Grand Voyage : Surviving on a Ghost Ship-Chapter 227 - Effects of the Execution Rack
“Just crystal shards?”
Yang Yi was stunned.
Until then, the Nightmare Star’s upgrades had always centred on the Nightmare side, using parts or corpses of aberrations as the key materials.
From level two to three, and three to four, the Nightmare’s abilities had grown dramatically, while the Astrologer’s abilities barely changed.
But the requirement had suddenly shifted, asking an enormous amount of crystal shards.
“Does that mean the next upgrade will greatly strengthen the Astrologer’s abilities… or maybe unlock new ones?”
Yang Yi muttered, thinking aloud.
The Astrologer’s abilities weren’t like the Nightmare’s. They were more like plug-ins, features such as map revealing and screen peeking. They didn’t boost combat power directly, but their utility was unmatched.
So if the next upgrade granted a new skill, it could be another one of those “cheat” abilities.
Yang Yi was actually looking forward to seeing the level-five Nightmare Star.
The only problem was that crystal shards were incredibly rare. So far, he’d only ever caught one while fishing, and he’d already used it. Collecting thirty thousand of them wouldn’t be something money alone could solve. It would take a long time.
Yang Yi walked along the deck, glancing occasionally at the new execution rack on top of the mast, wondering what he could hang there.
The stronger the thing, the better the effect, but he didn’t have any suitable corpses left. He had used them all in vending machine draws.
“Maybe I could hang one of Suna’s lab specimens…” he murmured to himself, without realising he’d already wandered to the bow.
The old captain had been fishing for nearly two hours by then.
Yang Yi looked into the wooden bucket and almost laughed. Inside was only one scrawny long-legged sardine, nothing else.
Around the bucket were several chunks of dried flesh that the vines had drained, leaving only a thin layer of skin.
Yang Yi scooped out the sardine and picked up a few of the dried meat pieces, then headed towards the central mast.
He wanted to test whether these things could be hung on the rack. After all, the description mentioned “trophies”, which probably included not just aberration corpses, but also ordinary plants, animals, or even living creatures.
And since trophies could be replaced at any time, he didn’t need to worry about not being able to take something down once it was hung.
He also pulled up a few weeds from the deck, a fragment of an ancient skeletal arm, and a small piece of vine to try hanging as well.
He climbed the rear mast, the taller of the two, where the inverted cross stood at the top. Gripping the vine handholds, he climbed up quickly.
The long-legged sardine was barely alive, unable to survive long out of water. Yang Yi seized the moment and hung it on the cross.
It worked.
The barbed wires coiled around the cross seemed to come alive, wrapping around the sardine. The sharp spikes pierced through it, fixing it in the centre.
【Execution Rack Activated】
A notification popped up in Yang Yi’s log. Apparently the sardine counted as a valid trophy.
He opened the ship’s interface and saw the system’s evaluation and the resulting effect:
【Evaluation: A dying long-legged sardine, clinging to life, strung up for display by some idiot. Almost no one will even notice there’s a fish here.
Effect: Ship durability +1. Probability of being attacked by long-legged sardines increased by 1000%.】
…
“Attacked by long-legged sardines?” Yang Yi’s expression turned strange.
That’d be like… food delivering itself to his doorstep!
He took the sardine down and saw that it had already died. Then he hung it back up and checked again.
No difference.
So it seemed that hanging dead things worked the same as living ones, at least for this fish.
Yang Yi decided to try the other items next.
The execution rack accepted everything: grass, vines, bones, even the dried-up scraps of flesh that were little more than skin.
【Evaluation: An utterly ordinary weed. It’s unclear why anyone would consider it a trophy. Perhaps because it grew on a bone? 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢
Effect: None】
【Evaluation: A small segment of bloodthirsty vine, visually no different from an ordinary one.
Effect: Ship durability +5】
【Evaluation: A piece of dried flesh, drained of all moisture, leaving only skin. Tastes good, might be snatched away by a passing seabird.
Effect: Ship durability +3】
【Evaluation: A severed skeletal arm. Not particularly intimidating.
Effect: Ship durability +2】
“Pretty much useless…”
Yang Yi took everything down again.
Out of everything he’d tested, the long-legged sardine was still the most effective, as it could even help increase food yield.
He climbed down from the mast and went to the witch’s lab, borrowing a few specimens and some tentacles from a pale worm to test further.
The results were much better this time; most of the samples boosted durability by dozens or even hundreds of points.
The best one was the head of the Spider Queen, still attached to part of a human torso.
Despite the stitching marks and the hollowed-out interior, the sight of it hanging there was shockingly powerful.
It added 1,000 ship durability, +5 to maximum sailing speed, and increased hostility from spider-type aberrations by 100%.
Next was the stomach, which added 300 durability and repelled “delicious meat” creatures.
If he hung up the living pale worm, he estimated it would provide several hundred, even over a thousand, durability points.
After running multiple tests, Yang Yi finally understood how the execution rack worked: the stronger and more dangerous the creature, the higher the evaluation, and the better the effect.
The quality of the result also depended on the state of the trophy.
A complete corpse was better than dismembered parts, and vital organs were worth more than ordinary ones.
In the end, Yang Yi decided to hang the head of the Spider Queen. He messaged Suna, asking to borrow it for a while.
“Sure.”
Her reply was brief but approving.
She’d already studied the Spider Queen’s body inside and out, so hanging it on the mast was fine.
If they later found something better, they could always swap it out.
Just as Yang Yi was about to climb down, an absurd thought flashed through his mind.
What if he hung himself on the execution rack? What kind of evaluation and effect would that produce?
He glanced up at the inverted cross. Its size and shape looked like it could almost fit his werewolf form perfectly…
But that thought stayed just that, a thought. Yang Yi wasn’t nearly foolish enough to actually try it.
He quickly climbed down and returned the borrowed specimens to the witch’s lab.
“Looks like I’ll have to test every aberration I kill for its trophy effect before using it in a draw…”
Yang Yi nodded to himself, very pleased with the execution rack.
It was simple, practical, and its potential seemed almost limitless.
If he could hang a forest fairy, the effect could be incredible. And if he ever managed to hang a truly great being, he didn’t even dare imagine what would happen.
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