The Informal Tomb Raiding Diary: She is the occupant of the tomb!-Chapter 205 - 206: Seeking Profit

This ship has never encountered mechanical failures; its navigation system is something he’s never seen before, usable only by specially trained technicians.

These technicians include the ship’s doctors, nurses, experimenters, and inspectors, all assigned by the Shield headquarters.

The captain has no authority to hire or fire them, and their work independence and confidentiality are very high; they can directly contact headquarters to report work, the captain has no right to intervene.

Thus, on the ship, only the regular crew members are managed by the captain, responsible for lookout, cleaning, and security work, much like gatekeepers, cleaners, and guards.

Additionally, he received a peculiar order requiring him to periodically send people to the hold, tossing them in the night before and releasing them the next morning.

The crew are his old subordinates; he can’t toss his own people, so he kidnaps fishermen on the high seas or tourists with few numbers, easy to handle.

He even captured several oceanographers, as well as their assistants, photographers, diving enthusiasts, and even pirates...

The crew doesn’t know what he’s capturing people for, but as they’re old subordinates, they do whatever he asks them to do.

This group is not constrained by law; they’re scarier than pirates because they hit harder.

Captain Jack was curious as well; after throwing the first one into the hold, he waited outside the door for a long time, trying to hear any movement inside.

He speculated that something bred in water might be above, possibly fond of eating humans, but when people were thrown into the water, no sound was made, unlike being torn and eaten.

The next morning, he waited at the door early, watching people who were tossed in the day before emerge unscathed, leaving him very confused.

No one explained to him why this was done; he only guessed on his own, and every time people were locked in and then released, they would be taken away by the ’assigned department’.

He even considered that they were conducting human experiments, needing living humans as test subjects.

But he soon discovered that things weren’t as he imagined.

After spending a night in the hold, people would emerge and suddenly become doctors, experimenters, working alongside other assigned personnel.

They lost their previous memories and joined the experiment and medical teams without training.

This led Captain Jack to a new hypothesis — replacement!

His hypothesis wasn’t just about captives learning to treat diseases and conduct research overnight; a more important reason was that the number of assigned personnel never changed.

Even with constant new members joining, their total number remained unchanged.

No surplus corpses ever appeared on the ship; new faces emerged, old faces disappeared, yet no body of old faces was found, leaving only one possibility.

Assigned personnel would transplant old memories into the new person’s brain, with the old body dissolved using medicine and discharged into the sea.

He thought this could only explain the unchanging number of assigned personnel, but why would they do this? If they wished, they could send the corpses to the incinerator; the ship has an incinerator, there’s no need to secretly dissolve bodies.

Other crew would notice medical personnel and experimenters frequently changing faces; the replacement can’t be hidden.

As for the captain, his task includes sending people to the hold, making him the easiest to discover the truth of ’replacement,’ with no need to keep it secret from him.

Hence Captain Jack’s hypothesis has flaws; perhaps those creatures in human disguise wanted him to think exactly this way.

They dare not publicly handle corpses, fearing others might find they’re merely human skins, guessing they’re not human but creatures disguised as humans.

"To keep this secret, the ship frequently changes personnel." Captain Jack glanced at the surrounding crew, "I don’t want them to be frightened anymore."

Witches, Sea Demons, storms... these fears come from the external world, obvious enemies; once they disappear, fear can be controlled.

Therefore, at least there’s hope, hope for them to disappear, hope for the danger to pass.

But if they knew monsters in human skin live among them daily, inescapable, unavoidable, they might be skinning human skins next door while they sleep; these timid crew members might be scared to drown themselves.

Captain Jack only said he suspects frequent memory transplant surgeries occur; I asked him if he’d considered, having obtained new young strong bodies, why continue these surgeries.

"Maybe, maybe after extended use of the new body, the transplanted memories would fade." He thought briefly, uttering a guess even he found implausible.

His self-confidence and sense of superiority were all gone; he admitted he tampered with the employment records to benefit his subordinates.

This means the crew should have left the fishing ship before the witch incident, with a new batch on board, but with the generous rewards from Shield, crew members were reluctant to forgo such favorable treatment, begging him to allow them one more contract extension.

Familiar ones are easier to deal with; Captain Jack hired all old friends upon taking office, couldn’t resist their pleas, so he faked data to help them renew their contracts once.

Shortly after renegotiating the contract, the witch incident happened, explaining why he knew crew’s psychology couldn’t endure another scare yet couldn’t let them ashore. 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

He couldn’t apply for another crew swap immediately after renewing the contract; no one wants to blow things up, so he had to tough it out until the contract ends.

"Is Shield that easy to fool? Don’t they verify new employees’ information?" I signaled the team leader to translate my words to Captain Jack.

I can hear foreign languages just fine, but my spoken skill only supports simple exchanges, retail-like, able to express bit by bit yet too time-consuming.

The team leader quickly translated for me, Captain Jack said the new crew data he submitted was real and valid, and he’d already negotiated they would sign contracts once the old crew’s contract expires.

Shield would verify their data but wouldn’t come down to compare photos one by one.

By then, he only needs to tell these pre-contracted crew there’s an issue in the company, the project has been canceled, compensate them slightly, and no one would doubt.

After all, Shield won’t contact previously employed crew for their bait and switch plan; no one will find out.

He also plans to fabricate a few accidental death slots to swindle compensation funds for the crew.

I’m curious, aren’t these tricks conceived by previous captains? Didn’t Shield ever discover, and how would they handle it?

"How often does the lab and medical room contact headquarters?" Qinghan suddenly asked.