Both the king and the queen were relieved that Ars seemed willing to negotiate.
The king then decided that it would be better for all, if the negotiations were made with some tea and snacks. He looked at his butler and ordered.
"Prepare and bring some drinks and snacks to the guest room."
The butler nodded and left, the king proceeded to look at Ars and requested.
"Please let's sit down in the guest room to negotiate further."
Ars nodded and the king and queen started leading the way. On the way there the queen asked curiously.
"You seem quite young, and are already a king, did something happen to your family?"
Ars smiled, and calmly replied.
"Nothing like that, instead it was me who decided that I wanted to create a kingdom for myself and my followers. We found a deserted island and started building, thanks to that the kingdom is still very young and needs more people, so I was going on a trip to find refuges to offer them a fresh start on my kingdom."
They were all surprised by the answer, the queen then asked.
"How old is your kingdom now?"
Ars laughed and replied.
"Not even a year old, but close to it."
Now they weren't just surprised, they were shocked. The king then added.
"You and your followers seem to be very strong, to the point I thought you were the king of a large kingdom and your parents for some reason left the throne for you."
Ars then nodded and explained why they were all strong.
"The reason we are strong is that we train hard to become stronger everyday… It's quite simple in reality… In this world you either are a predator or you are just prey."
Ars hesitated but after a few seconds he decided to say what he wished to say.
"I apologize in case I sound rude but for example in the case of your kingdom, you seem to be a good ruling family, the people around actually seem to like you and want to genuinely help you, but because your kingdom strength is weak, you are being preyed on by that group of pirates."
Ars thought about it then added.
"In this case, they either think that you would be a very easy target, or someone is pulling strings from behind."
The king sighed, he knew Ars was right and his kingdom was weak, but he still couldn't understand why would the kingdom be targeted, there were no riches here, nothing to steal, so why risk their lives for nothing, it would be a lose-lose situation for both sides.
As they were talking, they reached the room, and sat down in some comfortable chairs, shortly after the butler arrived with some tea and surprisingly, donuts.
Ars tasted them and was very pleasantly surprised, the queen smiled and questioned him.
"How do you like our local specialty? They might not be the best ones in the world but I would say they are pretty good, we produce the fruit jam filling and the ingredients for the dough ourselves."
Ars nodded and replied with a warm smile.
"They are very good. Where could I buy more of these for my men? And before you offer the donuts, I will say, in this case I prefer to buy them."
The queen nodded and gave him the information proudly.
"You can find the shop on the center of the commercial street, it's easy to spot, with a donut shaped door."
Ars nodded and made a mental note to go shopping for donuts before leaving, and to add a marker on his world map, to know that they sold very good donuts on this island.
The king, seeing that both Ars and his wife were done with their talk, he initiated the negotiations.
"First I would like to ask your opinion on something… You said that the normal reasons for a pirate crew to attack would be the kingdom's weak military force or someone pulling the strings. But pirates normally attack for treasure and gold and our kingdom does not have enough to attract such a large group of pirate crews, we don't even have enough for two, and my doubt is, if someone is pulling the strings in the dark, why would that be. "
Ars thought about the best way to answer and finally decided to go with.
"I think there are two different possibilities but with similar reasons. The first would be that the pirates discovered that this kingdom has little military strength and it's not protected by the world government, so they decided to make the land into a lawless island…"
The other possibility was worse… So Ars tried to think of a way to soften the blow. Not managing to find a way, he sighted and proceeded.
"The second possibility, might be the world government trying to kill you all to put other nobles in charge, who will always pay the heavenly tribute, even if it leads to the suffering of the people. Another option is the world government is using your kingdom as an example, to demonstrate what might happen to kingdoms who don't pay their tribute, after all if every kingdom follows your example the tribute will be much lower. "
Both of the adults went pale, the last possible culprit chilled them to the bones. They understood if the world government was the one behind the attack they would die sooner or later, even if they survived this attack more would come. Unless they would start paying the tribute. Something that was impossible for them.
Ars then gave them a suggestion, just in case they weren't doing it already.
"Do you create the fruit jam just for the donuts or do you actually also sell it in jars? "
The king absentmindedly, automatically answered.
"Just for the donuts, why?"
"You can expand the fruit production in the future, and then sell the jam by itself, at a higher price, by creating the glass container yourselves and calling it premium goods, that will boost your revenue. "
The king smiled awkwardly and replied.
"We tried it in the past but it failed due to the lack of merchants interest, and we rarely have tourists to buy it, so it failed miserably, in the past."
Ars then said.
"Why not give a few jars to Big Mom, as long as she likes it, you might get free advertisement, in the best scenario she might send some of her children to buy it and they would try the donuts and like them. In the worst scenario she eats it and decides she had better in the past and ignores it. I doubt she would attack you for giving her sweets."
The king was shocked, he never thought of using Big Mom as free advertisement, that would be risky, before the king could reply, Ars added.
"I know it's risky but it might be your best chance of increasing your revenue."
The king nodded and finally replied with a serious expression.
"I will consider it, if we live through this attack."
Ars nodded and continued.
"What do you suggest, for compensation?"
The king started his offer.
"My suggestion is pretty straight forward, we give you 5.000.000 berries, all the bounties of the pirates you kill or defeat and a place for you and your men to stay when you need to rest from a trip."
Ars nodded, while he wasn't that interested in the offer, he also saw no loss in accepting it, so he accepted it.
"Ok, i will help."
All of them were very thankful to Ars, after all, what they could offer was almost meaningless, so they knew he was helping mainly out of good will.
Ars said his farewells and went to the donut shop to buy a large amount of donuts, for all of his sailors and the medical apprentice.
He spent nearly 100.000 berries in donuts, then left the store with a large amount of donut boxes.
Once he arrived, he explained the situation to his soldiers, and finally he distributed the donut boxes to everyone.
Everyone was happy about the unexpected sweets, especially the females, then Ars remembered and said to the 4 female soldiers who had come along.
"You will be in charge of protecting our medical staff."
They all nodded and replied with jam and donuts leftovers on their faces.
"Yes Sir!!"
Ars laughed and left, they were confused why he laughed until they looked at each other, and saw the leftovers on their faces, 3 of them blushed and the last one shrugged it off, and kept eating.
Ars was almost certain the pirates would attack very soon. His reasoning was that since his ship was here, the pirates would think they would make extra money. They probably knew the kingdom didn't have enough money for everyone, and an extra ship meant a greater chance of making money.
Ars went to sleep thinking he would be woken up to fight during the night, but to his surprise that wasn't the case.
He woke up the next day feeling ready for the day, while he awaited the pirates' arrival, he noticed that the city guards were very tired, he thought that they should change shifts with new guard teams soon.
When the new guard teams arrived, before the night teams left, the lookout from Ars ship spotted a group of 27 pirates ships approaching at a quick pace, he quickly sounded the alarm, and everybody started to get ready for a fight.
Shortly after, the first pirate's ship came in range, Ars simply jumped in the ship and started wiping out pirates, they didn't even have the time to beg for mercy, the difference in strength was just too big, so in less than a minute Ars was done with the first ship.
After Ars destroyed the 4th ship a few pirate ships reached land, and his soldiers and the guards were handling them without much difficulty, so Ars kept jumping from ship to ship, erasing every life on board.
After a few more minutes only a single ship remained, it tried to escape but Ars quickly caught up to it and killed all of them, with the exception of the captain, since he wanted info about why they were attacking this kingdom.
To put it nicely, a nearby lawless island had been destroyed by the marines, and when they were seeking a new place this kingdom appeared on their search, and after investigating they discovered this kingdom was pretty weak so, they decided to create a new lawless island here as revenge.
Ars knew about the marine attack on the lawless island, but while they managed to crush most pirates that remained, most of the pirate crews had runned of and after the marines left the pirates went back.
He also had heard that some of those marines were later attacked by a stronger pirate crew and got wiped out. Ars then asked the pirate captain about the island.
"You know that a few days later, that lawless island was basically back to normal, right?"
"Yeah but we decided to get a new one and get revenge at the same time, after all you might not know, but some of the marines docked here for provisions."
Ars was feeling like an idiot, he had thought that it would be an actual intelligent reason, but instead he got this absurd reason…
Ars also felt a bit relieved for this kingdom, if the captain had said the truth, the kingdom would be safe for now. Done with the questions, Ars just executed the captain and went back to talk with the king and queen.
He explained the pirates' reasons and received his reward, before collecting his bounties and finally departing for a different kingdom.