Lucian went to open the medicine box inside the infirmary and brought it out to the deck. It was full of bottles and vials, filled with liquids and ointments.
He placed it on the barrel and went to gather a few leaves from the potted plants near the windows. They were thick and fleshy. When he broke them apart, a thick white juice began to leak from them.
A's, who was still in a daze, came to his senses when his father approached him. He instinctively pushed his legs out in front of him to get away from his father as none of his four men dared to stand up for him.
Mad Hatter's expression darkened even further. A sound of a slap echoed through the deck, followed by a second and a third one.
The merry atmosphere on the ship had been completely destroyed.
"Useless, pathetic..." Mad Hatter cursed his son. A's face became swollen as his father shouted at him, "Can't even follow simple instructions! Can't even do a proper job! You had one job, and you messed it up!"
"Stop! STOP! PLEASE!!!" A's screamed, shielding his face with his hands, "I'm sorry! I'll do better next time!"
"There won't be a next time! You are a failure!" Mad Hatter shouted. The veins on his forehead and neck were throbbing as his body shook from anger, "I'll beat you to death!"
Lucian's men blinked at the scene, pausing their escape to stare at the father and son. It was a familiar sight for most of them, a glimpse at their past.
'Voice, I found your long lost twin,' Lucian said to Voice as A's father screamed obscenities.
Voice decided to ignore him, but who was Lucian? Whenever there was a chance for him to get back at Voice, he would take it.
'I bet if you had your own body, you would have treated me the same way,' Lucian knew it hated humans so he compared it to the biggest scums for the biggest effect, 'Just like him.'
'Shut up,' Voice hissed.
'No, look,' Lucian continued to mock it, 'You should look at that man, you might be related to him...'
Voice didn't say anything, but it made his illness flare up again.
Lucian was prepared and chugged down a vial with the medicine.
He didn't feel sorry for A's, thinking how everyone had their own battles to fight. It was so fun to tease Voice whenever he could, so he decided not to play a hero this time around.
"Hey! Get your hands off him!" Leaf shouted, a rare sight for him to be the voice of reason. "What kind of a man beats up their son like that?"
"Isn't it normal for fathers to treat their sons like that?" Goblin asked, succumbing to Lucian's treatment after running in circles around the mass.
Lucian made him drink a bitter potion and was now making Goblin rub the cold plant's leaves against his bruises.
Goblin pinched his nose, his skin was turning yellow from the plant's juice, "It stinks, Boss."
"It's good for you," Lucian reassured him, then broke another lead from the plant, and threw it to Fishbone to use, "My father always did this to me after visiting the church, and I turned out fine."
"You didn't turn out fine," Jax said, helping Leaf to separate A's from Mad Hatter, "But yours is better than mine for sure. Mine is a piece of shit. Can't wait for him to die, so I can piss on his grave."
"If only your mother heard you just now." Leaf said jokingly, making Jax shut up.
"Don't you dare snitch on me to her."
Jax's mother was a sore subject for him. He would become an unrecognizable docile version of himself around her, listening to her every word without saying a single complaint or objection. She was the only person who could make him behave properly.
Maybe they saw themselves in A's, or maybe they felt sorry for him because of how badly his father had treated him, but regardless, Jax and Leaf came to A's aid and tossed Mad Hatter into the sea, cursing and wishing death upon him.
"Did we just start a war with the Mad Hatter, a noble with a title of a baron?" Leaf asked, realizing what they had just done.
"Mad Hatter was most likely abandoned," Cansan said as the four men scrambled with their tails tugged between their legs when Lucian activated his bronze knight's powers, "By the merchant guild itself..."
True to Cansan's words, the Mad Hatter's crew had disappeared from the dock. The ships that were on the other side of the harbor were gone.
His wealth had disappeared overnight, making them realize that he was just a small fry in the grand scheme of things, one that was replaced by a bigger fish. Powerful enough to make a noble disappear like that.
The merchant guild refused to give an official statement about it. Only that Mad Hatter breached their contract, and that he was no longer a part of their organization, so they could not be held responsible for his actions.
Lucian wasn't convinced by the rumors. He recollected the priest's boots, and he noticed that those were only made in the Kereon Duchy. His dialect was also quite similar to those who lived there, so Lucian had a guess of where the priest had come from.
'Why would Kereons send one of their own this far west?'
The duchy of Kereon was the most religious one in the Diamante Kingdom. They were a big supporter of the church, lending their manpower to deal with the kingdom's shackled problem.
Lucian searched his mind for anything Celine might have told him about her family's history with the Kereons.
He recalled her mentioning that the Kereons were a bunch of stalkers who kept tabs on the lower and lesser nobles in the kingdom.
Celine was much more knowledgeable when it came to politics than Lucian was. His education was not nearly as thorough as hers. They had a lot of discussions on the topic, and it helped Lucian gain some insight into how the higher class people operated.
'Are they looking for someone?' He didn't see any reason why they would check his hair for traces of dye, unless they were looking for someone particular, 'Someone with dark hair.'