"We have two months entirely to get used to them," Hye laughed, "don't feel this way. Just use them as you use normal ships."
"..."
Even when he said all these points, it still felt weird to both of them. But Hye was already famous for being stubborn, and they knew they wouldn't be able to change his mind once he made a decision.
"Follow me," Hye boarded his flagship and let it take them over to the border of his territory. "According to the intel and maps, we are supposed to be around five months away if we flew directly on our own, so..."
He was in a big room, filled with holographic maps of this part of the universe. The maps kept flickering to show the travel routes proposed by the ship's main system, and a few other routes that Hye drew himself.
"There are many portals out there that can shorten this duration by ten times," the pirate king paused as he noticed the maps all faded, except for one.
"I know," Hye nodded, pointing to the single remaining map before adding, "but we'll go through this particular route."
"This..." the two of them looked at the map before the nymph lady added, "isn't this portal leading a bit away from the proposed meeting spot?"
"It is," Hye looked at the nymph lady in interest, "you did your research, good girl."
"Thanks," she moved a few of her hair before adding, "but that doesn't answer why you selected this route in particular."
He kept himself busy trying to reread through everything the pirate king and lady nymph sent. The reports and gossip were quite rich, speaking about many things like the current progress of the caravan, any newly discovered intel, even a few top-secret documents getting leaked from the Toranks.
"This can't be something simple," the more he read through all this, the more his annoyance stemmed up, "something fishy is going to happen. If it's the Toranks, then they'll be setting a trap for their enemies. If it's the Hescos, then they want to get their hands on the caravan without shedding much blood..."
He knew the first option was quite unlikely. Why would the Toranks set a trap around such a caravan which looked quite important to them?
Just from the latest intel he could tell there were tons of fleets guarding the caravan. And with the new reports of more fleets joining up, he knew the news of such a leak must have reached the Toranks ears and they started to respond.
This made them be the culprit behind all this quite unlikely. In fact he suspected more of the evil intentions of the Hescos. "They are quite manipulative, and doing this would definitely help them in getting this caravan with the least losses..."
He could tell this was how this situation had developed, and yet he couldn't settle just on this. Something kept bothering him about this, and so he kept his mind open for any other possibility.
Just before the arrival of five days, a weird report came in the middle of tons of others. It was an unremarkable note about spotting a large fleet belonging to the Selvator race.
At first Hye thought this could be useful intel, but another report came in and mentioned more races moving up.
"They got greedy as others, welcome old friends," Hye dropped his interest in this intel, which would be something he'd regret later on.
Even when the later intel came void from any notification of the Selvator forces, Hye totally missed that. In fact, he wasn't to be blamed here, as the intel coming in the last week was quite rich in tons of details and massive in number as well.
Hye kept tracking the reports flooding his messages from the pirate king and lady nymph until they finally arrived at their destination.