By the time Hunter Sun steered his yacht back to Paradise Island, the sun was already rising on the second day.
He had spent seven or eight grueling hours underwater.
Even though his wetsuit insulated him and his physical constitution was more than four times that of an average adult male, the fatigue finally crashed over him the moment he stepped foot inside his rented seaside villa.
Hunter barely had the energy to take a quick cold shower before collapsing onto his bed.
When he finally woke up, it was already past noon.
He got out of bed and cooked himself a lavish lunch. His [Cooking] skill was less than 20,000 experience points away from reaching the maximum level. A Level 5 cooking skill was undoubtedly master-class.
Over the past few months, whether dining at famous Chinatown establishments or highly-rated Michelin-star restaurants favored by Westerners, Hunter had rarely found a chef who could match his own culinary creations.
Consequently, unless it was necessary for social or strategic reasons, he increasingly disliked eating out.
After finishing his meal, Hunter returned to the sea. He piloted his rented yacht toward a tiny, uninhabited island he had discovered a few days prior.
Upon reaching the micro-island—a speck of land no more than five thousand square meters in size—Hunter began the arduous task of organizing his loot.
He cleared a flat space on the beach, laid down a large waterproof tarp he had bought for this purpose, and started pulling items out of his [Inventory] one by one.
First came the wooden barrels.
Having soaked at the bottom of the ocean for over a century, the oak barrels were severely degraded. The moment Hunter pulled them out of the stasis of his Inventory, exposure to the air and gravity caused many of them to instantly crumble or collapse.
He tossed the ruined husks aside.
In total, Hunter had extracted 119 barrels from the shipwreck.
Over ninety of them contained ruined supplies: stagnant water, spoiled rum, and useless, waterlogged gunpowder. These items, submerged for decades, were completely worthless.
Hunter used his superhuman strength and a shovel to dig a deep trench on the island, burying the useless barrels and their contents to destroy the evidence.
However, the remaining 26 barrels were the true prize.
They were filled entirely with gold dust.
Hunter did some quick mental math. The oak barrels appeared to be modified 'hogshead' casks. A standard hogshead could hold roughly 200 liters of volume.
One liter equals 1,000 cubic centimeters, making the volume of each barrel about 200,000 cubic centimeters.
The density of gold is approximately 19.3 grams per cubic centimeter.
Therefore, a fully packed barrel of gold dust could weigh upwards of 3,800 kilograms. Given that the gold was in dust/sand form and likely mixed with sediment, it wouldn't be perfectly dense. Still, even a conservative estimate put each barrel's contents at several hundred kilograms.
Multiplying that by 26 barrels meant he was looking at over ten tons of raw gold dust.
Of course, Hunter knew his rough estimation wasn't entirely accurate. Gold dust refined over a century ago wouldn't have the high purity of modern bullion.
But even accounting for impurities and sediment, Hunter was certain he could extract at least seven or eight tons of pure, solid gold from this haul.
That alone was a staggering fortune.
And the gold dust wasn't even the most valuable thing on the ship.
After storing the gold dust securely back into his Inventory, Hunter turned his attention to the wooden chests.
He had recovered 125 chests of varying sizes from the wreck.
Over sixty of them contained rotted miscellaneous goods, textiles, and ruined provisions. Another thirty-odd chests held cannonballs, lead shot, and rusted firearms from the American Civil War era.
Bizarrely, about a dozen of the chests were filled with nothing but rocks.
Hunter wasn't sure what purpose these rocks served on the ship—perhaps ballast. He smashed a few dozen open to check for geodes or precious ores, but found them to be ordinary stones.
He dug another pit and buried the useless chests, rocks, and rusted junk.
Finally, he was left with the core treasure: twelve heavy chests filled to the brim with gold and silver coins, exquisite jewelry, and uncut gemstones.
Though twelve chests didn't seem like a massive volume, their contents were priceless.
Among the jewels, Hunter found over a dozen uncut diamonds that easily exceeded 50 carats. The largest one he held in his hand felt like it could surpass 120 carats.
If he liquidated everything—the gold dust, the rare coins, the jewelry, and the diamonds—a conservative estimate put his earnings well over a billion US dollars.
The ship also held various scattered personal effects belonging to the captain and crew. Given their age, they qualified as antiques and could likely fetch another ten million dollars or so at auction.
Relying on the valuation knowledge he had gained after triggering the [Antique Appraisal]skill, Hunter estimated his total haul from the sunken ship to be significantly higher than his initial billion-dollar guess.
"I hit the jackpot!"
As he packed chest after chest of gold and jewels back into his Inventory, Hunter felt a rush of adrenaline, accompanied by a burning curiosity.
In his past life, when he watched Into the Blue, he had strongly disliked the male lead's personality and found the plot full of holes. Consequently, he had only watched the movie casually, even skipping scenes that didn't feature the sexy female lead, Sam.
Because of this, Hunter only knew the broad strokes of the plot. He was fuzzy on the finer details.
He didn't actually know the true origin of the sunken ship.
It clearly wasn't the treasure of some legendary Golden Age pirate, as he had initially assumed. The presence of so many items from the American Civil War era contradicted that. The ship itself looked less like a traditional pirate galleon and more like an armed merchantman or a naval blockade runner.
"I remember seeing the word 'Zephyr' carved into some of the crates and barrels," Hunter mused.
"I'll have to use that to dig into the history books later."
The sheer volume of treasure on the Zephyr had far exceeded his expectations, sparking a genuine interest in the ship's actual history and the identity of its owners.
It was a pity that the logbooks and ledgers he found on board had been completely destroyed by a century of seawater.
Still, holding a billion dollars in his pocket dimension, Hunter couldn't bring himself to be too disappointed.
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