Chapter Ninety-Eight: The Man-Eating Fish

“Leave it alone.”

The treatment was going smoothly. With the experience gained from treating the little boy earlier, Black Feather was fully confident that these people would recover before long. White Saint had applied some medicine to their wounds to aid healing.

At noon, everyone ate a simple meal in the fishermen’s village, then prepared to set out from the shore. Red Heart spoke with the villagers for a long time, and after great effort managed to find a small boat, which she moored along the coast.

The boat’s hull was only twenty meters long, and the cabin in the middle was low, crude, and simple.

“This is the best boat I could find,” she said. “As long as we don’t run into any powerful demons on the way, it’s enough to cross this sea.”

Everyone boarded. White Saint placed the medical kit inside the cabin, and then he and Black Feather took turns rowing.

Fortunately, the sea remained calm throughout the journey, and several days slipped by unnoticed. By evening of the day they neared the border between the Scarlet Sea and the Azure Sea, the horizon ahead was already visible.

Night fell. With overcast skies and no stars, and no lights along the shore, the world around them gradually sank into darkness.

The girls crowded into the cabin and dozed in the boat’s gentle rocking. The space inside was cramped; they could only sleep sitting up, shoulder to shoulder and knee to knee, while the howling wind slipping through the cabin window and the waves brushing the hull sounded in their ears.

They had encountered no danger for days, and the fatigue of travel had softened everyone’s vigilance.

White Saint’s large medical kit lay across the center like a table. Tears of Falling Sky had collapsed on top of it, drooling all over the floor, and White Saint had repeatedly pushed him awake in disgust.

Red Heart, a warrior of the Dragonkin, hugged her greatsword and leaned by the cabin door, resting with her eyes closed while listening to the sounds outside. Experience had taught her that as long as the ship had not left the Scarlet Sea, a demon attack could come at any time.

Suddenly the ship lurched violently, and a heavy booming sound echoed from beneath the hull.

It was as though a school of strong, hefty fish were charging and pounding past below.

Everyone jolted awake. Red Heart was the first to open her eyes; she seized her greatsword and rushed out. Black Feather and White Saint followed.

“Wake up, all of you!” Red Heart shouted from outside.

A school of fish smashed in from one side, their force increasing with every impact, until the whole ship tilted. The violent shaking slowly slid the central medical kit off to one side. Tears of Falling Sky, still asleep, lost contact with the kit with his chin, then suddenly pitched forward and rolled once across the floor as the boat swayed left and right before finally waking.

“Huh? What happened?”

He rubbed his head and pushed aside the cabin curtain. The two light elf girls tried to come out as well, but White Saint stopped them. Standing at the doorway, he signaled that they should not go out.

Red Heart stood on the rocking deck. Around her, the water was churning with wind and waves. Ugly fish covered in spikes, each one like a man-eating monster, leaped across the surface and slammed again and again into the hull with their sharp dorsal fins, trying to smash the boat apart. Spray splashed up onto the deck.

Because of the darkness, no one on board had even noticed that the ship was sailing straight toward a vast, black whirlpool at the edge of the Scarlet Sea. Right now, however, their attention was focused entirely on the fish around them.

“Those are man-eating fish,” Red Heart said.

For some reason the creatures were violently agitated. Again the school attacked from both sides, ramming the hull and underside of the boat with frenzy. The planks gave off loud cracking sounds, and several streams of water poured in through the breaches. The cabin floor quickly began leaking everywhere, and the two light elf girls, terrified, lifted their skirts and huddled together.

“How dare they damage our boat!”

Tears of Falling Sky crossed his fingers and instantly spread a barrier net. A giant purple web unfurled beneath the hull across the water, blocking the man-eating fish’s attacks.

At the same time, Black Feather sprang into the air, landing on the barrier net above the water, and with the trident staff in her hand, repeatedly thrust at the rapidly moving fish below, driving the weapon into their hard spines.

Any man-eating fish that leaped from the water to avoid the barrier and cut across the fishing boat was cleaved down by Red Heart’s greatsword, blue blood spraying into the air.

“These demons all came from the Eastern Sea,” Red Heart said.

“I didn’t expect there to be demons in the sea too,” Black Feather replied.

Faced with the attack, the man-eating fish immediately plunged back underwater and gathered together to ram the hull, trying to sink the ship. Tears of Falling Sky’s barrier net could no longer withstand the coordinated assault and struggled to hold.

Again and again, unpredictable impacts surged from the dark into the hull. White Saint returned to the cabin, lifted the medical kit from the floor, and the small, swaying compartment was already riddled with leaks; water was pouring in rapidly, spreading across the floorboards and over their feet. The ship was sinking.

“Let me out to help!”

Ignoring White Saint’s attempt to stop her, Spirit Dream rushed out of the cabin.

A holy bow of light formed upon the staff of the Flower Goddess. She drew the bow as if pulling a string, and arrows of light shot forth one after another, streaking across the night sky with the brilliance of meteors, striking each man-eating fish with perfect precision.

But because the force behind them was insufficient, none of the light arrows could pierce the creatures’ thick scales, and none could kill them. Even so, the rain of luminous shafts still forced them back beneath the water.

Yet beneath the ship’s black hull, the ferocious impacts continued unaffected. Suddenly one man-eating fish leaped from the edge of the barrier net and lunged at Spirit Dream with its maw full of fangs.

Spirit Dream had no time to dodge. She stumbled back in terror, but Black Feather flashed in front of her and drove the trident straight into the fish’s mouth with her right hand. The flying fish, carried forward by its own momentum, was impaled by the sharp trident from head to tail. By the time its fangs neared Black Feather’s arm, it was already near death.

The three elf girls hurriedly scooped water with containers and threw it overboard, while Tears of Falling Sky’s barrier net grew weaker and weaker, until at last it shattered.

The encircling man-eating fish gathered tightly around the ship, one after another opening their huge mouths and leaping from the water. The girls pouring water outside were so frightened that they quickly withdrew their arms, and even the containers slipped overboard. The ship continued to sink.

“The boat is going down!”

Tears of Falling Sky cried out.

The others also came out of the cabin, and all of them gathered on the deck.

“What do we do...” Black Feather thought. “I can’t use dark magic. If the ship really sinks, the rest of us will only die at the bottom of the sea.”

Soaked through, the hull tilted sharply, one end rising high as the water’s weight only hastened the sinking.

Everyone looked about anxiously, but this was the center of the sea, far from both shores. The cold seawater soon rose past their knees, and the three light elf girls clung tightly to one another, nearly in tears.

White Saint felt helpless. Looking at the girls with pity, he transformed a frost staff into being, lightly touched the deck, and said only two words.

“Freeze.”