Chapter 128: Bait

Description

The dense seawater of the Silent Sea was quiet as an abyss.

The murky currents, like thick, filthy cotton wadding, sealed off visibility to an extremely narrow scope.

Spreading fingers and aiming one’s palm at one’s own face was the only way to make out a vague silhouette.

Even the concept of “light” itself seemed to have been rotted away and devoured by the waters of the Silent Sea.

Facing the pitch-black darkness before him, Tunzuo raised his hand to his eyes and spread his fingers wide.

Lowering his hand, Tunzuo turned to look at both sides.

Ropes extended from his waist, firmly linking the three witches together.

Though Tunzuo and the other two witches were separated by less than two or three meters, at such a close distance, Tunzuo still couldn’t see them clearly.

Left with no other option, Tunzuo let mana surge at his fingertips, raised his hand, and swept it across his eyes.

His Elemental Vision opened.

With the mana perception of Elemental Vision, Tunzuo could finally make out the figures of Olivia and Hai Lanyue in the darkness.

The two witches continued swimming at his side, but from the perspective of Elemental Vision, Olivia and Hai Lanyue looked like two sheets of paper wrinkled by water, pale and fragile.

A heavy sense of unease spread through Tunzuo’s heart.

To ease his own discomfort, he grabbed the ropes on both sides and gave them a sudden, sharp tug toward himself.

The unexpected force yanked both figures back and forth, but Tunzuo paid it no mind.

Only after Olivia and Hai Lanyue were pressed tightly against his side did the taut string of his heart finally relax a little.

Sensing that something was off with Tunzuo’s mood, Olivia gently placed her hand on his shoulder and blinked a question.

“What’s wrong?”

If not for Olivia’s brilliant golden slit pupils shining as brightly as the sun even in the darkness, Tunzuo probably wouldn’t have been able to read the question in her eyes at all.

“Nothing. Just worried you two would get snatched up by some weird creature. Pulled you close so I can keep an eye on you troublesome ones.”

Tunzuo made a stubborn excuse using a sound transmission spell, but Olivia only looked baffled in response.

“Listen, we’re moving together from here on out. Got it?”

Tunzuo increased the output of his sound transmission spell and shouted at Olivia at a higher volume.

From Olivia’s perspective, Tunzuo’s lips were moving, as though he were saying something.

But in her ears, there was nothing but absolute silence.

Even so, Olivia still looked confused, blinking.

She couldn’t tell if she hadn’t heard him or hadn’t understood him.

Forced to improvise, Olivia had no choice but to cup her hand over her ear and gesture to Tunzuo that she couldn’t hear.

No sound?

After receiving the information, Tunzuo’s brow furrowed deeply.

He turned to look at the other side and noticed Hai Lanyue staring back at him with the same bewilderment.

She clearly hadn’t heard anything either.

To test his theory, Tunzuo raised his hand to his ear and snapped his fingers several times.

His fingertips collided, stirring rings of ripples in the water.

But neither the echo of the ripples nor the sound of his fingers colliding could travel through the seawater into Tunzuo’s ears.

It wasn’t that they couldn’t travel.

It was more accurate to say that the sound waves were devoured by the Silent Sea the instant they were produced.

“Heh. The Silent Sea. True to its name, I suppose.”

With no other recourse, and with visibility restricted while their group-wide communication was muted, Tunzuo could only communicate with Olivia and Hai Lanyue through continuous, repeated gesturing.

After a flurry of clumsy, improvised sign language and wildly abstract body movements, Olivia and Hai Lanyue finally understood that Tunzuo wanted to move together.

They both flashed an OK sign back at him.

Receiving their affirmative response, Tunzuo let out a weary mental sigh and thought to himself.

‘I was careless. If something like this ever happens again, I’m setting up a mental communication network beforehand. This is way too exhausting.’

After a brief exchange and initial planning, the three witches continued diving deeper.

As the depth increased, the water temperature plummeted.

Biting cold seeped into the witches’ senses bit by bit, like icy steel needles trying to nail them down in this dead, silent place.

The extreme cold of the deep sea didn’t affect her, and Tunzuo, as a Ghost Witch, also possessed excellent resistance to cold.

Though the oppressive depths made Tunzuo feel somewhat tight in the chest, it wasn’t enough to cause physical discomfort.

But on Olivia’s side, some problems were starting to surface.

As a Golden Dragon Witch, Olivia was more attuned to the blazing sun than to the abyssal deep.

The thick darkness and freezing temperatures caused a barely perceptible stiffness to creep into her movements.

After who knows how long of diving, Tunzuo finally spotted a vague outline of rocks below and successfully reached the seafloor.

Tunzuo groped his way to a stop beside a reef.

The sensation of solid ground underfoot soothed his nerves.

He steadied himself, turned to look around, and found everything utterly silent.

No drifting shadows.

No lurking eyes.

No unsettling presences.

He couldn’t even spot a single scavenger feeding on carrion.

The entire Silent Sea was like a forgotten graveyard, so quiet it was eerie.

Tunzuo had originally expected a horde of grotesque creatures to be waiting to greet him the moment he hit the water.

He’d even prepared himself to fend off an encirclement while clumsily gathering materials.

But looking at things now, it seemed he’d worried over nothing.

That wasn’t good news, however.

Nearly half of the materials needed from the Silent Sea had to be obtained by hunting the creatures that lived here.

Relying on just the three of them to blindly search without knowing where the material zones were distributed, in a sea this vast, who knew how long they’d be at it?

What’s more, the quiet before his eyes was nothing but a facade.

No enemies didn’t mean peace.

No movement didn’t mean safety.

The Silent Sea had quietly hidden every danger within the pitch-black waters all around them.

Just as Tunzuo was racking his brain over how to find the materials, a faint fluorescent glow suddenly drifted into his vision.

Tunzuo whipped his head around and saw that Hai Lanyue, off to the side, had begun emitting a soft blue radiance from her body.

The gentle light transformed into a lighthouse, illuminating a small pocket of brightness in the pitch-black, gloom-filled Silent Sea.

“Wait, is bioluminescence in deep water some kind of base genetic code for you jellyfish? You even manage to break through the Silent Sea’s mechanics?”

The sudden light source left Tunzuo completely dumbfounded.

His eyes fixed tightly on Hai Lanyue as he struggled to process the mess of emotions swirling in his head.

Tunzuo could only feel that the Silent Sea’s degree of “cursed” was rapidly, steadily progressing in the direction of “ridiculous.”

Just as Tunzuo was wondering what exactly was causing Hai Lanyue to glow, the rope at his waist gave a sharp tug.

Olivia had pulled both Tunzuo and Hai Lanyue to her side at lightning speed.

Olivia was on high alert.

Her brilliant golden slit pupils contracted sharply, her muscles tensed.

She positioned her body between Tunzuo and the darkness, crouching low, ready to strike at any moment.

Olivia’s guarded posture made Tunzuo’s eyes sharpen.

He didn’t ask questions.

Instead, he immediately emptied his mind and fused his attention into the shadows.

Through his natural affinity with shadows, the boundless darkness stretched out as an extension of Tunzuo’s senses.

Every faint disturbance in the surrounding water was carefully peeled apart and analyzed by Tunzuo.

Sure enough, several restless disruptions suddenly appeared within the previously tranquil shadows.

If he had to guess, Hai Lanyue’s light had successfully drawn out the hunters lurking in the shadows.

At that, Tunzuo and Olivia exchanged a glance, then spread out into formation on either side, shielding Hai Lanyue in the middle.

Tunzuo confirmed the hunters’ locations through his perception of the shadows, while Olivia locked onto their positions through changes in the water currents.

The soundless seawater made their senses razor-sharp to every tiny shift.

Lines of sight.

Water currents.

Even temperature.

After a brief period of probing, something finally lost its patience and launched the first attack, churning the water into turbulent currents.

Olivia reacted with lightning speed.

The instant the creature moved, she intercepted it before it could reach its target.

Olivia raised both arms and physically forced the attacking creature to a stop right beside Hai Lanyue, pinning it down.

Using the glow of Hai Lanyue’s fluorescence, Tunzuo squinted and saw that the creature locked in a struggle with Olivia was a bizarre species of shrimp, easily four or five meters in length.

The giant shrimp had no claws.

Instead, in place of them, two pairs of massive jaws sprouted from its mouthparts, taking up nearly a third of its entire body.

The jaws opened and shut vertically, their hard, chitinous edges glinting with a cold sheen.

One glance was enough to tell their bite force was terrifying.

The giant shrimp was a vivid red all over, with a smooth carapace.

Its swimming legs paddled through the water like oars as it twisted its body and applied force with its massive jaws, trying to break through Olivia’s defense from the front.

Olivia, meanwhile, braced both hands against the shrimp’s gaping jaws, locked in a contest of raw strength.

Razor-Jaw Anomaly Shrimp.

Tunzuo identified the creature.

Those two pairs of enormous jaws were exactly one of the materials needed for Willy’s refit and upgrade.

Seeing that Olivia had already captured the Razor-Jaw Anomaly Shrimp, Tunzuo turned away and stopped watching.

He needed to stay alert for the other grotesque creatures still lurking in the darkness.

There were still disturbances in the shadows, more than one spot.

The Razor-Jaw Anomaly Shrimp was just the one with the least patience.

Plenty more things were waiting behind it.

Just as Tunzuo assumed Olivia would finish off the Razor-Jaw Anomaly Shrimp as easily as squashing a bedbug, the rope at his waist suddenly went taut.

The next second, a flash of gold shot past his vision.

Tunzuo focused his eyes, and his pupils trembled.

The unidentified object that had just been flung away was Olivia!

His eyelids twitching violently, Tunzuo whipped his head around and saw the Razor-Jaw Anomaly Shrimp, having thrown Olivia off, shaking its head and clacking its massive jaws, seemingly regrouping for another attack.

No.

Can’t leave it alive!

With a flicker of thought from Tunzuo, the surrounding shadows instantly condensed into two massive hands that closed in from all directions, squeezing the Razor-Jaw Anomaly Shrimp in a vice-like grip.

Having seen Olivia lose in a contest of strength for the first time, Tunzuo didn’t dare be careless.

He focused his will and poured in power.

As the shadow hands increased their pressure, countless dark-violet four-pointed stars materialized around Tunzuo, like shattered stardust slowly revolving around him.

Each one brimmed with mana ready to be unleashed.

[Fifth Circle Spell – Arcane Star Rain]

Sensing that the Razor-Jaw Anomaly Shrimp might not be small fry, Tunzuo channeled mana at breakneck speed.

Just as he was preparing to unleash an all-out barrage, the crushing force of the shadow hands caused cracks to spiderweb across the shrimp’s carapace.

Green blood seeped from the Razor-Jaw Anomaly Shrimp’s body, dispersing through the water and being torn into fine, thread-like strands by the currents.

Watching the shrimp writhe in agony under his grip, Tunzuo cautiously cut off the mana supply.

‘This level of strength… it’s not some trash mob on the street, but it’s barely a medium review at best. How did Olivia get thrown off by this thing?’

While Tunzuo was still puzzling over why Olivia had gotten weaker, a furious Olivia had already sped back into position.

Her brilliant golden slit pupils blazed with unmistakable rage.

Olivia pulled back her fist, aimed at the Razor-Jaw Anomaly Shrimp’s head, and drove a full-powered blow into it.

One punch.

The shrimp’s head was smashed to a pulp.

Its carapace shattered.

Its massive jaws broke apart.

Green blood burst into a mist in the murky water.

The spreading blood clearly stimulated the other lurking hunters.

The shadows that had been stirring just moments ago rippled once, then fell back into absolute stillness.

Having vented her frustration, Olivia shook out her arm, feeling quite pleased with herself.

Too bad her moment of glory lasted barely three seconds.

Before Olivia could even turn around, a heavy, bone-crunching chop came down hard on the back of her skull.

Wincing in pain, Olivia clutched her head and spun around.

What she ran straight into was the sight of Tunzuo’s utterly furious gaze.

Tunzuo swam over to the shredded upper half of the Razor-Jaw Anomaly Shrimp, pointing frantically at the pitiful pile of remains.

He was so angry he kept blowing bubbles from his mouth, extremely foul-mouthed, and his meaning was painfully obvious.

“You perverted dragon! Why did you smash it up like that?! We still needed its materials! And now you’ve scared off all the other prey around us. What are we supposed to catch now?!”

Faced with Tunzuo’s silent accusation, Olivia finally realized she’d screwed up.

To quell Tunzuo’s fury, Olivia had no choice but to frantically gesture her apologies.

Olivia first pressed her palms together and bowed wildly at Tunzuo, indicating she was wrong.

Then she pointed at her own head, promising she’d think things through before acting next time.

Finally, she lowered her head in cautious, sincere remorse, vowing never to do it again.

“Fine. Considering how sincere your apology is, I’ll let you off this once.”

Tunzuo reluctantly accepted Olivia’s apology, massaging his temples in frustration as he gazed at the shadows that had once again fallen into silence, lamenting the missed opportunity to gather materials.

Ugh.

There had finally been a chance to score big, and it was gone just like that.

Hai Lanyue gently patted Tunzuo’s back as a gesture of comfort.

Feeling the reassurance, Tunzuo turned to look at Hai Lanyue, still emitting that soft blue glow.

He raised a hand to stroke his chin, eyes narrowing slightly, a glint of mischief brewing in his eerie green soul flames.

Tunzuo: (adjusting posture) Stare—

Hai Lanyue: O(√)O Huh? What’s the matter, Tunzuo?

Tunzuo: (I have a good idea)

In a stretch of open water, Hai Lanyue sat quietly in the center of the open area, cradling Shub in her arms.

She looked like a delicacy deliberately placed on a dining table, surrounded by hostility—quiet, appetizing, and utterly nonthreatening.

Meanwhile, Tunzuo and Olivia, using Hai Lanyue as bait, lurked in the dark recesses of the reefs.

They’d set an inescapable net, waiting for hunters to willingly take the bait.

Two seconds.

Three minutes.

Four minutes.

Half an hour…

The surrounding seawater remained utterly dead.

Not a single stir.

Hai Lanyue’s pale blue fluorescence slowly spread through the deep sea.

One second.

Two seconds…

The prolonged wait made Tunzuo start to wonder if his bait tactic had been a failure.

Just as Tunzuo was about to give up and wave Hai Lanyue back, the shadows suddenly stirred.

Sensing that prey had taken the bait, Tunzuo hurriedly looked up—only to be utterly stunned by what he saw.

Not far from Hai Lanyue, several more faint blue lights, flickering unsteadily, had appeared.

As if searching for companions, they drifted slowly in this direction.