Tales of the Endless Empire

Chapter 437: So… Are You the Fish or the Fisher?

The quick moving shadows deep underwater disappeared at some point, and the only thing he saw was the damaged ship sinking a lot faster than it normally should, with a giant whirlpool forming around it that swallowed it whole.“Seawomen. Pretty nasty creatures,” Rid mentioned, arriving beside Thalion and handing him a plate with something that looked like aged meat and toasted bread.

Rid wasn’t the only one joining him; the two brothers with the shark fins also came by.

“Yeah, wasn’t this amazing? We fucked them up real good. By the way, pretty good work, old man,” one of the brothers roared, slapping Thalion on the back, which almost made him sink a level deeper by sheer force.

Thalion thought, perplexed for a moment, before he remembered how he currently looked. Okay, he looked like he was in his early fifties, so not that old—but fair enough.

“It’s crazy how fast the Skarn were there, and the seawomen must have followed like always. I already had anxiety when swimming, but thank god they stayed in the depths,” the other brother said, taking a big sip from the bottle.

Thalion had also seen the movements below, but were they really that threatening?

“Maybe it’s due to the sea being locked and no ships venturing out. Made them more hungry than normal?” Rid thought out loud. He also seemed worried, which meant that those Skarn and seawomen must be really dangerous. Rid had still been calm when the first fighters boarded the ship.

“Did someone check if they are still below us?” the other brother asked.

“The captain probably did. He always keeps an eye on everything. I’m more worried about how the next fights will go. By how fast they were here, there have to be a few following us. They aren’t dumb either, and hiding in the depths for now isn’t difficult for them,” Rid said, now clearly worried.

Thalion found it impressive enough that those creatures were even able to keep up with the ship at the speed they were going right now. For short periods, okay—but to hold this pace over hours was terrifying.

So the hours stretched as they ate and talked. Then Thalion and Rid had to take another shift. The sun was already gone when their shift ended, and Rid went straight to bed, while Thalion sat down in an empty spot at the bow, meditating and working on his soul. From time to time, he paused to watch the moonlight wonderfully reflected on the ocean’s surface.

The next day passed uneventfully, with two shifts and a lot of meditation, but this was already the second day, and the crew was growing hungry. The food supply was also emptying at drastic levels, yet stopping to fish wasn’t something anyone was willing to do. The immediate appearance of the Skarn had everyone in its grip. Even Thalion felt a sense of hunger rising. Since he had connected with the blood thorn and the amulet, he couldn’t remember having problems with hunger, thirst, or sleep.

“It is the ocean. We don’t know why, but it’s the reason we need to eat much more than normal and why we can’t fly or dive underwater for too long. On land, I can hold my breath for hours, but here I barely last over a minute and a half,” Rid explained, joining Thalion at the railing. He was one of those who had tried to dive down quickly and catch something.

“This makes the mission a lot harder than normal. Did you see anything?” Thalion asked. It was unsettling that Rid was worried.

“Nothing, but I think the Skarn and seawomen are still down there. They’re just far deeper than normal, but I’m confident they’re waiting until hunger drives us straight into their open maws,” Rid said grimly, looking over the waves.

“The worst part is that it’s an effective tactic, and we can’t do anything if we don’t spot an island in the next few hours.”

These were indeed quite depressing odds. Thalion would be fine without eating for another two days, but the others wouldn’t last that long.

“Is there something I need to know about how the Skarn hunt?” Thalion asked. It sounded like he would encounter those creatures at some point, and having a battle plan was always good.

“Hmm… hard to say. I never fought them, but they can change the color of their scales, which can make them almost invisible if you don’t know what to look for.”

“They are very fast and swallow you in one bite. I watched the fishwomen fight a few times. They were often killing the sailors of ships like last time. They are like agile water mages, but the water they use always looks a bit green in the light. All in all, I don’t see myself winning if I try to fight one. Running seems to be the best strategy,” Rid summed up.

They didn’t seem like a good matchup for the Tidecaller Serpent either, which mostly liked beasts that were big and didn’t move around that much. Hunting in groups was basically the worst case. If he had already evolved, he might be able to deal with them, but there was no need to take such a risk right now.

“If we encounter another ship right now, chances are high they also don’t have any food on board. We need to fish or find an island. There are no other options,” Rid thought out loud.

This wasn’t good news at all. That they hadn’t found an island after traveling at such speed for such a long time was just unlucky. Thalion had no idea how many parts of the map existed or how many they needed to find the grand treasure. Two days were already over, and so far they had found nothing. During those two days, the other trial takers had caught up to him, and the First Daughter was less than a million points away from taking first place. The Second Daughter and the other Chosen were right behind her, and if this stage continued like this, Thalion would drop out of the top ten by tomorrow evening.

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This was especially horrible since Thalion had hoped that the millions of points he had gathered would give him the advantage he needed in the final stage. So far, he had a lot of information about the stages, but about the final stage he knew absolutely nothing. It could be anything. In this and the last stage, he needed to do everything possible to finish in first place.

With how things were looking, it might be worth finding a way to kill the water mage and take her leaderboard points.

In these events, there was simply no place for morals—at least not when the target was some water mage he didn’t know, didn’t like, and who was likely thinking the same about him right now. The stakes were just too high after sacrificing so much lifetime. Killing her now was too risky, since he would be the first one suspected, but if she died in the chaos of a fight, no one would bother.

Thalion knew that murdering the mage wouldn’t solve his current problems, but it would at least give him some breathing room.

The hours passed while Thalion made up his mind about how he could squeeze a few leaderboard points out of this stage. As time went on, the other sailors began to show signs of deficiency and unrest.

“Listen, my good sailors. We are currently in a quite tricky situation. We haven’t found an island, and we’ve run out of food. Be assured that we have thought through all eventualities before making a choice. If we continue to starve, we won’t be able to put up a good fight if we encounter another ship or find an island. Therefore, we have no other choice but to go fishing while we can still use our full power.

“I know the fishwomen and Skarn are likely just waiting for this moment right now, but there simply isn’t a better option. If we find a reef, we will stop and dive down to fill up our food supplies. I don’t know how much time we have before they attack us in the water, but it can’t be long. We are, of course, ready to take off immediately should we get attacked.

“All others who aren’t needed to steer the ship will have to dive down and try to catch something. Prepare yourselves for a bloody underwater fight. We already passed a bunch of reefs so far, which makes it likely that we’ll encounter the next one relatively soon. That’s all.”

Thalion thought with a smile.

“This is bad. Let’s dive down together so we can keep an eye on each other,” Rid said, holding out his hand, and Thalion shook it. They really should come up with some special stupid-looking handshake.

“Sure, I’ve got you covered. Still, I don’t like how this is going. Why aren’t we finding any islands? The others on the leaderboard are constantly progressing. Either they found an island, or they’re constantly fighting while we encounter nothing,” Thalion voiced his concerns.

“Hm. Finding the first island already means they were lucky—or we were just unlucky. I spoke with the captain, and according to our normal sea charts, we should have already seen three islands. Since none of them were there, it means they’ve been moved. We can’t rely on our sea charts, which means we can only travel in one direction and hope for the best. There also weren’t any birds, which would’ve meant islands were close by,” Rid frowned, also not liking that the others had a head start.

“Can’t those birds only stay in the air for a minute? How can they be so far away from an island that we see the birds but not the island?” Thalion asked. This stage was a bit weird when it came to the rules of the open ocean.

“Before this event, you encountered them all the time. They can only fly for a minute. They simply land on the water, wait there for a bit, then take off again. The longer you stay in the air, the more strained your body gets and the longer you need to rest, but after a few minutes of rest you’re good to go again,” Rid explained.

“That they are nowhere to be seen is odd. Maybe the Skarn ate them, since they like to hunt everything on and close to the surface. But yeah, that’s also unlucky, because it would mean there are a lot more of them in this ocean than we imagine right now. It would also mean that our fishing trip will end with a lot of casualties.”

“I don’t know how big those seabirds are, but maybe they were intentionally eliminated to make the ships stop and go for a fishing trip after the supplies ran out,” Thalion thought out loud.

“If that is true, we have a far bigger problem. But the captain is also right. There isn’t anything else we can do right now. Most fish already dive down a bit when they hear the boats. My grandparents told me stories that they could catch fish while surfing beside the ship, but those times are long gone,” Rid said.

It took another three hours until the captain found the next reef and the ship began to slow down. The sun was high up in the sky and shone down on them. The water was crystal clear, and only the tiniest waves were crashing against the hull of the ship.

“We won’t stop completely, but circle above the reef. This way it’s easier to accelerate and escape should we get attacked from below or if another ship spots us,” Rid explained, while the wind mages drastically reduced the power of their skills.

“My faithful sailors. It is time to dive down and bring up as much as possible,” the captain shouted from his position behind the steering wheel. Even his normally loud voice didn’t sound as confident as usual.

Now standing on the railing and looking down into the crystal-clear water, trying to make out any movement in the depths beyond the reef, Thalion felt odd. This was likely how a gazelle on the savanna must feel when it had to go to the water hole after eating dry grass and standing in the hot sun all day, knowing that a crocodile was just waiting for that moment.

The tension in the air was rising as no one dared to make the jump—until Rid took the initiative and jumped headfirst into the cold water. Thalion followed immediately, since he couldn’t let his body fall behind, and shifted into the Tidecaller Serpent the moment his body was fully submerged.

Back on Earth, you could see to a depth of one hundred to two hundred meters, depending on how clear the water was. In this ocean, the light barrier seemed to be roughly seven hundred meters to a kilometer. Thalion always liked how the rays of the sun were visible after breaching the surface of the water.

Yet there wasn’t any time to waste, and he shot after Rid, who was diving down fast.

The reef lay at a depth of roughly four to five hundred meters. Instead of the large disks he knew from the tutorial, these looked like they had been fractured into many pieces hovering together, with small rifts between each piece. The size of the fragments ranged from five to thirty meters. The rifts also varied greatly. Some were over ten meters wide, while others were so narrow that a human would barely fit through.

Those rifts between the small island-like fragments, filled with corals and fish surrounding them, were of course the perfect opportunity for anyone who wanted to ambush them. The corals were also much larger than any Thalion had seen so far, with some reaching over ten meters in height. Roughly half of the entire reef was overgrown with brown-green kelp that rose up almost fifty meters. Most fish were swimming in and out of it, almost unbothered.

Two fish swarms were patrolling the sides of the reef. They were clearly predatory fish, each about two meters long. Getting one of those would have been great, but both swarms immediately took off the moment the first sailors entered the water.

Rid didn’t even try to go for them and instead headed straight for the kelp forest. Thalion, of course, followed right behind him—but he had this growing feeling that he was missing something.

It really began to freak him out, because he couldn’t put his finger on it, but something was horribly wrong.