Chapter 34

Chapter 34: Harvest

A sudden crash of waves jolted Duncan awake from his dream.

He snapped his eyes open. The vision he had seen in that half-dream state had already faded, leaving only faint fragments. He only remembered seeing fish swimming in the air, circling around him and looking especially delicious—but what had those fish looked like again?

Fish… could fish really swim in the air?

Duncan blinked. That strange feeling of the Mortal Realm tearing and blending with his dream left him dazed for a moment. He looked at the three fishing rods fixed in the rod rack; none of them showed any sign of a bite. Out on the distant sea, though, the surface had begun to swell, and one wave after another was already slapping against the hull of the Vanished.

Then the waves grew higher. In a way he could see with the naked eye, each new wave grew stronger as they rolled in from afar in an endless rush. The huge hull of the Vanished rocked in the wind and waves, and the roar of the surging water filled his ears.

Duncan looked up at the sky. The weather still seemed fine. There were just more wind and waves, but it should not be enough to turn into some great storm or other extreme phenomenon.

“This might not be the best weather for fishing…”

He muttered to himself, wondering if he should reel in the lines. But just then, out of the corner of his eye, he suddenly saw the tip of one rod bend sharply!

Sea-fishing line made for strength went taut in an instant. The short, thick rod bent like a bow as if it had hooked some huge creature. It creaked with a harsh sound, and even the wooden rack holding it groaned under the pull. All of this sent Duncan one clear signal:

A fish! A big one!

He instantly dropped the idea of packing up to rest. The passion of a fisherman flared in his chest. In two strides he reached the rod that had hit the jackpot. One hand grabbed it to keep it from tearing free of the rack, and the other began to carefully adjust the tension of the line.

“I knew it! There is no way I was going home empty-handed!”

Duncan talked to himself in excitement as he wrestled with the huge thing on the other end of the line. It was a hard fight. Whatever lay at the end of the line clearly had no intention of surrendering. A tremendous force pulled on the rod; even with Duncan’s strength and the support of the rack, the stalemate still felt dangerously close to breaking.

The wind and waves around the Vanished grew little by little, but for Duncan, this slight rocking was nothing.

He was only getting annoyed by that stubborn “prey” and worried that this hard-won chance to improve their meals might slip away for nothing.

The line was stretched to its limit. The big fish was about to tear free from his hands.

After who knew how long of holding on, Duncan finally steeled himself. A cluster of ghostly emerald flame suddenly spread out from the hand gripping the rod.

The green flame flared, flowing like water. It ran swiftly along the rod and the line. The fire of his spirit form burned all the way down, turning the line into a blazing trail that plunged straight into the sea. A second later, deep down in the water around the Vanished, a hazy outline of emerald fire appeared out of nowhere. In the light of that ghostly flame, a vast shadow took shape in the sea.

That shadow looked like a huge, pulsing mass of flesh. It almost covered the entire stretch of sea for hundreds of meters around the Vanished. Countless dark growths stretched from its edges, constantly changing and multiplying. They writhed and waved through the ocean like thousands of arms, churning the water around the Vanished and driving the rise and fall of the unseen waves.

Duncan heard strange sounds coming from the sea. While he kept up the struggle with his “prey”, he leaned out curiously and glanced around.

He saw nothing, just the rolling waves, not much different from before.

Yet he clearly felt the force pulling on the rod weaken a little.

His prey was running out of strength. That fact brought a bright grin to his face.

He began to reel in hard, tightening the line and dragging his catch out of the water bit by bit…

…

Alice was startled by the roar and howl from outside the cabin. Violent rocking came from under her feet, and all the furnishings in the cabin clattered together in a series of ringing crashes. She grabbed a nearby rail in a quick reflex and barely kept herself from falling. Her face showed shock and doubt as she asked: “What happened?”

The Vanished was shaking as if a great storm raged outside. From deep within this ancient ghost ship came a low, oppressive rumble, as if it were roaring and bellowing, fighting against the terror rising from the Deep Sea, resisting some huge beast that was trying to swallow it whole.

Everything in the cabin was rattling and ringing. At first, Alice thought it was all just from the ship’s shaking. But soon she realized many of the noisy objects were actually clattering in place—making sounds as they talked to each other. Alice could not understand this language that only the Vanished itself could comprehend.

She only knew that something outside had probably gone wrong.

The doll decided to go up to the deck and take a look—she stumbled out of the cabin, one hand on the wall to keep from falling as she ran toward the deck.

After almost tripping several times over whipping ropes and barrels rolling about, she finally reached the top of the stairs. She pushed open the wooden door that kept swinging in the wind and saw monstrous waves rising on the Boundless Sea.

The sky was black as ink. Ominous, heavy clouds had almost clumped into solid masses, pressing low over the sea. Wall-like waves rolled and surged under the dark clouds, rising and falling around the Vanished as if to encircle it.

Alice had never seen such a sight before. She did not know if this was normal at sea, but she did know she had to find the captain now.

She looked around the deck and, almost without effort, spotted Captain Duncan standing at the edge.

…

The wind and waves around him were a bit annoying, but to Duncan, who was about to succeed, they were only trivial distractions. From the feedback of both the line and the green flame, he could clearly feel that his prey had stopped resisting. The huge creature was being dragged out of the water bit by bit.

“Come on up!”

He shouted in delight and gave the rod one last hard pull.

A big fish burst out of the sea—truly big, almost half his own height.

For a brief instant, Duncan locked eyes with the fish hanging in midair.

“…Pretty ugly.”

That was his first thought.

It really was a very, very ugly fish. Its pitch-black body looked covered with some kind of overgrown, lumpy growths. Weird gray-white patterns sprawled messily along its fins. Many bone-like spines jutted from its head, and a pair of pale, empty eyes under those spines stared straight at Duncan.

Duncan felt very uneasy. He had the strange sense that the fish was staring at him with ill intent.

But the next second, he saw the fish suddenly convulse. For some reason, the eyes that had been staring at him burst apart out of nowhere, and blood streamed out at once.

The fish fell heavily onto the deck and thrashed and twisted like it had been shocked by lightning. In just a few seconds it went still. Blood seeped from its mouth and its burst eyes, dripping onto the deck bit by bit.

Duncan watched in surprise as the hideous fish quickly lost all life at his feet. He vaguely recalled something he had read in books: most fish from the Deep Sea really were very ugly, and because they lived under heavy pressure for so long, when they were pulled up to the surface their blood vessels could burst from the change, even killing them quickly because of it. So the fish in this world were like that too?

While he was still spacing out, another series of sharp thuds suddenly came from nearby.

Duncan looked over in curiosity and saw several smaller “strange fish” falling onto the deck one after another.

They looked much like the half-man-high monster fish, but were only about half a meter long. And just like the big one, by the time Duncan’s gaze fell on them, they were already bleeding heavily all over and soon lay at death’s door.

Duncan stood there, a bit stunned, and only after a long moment did he react: “Is this like the Calabash Brothers saving Grandpa, coming one after another in a line?”

…

Alice gripped the nearby rail tightly, nervously watching the savage fight not far away, a scene enough to drive an ordinary person mad.

She saw Captain Duncan standing at the edge of the deck, ghost-green flames roaring from his body. He stood like a burning giant facing the sea. Three hooked chains stretched out from the deck at his feet, and terrible flames burned along one of them.

She saw a vast shadow suddenly appear in the Boundless Sea. Then a tentacle, almost thicker than the mainmast of the Vanished, rose from the water. Countless eyes full of malice opened along its surface, and numberless sharp teeth ground and chewed between those eyes, as if ready to bite the entire ship into pieces in the next instant.

Alice almost cried out. She wanted to warn the captain to dodge, to rush in and help, but before she could move, the tentacle crashed down toward him.

She saw Captain Duncan lift his head. In the blaze of the flames, his face actually showed the joy of a bountiful harvest—he was staring at the countless eyes on the tentacle, and the countless eyes on the tentacle were staring back at him.

The next second, all the eyes on the tentacle burst apart at once. Hundreds of sharp teeth let out a shrill, agonized screech. Then the tentacle simply broke off in midair—as if some huge body hidden beneath the surface had cut off its own limb on purpose and thrown the badly wounded end onto the deck.

The tentacle crashed down. Foul, sticky flesh spilled from the severed end, splattering all over and landing at the captain’s feet.