Chapter 38: Chapter 38: Attack

It didn’t take long the find the village chief and lead him back to the shore. We returned to the spot where we had seen the glowing fish, before gazing at the ocean again. The glowing fish was still moving around in the distance, although it was hard for us to make out any details because it was too far away. The village chief, however, had three mental runes. I saw his body start to light up as he poured some mana into boosting his Perception, before he frowned. 

“How odd…When did you first see this creature?”

“Just before we went to get you, chief,” I said, looking at the fish. “We thought that the creature looked quite unusual, so we wanted to inform you about in case it was dangerous. We don’t really know what to make of it.”

“I wonder if it’s related to the powerful creature that attacked the Outsiders all those years ago?” said the village chief, although his voice was soft enough that I didn’t think he was talking to us. He continued looking at the creature for a few more minutes, while we waited, before he shook his head.

“The creature is thrashing around for some reason. I can’t quite tell why - perhaps it’s injured? One of the other villages already have a few boats hovering around it, and the fish doesn’t seem very interested in them. The creature is very strange, but at least it doesn’t seem dangerous right now.

Finally, the village chief sighed. “I’ll speak with the other village chiefs tomorrow, to see if they have any more information about the creature. But at least right now it doesn’t seem like something to be alarmed about - the creature isn’t reacting to the boats flying around it, and it honestly looks like it’s about to die. I’ll tell the villagers to keep an eye out for the fish, and I’d be grateful if you told your families to help spread the word. If it doesn’t die, avoid it for now. And don’t try to grab its corpse - the creature gives me an uneasy feeling, and I don’t want anyone eating it in case it’s poisonous or something.” The village chief fell into thought, squinting at the glowing fish in the distance.

“Thank you for bringing it to my attention,” said the village chief as he looked at the three of us. “I appreciate knowing anything about potential dangers to our village.” After a few more moments of quiet contemplation, he turned towards us again. “You know, the fish oddly resembles the storm lights during the storm season, doesn’t it? Every storm always has a massive, glowing ball of light in the center of the waves whenever a big water pillar forms. The glowing rune in the giant fish is the exact same color as those strange balls of light...” The village chief smiled softly. “If one of the other villages grabs its corpse, I’d be interested in taking a look and seeing what they make of it. Perhaps after talking with the chiefs tomorrow, I’ll ask Olav to grab the corpse for me. I’d appreciate it if you passed word along for me, little Miria. Avoid the corpse for now, but I might want Olav to take the corpse back later.”

I nodded. Honestly, I was also very curious about the glowing fish. The fact that its eighth rune resembled an oddity of the ocean so strongly made me wonder if it had somehow absorbed one of the storm orbs, or if it had interacted with one of them somehow. I wasn’t sure if absorbing a storm orb was even possible, but if it was, it might give me a new clue on the nature of the Ocean.

The village chief gave all three of us a small pat on the shoulders, before he turned and left. The three of us watched the giant glowing fish for several minutes longer, chatting and discussing it, before it started to get dark. After that, we also returned home for the night.

* * *

The next morning, I got on the fishing boat with my father and the rest of Olav’s fishing crew. I passed along the village chief’s words to Olav, telling him to avoid the glowing fish if we saw it, and Olav simply nodded. After that, we got into our daily routine. We flew around, looked for giant fish, and chatted. We didn’t have much luck catching fish that morning, but that wasn’t anything unusual. It wasn’t uncommon to only hunt one fish every couple weeks for most fishing boats. I appreciated the long, peaceful hours I spent watching the waves, thinking about the oddities of the ocean and hopping in and out of conversation when I wanted to. 

I spent most of the morning looking at the ocean and daydreaming about my fifth rune. Since my fourth rune was nearly stabilized, I was excited to see what new ability I would get.

It was midday when things changed.

I was jolted out of my thoughts by the sight of something massive in the distance. “Giant fish spotted!” I called out, seeing a large shape speeding towards us. As it grew closer and closer, I spotted a certain telltale glow. “It’s the glowing fish the chief told us to avoid!” 

Olav seemed to pause for a moment, before he nodded. “I thought ya said it might croak anytime?” Olave sighed, before shrugging. “Not a big deal. Let’s get clear o’ it. Since the village chief said ta be wary of the creature, we should go up.” The five of us began powering the boat to fly higher.

However, a few moments later, I had a sudden thought.

Why was the fish speeding towards us? Great fish were usually apathetic towards humans. However, as we flew higher and shifted our position, the glowing fish seemed to be swimming directly towards us, no matter what direction we moved in. I started to get a bad feeling.

“Is it moving towards us? Why is it showing so much interest in us?” I asked. Olav was also looking at the fish and frowning. The ominous feeling in my heart intensified as Olav’s frown deepened.

“It really does look like it’s heading towards us. Keep flying up! And start heading back towards the island, just in case!” said Olav.

The giant fish was starting to get uncomfortably close now. It was speeding towards us, and it seemed to have no intention of slowing down. 

“Fly higher! Put as much mana as you can into it! I’ve got a bad feelin’ about this!” said Olav, who seemed to be noticing just how much bigger this fish was. Our ship lurched higher into the air, desperately picking up speed as we tried to stay coordinated while moving as fast as possible.

I looked at the fish for a few more moments, trying to get a better look at the massive creature. I realized that it had hideous wounds on the sides of its body. Several open sores leaked glowing white blood into the surrounding ocean, although not particularly quickly. I frowned as I looked at its wounds. What had caused its injuries? And why was the fish so intent on swimming towards us?

As the fish drew closer, I started hoping that it would ignore us. My uneasy feeling was getting worse and worse with every second. I counted down the seconds until it passed underneath us.

3… 2…

The fish jumped out of the water, sailing directly towards our boat in midair. I felt a moment of terror as I realized the fish was actually targeting us. Then, I realized the fish wouldn’t make it - it hadn’t jumped high enough to reach us. I breathed a sigh of relief - Olav’s instincts as a fisherman had been perfect. He had steered us out of the fish’s attack before it could hurt us. 

Then, the fish suddenly vanished into thin air.

Huh?

I felt a prickling sense of danger from behind me, and I whirled around. The fish’s dozens of eyes stared at me, its wounded skin glowing as blood oozed out of its body. I finally realized that the fish had teleported next to us.

Its hideous mouth opened, and inside of its maw I could see two massive rows of teeth. 

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“Fuck!” yelled Claus, but it was too late. Claus reached towards me and dragged me out of the way. I lost my grip on the side of the ship, and the boat lurched to the side.

Purely by reflex, the other sailors of the ship tried to shift the boat out of the way. We shifted a bit to the right, but it was far too slow. 

The fish’s massive jaws clamped over half of the boat, including one of Claus’s legs, and bit down.

Claus screamed and the boat suddenly lurched to the left. I nearly fell out of the boat, but grabbed onto the side of the boat at the last second.

We lurched in midair as half our boat disappeared into the fish’s gullet, and I nearly fell overboard as the boat shook. Desperately, I grabbed onto the boat but the boat’s movements were too difficult to deal with.

My wrist bent at a weird angle, and I heard a sickening snapping sound.

Pain lanced through my arm, and if I hadn’t had such a strong body and high Willpower I would have fallen into the ocean and died right there. Instead, I felt like I was going to pass out, but there was no way in hell I was letting go. My father finally noticed my situation, and used a gust of wind to help catch my weight before lifting me back on board. I resisted the paralyzing pain in my arm and placed my other arm on the boat, fueling our damaged vessel.

Claus continued to scream, blood pouring out of his stump leg. He wasn’t fit to help us move anymore.

“Fuck! Up more! Try not to fall off! Fly back ta the island!” yelled Olav, panicking as he stared at the glowing fish.

Terrified, I poured way more mana into the boat than I needed to, and I could tell that I wasn’t the only one. The other fishermen were all desperately dumping mana into the floatwood, trying to get the boat back even a second faster. The remaining half of the boat was still able to fly, and with a clear direction to travel we fled for our lives. However, the glowing fish was circling around, preparing for another attack. I realized it wouldn’t let us go so easily. Worse, with its teleportation ability, there was no way we could doge or outrun it.

Finally, my reflexes and years of training kicked in. The fish was targeting our boat, and if we didn’t flee fast enough, we would die. We couldn’t dodge or flee without help.

If that was the case, my rune ability would finally become useful.

I pushed through my nausea and concentrated on the ocean, taking control of as much water as I could. Then, three globs of water turned into copies of our boat. The boats weren’t very realistic, since I was in pain and couldn’t focus.

Luckily, the glowing fish wasn’t very smart. Even though my fishing boats weren’t very realistic, its attention immediately swapped to the nearest boat. With another blink, it teleported in front of one of my fake boats, before trying to bite down on it.

I released the illusion, and the boat burst into a flash of blinding light.

Then, before the fish could recover, I reformed the illusion of a boat near the ocean, making it look like the boat had teleported away.

The fish seemed pissed off, and ignored our real boat, along with my other two fake boats, and started chasing the one that had ‘blinded it and escaped.’

I heard a notification from the Market spring up, but I ignored it for now. I had more important things to do.

“Good work, lass. We’ll take care of the boat - keep the damn thing occupied as long as you can,” said Olav. I nodded, and stopped pushing mana into the boat. I couldn’t afford to focus on the boat right now - I needed to keep the fish occupied.

The attack of the glowing fish quickly devolved into a strange chase. The glowing fish kept pursuing my fake boat, which continuously ‘teleported’ around and blinded the glowing fish whenever it tried to attack. Any human would have long realized something was wrong, but the glowing fish didn’t seem to realize the boat was fake. After some time, I even dismissed the other two illusory boats, in favor of making the targeted boat as realistic as possible. I felt thankful for the fact that the Glowing Fish had such low intelligence - even with two mental runes, it was still easy to trick.

I managed to wheeze out a sigh of relief, in between waves of pain radiating from my wrist. The boat flew back to the island, with the fish chasing my fake boat and tailing us all the way. Sadly, I couldn’t control water that was too far away from me, or else I would have simply flown my fake boat into the distance. However, at the very least the fish’s attention wasn’t on our group anymore.

Meanwhile, my father found a moment to wrap a piece of cloth around Claus’s stump of a leg. It didn’t fully stop the bleeding, but it slowed down Claus’s blood loss, which was enough for now. Claus wasn’t in any shape to help us fly - he was half passed out at this point. However, my father, Olav, and Edel were determined to get us back to the island. There, the village chief or the hunters could keep us safe from the creature.

After half an hour of being chased by the creature, I started to get nervous. We were getting closer to the island, but the damn fish kept teleporting around, and it showed no signs of giving up or running out of mana. Did we have enough mana to get back to the island? If we didn’t, we might fall out of the sky and get eaten by this bloody fish. I looked at the other fishermen, nervous, as they strained to send mana into the sides of the boat. Then, I pulled out a few fish cores. “Take them if you need to replenish your mana,” I said, before absorbing one of them. Maintaining my distraction wasn’t usually a huge burden on my mana reserves, but keeping my fake boat flying for half an hour while using light flashes and fake teleportation was another story entirely. The other fishermen simply nodded, too numb and afraid to properly respond. However, Olav and Edel took a fish core and absorbed it. My father, after some hesitation, followed suit.

We fell back into a tense and uneasy silence, as we flew back towards the island. Luckily, the creature never wisened up to my illusions, so we stayed safe, if terrified.

Finally, we reached the island. When it got within a certain range of our island, the fish suddenly recoiled, hissing at something we couldn’t see. It gave my illusory boat one last, enraged glare, before it turned back towards the ocean and swam away. I breathed a sigh of relief, and my illusory boat collapsed into fragments of light. The fish had given up. We started dropping in height as we flew to the village.

When our boat was finally back home, our boat wobbled, and then almost fell out of the sky as we rapidly descended. We landed on the sands of the beach, exhausted and terrified, but alive.