147 Lord Dagen

Jin and the others did not know that Swabs had sacrificed himself for the ritual and continued to fight against the Deep Ones for their survival. The ritual went on silently until Swabs' entire body was completely engulfed by the ritual process.

The boat started to crack and slowly, the hull of the boat disappeared while the magical ritual circle was still floating in mid air. That was when Milk happened to catch sight of the red glowing circle floating at the docks.

"Is that...Oh shit!" Milk quickly ran towards the dock, which was filled with Deep Ones crawling out of the sea and onto the pier. Zeru noticed Milk hastiness and shouted at Jin. "Master! I am going with Milk!"

Jin nodded his head as he grabbed Peppers by her waist. "Ack! What are you doing Master!""You said you wanted time for a mega big explosion, right? Well, grab on to me and prepare to cast! I will tell you when to release it!" Peppers blushed a little as Jin was holding her very tightly but she nodded her head and started to chant out words that did not make sense to Jin.

Jin pushed Peppers up to his back and piggybacked her but unknowingly squeezed Peppers butt whilst doing so because he was in a rush. Peppers did not expect that and mischanted her spell, which caused a slightly forceful magical feedback to her circuits.

"Gah! Watch where you are grabbing! I mischanted my spell because of you and now I need to do it all over again!Peppers knocked Jin with her staff and continued to chant while Jin ran further into the port town. Surprisingly, there were few Deep Ones further into the port town but a growing number of them were chasing after Jin and Peppers.

Meanwhile, on Milk's side, she noticed that the ritual was nearly complete and all she could do was either delay it further or break the ritual component. While she might not know about rituals in the Fishing World specifically, according to Peppers, all rituals had the same basic fundamentals.

She once said, "As long as you change a single word, symbol or add a new catalyst into the ritual, the ritual will not be as effective as it should be. Some rituals might only go awry but most rituals should be rendered ineffective. For example, you are summoning a horse, instead of a mature, strong, healthy horse, but just by adding a bit of salt to this ritual and... Ta-da~! The Horse turned into a baby horse instead."

Milk looked at the ritual circle and figured. "If it's trying to summon some deep dark monster, then perhaps some Light energy would cause it to be less effective! Zeru, do what you must, just make sure that I don't get interrupted!" Milk instructed Zeru to protect her as she decided to channel Holy Energy into the ongoing ritual.

"Understood." Zeru relaxed his fencer's stance and instead, stood behind Milk like a strong solid tree with his eyes closed and his short hair waving along in the ocean's sea breeze. But in fact, the stance he was assuming now was the stance he used when he protected his master against a dozen enemies. "The Perfectly Normal Trap." was the stance he used.

As long as a Deep One entered a certain range of Zeru, he immediately attacked it. Although the rubbery skin partially negated Jin's damage when he was slashing it with a good katana, Zeru was able to cut a Deep One down effortlessly. If one looked closely, they would notice a tiny reinforcement of chi surrounding the entire wooden sword. Zeru had condensed a copious amount of chi to create that small thin sharp edge reinforcement, which allowed his wooden sword to cut even better than any other sword one had ever known.

That was what Zeru was known for when he was well and alive in the past. Many had tried to copy his technique but all had failed to do so. Some even called it the Perfect Sword Essence, a level higher than Sword Core Essence, which most master swordsman already had difficulty even reaching, but in reality, Zeru was just that good when it came to the matters that concerned the sword.

The few Deep Ones who were intelligent enough figured that no matter how hard they tried to go near Milk and Zeru, they would be mercilessly cut down. Hence, they decided to run after the other group of visitors and even commanded others to go after them. Soon, there were not many Deep Ones surrounding Zeru and Milk.

"Ehh Master, I think...there will be more coming your way."Zeru sent his message via Jin's phone's loudspeakers and could not help but chuckle as he saw a shining bright beacon running up the hill where the rest of the Port Town was situated. "Just for your info, you are very visible from the docks."

"What do you even mean?!" That was when Jin noticed Peppers' magic staff was sparkling with a radiant red colour. "Please do not release your fire blast of fury and hatred or whatever other demonic words you added into it." Jin thought to himself since he figured if he really did say that out loud, it would cause Peppers to miscast a second time. He did not want to know what would happen if she miscast.

"I do not think...I can interrupt it any further…" Milk was panting heavily. Her arms were tired. Her mind was going blank from fusing holy energy into the ritual. One thing was for sure, even if the ritual was completed, Milk did manage to alter the initial intent of the ritual or at least delay it.

"Milk, Stop. I am bringing you out of here before we get caught in things." Unlike Jin, Zeru performed an energised horizontal slash that wiped out any incoming Deep Ones that tried to come near him as he sheathed his wooden sword and carried Milk gently.

"Zeru, I am sorry." Milk was still pushing whatever holy energy she could muster into the forbidden dark ritual even though she was being lifted up by Zeru. "Shh, rest easy Milk, I will definitely bring you to safety." Zeru saw Milk reluctantly close her eyes due to fatigue and he sneakily gave her a gentle kiss on her forehead before he carried her further away from the ritual site.

Meanwhile, the ritual circle started to shake vigorously. The interruption of the ritual by Milk's holy energy caused Lord Dagen to be infuriated. He initially wanted to send some minor spawns, probably Deep One Hybrids that would match up to the visitors' strength for his loyal supporter's offering but little did he know that the supporter decided to betray and insult him. The holy energy was a slap on the face to his superiority and generosity. He was so furious that he decided to send a replica of his powerful visage down to the ritual site to display his wrath.

A gigantic monolith pillar abruptly appeared at the ritual site. The sun was still up moments ago and it was slowly blocked by the ascending moon. To the naked eye, it was merely a gigantic piece of stone but as the moon blocked half the sun, the stone lit up in bluish green colour with crude inscriptions on it.

Suddenly, something raised its enormous scaly arm to grab onto the monolith. As the two separate groups saw it crawl out of the waters, the earth shook with the jarring sounds it made when its hideous fish head arose from the sea. It started twirling around the monolith pillar and its entire fish body was revealed. Like a gigantic serpent with two hands, its howls echoed through the port town, causing the Deep Ones to stop abruptly and kneel down to it.

"....So, do I hit the massive group of Deep Ones here or that big Derpy one over there?" Peppers asked the wide-mouthed Jin when she just finished pre-casting her unique signature blast.

.

.