Chapter 34

Chapter 34 “Harvest”

Duncan awoke from his dream after hearing the sound of waves banging against the ship. With his eyes shot open, the guy found himself glancing back and forth around the deck. As for the fishes in his dream, he could hardly remember their faces, only a faint thin silhouette and how delicious they must be.

Do... fishes swim in the air?

Duncan blinked in thought. He’s got this strange sense of reality briefly intermingling with his own fantasies there. Then as soon as he saw the fishing rods with no sign of landing a hook, he deflated, realizing what had happened.

Immediately, he peered out into the sea to see what had awoken him. The waves were getting bigger, and the weather had deteriorated to the point where a storm had started brewing overhead.

“It might not be a good idea to fish today...”

He muttered, considering whether it was time to put away the fishing rod. However, it’s at this moment an afterglow caught the corner of his eye – one of the rods had started to bend!

Any fisherman would know what this signaled. The grinding sound of tension, the screeching noise of wire being tugged at, it’s all for this moment!

The fish is here, and it’s a big one!

He instantly dismissed the idea of pulling the rods off and resting – the enthusiasm of a fisherman burned was on fire! Grabbing the tugging rod with both hands, he made sure to lean hard against the sides to avoid falling off.

“Didn’t I say it! How can I come back empty-handed!”

Duncan yelled with excited glee as he mustered the energy to fight this massive prey. It was a difficult fight. Every pull he did got returned with a tremendous tug. No matter how one looked at it, it would appear the guy was losing the fight.

Eventually, after much frustration and the line near snapping, this ghost captain finally came up with an idea. Huffing steam of pure ego from his nostril, he summons a plume of green fire on his hands that quickly expanded to infect the fishing rod.

The green fire burned violently there, shooting forth from the line until it was dead into the water. Before he knew it, his eyes had caught onto what’s biting – it’s an illusory green silhouette circling around the ship below the waters!

This shadow looked more like a swollen and contracting ball of flesh than a fish from above, almost covering the entire sea surface within a few hundred meters around the Vanished. Nevertheless, Duncan didn’t have the attention to care about some unknown shadow inside the ocean.

“...... It’s so ugly.”

The big game of a fish indeed had an ugly appearance. Instead of a smooth, sleek body, it had rough and bumpy skin with fins that were so sharp and spread out that its borderline menacing. Then there were those eyes. Instead of a clean pair of sockets, those are white hollow-looking things that would usually be reserved for ghouls and zombies in a horror flick.

God knows why, but Duncan got this very uncomfortable sensation that it’s glaring at him, telling the man who dared to fish him to try it.

But the next second, the fish convulsed violently, and its eyes that were watching him burst apart with blood gushing in all directions. Then it was dead. No more jumping or flapping around like it’s been tasered. The ugly atrocity had quieted down with only the pool of blood signaling it was alive seconds ago.

Duncan got taken aback by this twist of event. Then to his surprise came acceptance over what he remembered: most fishes from the deep are incapable of surviving on the surface due to the water pressure. If hooked, their blood vessels would burst like now and quickly die, which explains what he just saw.

Just as he was dazing around still, a crackling sound suddenly caught his ears again. Looking over curiously at what it could be, the man was caught off guard by the smaller “strange fishes” landing on his ship!

They looked exactly like the behemoth, but just smaller about half a meter in size. And like the big game, they’re all bleed profusely from the eye sockets and about to kick the bucket.

Dumbfounded, he took a good moment to react: “Jeezes, buy one get a dozen?”

......

Meanwhile, from Alice’s perspective, the doll was staring nervously at the ferocious fight that just transpired before her very eyes.

First, it was how Captain Duncan stood at the edge of the deck, staring down at whatever massive shadow lurking within the waters. Then a tentacle – thicker than the main mast of the Vanished – had sprung out of the water. It barred countless menacing eyes across the body, and innumerable sharp teethes next to the eyeballs. At that moment, Alice thought for sure the whole ship would be torn to pieces by the main body beneath the waters.

In her panic, she gasped and wanted to cry out for Duncan to dodge. But before she could act, the tentacle had already started smashing down.

Yet, instead of panic or rage, Captain Duncan only smiled gleefully like a fisherman about to make a grand harvest, and that’s when their gazes met. The monster tentacle and Duncan were staring off at each other like two predators challenging for supremacy.

Then beyond the doll’s expectation, the eyes on the tentacles all burst apart with blood spraying everywhere on the ocean, followed closely by the thrashing and flailing of the monster in the depths.

Whatever Duncan did, it was hurting the dark creature hiding in the water because it had cut off its own appendages. Next second later, the filthy and vile thing had crashed onto the wooden deck and rolled in front of the captain’s feet.