Chapter 139: Because They Were Amphibians to Begin With Part 1
Chapter 139: Because They Were Amphibians to Begin With Part 1
Realizing that stopping onboard the Crying Innsman would mean certain death, I kept on running while carving a way for myself with my sword. As expected, the fish people came to attack me with their weapons, adamant on removing a foreign object from their ship. Thankfully, their weapons were awfully rust and would break after hitting them two or three times.
「Heh, if you want to overrun me with numbers alone, you’ll need to do better than that!」
「No, no matter how you look at it, we’re already completely surrounded!?」
「It doesn’t matter how many of them are there, if they are slow enough to fail to reach me in time!」
「Waah, if you put it that way that really makes sense. But still!」
In that regard, the Crystal Scorpions were much better, even after their behavior pattern was patched. Truth to be told, I was still kind of salty about that.
I twist my body to avoid a saber that was coming my way, use my sword to reflect the spear that was aiming towards my throat.
Before I can get surrounded again, I jump in the air and land on the broken mast, jumping forward away from danger, my abilities enhanced by skills. Before I manage to land, ballista fires again and blasts away the fish men that were trying to rush towards where I was going to land.
「You’re lucky that I’m so agile and acrobatic! Otherwise that ballista of yours would be even more dangerous than those things!」
「Better focus! One error and you’re a dead meat!」
「Oh, yummy. Maybe that’s not so bad after all?」
「Ballista is out of arrows, switching to bow and normal arrows support.」
「Are you going to go in here yourself!?」
「…… When I’m using a magic bow, the best distance possible for me is medium range. I’m most effective that way.」
Speaking quietly like that, Rust draws her unstrung bow. The moment she holds it firmly in her hand, a bowstring and an arrow appear in her hands, clearly not material.
「Does it use your MP as a source of its power?」
「Not only that, but it scales with magic to give some decent magic damage!」
Says Rust while standing top Ghost Ship’s bow and firing her arrow. It pierced right through one of the fishmen that was trying to attack me, immobilizing it in a mere second.
While other fishmen focused on Rust as a new source of threat, she continued to fire arrow after arrow while never allowing them to get close to her. Rather than responding to her enemies’ attack on the go she was anticipating their movements, effectively drawing the aggro away from me.
「Leave the role of the off-tank to me!」
I then switched to the Dullahan Blade while Rust impaled three more fishmen with her arrows, and I took a swing at a whole bunch of them, drawing their attention away from Rust and leaving her some breathing room.
「S, sorry about that, Rust!」
「Took you long enough! How’s the situation?」
「Monsters keep on emerging from the sea, but the NPCs and Akitsu Akane are keeping them in check for now.」
They were half-fish, so of course they would be able to swim in the sea. However, it seems that the enemies over there were relatively easy to kill if you landed a critical strike on them a few times, so Akitsu Akane and the NPC got the situation under control.
Now I see, this quest really was meant to be done by a larger party. Apparently some players had to join in with the NPCs to protect the ship, some would mount the ballista like Rust and some would board the Ghost Ship like I just did.
So that would mean that the conditions to clear the quest would be to destroy the ship, or to kill all of its crew, or……
「Lemme guess: you’re supposed to be the captain here?」
It emerged from the place that was supposed to be the captain’s cabin, contrary to the other fish men who kept on emerging from below the deck. It was merely the shilhouette, but it was clearly different from the rest of its crew. It was larger, thinner and its face was placed on a long neck that seemed too unproportioned for its body.
It was similar to a snake or an eel, but it was so rotten that it was hard to tell which one of the two it resembled more. Also, the look in its eyes was dead and unfocused, just like that of a fish.
Even without its long neck, it was already larger than me, and it was holding onto a huge anchor that it was probably using as a weapon. That weapon alone was a clear indication that it was something completely else from the rest of the small fries here.
「Now then, I wonder just how should I cook you……?」