“I wonder how they survive down here,” Gideon mused. “Swimming in the dark and somehow surviving for all of these years? Perhaps they eat moss or plants or something else down there that we cannot see.”
“Maybe they don’t eat,” Ben suggested.
“Everything eats,” Tag said. “Everyone needs to eat food to survive.”
Ben chuckled goofily as several more blimp fish flashed with light. “That’s not what I meant. I meant that maybe they absorb food from the water or filter it through their gills. I don’t know the biology of it all, but not everything has to chomp.”
Gideon pointed ahead. “Then what are all those teeth for?”
The largest blimp fish they’d seen yet leaped out of the water. As with the others, it inflated to a phenomenal size and hovered several feet above the water before glowing brightly. Its insides lit up, and they could see its organs through translucent skin and a row of thin, long, sharp teeth in its jaws.
Chloe’s stomach dropped. “You don’t think they’re like piranhas, do you? Like, they gang up and strip their food to the bone in seconds as a group?”
They looked at each other, then said as one, “Gan’gor!”
As if he had been listening, Gan’gor breached the water. He leaped several feet into the air with the blimp fish, his smooth body and flat palms helping him move fast through the water. He yelled something unintelligible, then was beneath the surface again.
The blimp fish changed direction, the water bubbling and rippling behind him. With long, strong strokes, Gan’gor tore toward the shore, launching out of the water and slapping onto the rock moments before the fish reached him.
“There! It’s in there!”
Several fish jumped onto the shore, their momentum carrying them onto the rock. They desperately bounced and struggled back into the water; their large teeth now prominent.
But they weren’t what drew the adventurers’ attention. For several dozen feet away in the lake, a giant mound approximately the width of a house was rising.
A strange, luminous appendage rose first, lighting the cavern around them. Next came two eyes that were the size of beach balls, dark, wet things with years of memory buried within.
Then came the mouth, which stretched across its face in a dark grin, showing more of those long, needle-like teeth.
Chloe held the others behind her, arms outspread. “It’s okay. As long as we’re on dry land, it can’t get us. It’s a fish.”
Chloe used her Creature Identification.
Creature: Blimp Fish (Ancient) (Lv 28)
HP: 1,897
Resistances: Dark, Fire, Water, Earth, Poison
Weaknesses: Light, Electricity
“Level 28?” Chloe sighed.
“I’m sorry?” Tag said. “Do you want to repeat that?”
“Don’t worry about its level.” Chloe closed her eyes. “With the four of us together, we’ve got nothing to worry about.” She sank into her thoughts and grasped for the etheric, already hunting for her jackalope familiar.
Ben aimed his bow and let loose an arrow. It soared through the air and found its way into the fish’s skin, striking the center of its forehead. The light from its appendage flickering as though a bulb was about to die.
The creature screeched, a horrendous sound like two steel girders being tied into knots.
When Chloe opened her eyes, the fish’s mouth was wide open. She saw a small red glowing pulse and realized that her Monster Slayer skill had kicked in. Not only that, but there was a notification waiting for her.
Skill increased: Monster Slayer (Lv 2)
You’ve encountered enough large monsters to level up your Monster Slayer skill. Not only will the weak spots of larger monsters become clearer to you, but your attacks will also be drawn to the weak spots to aid in combat. Fire spells and arrows and see the effects of this skill as the projectiles curve and bend toward their goal.
NOTE: The farther away you are from the target, the lesser the effects.
Bonuses: +3 strength, +3 intelligence
Sweet, Chloe thought, realizing as the creature screeched again that they would need all the help they could get.
“Okay,” Tag said. He took a few deep breaths, patting his hammer against his palm. “Sure. As long as we’re here and he’s there, we’ll be fine.”
Chloe stared down at Tag. “What makes you think it’s a ‘he?’”
“Now’s not the time for a gender debate,” Ben said, another arrow ready to go. He fired again. The arrow found its way to the center of the fish’s bulbous eye.
Gan’gor winced.
The fish howled in pain, its eye unblinking. It remained floating in the water, surrounded by the bubbling disturbances of a hundred smaller blimp fish.
“I thought you said this creature was supposed to be difficult?” Ben said to Gan’gor. “He’s a sitting duck. We can keep on picking him off for days. Chloe, Gid, get involved.”
Chloe and Gideon’s hands sparked with Volt Shock.
“What about me?” Tag whined.
“Got anything you want to throw?”
Tag considered throwing his hammer, then thought better of it. “No.”
“Ready?” Ben asked. “Aim. Fire!”
The arrow was joined by two bursts of electricity. The water came alive with sparks and the smell of frying fish. The smallest of the fish rose to the surface, their strength diminished, while a few of the larger ones floated into the air to escape the lightning conducted by the water.
“Hold on!” Ben cried. “Hold fire.”
Chloe and Gideon drew back their electricity. The cave seemed dark in comparison to the explosive light from their spells. When their eyes adjusted once more to the cave’s light, they realized something was wrong.
The ancient fish’s health had gone down, but it looked undamaged. If anything, it looked to have grown several sizes and was now looming over them.
“What’s it doing?” Tag asked.
The waif gulped. “Waiting.”
“For what?”
Before he could finish his sentence, the fish’s head tilted backward. Its teeth scraped the ceiling as a long, thin tongue whipped out of its mouth and wrapped around Tag’s body.
“Tag!” Chloe cried.
Tag made a strange sound as he was pulled off his feet and dragged toward the mouth. The tongue acted like a tentacle and waved Tag around.
Ben shot several arrows, trying to pierce the tongue, but his aim wasn’t true.
Gideon’s hands sparked to life. Chloe held him back, reminding him that if he shocked the fish, he would likely shock Tag too.
“Then what do we do?” Gideon asked desperately.
Tag flew toward the fish’s mouth. The tongue whipped him into the air, where he arced toward the fish’s waiting gullet. He yelled for help, plummeting quickly toward his death…
And stopped in mid-air.
The fish’s jaws snapped closed like a bear trap. Tag hovered several feet above the teeth.
“What the…” Ben asked, then he saw Chloe’s hands glowing purple, outstretched toward the dwarf. “Of all your spells, I think that one’s my favorite.”
Chloe smirked. She used her Telekinesis to bring Tag quickly back to shore. The dwarf groveled on the ground, repeatedly thanking Chloe for the save.
“I’ve got you, buddy,” Chloe said.
The fish shook in anger.
“Oh, here we go again,” Gideon cried.
“Quick, let’s put some distance between us. That tongue can’t be so long that we can’t outdistance it. If we remain out of reach, we can minimize the damage.”
The others agreed without a word. They ran until the fish was nearly out of sight. A few times along the way, they heard the tongue whipping after them, but they managed to avoid its grasp.
“Okay, what long-range attacks do you have?”
Gideon scanned his spells-dex. “That’ll work on this guy? Mostly the lightning. I think I can reach it f
rom here.”
“And I’ve got my Ice Shards that I can fire. Ben’s got his arrows. Tag?”
Tag folded his arms. “Screw you.”
“Sorry, bud.” Chloe chuckled. “If we get near him again, he’s all yours.”
“Oh, so he is a boy?” Tag winked.
The tongue lashed out, landing a few feet away from them.
“Ha!” Chloe shouted. “You can’t reach us!” She stuck out her tongue.
Which was probably the last thing she should’ve done.
Whether it was because of the taunting, or it happened to be the next stage of the fish’s attack plan, she’d never know, but now the fish swam forward until its body kissed the shore.
It emerged from the water on muscular fins that began to take steps like the feet of an amphibian. With its entire body out of the water, the thing was even bigger than they’d anticipated. Now the cave itself shook.
The party ducked and moved out of the way of the stalagmites that began to rain down like crude rocky needles. The creature screeched and lumbered toward them, a dozen blimp fish wriggling along beside it.
“Oh, crap.” Chloe sighed. “We’ve angered it."
Chapter Forty-Seven
The smaller blimp fish increased their speed, placing themselves in front of the monster.
“Take out the little guys,” Chloe commanded, summoning her Volt Shock.
Tag took a breath and bellowed into the cave, activating his Cry of the Valiant. The party’s stats boosted as Tag glowed with power.
“Good idea.” Chloe smirked. “Let’s stack the bonuses. For the queen!”
She waited for more buffs to stack, but nothing happened.
“Huh? Why didn’t that work?”
Ben found a half-second between firing his volley of arrows to say, “Maybe because you’re not in Hammersworth, and you’re also not currently the Chief Guardian of the Queen. Veronica is, remember?”
“Aw, man.” Chloe sighed. “I guess I’d better stick with the classics.”
She joined Gideon in blasting with their Volt Shock. The lightning was unreliable across long distances but started to find their targets the closer they came.
Chloe couldn’t quite understand it. It was a suicide mission. Why were all those fish wriggling toward them when they were flopping into certain death?
Unless they know what they’re doing, and they’re distracting us from Big Mama? KieraFreya suggested.
Chloe rolled her eyes. Great, now it’s a girl?
Whatever the gender, she knew KieraFreya was probably right. That didn’t mean they could ignore the immediate threat of the oncoming horde of teeth-gnashing fish.
“Come on…” Tag muttered through gritted teeth, hands shaking with impatience. “Get your asses here. Come on…”
Chloe ran to Tag’s side and gripped his hammer.
“Hey! Get off…”
The hammer burst into a blue glow. Electricity thrummed along its length and crackled on its head.
Chloe didn’t wait for thanks. “You’re welcome.”
Tag’s eyes lit up as he held the hammer in the air. “I am Thor, god of thunder!”
“Hey, Thor?” Ben called. “How about you actually use that thing instead of playing with it?”
“That’s what she said.” Chloe laughed.
Tag obeyed, a giant smile on his face. He sprinted at the throng and swung his hammer in a broad arc. It connected with a number of fish, thwacking them back into the lake, their bodies humming with electricity.
They were all around him now, and Chloe realized how much she had missed him. Having Tag back with their group filled her with a happiness that spurred her onward. She imbued her own sword with Volt Shock and ran into the horde to help.
Between the four of them, they took down most of the fish with ease. They carved a path through the attackers, Chloe and Tag taking down the majority with glee while Gideon and Ben picked off any of the creatures that escaped their weapons or got too close.
Experience points stacked up. Chloe could see the blinking notifications but ignored them, focusing instead on thinning the herd before Big Mama arrived.
The fish were tricky, though. They had more surprises up their fins. As the monster lumbered its way casually toward them, some of the smaller fish acted like bombs.
These they had ignored at first, thinking that there was no more threat in them than there was in a puppy or a kitten, until the first ones found their way near their feet, made a high-pitched squealing sound like air being let through the squeezed nozzle of a balloon, and exploded in a shower of light.
If it hadn’t been for their armor, Chloe guessed it would probably have hurt quite a bit. As it was, the pain was absorbed by the metal, although she could feel the radiant heat following the explosion.
“How’s it going, Thor?” Chloe called, finishing off several fish with one charged swing of her sword.
Tag laughed. “God of Thunder happy.”
“You sound like the big green guy, not the God of Thunder,” Ben shouted over the relentless sounds of gnashing teeth.
“It’s Goddess of Thunder,” KieraFreya chimed in. “And it’s blasphemy to pretend to be a god.”
“What are you talking about?” Chloe asked. A fish flew at her face, and she quickly raised her hand. Electricity pulsed in her palm, and the minute the fish connected with her skin, it was propelled magnificently backward.
“Voltinya is the Goddess of Thunder. I don’t know who the hell you’re talking about.”
Chloe laughed, realizing the miscommunication. “I’ll explain it to you some time.” She kicked at several small bombing fish around her feet. “We’ve got our own pantheon in Earth. It’s a lot cooler than yours.”
“I highly doubt it.”
“Incoming!” Ben cried out. Chloe turned at the last minute to see the colossal tongue whipping toward her. She was about to duck when Ben’s arrow found its mark and buried itself in the soft pink flesh.
“Nice shot.”
“Thanks. Now move!”
Tag and Chloe worked their way back to the others. The crowd of fish had thinned, but the mama was on them. It loomed over the others, the ground still shaking with every step.
“How do we take it down?”
Chloe trained her eyes on finding the marks from her Monster Slayer skill again. She identified a red glowing orb in the center of its mass, as well as one at the top of its head.
“It looks like the heart or brain are the targets.”
Tag shot her a look. “I could have told you that.”
“You’d think it would have lost us without sight in one eye,” Ben said. “Here, let’s see if this works.”
Tag, Gideon, and Chloe cleared the area around Ben, allowing him to use his Double Shot on the other eye. Like before, the arrow held fast in the vast expanse of black goop. The fish howled again and charged onward.
“Both eyes, and nothing?” Ben moaned. “Come on…”
“Here, let’s put the lights out. That way he’ll never find us,” Gideon said.
Before anyone could protest, Gideon shot a concentrated bolt of lightning through the air and straight into the blimp fish’s appendage. The light at the end of the appendage thrummed and exploded with light. The fish writhed and swung the appendage around, but it was too late. The light exploded in a fiery white burst, then there was darkness.
Darkness broken only by the gentle glow of the mushrooms and the faint throbbing bursts of the remaining blimp fish
“Okay, that didn’t work,” Ben said. “It’s just harder to see them, that’s all.”
The tongue whipped out at the adventurers and missed them by inches, then retracted. The fish grunted, and the stench of things left to rot poured over them. It whipped its tongue again and missed once more.
Chloe looked on with fascination, her Dark Vision meaning she could see the area relatively well. “Huh.”
As she mused, a fish jumped from the ground and launch
ed at her face. She didn’t have enough time to raise her hand in the air to block it. From out of the darkness beside her came Gan’gor, who grabbed the fish between his fingers and tore at the body with his teeth, gnawing at the fish until it stopped moving.
“Y’know, these are pretty tasty.” He grinned.
The others looked at him in disgust.
“What?” He held the carcass out for them. “Want some?”
But Chloe’s attention was already back to the mama fish, who had once more whipped its tongue and missed.
Could it be a coincidence that the minute the lights went out, its aim got worse?
And then the realization struck her.
“It’s blind! The fish is blind!”
Ben had now traded his bow for knives and was hacking at the small fish exploding near his feet. He raised his knees, moving his feet quickly. If they hadn’t been in such danger, the whole thing would’ve been funny. “Great! So what?”
“So it can’t see in the dark.”
“Go figure,” Tag cried. “Still managed to attack us before.”
Chloe cleared the space around her, hacking at the fish until she had time to breathe. “Don’t you get it? They’re symbiotic! The blind fish can’t see, so it uses the energy from the little guys to guide it. They lead the way for it, and it follows. If they’re struggling to see, they can’t communicate back to mama. It’s the perfect setup.”
“Great work,” KieraFreya said dryly. “How does that help us now?”
Chloe cast her eyes at the mushrooms on the walls. “Gid, get everyone under your orb and zap it with lightning. Ben and Tag, keep attacking through the orb walls until I say so, okay? Gan’gor, trust us, and jump inside.”
They all agreed.
Gideon summoned his orb in seconds, the ball now imbued with electricity. Its light and power drew the attention of the little fish, and consequently, the larger one. The tongue whipped across the cave, zapping the orb again and again but failing to break through.
Chloe, meanwhile, focused on the mushrooms. She summoned Purple Blaze and threw balls of fire at the walls. This, of course, drew the attention of some of the smaller fish, but she worked quickly and ignored their explosions. Soon the walls were alive with purple fire, the mushrooms shriveling and dying beneath the heat.
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