But Thrainul seemed to know what he was doing. The bait and the hook fell into the water, attached to a thick anchor chain able to hold an astral ship—it served as the fishing line. After that, the Abyssal’s armor plates moved up, preparing us for submersion. So the “fishing hunt” would happen underwater, after all?
“Thrainul, we need to hurry. Vultures are coming.”
“Blind sharks? How many?”
“Three. No, four.”
“Whatever. We’ll make it! Everybody ready? Let’s go down! You’re going to see a real live Hole safari!”
Chapter 13
THE ABYSSAL STARTED submerging, and water splashed against the portholes. In a moment, the darkness behind the thick glass windows was replaced with translucent dark malachite.
“Cap, they’re close!”
“Move it!” Thrainul grumbled as he spun the steering wheel and pulled at some levers. “Rocky! Lower the bait deeper, or they’ll eat it, I swear to God!”
“Deeper?” The Gravekeeper gave the captain an odd look. “Are you sure, Cap?”
“Do what I say, you damn zombie!” the zwerg exclaimed. “We’re just on the periphery!”
“As you wish!” Rocky released the clamp, and the large anchor chain started unwinding with a loud clanging, quickly disappearing in the pitch-black abyss.
A powerful blow to the top hemisphere shook the descending ship, making the armor plates screech pitifully. A long dark shadow flashed past the portholes. Pressed against the round windows, the Pioneers and I tried to study the next dweller of the underground ocean.
That was a sight best left forgotten. I flinched back as I saw a giant maw with several rows of teeth fly right at me, and another powerful blow rocked the hull. A crack appeared on the outer window, and copper rivets groaned around the porthole. I felt shivers down my spine—the creatures the seeker had called “blind sharks” hit like hydraulic hammers. However, the captain and the crew didn’t seem worried, other than Rocky, who was cursing as he loosened the chain.
Cigar-shaped silhouettes circled the ship, long and flexible, covered with glistening black skin. They looked more like eels or morays than sharks, but the other half of the name proved true—there was no sign of eyes above their huge round maws.
“These are mutant blind sharks,” Thrainul explained to the curious Bonus. “Vultures. They’re drawn to the smell of bait and emanations of death... What? No, they aren’t a threat to us. Get one? Why would you want to? These are ordinary, unremarkable creatures. The Sea of Terror’s teeming with them...”
In the meantime, the blows ceased, as the Abyssal had gone deeper.
“No, they won’t follow us. They live near the surface. For the deepwater monsters, they’re a mouthful.”
We stopped descending and, according to my senses, started moving forward, gradually revving up the engines and gaining speed. The anchor chain, originally aimed straight down, strained—we were dragging the bait askew. It reminded me of trolling, a method of fishing I had seen on video a few times. Essentially, the fishing line was attached to a fast-moving vessel, a motorboat or a yacht, and dragged at a considerable depth, attracting predators with scent and motion. The resemblance was made stronger by Rocky alternating between tightening and loosening the chain, while Thrainul kept adjusting speed, making our movements uneven.
However, we weren’t trying to catch a tuna or a marlin. Our fishing line was a calf-sized steel chain. What did they want to attract while playing with the bait in those abyssal depths?
The seeker, Thrainul, and the crew switched to their own chatroom or simply fell into a tense silence, sometimes gesticulating. Here, in the deep, the water was ink-black, and we couldn’t see anything through the portholes. The gears of the handwheel creaked, and the Clay People in the hold sighed as they steered it, while the fire elemental in the rear engine hissed and wheezed.
Everyone felt it when our prey took the bait. The Abyssal shuddered and stopped, despite the still-working engines. Then, a sharp jolt knocked us all down, and the deck rose at a sharp angle as some unstoppable power pulled us downward almost vertically.
“Heat the engine!” Thrainul bellowed. The white-bearded zwerg, his blue eyes wide with fury, spun the steering wheel, almost returning the submarine to the horizontal position. “Rocky! Can you see what we got there?”
“Not by a damn sight, Cap!” the Gravekeeper reported, futilely trying to stop the chain from rapidly dwindling away through the gap. “It’s too far! I swear by the Prime; it’s something really big!”
“I know that already!”
The captain hurled out orders, jazzing up engines and forcing the golems to work harder but to no avail: the unknown monster was stronger. Overcoming the resistance, it burrowed downward, dragging the heavy vessel with it. What creature could possess such power? Was that a routine situation? I didn’t know.
“Going by the signal, the monster’s very large!” Fayana, who was standing by my side, told me. “It’s bigger than the ship... HotCat, are you scared?”
“Honestly, a little bit, yeah.”
“Me too!” She nodded. “I’m starting to regret paying for this...adrenaline!”
“Don’t, or we’ll lose the wheels and burn the engine!” Snippets of conversation reached us. “Let it drag us. When it gets tired, we’ll pull it up and call it a day.”
“I dunno, it’s something from the depths! A Flaming Urchin or a Screamer!”
“Just look on the map where it’s dragging us to! It’s not the edge of the Sea of Terror anymore: we’re just above the chasms! We might draw attention...”
“Dammit, you’re right!” Thrainul snapped. “It’s bad. Whatever, we’ll get through! Silence!”
“Phew, I think it’s running out of steam,” the captain said after ten minutes of fighting the invisible underwater leviathan that dragged us into the depths like a giant dog and its blundering master.
“Rocky, try pulling it closer!”
The Gravekeeper and Bonus, who was helping him, barely managed to turn the spool, drawing in the heavy wet chain that was almost completely unwound. Another jolt knocked them down, and the ship swayed—but it was a different kind of motion as if hit by an invisible boxing glove. Armor plates screeched as they returned to their positions, and a vortex of bubbles swirled up behind the portholes. A drop of water fell on the deck right next to me, with several more forming on the ceiling: one of the ship’s joints had sprung a leak.
“A tringalote!” Rocky shouted, quickly pulling in the loose “fishing line”—the monster was closing in. “Cap, it’s a tringalote!”
“Looks like it!” Thrainul said, content. “So what can it do? Whirlpool and Spit? Hold tight; it’s going to be bumpy!”
“What’s a tringalote?” Fayana asked quickly.
“Oh, a rare monster from the deep. Its maw is really something else! I guess we grazed it by chance. It’s like a vacuum cleaner. When it breathes in, a huge whirlpool appears on the surface, sucking everything in. That’s how it feeds—it moves while processing a stream of water and spits it out with great force...”
Confirming his words, a blast of water crushed into the Abyssal, sweeping it up in a powerful tornado. The deck and the ceiling seemed about to switch places. We were saved by the skill of our captain—who masterfully controlled the steering wheel—and by the wall clamps that we clutched onto to avoid flying across the deck.
The next few minutes were completely chaotic. We were shaken and thrown around, Thrainul cursed, and Rocky still tried pulling the chain to get the monster closer to the ship. The safari was a real success. I hadn’t experienced anything like that since my latest rollercoaster ride.
“Prepare the Ripper!” Thrainul commanded. “Load it up with physical damage. Stormbreaker, are you asleep?”
“Can I take a shot?” Fayana waved her hand. “I can do it!”
“Do you have the Cannoneer skill?” the zwerg asked in a matter-of-fact tone. “Fine...go to the canno
n! Stormbreaker, load!”
Stormbreaker reluctantly stepped away from the gun carriage. The Abyssal’s artillery was structured in such a way as to allow the cannons installed in special slots to work underwater. The monstrous Ripper, located right next to the cradle of the rear harpoon gun, had the best field of fire. A spiked cannonball the size of a human head fell into the breech, and the breech block snapped shut.
“I’ll pull it closer, and when you see it, fire along the harpoon chain!” Rocky instructed the girl. “Got it? You won’t miss; it’s large! Just don’t hit the chain.”
Adjusting the ship while dodging the Spits and the monster’s lunges was a challenge, but Thrainul did it. I pressed myself against the window, trying to make something out in the darkness.
Fire! Ripper’s recoil shook the Abyssal, and Fayana shrieked in triumph. In the blaze of flash that momentarily illuminated the bottom, I finally saw who had swallowed our bait. I shouldn’t have looked. It was a colossal carcass the shape of a long onion covered with a shroud of moving tendrils. The narrow end of the “onion” had a gaping star-shaped mouth that could easily fit a boat. A vivisector’s wet dream. Whose fevered imagination gave birth to such monstrosities? Was it the procedural generator? Ugh.
The piercing howl of the wounded creature reached me even through the thick walls. With another jolt, the Abyssal was pulled forward, even faster than before!
“Did we really hit it?” I yelled.
“We did! It just doesn’t want to die!”
“Then finish it off!” Thrainul yelled. “And faster—it has dragged us far away already!”
The more experienced Stormbreaker fired two more shots, and they hit their target. The tringalote’s onslaught weakened; it was clearly dying, and the ship’s movement slowed down with every second.
When we finally stopped, Rocky chuckled, pulling the rope in.
“It’s almost down. Still twitching, but the end is near.”
“The signals!” Fayana suddenly spoke up. “Captain! Can your seeker see this? Giant signals just appeared in the distance! Over there!”
She confidently pointed somewhere below.
“What’s that?”
“We’re above the chasms in the Sea of Terror, Cap,” Rocky said, alarmed. “Tentacles or...”
Thrainul replied by cursing angrily and quickly turning the ship around.
“This creature has dragged us somewhere we shouldn’t go! Keep an eye on your Dread and put on Estel if you have it!”
The warning came just in time, as my Dread bar spiked by three points, resulting in seven. It was a lot; it decreased my stats almost 75%. I felt unusually weak, despite the protection provided by my Estel set.
“The signals are closing in,” Fayana said, concentrating. “Weird...they’re fusing together. It’s a giant creature! I can’t even imagine its size. I’ve never seen anything like that. And it’s moving upward!”
Two more Dread points, nine in total! Just one more point, and everyone who didn’t have special items or Estel buffs would lose the ability to do anything but writhe in agony, caught in an undispellable paralysis.
“I think we’re screwed,” Rocky whispered loudly. “It’s moving up... I really don’t want to die! Captain, what should we do?”
“Do you know what signals those are?” Fayana glanced at the zwerg. “What kind of monster is this? Have you seen it?”
“It’s our doom!” Thrainul replied curtly. “Those who’ve seen those never come back! It’s the Guardian.”
“What Guardian?”
“What Guardian? There’s an island in the Sea of Terror. HotCat mentioned it. It’s surrounded by chasms—trenches so deep that nobody ever risked going there. These chasms are home to monsters like this one. I’ve only heard about them—nobody’s stupid enough to enter these waters!”
“Do they attack everyone?” Fayana asked.
“There’s a certain line. If you cross it, they crawl out of the deep. They can aggro to noise, light, or movement. We were firing cannons—I didn’t realize it could be a problem. What an old fool...”
“All right,” he said, abruptly pulling himself together. “Turn off the sidelights! Disengage the engines. Stop the handwheel! No casting, complete silence, talk only in the chat! Rocky, unshackle the chain and throw it away!”
“Together with the booty?”
“Yes, overboard! Maybe we could distract it! It’s one chance in a million that the Guardian won’t touch us, thinking us a dead piece of iron...”
The chain swiftly disappeared in the hole with a loud clang. We hadn’t gotten the chance to look at the caught Tringalote, but it’s not like I was eager to do it.
The impenetrable darkness in the portholes suddenly cleared up. I carefully looked out and saw a source of light somewhere far below us, a round yellow patch slowly rising from the deep. Another one suddenly appeared right next to it, and I realized what it was.
Eyes, each of them the size of a Tringalote. Yellow pupils illuminated pale beams that dispelled darkness like searchlights. Thanks to them, I could make out the monster’s outline: the spots on its round head, the writhing tentacles...
The chain with a slab of flesh slowly fell toward the rising Guardian. It was so small next to the monster that I felt cold shivers down my spine. I had never seen creatures of that size in Sphere.
A colossal tentacle, each sucker cup of which was as big as the Abyssal, moved underneath us. Most of the monster was hidden in the darkness, but it definitely resembled a squid...scaled up a thousand times.
Bonus: Holy crap. Fayana, I hope you’re recording.
Our submarine was hovering underwater, showing no signs of life, while the gargantuan monster took its time getting closer, probing the depths with his eye-beams. I wondered where the closest resp point was and whether the Pandas would intercept me there. What would I do if they did? From the looks of it, we were about to be eaten; fighting a creature of that size wasn’t even a question. What could actually hurt a monster that big? It probably had billions of hit points. Several player raids? Probably not, considering the level of Dread. Maybe even True Fire...
Wait. True Fire. Just like Rocky, I really didn’t want to die...
HotCat: Thrainul, how much are you willing to pay if I destroy this monster?
Thrainul: Are you kidding me? It’s impossible.
HotCat: I understand that you don’t want to lose the Abyssal, and still…
Thrainul: Don’t tease me.
HotCat: What if I can do it? What will you lose? Let’s say you’ll give me back the transportation fee and get me to the Isle of Madness for free.
Thrainul: I’ll give anything you want, even sell my soul.
HotCat: So it’s a deal. A contract?
Thrainul: Wait. Look...
The Guardian seemingly aimlessly probed the area right next to us with its tentacles, and the movement of water carried the Abyssal aside. Startled, the monster froze. Agonizing silence fell. Everyone was glued to the portholes, afraid to breathe. Impending death was just next to us, and we could hear its footsteps.
Thrainul: It’s leaving! Holy balls, it’s leaving!
Fayana: I confirm. The signal’s moving away. Movement vector: back, downward.
True, the glowing eyes were growing smaller as the squid withdrew, returning to the chasm from whence it had crawled several minutes before. Were we really off the hook? I felt relief with a hint of disappointment. I had already made up my mind for heroics!
Fayana: It’s retreating extremely fast. That’s it; it’s out of my search sphere.
A collective sigh sounded across the deck. NPCs and players exchanged unbelieving glances, happy smiles on their faces.
“What a beast!” Rocky complained. “I almost crapped my pants!”
Quietly, afraid to once again draw the giant’s attention, our ship began to crawl to the surface. Thankfully, the area around us was calm, and after the Guardian’s withdrawal, the level of Dread returned to
the usual four points. Other monsters were probably afraid to haunt its domain. When I opened my atlas and scrolled to the Hole’s page (Bonus had helpfully copied Thrainul’s map for me), I saw that we were inside a big blank spot—the aforementioned uncharted Sea of Terror. The Isle of Madness was somewhere close...
In the meantime, Thrainul laid into me, disgruntled.
“What was that nonsense? What contract?”
“It wasn’t nonsense. I really can kill this creature,” I replied, unperturbed.
“Are you nuts? How? Have you seen its health bar? It doesn’t even show how many hit points it has, probably billions! The Guardian cannot be killed at all!”
Shadow Seer (Rogue Merchant Book #3): LitRPG Series Page 17