Chapter 1040: Chapter 579: Bay 1_2
On the ground there were only some leftover charcoal and a box covered in barnacles; the metal parts on the box had long since rusted through, crumbling at a touch, yet it had still stubbornly held together until now.
It was precisely thanks to this box’s protection that the journal hadn’t been corroded. Inside he could still find a bunch of miscellaneous junk, but there was no real surprise, and the Map he wanted most wasn’t among it.
After searching this area for a bit, Lance continued deeper in.
Suddenly Lance stopped, his gaze falling on the calm puddle of water before him. He casually picked up a rock and tossed it over.
The instant the rock touched the puddle it was as if something in the water had been startled; several tentacles exploded upward, shooting out of the surface and swallowing the stone in a flash, making "kaka" chewing sounds.
And right at that moment a Hooked Spear thrust out from the side and stabbed straight into the monster’s body.
The monster tried to retract itself but was held in place by the Hooked Spear; the tentacles immediately flailed wildly, slapping the water and throwing up spray, thudding dully against the rock.
Wrestling with Lance, it would learn what despair tasted like.
He directly dragged it completely out of the water, revealing its lower half, and only then did he see it was a soft-bodied creature like an octopus. No idea if it tasted good or not?
Once out of the water the monster’s struggles quickly weakened, its state soon turning listless. After all, the Hooked Spear was stuck in its body, and that tug-of-war just now had already torn it open.
Lance stayed calm about it, pulled out his knife, jabbed the monster’s body, and killed it on the spot.
He drew the blade in one stroke, slicing open flesh to pull out the rusty Hooked Spear. This was something he’d just taken off those Deep Sea Warriors, and he had to admit it worked pretty damn well.
He looked again at the monster; this was a trap the Fishmen had set up using its hunting habits.
They stocked these puddles with a kind of marine creature as living traps, lurking in the water to ambush anything that passed by.
Step on it and it would explode open, those spiked tentacles instantly binding the prey.
Then the central mouthparts would begin biting. Even if it didn’t tear tendons or break bones, getting hurt and bleeding in a place like this was still a death sentence.
Lance pried out the rock it had swallowed with his knife. Seeing the deep bite marks on it, he figured even bone wouldn’t hold up.
Knowing how to use sea creatures to set traps, these Fishmen clearly weren’t necessarily dumber than humans. After all, they had once been human, only turning into this freak-show under the influence of some unnamable being.
Lance had already run into a few of these earlier. The rule was: skirt around puddles, and probe anything suspicious.
After easily cracking the trap, Lance hesitated but still decided not to sample the meat. He sacrificed it on the spot, then kept moving forward along the slick, wet ground.
The Bay’s terrain was in no way simpler than the Beast Lair, in fact it was even more absurd, because this was nature’s handiwork—completely devoid of pattern.
Maybe because too many Fishmen had been pulled away to invade and blockade Hamlet, aside from the group he’d slaughtered at the start, the rest of Lance’s encounters had all been small fry.
But this lack of serious resistance also meant his rate of penetration into the Bay had shot up...
Only Lance’s mood didn’t improve just because the fights were getting fewer. On the contrary, his mood grew heavier.
The deeper he went, the more wrong something felt to him, because the surroundings were getting stranger.
Maybe because he was farther from the shore, the rocks supporting the tunnel around him were no longer those water-eroded, blade-like walls, but had become stalactite-style stone pillars like in a karst cave, segmented in rings so their outer edges looked like rolling waves.
The rock underfoot showed obvious signs of being worked, becoming flatter, and some places even had carved stone steps to make climbing the elevation differences easier.
More striking were the relief carvings cut into the rock walls, bearing a distinctly foreign style.
They depicted waves, tentacles, and some incomprehensible patterns, but they weren’t random; they formed regular shapes and all basically carried oceanic motifs.
Going deeper still, Lance even found signs of brickwork, and a Stone Gate formed by stacking stones against the surrounding rock. On the gate panel, two tentacles were clearly carved holding up a shell symbol together.
The thing was perfectly symmetrical. Lance pressed his torch against it, then raised a hand to trace the carved lines. Such fine craftsmanship could only come from skilled stonemasons, and it had even been lightly polished. There was no way Fishmen had made this.
So why were these things here? And who had made them?
Lance once more focused on that shell motif that kept appearing. What did it stand for?
He didn’t dwell on it much longer. Bracing himself, Lance pushed hard on the Stone Gate. It looked heavy, but it swung open without too much effort.
After he stepped inside and walked only a few paces, movement suddenly came from the gloom ahead. Clearly he’d stepped into some creature’s territory.
Before Lance could see clearly, a wet, gurgling spitting sound came from within the murky vapor.
Having been through the Wilderness Giant Spider and the Beast Den Crippled Pig, Lance instantly knew this was nothing good and dodged instinctively.
Sure enough, a lump of phlegm-like goo splatted right where he’d just been standing. With his level of cleanliness, he didn’t even want to imagine what it would feel like to get hit by that; just looking at it made his stomach turn.
Lance swung the torch forward. The wavering light drove back the mist shrouding the area, and he finally got a look at the enemy that had just attacked him.
It was a snail-shaped creature, a purple worm-like body extending two tentacles, and two dense rows of suction cup-like feet beneath it.
The shell on its back took up most of its bulk, looking like solid rock and giving off an impression of toughness, with irregular spikes jutting from it.
The Deep Sea Snail was half a man tall. He couldn’t see where its mouthparts were, but its whole body glistened wetly, covered in a layer of slime—proof enough that the earlier attack had come from this thing.
What disgusted Lance even more was that there was more than one. In the torchlight he could see two Sea Snails, and behind them a Deep Sea Shaman waving a Sea Urchin Staff.
The burst of light triggered a reaction from the Sea Snails, but their movements fully lived up to the name "snail." The Shaman, however, moved first.
Suffocating Waves!
Under the thick water vapor, that evil power surged like a wave, trying to swallow Lance whole.
Lance didn’t even bother acknowledging it. Instead he pulled out a Warhammer with the Church’s style and charged straight at the Sea Snails.
Confident as he was in Wolf Fang’s sharpness, chopping at those rock-like shells with it still felt like abuse. The hammer was a different story; much better for breaking armor.
He’d picked it up anyway, so he might as well swing it as hard as he could.
Holding the hammer one-handed, he still swung it hard enough to whistle through the air, the head churning the mist, and the next second...
"Boom!"
A deafening bang exploded, blasting up a spray of vapor as the terrifying impact force compressed the moisture into a visible shockwave.
The Sea Snail closest to him split open—literally split open.
The shell that had looked so sturdy shattered into countless pieces under the single blow, and its soft body inside died on the spot.
The slick floor severely limited Lance’s speed, but he was still faster than the Sea Snails.
Before they could spit again, Lance was already moving, dodging their attacks while hammering them one by one. Each explosive crack was like popping open a can.
It was just that these things didn’t have brains; otherwise they’d have panicked and bolted long ago.
The Sea Snails wouldn’t, but the Deep Sea Shaman among them was another matter. It didn’t understand why its witchcraft had done nothing, but it sure as hell didn’t want to die here.
It planted its Magic Wand and tried to waddle away as fast as it could. If it had kept more of its human memories, it might have realized that flippers were worse than feet on land.
But...
"Hmph! Trying to run?"
