Chapter 126: The Raid

Chapter 126

The flames filling the room had just died down when Mo Chen rushed over. Before he could say a word, the entire ship suddenly began to shake violently.

“All personnel, take note! Our ship is under attack by an unidentified creature. All personnel, proceed to the deck immediately to provide support!”

As the ship rocked violently, the warning announcement rang throughout the cabins.

Hearing the broadcast, Mo Chen had no time to settle accounts with Ye Jingxuan. He and the others hurried toward the deck.

A number of ability users were already battling seven or eight blue-gray, tentacle-like appendages. Several more tentacles of the same color were wrapped tightly around the hull, preventing the ship from moving.

“What is that thing? It looks disgusting!” Mei muttered to herself as she drew her bow and fired.

The skin of the tentacles was extraordinarily tough. Even the combined attacks of numerous ability users had done no more than leave shallow scratches. Yet a white arrow of light easily severed one of the wildly thrashing tentacles. The severed limb fell onto the deck, spilling blue blood.

What incredible offensive power!

Many people froze when they saw this and instinctively turned to find the source of the arrow.

Mei, however, had no intention of standing around waiting for them to look. The instant she fired her first arrow, she sprang into motion. Her figure darted through the gaps between the flailing tentacles, while the arrows of light in her hands shot out one after another. Before long, she had severed every tentacle lashing about.

Just as she was about to deal with the tentacles wrapped around the ship, the hull began to shake violently again. This time, the movement was far more intense than before. Most people could not remain standing and rolled helplessly across the rocking deck, plunging the scene into chaos.

Only a few were able to stabilize themselves with their abilities and barely remain where they were. But those people soon discovered that a blue-gray hill was slowly rising beside the ship.

Then something even more astonishing happened.

The severed tentacles were rapidly growing back from their wounds.

“Oh? It can regenerate?” Mei said, somewhat surprised.

She leaped into the air. From above, she looked down, trying to see the creature’s entire body.

What a huge monster!

From that vantage point, she could see that the creature was more than twice the size of the entire ship. It was a vast expanse of blue-gray flesh, covered in bumps and lumps, making its exact form impossible to discern. But it certainly had an enormous number of tentacles. Excluding those already wrapped around the ship and those that had just regrown, it still had at least seven or eight tentacles free.

The monster seemed to have been enraged by the earlier attacks. It wrapped even more tentacles around the ship and began twisting them with all its strength, as though it intended to crush the vessel to pieces.

Without the ship, were they supposed to swim all the way to Country A?

At the thought, everyone launched another assault on the tentacles. More than a hundred people concentrated their attacks on a single limb, unleashing their abilities without restraint. The results were quite obvious; before long, several tentacles had been severed.

But how could the monster simply wait obediently to be attacked without fighting back?

As soon as three tentacles had been cut off, the monster’s remaining limbs lashed toward the crowd. At the same time, mucus began spraying from the undersides of the tentacles.

Streams of green slime splashed directly onto many ability users who had no time to defend themselves.

Piercing screams instantly filled the entire ship.

The skin of everyone struck by the slime was immediately corroded as though it had been doused with sulfuric acid. In the blink of an eye, their flesh was eaten away.

As a result, a large number of people lost their ability to fight on the spot.

Seeing this, Mei could not help sighing. She condensed three arrows of light at once and fired them at the monster.

The three arrows flew in three different directions and struck three tentacles that were continuously spraying slime, severing them almost simultaneously. Mei immediately fired three more arrows, cutting off three additional tentacles.

After two such volleys, the pressure on the other ability users was rapidly relieved.

However, her actions also drew the monster’s attention. It seemed to determine that she posed the greatest threat. Abandoning the others, it redirected its tentacles and began launching a frenzied assault on Mei.

When Mei saw all the tentacles converging on her, she immediately ceased her attacks. Her dark ability condensed into a black curved blade. She dodged and leaped through the gaps between the tentacles while swinging the blade in counterattack.

The crowd saw a petite figure entirely shrouded in black darting with astonishing agility through the spaces between the tentacles. Neither the tentacles nor the slime could touch her in the slightest. In contrast, every time she swung the black blade while evading, one of the tentacles was inevitably severed.

Although the severed tentacles continued to grow back, as the number of times they were cut increased, everyone noticed that their regeneration was visibly slowing.

Not only that, the newly grown tentacles were far weaker than before in both defense and attack. Even the limbs wrapped around the ship had begun to lose their strength.

The monster was gradually weakening!

With this realization, everyone intensified their attacks.

The monster also understood that it could no longer devour everyone aboard the ship. It retracted its tentacles and prepared to flee.

“Trying to run? That depends on whether I agree!” Mei watched the tentacles rapidly withdraw and the monster’s body sink quickly beneath the waves. Once again, she drew her bow, and a black arrow swiftly appeared against the string.

With a sharp whoosh, the arrow shot forth, a long black shadow trailing behind it, and plunged straight into the monster’s body.

The next instant, there was a tremendous boom. A huge hole was blasted through the creature.

Seawater rushed through the opening and poured into its body. The monster writhed in agony, rolling and thrashing violently beneath the waves. The surging water caused the ship to rock once again.

Around the blasted opening, great masses of flesh writhed rapidly, apparently attempting to seal the wound. But an invisible force blocked the injury, preventing it from healing no matter how hard the flesh struggled.

The others seized the opportunity to attack the monster again. Before long, it stopped rolling and floated motionless on the surface of the water.

It was finally over!

When they saw that the monster was truly dead, many people revealed expressions of relief at having survived a disaster.

Some collapsed onto the deck, completely exhausted. Under Ling Feng’s direction, others carried the wounded below for treatment and cleaned up the deck.

“Mei, are you all right?” After the battle ended, Mo Chen and the others regrouped and asked anxiously.

“I’m fine. What about you? None of you were hurt, were you?” After being weak for so long, she had finally been able to give her body a thorough workout, and her voice sounded unusually excited.

She glanced at her companions and confirmed that none of them were injured before turning her gaze back to the severed tentacles scattered across the deck. Ling Feng had ordered some of the tentacles to be placed in containers and sent to the experts for examination, while the rest were thrown back into the sea.

Mei could not help looking regretful.

“What a shame!”

“What are you lamenting? Don’t tell me you want to eat this thing. Aren’t you disgusted by it?” Although he could not see her expression, Mo Chen could still guess what she was thinking and spoke with undisguised disdain.

“It’s precisely because it’s so disgusting that I’m lamenting it! Otherwise, something this huge would be enough to give so many people a full meal. What a pity that it can’t be eaten!”

Mei had not deliberately lowered her voice, so quite a few people nearby heard her. Those with less delicate sensibilities immediately began entertaining the idea.

“Colonel, it seems rather wasteful to throw all of this away. Since mutated animals can be eaten, perhaps this thing can be eaten too. Why don’t we haul the body back up and take a look?” someone suggested to Ling Feng.

“No. We don’t have time for that. We must leave immediately!” Ling Feng rejected the proposal without hesitation.

Seeing that the hull and deck had been more or less cleaned, he immediately ordered the ship to set sail.

Many people were unwilling to give up, but with only a dozen or so of them, they certainly did not dare oppose Ling Feng. After all, he not only controlled the supplies, but at least a quarter of the people aboard the ship obeyed his orders completely.

The ship had not sustained too much damage in the monster’s attack and soon began moving.

After traveling only a few hundred meters, someone suddenly shouted, “Look! What is that?”

Everyone still on deck turned toward the direction indicated. A black creature, even larger than the previous monster, rose from the water. It opened its enormous mouth and swallowed the tentacled monster’s corpse in two bites.

Nearly everyone grew tense at the sight, afraid that the creature had not eaten its fill and would come after them next.

Fortunately, the creature did not seem interested in them. After finishing its meal, it sank back beneath the water and soon vanished without a trace.

As everyone breathed a sigh of relief, they were filled with gratitude that the ship had left so quickly. If they had remained in place, who knew whether that enormous creature would have swallowed them along with its after-meal snack? Judging by how easily it had devoured the tentacled monster in two bites, swallowing their entire ship would probably have been effortless.

Those who had previously wanted to eat the tentacled monster now instinctively shrank back. They no longer dared complain about Ling Feng. Instead, they were deeply grateful for his decisive order. Otherwise, how could any of them still be alive?

Their crisis had been temporarily resolved, but the wounded were not so fortunate. The tentacled monster’s slime was not only corrosive but also mildly toxic. Before long, the injured people fell into comas.

Fortunately, apart from ability users, experts were the most numerous group aboard the ship. After researching through the night, they finally extracted an antidote from the remaining tentacle samples.

As for the wounds on the victims’ bodies, those were left to the healing ability users.

Healing ability users were extremely rare. To ensure that this journey proceeded smoothly, Long Sheng had sent half of the healing ability users they had recruited.

It was only then that Mei discovered that the Xiao siblings were also aboard the ship.

Why did they encounter this pair of siblings everywhere they went?

Could this be what people called fate?

Mei’s gaze drifted between Xiao Keren, Ye Jingxuan, and Mo Chen.

To be continued.