Irabetha fell into the sea. She moved as nimbly as a fish, diving beneath the surface and swiftly swimming towards the Sea Angel.
Having grown up in Pirate Bay, Irabetha was an excellent swimmer who could hold her breath underwater for three or four minutes. Yet she was truly weak right now. After swimming only a short distance, she felt utterly exhausted, as if she could no longer squeeze out even a trace of strength. Several mouthfuls of cold, bitter seawater accidentally poured into her mouth. She surfaced and gasped heavily for air.
When she looked back, the Undead Monk ships had not pursued her. Evidently these monks had never taken her seriously and believed that leaping into the sea in her condition meant certain death, so they could not be bothered to chase.
Irabetha glanced again towards the direction where the Sea Angel was entangled with the merchant ship. She was still more than a hundred metres away. Fierce explosions kept bursting from the vessel, and several figures constantly moved about on the deck, unleashing powerful attacks.
Being a little closer now allowed Irabetha to see clearly. The ones fighting the Sea Angel were precisely those strange pirates who had teamed up with Stari yesterday. Their methods were astonishing. The Sea Angel’s enormous tentacles were immensely strong; a single strike could snap a ship in half and drag it underwater. Yet their attacks kept landing on those tentacles, forcing the terrifying limbs to retreat repeatedly. Several tentacles were already badly mangled, exposing red flesh.
Irabetha even had the odd thought that this group might actually be able to kill the Sea Angel!
Of course, she could also sense that the situation was far from optimistic. The merchant ship was already heavily damaged. No matter how powerful Ye Chui and his people were, the vessel would not hold out much longer. Irabetha’s gaze fell on Stari, who was trembling and clinging to the mast on the deck.
“Idiot, just wait for me a little longer!” Irabetha muttered to herself, then once more submerged.
She looked around, searching for any sign of the ghost ship. Only the ghost ship could oppose the Sea Angel!
Irabetha had swum close enough. Beneath the water she could see the Sea Angel’s hideous, grotesque octopus-like body, unimaginably huge. The tentacles visible above the surface were merely a tiny fraction of it. Compared to that terrifying bulk, the ship floating on the sea was like a piece of bread in a child’s hand, utterly insignificant.
“Ghost ship, where on earth is the ghost ship…”
Irabetha began to feel dizzy, her body pushed to the limits of exhaustion.
After surfacing once more to breathe, she dived again. Suddenly the vortex stirred by the Sea Angel caught her. Her body was dragged uncontrollably by that immense force. She struggled desperately, yet could not free herself from the sensation of being utterly powerless.
Her body began sinking endlessly into the depths, into boundless darkness.
Her consciousness gradually grew hazy.
The pendant around her neck drifted in front of her.
In the instant darkness swallowed her, a faint glow emanated from the pendant.
It was like a lighthouse upon the sea. The next moment Irabetha felt herself suddenly land on solid ground. Gravity returned, seawater cascaded off her body, and air surrounded her. She gulped in huge breaths, her scattered senses rapidly clearing. Had she returned to the surface?
No, darkness still enveloped everything, the strange underwater scenery unique to the seabed. She was beneath the sea yet standing on the deck of a black ship. A layer of air bubbles enveloped the vessel, allowing her to breathe.
“This… is the ghost ship!?”
At the final moment before she drowned, the ghost ship had caught her!
Clang, clang, clang…
Heavy footsteps slowly echoed from the cabin. A black figure appeared.
“Your pendant… looks very familiar to me…” a dry, rasping voice said, as though its owner had not spoken for so long that he had forgotten how.
“Captain Dalin, you are Captain Dalin…” Irabetha cried out with a mixture of joy and fear. She struggled to her feet on the deck and spoke to the figure in the darkness. “Please save Stari! He is your descendant, your grandson. Right now that terrifying sea monster is about to kill him!”
…
On the merchant ship’s deck, a horrifying tentacle swept down towards Ye Chui.
As the primary damage dealer on deck, the Sea Angel had evidently marked Ye Chui as its main target.
Ye Chui’s body flickered, dodging to one side of the deck. A flying magic missile had already appeared where he had stood.
Whoosh—
The magic missile shot out, striking the enormous tentacle. Boom! Flesh and blood flew everywhere. The tentacle nearly shattered and hastily retracted into the sea.
The ship rocked violently. Turtle Treasure was frowning as he maintained his turtle-pattern defence. Faint turtle-pattern markings could be seen on the deck, the cabins, even the ship’s hull. Under the Sea Angel’s onslaught, any ordinary vessel would long since have broken apart, but thanks to Turtle Treasure’s protection the ship was still holding together.
Another tentacle descended from above towards Ye Chui. Before he could react, a white figure leapt forward. It was Evans. Drawing the dragon-slaying blade Itomaru from his back, he let out a thunderous shout: “Someone gay is pulling down my zip—”
[Slash]!
In a flurry of after-images, Evans’s body flashed around the tentacle, every terrifying strike landing on exactly the same spot. The thick tentacle was instantly severed. A section crashed onto the deck, wriggling like a lizard’s discarded tail.
Bart gripped his great bow, continuously firing at the tentacles. Seeing his younger brother slice off a monstrous limb, his expression showed a moment of surprise.
The next instant Ye Chui appeared beside him and patted his shoulder. “Want me to upgrade you too? I guarantee it’ll be even stronger than that.”
Bart: “Thanks… but no thanks!”
At that moment Guni walked up to the severed tentacle, swinging a metallic greatsword. The blade was a new gift from Ye Chui: a vibranium greatsword. Of course, although it was called a vibranium greatsword, with vibranium costing one point per gram, a hundred-kilogram sword would require a hundred thousand points. Ye Chui could not afford that. This “vibranium greatsword” was formed by using ten kilograms of vibranium (ten thousand points) to coat the surface of a fine steel greatsword. In short, it was a gold-plated greatsword.
Shalumei’s vibranium mace was constructed the same way.
Guni approached the severed tentacle, raised her greatsword, then suddenly hesitated. “Ye Chui, can we eat this?”
“No!” Ye Chui shouted. Why was this girl always thinking about food?
Guni spun her body in a full circle and swung the greatsword down onto the twitching tentacle. The limb was hurled away by the immense force and exploded mid-air into a cloud of blood and flesh under the terrifying sword energy.
More Sea Angel tentacles kept rising from the sea.
Debbie summoned her Kryptonian warrior Gilga, Leisha unleashed holy words, Shiers fired black flames, all of them continuously resisting the Sea Angel’s attacks.
“When is it my turn? I can’t wait any longer!” Dragon Treasure stood guard beside the elf baby. For a certain purpose, Ye Chui had told him to hold back for now.
“Wait a bit longer, it’s not time yet…” Ye Chui hurriedly reminded him.
Yet the moment those words left Ye Chui’s mouth, the violently shaking ship suddenly grew calm. The tentacles that had been lashing out seemed to vanish. Had the Sea Angel left? No, impossible. Amid the sound of rushing water, a terrifying bulge appeared on the starboard side. Then a hideous head, larger than the entire ship, rose from the water.
It was a twisted, deformed octopus head!
It opened its mouth towards the ship.
A circular maw lined with layer upon layer of sharp teeth unfolded like petals. That terrifying mouth looked capable of swallowing the entire vessel in one gulp!
Many members of the Three-Headed Serpent Mercenary Group were still alive. Seeing this monstrous maw, they collapsed to their knees in terror, muttering prayers, completely paralysed with fear.
Their captain Zack, perhaps having lost his mind entirely, let his battle axe clatter to the deck. He walked blankly towards the giant mouth, babbling like a madman. “Sea Angel, terrifying Sea Angel, please spare us, this has nothing to do with us, truly nothing to do with us…”
A strange snake-like tongue suddenly shot from the Sea Angel’s mouth, coiled around Zack’s body, and dragged him back into that horrific maw. Immediately afterwards, more snake-like tongues extended, resembling the stamens of a flower.
A muffled roar like rolling thunder issued from the giant mouth, accompanied by waves of viscous fluid and a foul stench.
Ye Chui instantly erected a space barrier in front of everyone to block the slime.
He looked at the octopus’s gaping maw, picked up the tricorn captain’s hat that had just been blown off, placed it back on his head, and, pinching his fingers in an orchid pose, let out a heartfelt sigh. “Now this is what a proper pirate looks like.” Then he turned and shouted at Dragon Treasure, “What are you waiting for?”
Dragon Treasure immediately leapt into the air. The chubby little boy transformed into the black-gold flame dragon. The current black-gold dragon was now enormous, nearly as large as the Sea Angel itself. He let out a terrifying dragon roar, spread his wings, and hovered in mid-air. Blazing light flashed within his massive draconic neck. He swung his head and opened his jaws.
“Roar—”
Terrifying black-gold dragon flames poured from his mouth like a torrent, flooding straight into the Sea Angel’s horrific maw.
Ye Chui had been waiting for the Sea Angel to expose its body so Dragon Treasure’s dragon flames could strike it directly. At the same time, Ye Chui began gathering a fearsome explosive spell in his hands. [Explosion is justice]. He refused to believe he could not kill this giant octopus!
However, contrary to Ye Chui’s expectations, the instant Dragon Treasure’s black-gold flames poured into the Sea Angel’s mouth, the creature suddenly spewed out clouds of black—ink!
No one knew what that ink was made of, but it actually extinguished the supposedly inextinguishable black-gold dragon flames, then surged forward and splashed all over Dragon Treasure. Whoosh—the terrifying black-gold dragon instantly turned pitch black from the ink.
“Bloody hell—” Dragon Treasure’s voice, made deep and resonant by his transformation, bellowed. His enormous body swayed, then crashed onto the deck, reverting to his child form. Except the originally fair and chubby little boy was now a completely blackened little kid. Even the darkest-skinned person in Africa probably would not be as black as he was now…
“This sea monster’s ink is poisonous! It can suppress my dragon flames…” the little black kid shouted in shock.
Ye Chui: “…”
The poisonous one is your current appearance, alright?
This was completely different from what he had planned!
Then, the next moment—boom! Something struck the bottom of the ship with devastating force. Even Turtle Treasure’s defence could not hold. The huge merchant ship had long since suffered catastrophic damage; only Turtle Treasure’s protection had kept it intact. But now, with this blow from beneath, she could no longer maintain it. The hull instantly shattered into fragments.
At that moment Stari was in despair. He shouted at Ye Chui, “You said there wouldn’t be a third sinking…”
