Splash! Splash! Splash!

Yongno did a flip turn near the cliff and quickly fled from the school of blade fish that was aiming for his chest, head, and left leg. He trembled when he saw those creatures miss him and, in a horrifying fashion, burrow into the stone as if it were mud.

‘Come to think of it, they easily stabbed me when I was performing Body Strengthening!’

If Yongno didn’t use that skill, those fish would have shot clean through his arms and chest. While their blade-like noses couldn’t directly pierce the waterdrop turtle’s shell, they were still tyrants of the deep sea who considered the mighty turtle as their prey.

Splash! Splash!

As he avoided two more blade fish, Yongno bit his lips. The current situation was as tricky as the fight with the waterdrop turtle.

‘I can’t retreat!’

He felt like he was stepping back to avoid the arrow flying toward him. Truthfully, if an arrow was shot from far away, there was no reason he couldn’t evade it. An arrow shot straight toward him could be dodged by moving one step to the left or the right after reading the wind’s direction. However, what would happen if he tried to escape the arrow by moving backward? Simple, it would be a bull's eye. Unless he could move quicker than the arrow and go where it couldn’t reach him, it was impossible to entirely avoid the projectile since he would still be in its range.

Yongno was in the same situation with the school of blade fish. No matter how far he retreated, if he couldn’t move faster than these creatures, he could never escape. Of course, he also had the time-consuming option of gradually moving in a zig-zag motion. Yet, this would eventually drain his internal force since he had to pay attention to their movements and ascend from a depth of 1,000 meters, all while speeding up every moment.

‘Do I have about three years’ worth of internal martial arts left?’

After learning the Penetration Power ability, the internal martial arts needed to use the skill had been dramatically reduced, but even so, he could still only use the skill one or two times more at the moment. The problem was that there were approximately twenty blade fish near him.

Splash!

The blade fish charged toward him again, and Yongno moved slightly to dodge while constantly performing the Golden Pill Immortal Technique. However, diving while operating Water-Friendly consumed a lot of his internal energy, so he couldn’t quickly recover his internal martial arts. He would need to survive for twenty minutes to barely release one blow of Penetration Power.

‘I can’t take anymore. If I keep wasting my time like this, I’m dead meat. I have to either hide and wait until those bastards leave or distract them with something else….’

While thinking that, he activated Aura Vision and looked around before detecting some living creatures inside the cliff.

‘Awesome, I see two inside that are pretty strong. Of course, if I’m unlucky, I might get surrounded.’

The blade fish around Yongno kept attacking him without any pauses. As he dodged their speedy strikes, Yongno carefully studied the cliff. He noticed an entrance to a cave by a big rock. The opening was hidden and required him to climb upwards. Clearly, it was a man-made cave. There was no way nature would create an entry in the shape of a ‘ㄱ.’

Pow! Wham!

One of the blade fish shot itself at Yongno like an arrow, but he had already moved and was entering the cave.

BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM!

It was like a scene from a movie. The blade fish fired themselves at him and drilled dozens of holes in a line, tracing his movements. Their accuracy, power, and reaction speed were so great that despite swimming fluidly like a dolphin, Yongno barely managed to avoid their machine gun-like attacks. If these fish were just a bit more intelligent and could predict where he was heading or attacked simultaneously in a siege formation, he would have died.

‘Gosh! Help me!’

Yongno shrieked to himself and glided past their attacks. In truth, it was physically impossible for a human to move that smoothly in the water. After all, despite his swimming speed and skill, he still wasn’t a fish. Humans didn’t have streamlined bodies, fins, or even flexible tails, so his effortless movements were rather strange. Of course, it was his Attribute Power that enabled this, as it allowed him to control the water around him. Yet, even with this under consideration, he was surprisingly fast in the water.

‘Oh my god! How could the school get larger?’

After entering the cave, Yongno realized that the number of blade fish chasing him had increased to thirty. However, Yongno could shoot only one or two blows with his current Penetration Power and, subsequently, could only kill one or two blade fish. Considering how he’d also likely fail to generate enough force in those blasts of power, he was in a truly dismal, frustrating situation. Then, Yongno made up his mind.

‘Pause.’

When Yongno stopped moving, the school of blade fish also came to a halt. Before he moved to a reddish-brown rock, he raised his left hand to prevent the creatures from suddenly attacking him. The moment he lowered his hand, a group of six blade fish swarmed him as if they had been waiting for this moment.

KRAKA-BOOM!

Yongno dodged their strikes just as he’d done before, but something different happened this time. The swarm of blade fish couldn’t pierce through the rock like butter. In fact, what they bounced off of wasn’t actually a rock - it was a creature mimicking a rock.

Clank.

Yongno could have sworn that the gigantic lobster made a ‘clank’ noise as it opened its eyes. The massive creature was approximately 2.5 meters long with enormous claws. Actually, at this point, it was too big to even call it a lobster.

Splash!

However, the blade fish ignored the lobster and tried to target Yongno again. From the beginning, their target was Yongno, and nothing could distract them from attacking him. Yet, that was only the blade fish; the lobster thought differently.

POW!

When Yongno saw the massive lobster’s claws, he expected them to be its primary weapon. Of course, he wasn’t wrong since the lobster’s main weapon was indeed its claws. However, the way the lobster used them was beyond his expectations. The lobster punched.

‘Yikes!?’

In a shocking and absurd manner, the lobster was swinging its claws at the speed of Mach 3. Whether it was unfortunate or fortunate, none of the blade fish were directly hit, but sadly, the danger wasn’t only from being directly hit. Even Yongno felt the underwater waves smashing into his stomach, and he’d been outside the attack range.

‘What the heck is that?’

Then he recalled the mantis shrimp he had seen on TV. The mantis shrimp, also known as the Mike Tyson of the ocean, was only 20 centimeters long, but it was a formidable sea creature.

The power of its claws, its largest weapon, was equivalent to a 22-caliber bullet. It had a 23-meter-per-second punching speed that reached 10,400 grams of acceleration and gave 1,500N of strength, making it difficult for people to remain unharmed if they were hit. In addition, the mantis shrimp’s punch caused a vacuum phenomenon underwater and generated internal waves, which added tremendous power to the attack and caused damage to the other creatures nearby.

Thus, the mantis shrimp hunted its prey by “hitting” it. Whether it was an oyster or hard-shelled crab, once hit, it was done for, and the Tyson of the ocean would enjoy its remains. Even the divers who went down to film the mantis shrimp had their camera lenses broken once or twice by the shock wave created by the creature’s punching force. In addition, it’s said that a mantis shrimp also broke through the glass of an aquarium tank in Norfolk, England, and that glass was a quarter of an inch thick.

‘Is that bastard on the fighter line?!’

If even a 20-centimeter small mantis shrimp could swing such a violent punch, Yongno couldn’t even imagine how forceful the claws of this 3-meter-long lobster would be. In fact, he didn’t have to think about it since the lobster was currently wielding its claws right in front of him!

THUD!

Just a single blow was enough to kill the six blade fish instantly. The rest of the fish quickly started targeting the giant lobster, who wielded tremendous power and caused significant damage, but….

BOOM!

The lobster threw another punch, followed by a tremendous shock wave. Yongno crouched to endure it. Thankfully, he had gone past the lobster and was hiding behind a rock in the cave.

‘Eek!’

He gritted his teeth from the pain, but this time he wasn’t just trembling from it; it felt like all his bones were cracking. Yet, he couldn’t circulate his qi to protect his body or perform Body Strengthening.

‘I have to endure… I’m running out of internal force….’

Yongno clenched his teeth. His Golden Pill Immortal Technique had reached 30 percent of its mastery, and his Swimming skill had also improved, which reduced the amount of internal force required to dive. As a result, the rate at which he gathered internal force exceeded the consumption speed of internal martial arts for diving, but that didn’t mean he was completely safe.

Cultivation methods controlled the user’s internal martial arts and accepted external qi, so if Yongno had a low amount of internal martial arts left, it would be difficult for him to recover. If he drained all of his internal martial arts, then qi absorption wouldn’t be possible for a long time.

Splash!

Yongno kicked off the wall and went deeper into the cave. He didn’t have a specific goal in doing this, but rather, he couldn’t withstand another shock wave if the lobster punched again.

BOOM!

Unfortunately, Yongno crashed into a wall when he was pushed by the shock wave that made the entire cave shudder. To make matters worse, Yongno had his severely injured right arm smashed against the hard surface.

‘God darn it! My arm is almost crushed like minced garlic. I don’t think even modern medicine could have a cure for this….’

Yongno was bleeding out a cloud of gold dust, and his right arm had many bone fragments exposed. It almost seemed like a scene from a horror movie. He touched his right arm with his left hand. It felt squishy.

‘Ugh, it looks so painful! If this game didn’t have the pain control system, I would have died from the excruciating agony.’

BOMB!

The shock wave once again shook Yongno’s surroundings without letting him get distracted, but thankfully, it was bearable this time. Yongno had been desperately swimming away from the lobster’s attack, so he was thankfully a safe distance away from the battlefield.

Wooong.

‘What is this?’

Some distance away from the battlefield, Yongno found a marble emitting purple light. He stared at it with a dumbfounded expression. It was a pearl. Of course, he had never heard of a purple pearl, but either way, it was still a pearl. And from his experience so far, a pearl was usually inside a….

BOMB!

How lucky. Yongno had only survived due to luck. He just barely avoided the lethal possibility of getting bitten by the giant clam. He would have died immediately if he didn’t perform Aura Vision, as he noticed that something alive was around him and had a slower swimming speed.

The boulder bitten by the giant clam was ‘sliced’ like magic. The clam had spiritual power, and judging by its teeth, it seemed to be a carnivorous sea animal. Furthermore, the hole on the clam’s rear was constantly absorbing water.

THUD!

‘Ugh, how come every sea creature has that? Is it a necessary aspect in this game?!’

Yongno deftly dodged the clam dashing toward him. Perhaps he was now accustomed to how the sea animals attacked by propelling themselves with a jet of water as he’d started reading their movements. If he had encountered this clam in the beginning, he would have been attacked without realizing what had happened.

‘Do I still have only three years’ worth of internal martial arts left? Geez, it’s driving me crazy….’

Yongno was recovering, but his condition was still dreadful. He had to keep performing Water-Friendly skills to endure the high water pressure and operate Diving skills to breathe underwater. Yet, Yongno realized that he had to consume more internal energy since the sea creatures wouldn’t let him go that easily.

BOOM!

Yongno clenched his teeth as he quickly moved to escape from the giant clam that tried to swallow his entire body. He didn’t do this because the giant clam was difficult to avoid. The clam was huge, but it was moving in a straight line like the blade fish, so it wasn’t hard for Yongno to evade. There was about half a second of Time Lag[1] between the attacks. So, if Yongno were prepared for the attack, he wouldn't be struck. However….

CLANK!

‘What the! How could it already catch all of them?!’

Yongno shuddered when he saw the gigantic lobster appear on the opposite side of the cave. Although approximately thirty blade fish had just tackled it, only a few little scratches appeared on its armor-like shell.