Hunting

But his expression told Lu Yuan that it wasn't just the storm.

On that usually fearless face, a flicker of vigilance appeared—an instinctive reaction to a threat.

The hull tilted violently again, and the items inside the cabin clattered.

Lu Yuan forced himself to turn his head, looking out at the sea through the porthole.

Beneath those rolling black waves...

There were shadows.

Gargantuan shadows.

Not just one, but many.

They cruised beneath the sea, appearing and disappearing; each one was as massive as the Abyssal Hunter, flickering in and out of sight between the gaps in the waves.

【Environmental Perception: Maritime pollution concentration is extremely high; deep-sea organisms are abnormally active. Detected multiple large biological signals, approaching...】

The storm had fully descended.

Giant waves slammed against the hull with a dull roar, each impact making the entire ship shudder violently as if it might be torn to shreds at any moment.

The Abyssal Hunter rocked heavily in the waves, the ship's angle of tilt growing steeper; crates in the cabin slid from their moorings, striking the bulkheads with heavy thuds.

A Descendant stood before the helm, his mechanical arm tightly gripping the wheel as gears whirred at high speed and steam hissed from his joints. His legs seemed bolted to the deck, remaining motionless no matter how the wind and waves raged.

Another Descendant stood behind him, ready to take over at any time.

The creations of the Ascension Society knew no fatigue, but even machinery had its limits; in a storm of this intensity, any mistake could be fatal.

Rain poured down in torrents.

Raindrops the size of beans pelted the deck, creating a dense, rhythmic clatter.

Lightning tore through the sky.

Blinding white light bleached the darkness, making the entire world incredibly clear for that single instant.

Alice stood in the captain's cabin, looking out through the glass blurred by rain.

With every flash of lightning, she could see the churning sea.

And beneath the surface... those looming gargantuan silhouettes.

They were getting closer.

"The thing is closing in!"

The Descendant's voice came through the speaking tube, carrying a distinct mechanical rasp.

Alice's gaze suddenly sharpened.

She saw them clearly.

The dark shadows hidden beneath the waves were fish.

No, they couldn't simply be called fish.

Those things were massive, each one half the length of the Abyssal Hunter.

Their bodies were a bizarre deep blue, as if they had been stained by Deep Blue ore, and their scales glinted with a cold, eerie light in the lightning.

Their eyes lacked pupils, showing only a clouded expanse of blue, and their mouths were filled with jagged, uneven teeth.

They moved in schools, swarming toward the Abyssal Hunter from all directions.

"They are going to attack! Requesting permission to fire."

The Descendant's voice rang out again.

Alice made an immediate decision and rushed to the speaking tube.

"All barrels, fire immediately!"

The hull of the Abyssal Hunter began to vibrate.

Not just at the bow; the armor plates on both sides of the hull slowly slid open, and black cannon barrels emerged from within, glinting with a cold metallic sheen in the wind and rain.

The warships of the Ascension Society were never meant for mere transport.

Ed and Leonard rushed to the gun deck, preparing to make repairs.

"Fire!"

Boom!

The first round of shells whistled out, crashing into the seawater and kicking up a massive waterspout.

Explosions bloomed underwater, the shockwaves pushing back the lead sea fish as vibrant blue blood erupted, only to be quickly dispersed.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

More cannon fire poured down.

The barrels fired in alternation, the orange-red flashes flickering in the storm and illuminating half the sea.

Each volley managed to drive away the mutated fish, and some were even hit directly, their flesh torn apart and limbs scattered.

But there were too many of them, and they were far too large.

A single round of shelling could hardly kill them, and it wasn't even enough to drive them off; before the cannons could fire another volley, several mutated fish had already reached the side of the ship.

They leaped out of the water, their massive bodies tracing arcs through the air before slamming heavily into the hull.

Bang!

The entire ship shuddered.

Alice braced herself against the bulkhead and saw through the glass that a mutated fish's mouth was clamped onto the ship's side, its sharp teeth leaving deep gouges in the iron plating with a piercing screech of metal on metal.

More mutated fish leaped from the water.

They threw themselves at the Abyssal Hunter like they had gone mad, ramming with their bodies and tearing with their teeth.

The cannons began to be destroyed; this school of mutated fish clearly possessed intelligence, as they were not only attacking the hull but also systematically destroying the extended cannon barrels.

The ship rocked violently under the continuous impact, and the sound of things collapsing echoed throughout the cabins.

"More than half the cannons are destroyed!"

The Descendant's voice carried a hint of agitation.

The Abyssal Hunter was already in a precarious state.

Alice gritted her teeth; she had no other options at the moment.

The situation was critical.

Just then.

A more powerful bolt of lightning tore through the sky.

That flash was brighter than any before it, white light enveloping the entire stretch of sea.

Alice saw it.

Philip saw it.

Everyone on the ship watching the sea saw it.

In that momentary white light, a colossal silhouette emerged beneath the surface.

It was vaster than all the shadows they had seen before.

Thousands, tens of thousands of times larger than those mutated fish.

It was like a sunken mountain range lying across the seabed, its black form extending to the very edge of their vision, seemingly without end.

Countless tentacles extended from that silhouette, each one thicker than the Abyssal Hunter itself, swaying and rising slowly through the water.

A dead silence fell over the captain's cabin.

In the next moment, the waves churned as tentacles rose from the depths.

Slow, silent, and unstoppable.

They pierced through the churning seawater, through the dense curtain of rain, and through the barrier of the storm, reaching straight toward the clouds.

When the first tentacle broke the surface, Alice felt her heart skip a beat.

The surface of that tentacle was covered in dense suckers.

And inside every sucker was an eye.

Pitch-black eyes, devoid of pupils, holding only a bottomless darkness.

As the tentacle stood tall, all the eyes opened simultaneously.

It was watching this tiny, insignificant ship.

Alice gripped her warhammer, but she knew it was useless.

Before such an existence, a warhammer was no different from a twig.

But the tentacle did not attack the Abyssal Hunter.

It swept toward the schools of mutated fish.

With just a single swing.

Nonchalant, like brushing away insects.

Dozens of mutated fish were pounded into pulp, their blue blood exploding across the sea's surface like a blooming, vibrant blue flower.

The school of fish scattered instantly.

They seemed to sense a much higher-order existence; a fear carved into the depths of their instincts made them forget everything else. They stopped attacking the Abyssal Hunter and fled frantically in all directions.

But they could not escape.

More tentacles rose.

Two, three, five, ten...

The entire sea began to fill with tentacles as they traced lethal arcs across the surface, chasing down the mutated fish that were fleeing in panic.

Those monsters that had seemed unstoppable moments ago were as fragile as paper toys before the tentacles; every swing claimed dozens of lives.

The sea's surface was dyed a solid blue by the blood.

Severed limbs and tails drifted among the waves, pulled into whirlpools only to be tossed up again.