38: Chapter 38 Sights and Sounds at Sea

"You all keep talking about these heavy topics, but does anyone care about how I feel? I almost threw up my stomach today!"

A lazy voice came from the direction of the cabin.

Jinbao crawled out of the cabin, swaying unsteadily. His round face was pale and tinged with green from the tossing of the ship, but he looked much more spirited than he had this morning.

He held onto the cabin doorframe with one hand, while the other clutched a small leather pouch filled with who-knows-what.

He squinted and scanned the deck, his gaze immediately locking onto the group of sailors playing dice at the stern.

"Yo, playing dice?"

The corners of his mouth slowly curled up, and his complexion visibly improved in a mere three seconds.

"Don't you go scamming them," Morpheus said without turning his head.

"What do you mean, scamming? This is called a technical exchange!" Jinbao patted his chest righteously.

"Besides, there are so many of them and only one of me; it's not certain who will be scamming whom."

"I can't be bothered to chat with you guys anymore, I'm going to go play a few rounds, hehe!"

After saying that, Jinbao trotted off on his short legs toward the sailors, turned back to give Morpheus an extremely rude gesture, and then slipped into the crowd.

Just then, a nimble figure leaped down from the mast and landed on a pile of cables, her movements so light they made almost no sound.

Black Cat slung her crossbow onto her back and sat cross-legged on the pile of cables.

She almost never volunteered information about herself; whenever the past came up, she would sit silently to the side or simply walk away.

This time, however, she spoke of the past, perhaps because it was too boring on the ship.

"I don't have that many dreams; I just want to make a lot of money, enough money to last a lifetime."

Black Cat's tone was very flat, as if she were stating a fact that had nothing to do with her:

"I grew up in the sewers of the slums. I don't know who my father was."

"My mother died in the winter when I was six. She died of illness, or maybe she froze to death—in the winter in the slums, any way of dying is not unusual."

No one interrupted; the sound of the waves suddenly became very clear.

She paused: "The first mentor of the Rogue guild took me in and discovered I had talent. I usually walk without making a sound; no matter what kind of floor or tiles I step on, they don't make a noise. He said, 'You are just like a cat.'"

"Just like a black cat lurking in the shadows. That is my name, and it is also my codename. I'm done..."

Cecilia climbed down from the barrel, walked over, and sat down beside her.

Black Cat glanced at her but didn't speak. The two women sat side by side like that, watching the sun sink bit by bit into the horizon.

The sky was still clear, and the sun was still sinking slowly in the west, dyeing the entire surface of the sea a molten orange-red.

But the sea surface changed, and things began to go wrong.

The rhythm of the swells turned from regular to chaotic. The ship no longer rose and fell rhythmically but began to sway irregularly from side to side.

A low-frequency vibration came from beneath the sea, as if pressure waves caused by something extremely huge moving in the deep water had penetrated the wooden hull and were vibrating directly against people's bones.

The sailors on deck stopped their work, the helmsman's hands froze on the wheel, and the sails suddenly deflated without any change in wind direction, then abruptly billowed full of wind again.

"Port side!!!" The sailor in the mast's crow's nest shouted, then lost his voice halfway through.

The reason he didn't finish was that he wasn't sure if what he was seeing was real.

Just less than two nautical miles off the port side of the white gull, the entire sea surface suddenly bulged upward like a swell, as if it had been forcefully pushed up from the seabed by some power.

That bulging mountain of water grew higher and wider, then exploded from the top, and a Dragon Turtle's head reared up from the seawater!

This was a legendary-level ancient Dragon Turtle.

Its head was larger than the entire white gull, covered in a layer of thick, dark brown armor. The shell was encrusted with centuries of accumulated coral reefs, barnacles, and seaweed; in some places, the coral had even grown into small coral reef ecosystems.

One of its eyes was as big as the ship's wheel, its black vertical pupils slowly rotating in the sunset, locking onto a direction on the sea surface.

It opened its mouth and let out a terrifying, earth-shaking roar; the sound was so loud that everyone felt their entire chest cavity vibrating along with it.

The shell on the Dragon Turtle's back gradually emerged from the water, and the sailor in the mast slumped onto the crow's nest, unable to stand up.

The dice in Jinbao's hand fell to the deck and rolled to the side of the ship, and he didn't even dare to go pick them up.

Then a second mountain of water exploded opposite the Dragon Turtle.

What rushed out from the deep sea was a legendary Kraken!

This was a giant squid covered in deep-sea scars, its tentacles spanning a width that could cover several white gull ships at once.

The tips of every tentacle were lined with serrated suction cup teeth; those teeth were spasming open and closed in the seawater, like countless mouths craving flesh.

It lunged from the seabed straight at the Dragon Turtle's face, seven or eight tentacles simultaneously wrapping around the Dragon Turtle's forelimbs and neck. The serrated suction cups scraped against the turtle shell, emitting a sharp noise similar to a steel saw cutting through granite.

The Dragon Turtle bit down on one of the tentacles, twisted its head, and gave a fierce yank, tearing the tentacle in half.

Deep purple blood gushed from the severed end, splashing onto the sea surface and staining a large area a thick, dark purple.

The severed tentacle was still writhing frantically in the Dragon Turtle's mouth, then was chewed twice and swallowed.

The seawater in this area was like boiling water.

The battle between the two legendary behemoths stirred up the seawater for several nautical miles, and huge whirlpools formed around them.

The white gull was tossed and shaken wildly on the edge of the whirlpool; the rudder had lost control, and the sail ropes let out desperate, shrill whistles in the wind.

The captain was an old sailor who had spent most of his life at sea; at this moment, his face was whiter than the sails, and his lips trembled as he squeezed out a few words: "Hard to starboard... hard to starboard..."

On deck, some people were crying, some were vomiting, and a few people knelt down, kowtowing and praying to the God of Storms.

Jinbao crawled on his hands and knees to the cabin door, clutching the doorframe, not daring to let go.

Black Cat grabbed the ship's railing with one hand, her whole body being swung so hard that her feet left the deck.

Morpheus sat on the stern deck, his staff sliding out of his sleeve and rolling away. He didn't bother to pick it up, just stared blankly upward at the two behemoths tearing at each other on the sea surface.

Cecilia stood beside Richard, her sword already unsheathed, her blood-red eyes fixed intently on the behemoths on the sea.

Of course, she wasn't preparing for battle; she knew that would be useless. She was just instinctively using her most familiar defensive posture in the face of fear.

Then, she heard Richard beside her let out a laugh that came from the bottom of his heart, filled with extreme excitement.

"Hahahaha, this is so cool!!!"

She turned her head to look; Richard's hands were gripping the ship's railing, his knuckles white from the force.

But he was leaning his whole body forward, his eyes wide, the sunset and the figures of the two behemoths entangled together reflected in his pupils.