Chapter 179 Never Help Strangers
“Lunar blade.”
The fishman yelled out his attack. A blue blade of water came rushing at me, but with my [Elemental Barrier], this attack was completely nullified. Apparently, inside the dome, I wouldn’t be able to use magic like I did outside. Normally, it would be a problem, but as I was now, I saw no issue with it.
With [Vector Control], I closed the distance between myself and the fishman in the blink of an eye, leaving only a mere foot of distance between us. Using [Slime Body], I increased the size of my hand to twice as large as my body. It was instantly covered in [Sinuous King Adamas Armour]. Snakes made of diamond wrapped themselves around my arm and two
Bringing it down mercilessly, my plan was to activate [High Force Impact] on the point of contact, but the fishman was fast. Somehow, he managed to twirl around and the water followed him, grabbing my arm. It swung me around like some sort of merry-go-round.
For some reason, I was unable to break free till he directly grabbed my hand.
‘What sort of creature is this?’
I read his mind. His sword’s tip was already pointed at me. It was a fine curvy blade, getting big towards the tip. A scary looking sabre that had the water swarming at its tip at a stupidly fast velocity.
‘An assassin from the SharkFang? I guess I’ll just end it now.’
‘Agent?’
<<The attack has a high chance of penetrating through your defences. However, with your [Auto Regeneration] skill, the wound will be healed up quickly.>>
‘What if I took it with one of my defence skills?’
<<The likelihood of the attack penetrating reduces by 30% and its effect is reduced by 50%>>
‘This attack isn’t life threatening?’
<<No. It is the farthest from life-threatening>>
‘Doesn’t mean you should take the hit.’
‘Y-Yeah. It’ll still hurt, right?’
‘True.’
I used [Slime Body] to slip out of his grip and moved to the fishman’s side. My leg lit up in flames with the activation of [Fiery Kick] which I used to deliver a straight right at his ribs.
It was a direct hit, but my opponent was tougher than I’d assumed. He took the hit like it wasn’t worth anything. Then again, using a fire elemental ability underwater was probably detrimental.
‘Its body is weird… Probably best not to make anymore physical contact with it. In that case, I’ll just have to go wild with my surroundings.’
He made a self-rule about avoiding any contact with me since I was able to easily slip out of his grasp. I moved back, realising that this was not going to be an easy fight.
‘Agent. Any skills of his that could be lethal to me?’
<<After scanning. Only 3 skills that could cause a lethal effect have been detected. The high advanced skill [Trench Crunch], the technique [Imperial Dragon God Swordsmanship: Dragon Bite] and the racial skill [Sea God’s Bite]>>
‘Huh? They all just sound like him biting me.’
<<Indeed. That is basically how the skills function>>
‘Tch. I’ve got my own nasty bites.’
“Overflow!”
He grabbed the water like it was some sort of curtain. Once again, I was trapped in it, unable to move out which I still failed to understand.
I was slammed into the palace walls, but they were so dense I wasn’t able to destroy them with my body. Reflexively, I spat out black acid ink that covered a fourth of the room, including where the fishman was. I wasn’t sure how potent my acid was since I hadn’t used it in quite a while, but I last remembered it being able to melt through a beetle’s armour.
“Containment!”
He roared once again and just like before, the water became solid. It wrapped itself around my acid and myself and folded us off together.
“Spiral Heart!”
Just like before, at the tip of his sabre, glowing water was forming like some sort of drill and he charged at me.
‘Oi, look.’
‘What?’
‘His left hand. It’s still making a clutching motion.’
‘Eh? Why would i- He needs to keep it that way in order to control the water!’
I activated [High Force Impact] through the thick water. If my theory was right, I would be-
‘Free!’
I was no longer constrained by the water. With [Vector Control], I moved my body right behind, not allowing for even an inch to separate us. I felt that an inch was provide him with enough time to react.
‘[High Force Impact], [Fiery Kick] and [Crush]!’
With both skills, a powerful boom sounded erupted from my leg making contact with the wolf’s armour. Surprisingly, the kick melted right through the armour and hit his body, throwing him off balance.
“Gaah!”
I grabbed the back of his head.
‘Stomp!’
A simple “po” sound came from the skill’s effect. Slowly, blood floated up from the fishman’s mouth. Instinctively, I licked the blood.
[You have added 10 millilitres of blood to your blood bank]
[Current amount of blood in blood bank is 10 millilitres]
His blood tasted delicious, like salted fish and some other meat. I couldn’t discern exactly what kind of meat it was. Dog meat? Well, I never was one to be able to tolerate eating pets, so I would hope this wasn’t what dog meat tasted like, because it was too good.
‘More!’
PO! PO! PO!
I repeated these three more times. Each time I could hear the fishman grunt and there was something relaxing about that. The safe feeling knowing that my enemy was suffering.
This was short-lived however. My opponent wasn’t ready to die here.
“D-drill!”
His claws pressed firmly into the water. This time, since I had figured out the weakness of the skill, I wasn’t scared. I sent two [High Force Impact]s to force him to stop.
His green fur became bloody. It would appear I had caused quite a bit of damage to his head. On his status, I saw, [Concussion].
‘W-What is happening?’
His thoughts started rushing into me.
‘A-Am I seriously going to die here? Like this? After all my hard work? N-No! Not now!’
He was gravely injured and down to his last 30% of health, yet he was willing to fight more? I was surprised by how weak he was, considering he was supposed to be on the same level as Bastien at the very least. Fortunately for me, he wasn’t Bastien. This would have gone way worse if he was.
While struggling to get up, I looked around.
‘Agent… I don’t get something.’
<<…>>
‘His species. It says [Half Sea Wolf God]. How is a demi-god so weak?’
‘Honestly. This wasn’t as tough as I expected it to be.’
‘Y-Yeah. I thought for sure w-we’d be in trouble without magic.’
<<That is unknown. However, having the “god” title in a species name does not necessarily mean that species has godly power. They could be distant descendants of gods from the [Age of Heaven], however their power wouldn’t differ much from the average person.>>
‘Is that so? So, there’s nothing special about him?’
<<Yes. Absolutely nothing.>>
If that was so, I would have no qualms about killing him. Especially since he had a name.
While doing this I had another thought. With my new [Gravity] skill, I could control the gravity of anything I was touching.
‘Agent… can I crush his head using gravity?’
<<Yes>>
‘I see. In that case. Gravi-‘
Just as I was about to activate the skill, a weird pulse threw me off of him. He dizzily grabbed his head and spun around to meet my gaze. A low snarl escaped his maw as he glared at me viciously.
‘Would you look at that. Fido’s gotten angry.’
There was something odd about him now. Both of his hands were now on his sabre’s handle. It would seem he wasn’t in the mood to allow me to damage his hands anymore.
Then there was me, who currently had a limited set of usable skills. I could summon my sword to fight, sure, but he clearly had me beat when it came to swordsmanship and I wouldn’t be able to activate its effects underwater.
I considered simply buffing myself up with [Devil Form], but decided that it was a bad idea to reveal my strongest card. Since the goal was to beat them and take Kawaii back with me, I needed a way of ending this quickly.
I would have gone to the princess already, but in my fight, some guards had appeared to ensure the princess’ safety.
Sharp black claws protruded my finger tips as I activated the skill [Lethal Black Claw].
‘Well, I guess I’ll just have to kill you then go to the others.’
This was now where the real fight would begin.
“I don’t know what you are, but I will not permit you to destroy all I have worked for!”
‘Not after all these years of preparing!’
He was on his last straws. There was something very weird about him for me. It felt sort of familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
“WAIT!”
A command came my way and my body automatically paused. Looking back, I saw the princess holding a blade over Kawaii. Two guards were slowly approaching me.
“Don’t continue this fight or there will be trouble.”
She threatened me. Honestly, the balls on this princess. Abandoning me to die then beating up Kawaii till she was in her orb, now threatening me? I knew that logically speaking, it would be impossible for me to face an entire kingdom without my magic, still, I couldn’t just let her make light of me.
Escape looked quite possible with [Vector Control] that boasted the most freedom in terms of mobility and speed control I’d ever seen. It was a broken skill!
Still, my body was completely incapable of moving after the command.
‘Let me go now or I’ll kill you!’
I sent a threat back at her. She wasn’t amused in the slightest. A cold smile formed on her lips.
“I’d like to form a cooperative alliance with you instead.”
She was approaching me slowly. One of her guards tried to stop her, but she shot him a strict gaze and he backed down.
“How about you help me instead. You do something for me and I do something for you.”
She suggested a trade, just like before. I suddenly remembered why I needed the princess alive. And thinking about it more, I wouldn’t be able to beat both guards without my magic. They were both as strong as this guy. I may have called beating him easy, but it was only because of how reliant he was on that sea-curtain technique and the fact that he didn’t use any of his lethal attacks. If he did, just like the agent said, I would be dead.
Still, I couldn’t trust her. If I did, I wasn’t sure how everything would end. She might have been trying to lower my guard to make it easier for the soldiers to kill me.
This was a precarious situation I somehow ended up in.
‘This is the last time we help some random person… ever again.’