NOVEL NEXT WORLD Chapter 176 - Training Exercise 24
As soon as Ye Zhengyan pulled back his spear, another member of the Sunlight Squad, who was guarding one of the holes, also moved. His spear, like Ye Zhengyan’s, was thrust forcefully into the hole.
Almost simultaneously, the other members also took action, driving their spears into the various holes on the raft.
While Ye Zhengyan and the others were busy, the two paddlers continued to row, unaware that the water at the back of the raft had turned red. Several one-meter-long mutant fish bodies began to float up, only to be quickly devoured by other fish of the same size.
However, since the paddlers were closer to the water’s surface, they quickly noticed that many mutant fish had surrounded their raft.
These fish were attacking the raft, not only ramming into it but also opening their large mouths filled with barbed teeth, attempting to bite the raft and sink it. Some even leaped out of the water to bite at them, but were naturally pierced through by the spears.
The Sunlight Squad had worked hard to fell trees thicker than a human body to build their raft.
The mutant fish had to put in a lot of effort to bite through the thick wood, as the logs used to construct the raft were so large.
Additionally, while they were building the raft, they had intentionally left holes in various places.
Although they couldn’t prevent the mutant fish from ramming or biting the raft, the holes in the raft allowed the Sunlight Squad to stab the fish from below.
Therefore, each fish was only able to bite the raft once or twice before being injured by the spears. These bites only resulted in a few splinters of wood being bitten off, causing very minimal damage to the raft overall.
This situation lasted for about an hour. In that time, Ye Zhengyan and the others killed over a hundred mutant fish.
Perhaps because the mutant fish had fed on enough of their own kind, the attacks on the raft gradually decreased. By the end, the surrounding fish had all rushed to feed on the injured ones.
Seeing this, Ye Zhengyan ordered the two paddlers at the back of the raft to join in. With four paddlers now rowing, the raft moved at a speed comparable to their running pace.
However, this intense paddling took a heavy toll on their stamina. Once they were sure they had completely shaken off the mutant fish, Ye Zhengyan ordered only two paddlers to continue, giving the rest a chance to rest.
This way, they had enough manpower to switch shifts every hour, allowing them to maintain a steady and fast pace.
Ye Zhengyan and Booker did not join the paddling crew. Aside from their fixed four hours of rest time each day, they were assigned to guard duty.
Mutant fish continued to attack the raft, and the deeper they went into the ocean, the larger and stronger the attacking fish became.
The two of them kept dealing with the mutant fish, constantly switching out their spears as the tension in their hearts grew.
This mounting worry made them feel a sense of inevitability when they finally saw a level six mutant fish—one that was ten times the size of their raft.
They had encountered level six creatures before. In the mountain area, they had killed at least ten level six beasts. But that was on land.
In the ocean, even though each of them could swim and had decent water skills, the situation was different.
However, with such a large mutant fish, the only weapon they had were primitive wooden spears. Even level four fighters would find it difficult to deal with, and facing a level six fish would likely lead to their complete annihilation.
Though the Sunlight Squad was filled with despair, they didn’t give up the fight. Before entering the sea, they had made contingency plans for every possible scenario.
If this mutant fish directly attacked them, the level five fighters would sacrifice themselves to cover the escape of their leader and Booker. As long as those two weren’t eliminated, the Sunlight Squad would still have hope.
The level six mutant fish swam towards the raft at a leisurely pace, but its eyes, clearly visible above the water, were fixed on Ye Zhengyan and his team, indicating it wasn’t just passing by.
As soon as this massive mutant fish reached the side of the raft, regardless of whether it attacked or not, the raft would be unable to withstand its size.
Ye Zhengyan observed for a while and noticed that the fish was getting closer. He decided to try the method he had thought of earlier.
He threw ten mutant beast corpses, which he had stored in his space ring, into the sea, then instructed the paddlers to speed up and get the raft moving faster to distance themselves from the area.
The mutant beast corpses Ye Zhengyan threw into the sea were level four beasts, which they had hunted in the mountains.
Each of the beasts was two or three meters long, and due to the high density of the seawater, the corpses didn’t immediately sink. Instead, they slowly descended as the waves washed over them.
The Sunlight Squad nervously watched as the mutant fish, now less than 500 meters away, closed the distance. They watched helplessly as the fish swam past them, a mere 300 meters away from the raft, heading straight toward the corpses, swallowing three of them in one gulp.
Seeing this, the Sunlight Squad let out a collective sigh of relief. However, they didn’t dare to relax just yet and worked together to paddle the raft even faster.
It wasn’t until the level six mutant fish was no longer in sight that they finally allowed themselves to truly relax.
However, they hadn’t expected that, the very next day, around the same time they had encountered the mutant fish the previous day, they saw it swimming slowly toward them from behind the raft.
The entire Sunlight Squad instantly had a bad feeling. No matter how they looked at it, the fish seemed to be coming for them again.
“It can’t be that it’s taken a liking to our food,” Booker said.
“Impossible!” one of the team members replied, incredulously.
As it turned out, yes, the level six mutant fish had indeed developed an interest in their feeding.
The Sunlight Squad had been feeding it for three days in a row, and only after being overly stressed did they finally realize that, aside from the level six mutant fish that had been hanging around near their raft, the mutant fish attacks they had been facing since entering the sea had completely stopped.
They didn’t need to think to know that it was the presence of the level six mutant fish that had scared off the others.
“Although this means we won’t have the opportunity to hunt mutant fish anymore, it’s probably better to have fewer problems in the sea.”
“Based on the situation, it seems like only mutant fish above level six aren’t afraid of this one, which means if other mutant fish show up…”
The person who said this was quickly silenced by the others with looks that clearly said, ‘don’t jinx it’, and hurriedly shut their mouth.
Ye Zhengyan, however, was troubled. Having the level six mutant fish escort them was certainly good. Over the past few days, their speed had been impressive—more than 600 kilometers a day. In a few more days, they’d have caught up to the distance they had previously lost.
But feeding it ten mutant beast corpses a day, with the supplies they had, they could only last for at most eleven more days.
Although Ye Zhengyan didn’t know the full size of the ocean, he did know where the endpoint of their journey was. Based on the distance to the endpoint, and with their current speed, it would take them at least another 18 days to reach it.
He couldn’t help but imagine what would happen if they ran out of mutant beast corpses for feeding—would the level six mutant fish get upset and turn on them, hungry enough to try and eat them?