#113
The entrance was predetermined. I could see a broken cabin window near the bottom, flickering particularly brightly. It was a rare advantage that worked in the player’s favor.
If it was a ghost ship, the monsters I’d face were obvious too—ghost sailors, no doubt. I drew my sword. I had left my backpack behind, but I always wore my tool belt.
I approached the glimmering cabin window. Schools of small fish that had been passing by scattered in the water’s current before regrouping repeatedly. The golden, glittering fish were beautiful both individually and as a collective whole. When they gathered in schools, they sometimes looked like one giant fish… wait, no.
It really is one giant fish, isn’t it? And in that gaping maw opening wide toward me, hundreds of saw-like teeth are packed densely…
“Shibal!”
I recoiled in shock. Being underwater, my body wouldn’t move as nimbly as my mind wanted it to. Right in front of my nose, the giant fish’s teeth snapped shut with a click.
“Shibal shibal shibal!”
I felt like I could use up a year’s worth of curses in just one day. I tried my best to escape, but there was no way I could outmaneuver a fish underwater without any items. I hadn’t even fled far before I was swallowed by the fish. My best option was to voluntarily slide down into its stomach to avoid being torn apart by those saw-blade teeth. Instead, I couldn’t avoid the stomach acid that poured down. My skin immediately began to dissolve.
This wasn’t the first time I’d been trapped in a monster’s stomach, but having experience didn’t make it any better. If anything, it just became traumatic. Just recently, I’d been trapped alive in a mushroom mob’s stomach, and vivid memories of being digested in the stomachs of various monsters like sharks and crocodiles came flooding back. My pulse raced like crazy and cold sweat broke out all over my body.
I had to escape before my body dissolved in the stomach acid. Now I didn’t even have healing potions to regenerate my skin if it melted.
“Shibal, Tranquility Potion!”
No matter how much my voice was going crazy, enduring this situation with a clear mind was just self-torture. I’m just an ordinary, normal human being! Not some fantasy hero or anything!
At least, fortunately, unlike during the tutorial or early stages, my combat level had risen considerably. At the same time, my beloved sword—which had been fed plenty of mushroom fragments and enhancement stones, then finished with Halmite and Lightmite reinforcement—was protecting me.
“Bisang-ah. Sorry for cursing about you overcharging me.”
I belatedly apologized to Bisang while swinging my sword. I had no talent for preparing fish, but through repeated battles, I’d developed my own expertise in random sword slashing. When I stabbed the sword deep into the stomach wall, the fish began thrashing wildly. I desperately clung to the sword and held on. Since the stomach wall wasn’t as hard as a rock face, the thrashing actually caused the stomach wall to be sliced up here and there.
Blood mixed with stomach acid spurted out and my whole body became a mess, but I didn’t stop slashing. After repeating the cycle of stabbing the sword, cutting the stomach wall, and being thrown around several times, the giant fish that had given up trying to digest me finally scattered back into small fish and disappeared into the darkness. Blood and stomach acid mixed murkily in the black seawater before slowly dispersing in the waves.
“Huff, huff…”
It ended faster than I thought, but my stamina and health were already severely depleted. While leveling up had increased my overall health and stamina capacity, I still couldn’t endure indefinitely without potions. I had to conserve my strength as much as possible. I also couldn’t afford to get injured.
[First gateway passed. A memory fragment is given as a reward.]
My vision became dizzy as if I was having vertigo, then a scene appeared before my eyes.
In a park or some flower bed somewhere, a little kid was crouched down, peering at something. Not at pretty flowers, nor living insects or small animals. Just a withered tree branch lying abandoned—a pathetically weak and small branch that couldn’t even be used as a toy for sword fighting.
But the kid stared at it for a long while, then suddenly dug up the soil with small hands and planted the dry branch in the ground. Having seen it done somewhere before, the child even piled up soil around it quite thoroughly. Then, taking out a water bottle from the bag being carried, the child poured water generously over the branch, starting from the top.
“What are you doing there? We need to go home now.”
Someone called to the child. The kid stood up and pointed at the branch.
“It looked thirsty, so I shared my water with it.”
An adult approached and looked down at the tree branch. It wasn’t even a sapling—just a dead tree branch. The adult gave a bitter smile but didn’t show it, instead patting the child’s head.
“Oh my, the tree must have felt refreshed. Good job, Raon.”
The young face that received praise lit up brightly. Taking the adult’s hand, the child began to walk away. When the child turned back for a moment while walking, the branch that had sprouted two green leaves was swaying gently in the breeze as if waving. The child smiled and waved back too.
It was my first encounter with a “tree.”
“What is this?”
Even after the hallucination-like scene disappeared, I thought in a dazed mood. Come to think of it, it was a plausible memory. Actually, I couldn’t pinpoint that exact day or scene from memory. Giving water to withered plants I found on the road was something that happened often.
It’s not like I particularly preferred plants over toys or animals. I just shared water when I happened to have it and found small animals or plants that looked thirsty on hot days while walking. Even as an adult, I didn’t raise plants with enough affection to be called a plant parent or accumulate special knowledge… though I guess I always had at least one or two flower pots around.
[Entering Stage 2. Pull yourself together.]
The system scolded me as I fell into confusion. Come to think of it, the broken cabin window was still flickering. I was in the middle of a quest. I saw long seaweed growing around the cabin window swaying, which made me tense up. I didn’t have any antidotes right now. All the precious potions I had worked hard to make were currently in my backpack, sleeping in Carlisle’s bedroom.
I swung my sword to cut through the seaweed wrapping around me and passed through the broken window as quickly as possible.
Crack.
Crash, bang, clatter.
“Ugh.”
I rolled onto the floor and got back up, but while focusing all my attention on the seaweed, I ended up getting cut by broken glass.
“Tsk.”
I grimaced. It wasn’t a very deep cut, but since I was already injured from the fish’s stomach where stomach acid had peeled my skin, the pain was considerable. Blood seeped out little by little and mixed into the black waves.
“Is it really okay to be in this condition… I’m even breathing in this pitch-black water, so it wouldn’t be strange if I got contaminated like Carlisle beyond just being poisoned.”
I steadied my increasingly rapid breathing from the pain and gripped my sword properly. First, I had to assess the situation. The seaweed covered the area where the window had been like dense undergrowth, but fortunately it didn’t seem able to push into the cabin.
The place I had jumped into was a very small room with just one narrow bed and one table. On the table sat what looked like a heavy, old chest. It was a box that any game player couldn’t just pass by. I was about to check inside the box when something rattling and gnawing outside caught my attention.
The sound was coming from outside the door—from the corridor side.
Fortunately, there was a small window that let me check outside from inside, so I put my eye to it. In the dim light emitted by unknown luminous objects, I could see the typical appearance of a ship’s cabin corridor. Though my vision was limited, nothing particularly dangerous seemed visible, but what on earth was making that sound…
CRASH!
Suddenly something rammed into the door as if charging at it. At the same time, a disgusting eyeball with bulging blood vessels stuck to the entrance window.
“Ah!”
I nearly fell backward in surprise.
“What the hell is that now?”
When the eyeball moved a bit away from the window, I finally thought I could tell what it was. Skeletons wearing torn and tattered clothes came into view. It would have been less horrifying if only bones remained, but the dangling eyeballs, muscles, and chunks of flesh attached here and there, flapping around, were utterly disgusting. They looked like a combination of skeletons and zombies. The clothes they wore were varied—some uniforms, some civilian clothes. Those skeletons were rattling as they swarmed toward the door of the room I was in.
“Shibal, what am I supposed to do?”
I wanted to go back outside the ship, but the window was already densely covered with seaweed, blocking the passage. It seemed like those seaweeds weren’t meant to wrap around and catch me, but to trap me inside.
Should I just charge out relying only on my sword?
That’s ridiculous. What could I do alone without potions or anything else? I wasn’t Carlisle Lightinger.
When my mind went blank from anxiety, another rattling sound grated on my nerves. It was a sound coming from inside, not outside. When I turned around to find the source of the sound, the box on the table caught my eye. It was rattling continuously as if asking to be opened.
“Ah, right. That was there.”
There might be items inside that could help me. Power potions would be good, or new powerful weapons or items would be great. Please, anything that could help me…
I hurriedly unlocked the box and tensed up just before opening it.
“Surely a monster won’t jump out from here too.”
I had no choice but to hesitate, but the problem was that I had no other options. Taking a deep breath and gripping my sword in my other hand, I opened the box.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
