Chapter 212: Sharkmen

“Help me! Help me!” Captain Aifre shouted.

He swam toward them with surprising agility for his large body. Not far behind him, three or four huge shark fins were visible, rapidly closing in on him.

“Liuli!” Wu Qingsong shouted, activating her ability. “Throw me as hard as you can.”

He couldn’t just stand by and watch his companion get eaten by sharks. Besides, even though he thought Aifre was unreliable, he was the only one among them who knew how to navigate. If they wanted to escape, they couldn’t do it without him.

Liuli, still groggy from waking up, grabbed Wu Qingsong, spun him around twice, and flung him toward Aifre.

The seal people gasped, but Wu Qingsong managed to adjust his position mid-air, avoiding a painful belly flop.

Though he wasn’t as skilled a swimmer as Aifre, his advantage was that he wouldn’t get injured or die. Even if he inhaled water into his lungs, he could endure the discomfort without lasting harm.

The water was about four or five meters deep in this area. Wu Qingsong quickly adjusted his position and swam to the surface.

Popping his head out of the water, he looked around for Aifre and spotted him about ten meters away. 

“Swim over here!” he shouted.

Aifre, in a panic, swam past him even faster, clearly doubting that Wu Qingsong alone could save him.

Cursing inwardly, Wu Qingsong directed several soul fragments toward the approaching shark fins.

He hadn’t tried using this ability on animals before, but if it worked on more mentally resilient beastmen, it should work even better on animals.

Sure enough, the water where the shark fins were started to froth violently. Wu Qingsong swam as hard as he could to keep up with Aifre, but then a strange creature jumped out of the water, clearly in pain from the soul fragments.

The sight startled Wu Qingsong.

The creature had the body of a shark but hands where the pectoral fins should be. Wu Qingsong stopped in his tracks, treading water as he turned to look at them. He realized they were quite different from the sharks he knew. Besides the hands, their eyes and mouths were positioned differently, and their heads seemed more flexible, capable of a wider range of motion.

‘Are these the fishmen?’

“My Lord! Get out of there quickly!” Beck and the others’ voices called from the reef. 

Only then did Wu Qingsong notice more dorsal fins appearing in the distance, rushing toward him.

He swam toward the reef, but even though he didn’t need to breathe, his human body wasn’t built to move as quickly underwater as the walrusman or the sharkmen.

Aifre’s figure soon vanished from his sight, while several large shadows appeared nearby. Suddenly, excruciating pain shot through his calf as a sharkman bit down on his right leg and tore at it.

Wu Qingsong immediately directed another soul fragment at the sharkman, incapacitating it, but more sharkmen quickly surrounded him, biting his limbs and tearing at him ferociously.

His stock of soul fragments rapidly depleted, causing the sharkmen to thrash in agony and scaring away the others. Wu Qingsong seized this opportunity to break free and desperately swam toward the reef.

Four or five loops of rope were thrown over, and Wu Qingsong grabbed two of them, allowing the others to pull him out of the water quickly.

Aifre’s screams suddenly rang out. Wu Qingsong looked up to see Liuli holding him by the neck, lifting him high, seemingly ready to throw him back into the sea.

“Liuli!” Wu Qingsong shouted urgently. “Put him down.”

“Wu!” Liuli protested. “You risked your life to save him, but this jerk just abandoned you and swam back.”

“If you kill him, my risk will have been for nothing,” Wu Qingsong said. “Punish him if you want, but don’t kill him.”

“I’m innocent! I’m innocent!” Aifre shouted in panic. “I had no idea what was happening, and I certainly didn’t know you, Lord Tagraedi, were coming to save me. Otherwise, I would’ve fought alongside you! Do you think I would have abandoned everyone to save myself? I was so terrified, all I could think about was escaping. I wasn’t aware of what was going on around me!”

Wu Qingsong didn’t want to dwell on this. He patted Liuli’s arm, and she reluctantly let Aifre go.

“Is that… Liuli?” 

Aifre sat on the overturned hull, catching his breath. If he hadn’t overheard Wu Qingsong and Liuli talking, he wouldn’t have believed what he saw.

“We’ll explain later,” Wu Qingsong said. “What’s with these sharkmen? Where did you encounter them?”

Aifre explained that when the Black Pearl hit the reef, he, like the other sailors, was thrown far into the sea by the impact.

Knowing he had to stay away from the surface and the reefs, he cursed and swore at the storm, then took a deep breath and dove underwater, swimming towards the open sea.

Walrusmen were much better divers than sealmen. After a few breaths, Aifre found himself far from the reef. He stayed underwater until the storm passed. When he resurfaced, he saw a small boat that had fallen from the Black Pearl.

It took him a long time to flip it back over and climb inside to rest. Then he began searching for other crewmembers.

That’s when he saw the firelight on the reef, realizing it must be from the survivors. He started paddling toward them. But he was unwilling to abandon the small boat, and with no paddlers in sight, he used his hands. Eventually, he had to get into the water to drag the boat toward the reef. Being the captain, he hadn’t done such physical work in years and soon became exhausted. He finally gave up, deciding to rest in the boat and swim to the reef in the morning to get the sealmen to help tow the boat.

But shortly after dawn, he saw a large group of sharkmen swimming from the deep sea towards the reef.

“This place is probably their base,” he said, pale. “They were likely hiding in the deep sea to avoid the storm, and now they’re back.”