Molting the Mortal Coil - Chapter 856: Backup

Chapter 856: Backup

With the giant sea turtle closing in on him, Sage chose to call upon his reinforcements. Fighting with his life on the line was said to be the best way to improve, but he had no desire to actually die. If the chances of his failure far outweighed the chances of success he would not hesitate to cheat. He’d been here long enough that many members of the Purple Mist Sect had completed comprehensive underwater combat training and they’d already been assembled and were ready to jump into action.

Sage called out the Purple Mist Sect members and spun around to face off against the giant sea turtle. Then, a dark cloud spread into the water beside it, spreading outwards and showing its red tint. The turtle roared and swerved to the side, changing its path away from the figure that suddenly appeared in front of it. It spun away only to find another obstacle in its path and there was a bright flash and more blood spilled into the water. The moment Sage recognized that mysterious figures were humanoid, a dozen more of them appeared in the area around the sea turtle.

It was also at that instant that Sage changed his plans. The sea turtle was still chasing behind him and he was viewing the future with Foresight. Just before he called out the Purple Mist Sect he saw this series of events and the sect members were immediately disappointed. Their preparations turned out to be a false alarm. Sage turned his head, looking into the future for the direction that these other people would approach from. He realized that they were already following behind him at this time. They were simply slower than he was and it was only when he stopped to face off with the turtle that they could catch up and intervene. With this information he slowed down at the same moment that he had in his first vision, only this time he didn’t call out the Purple Mist Sect.

Just as he had seen, the sea turtle was injured by an attacker coming from its flank and then it turned the other direction and ran into another attack. This time, Sage’s attention was upon the two new arrivals and he saw men wielding single-edged curved swords, which he instantly recognized as katana. In addition to the recognizable weapons, they were also wearing equally recognizable sets of armor. Layers of overlapping laminated plates covered in lacquer, along with very distinctive helmets. They were very distinctly in the same style as the samurai he knew from Earth. Each of them had unique ornamentation and details on their helmets and individualized facemasks bearing ferocious looks.

Without having to do anything else, Sage watched as the armored Samurai surrounded the giant sea turtle and systematically sliced it apart. No matter which direction it tried to flee, it was met with a vicious slash of a sword. The sea turtle could not even pull its limbs into the shell, especially not those gigantic oar-like front limbs. The speed advantage of the giant turtle was countered by the large numbers of samurai, and even when it finally found a gap and smashed its way through, one of them brought out a bow. The arrow that was fired didn’t seem to be affected by the water, arcing after the turtle before it could build its speed back up again. The arrow did not strike the turtle but flew in front of it. Then there was a rumble and the arrow exploded into a giant steel net, large enough to completely wrap around the giant sea turtle. The edges of the net had huge metal weights on them, pulling the sea turtle down towards the sea bed. The samurai rushed forward and surrounded the turtle as it struggled to free itself. The reef around them was pulverized to gravel from the struggle but they didn’t let up.

After a few minutes of thrashing and fighting the giant turtle finally stopped moving and the samurai released a cheer. Throughout it all, Sage was surprised to find out that these samurai were conversing freely with each other, unaffected by the fact that they were all at the bottom of the sea. Seemingly from out of nowhere they produced a huge pole and tied the sea turtle to it. Two of them moved in front and two behind, lifting the pole up onto their shoulders and swimming up from the seabed. One of them swam over to Sage and pulled off his ferocious oni face mask. The man gave him a polite smile and a short bow. He moved both hands to the side in the direction that the others were moving, which Sage figured was a gesture to come with them.

“You want me to follow you?”

The man was taken aback that someone else could communicate while underwater, but quickly gave him another short bow, “Please, come with us.”

Curious to learn more about them, Sage followed along with the recommendation and followed along with the group. They were most curious about how they could understand him even when he was covered in water and unable to talk. Sage also saw that they were each surrounded by a very thin layer of air no matter where they went. To get on their better side he explained that he had a Magical Tool for communication and stuck out his tongue to show them. They showed him a few small charms that hung on chains around their necks, which allowed them to treat the undersea world more like one of air. The charms had varying levels of effect. On their weapons it was like the water wasn’t there at all, but their bodies were somewhat weighed down. This strangeness led to a very unusual swimming technique that reminded Sage of astronauts bouncing upon the moon. It was less like they were swimming and more like they were stepping on air like when he made use of Cosmic Traction. They didn’t explain more about this, but Sage saw some sort of fluctuations on the bottom of their sandals and figured they had specialized tools to allow them to move like that.

Sage was pleased to find out they weren’t taking him anywhere unusual as their path led right back to Coral Shallows. They didn’t need any reward for ‘saving’ him and they took the giant sea turtle’s body as payment for their good deed. The Cultivator world he was used to had varying styles of eastern architecture, but the building that these samurai brought him into was quite distinctive with rice paper windows and woven rush floor mats. They changed their clothing, using frog shaped purse-like bags that seemed to perform just like any other Storage Bag he’d seen before. Soon enough they were all wearing kimonos and roasting turtle soup in the courtyard.

What followed next was a whole lot of drinking, drinking games that Sage had never heard of before, boasting, and even a bit of wrestling. Some of the samurai made a ring on the dirt and took turns trying to knock each out of it. They didn’t quite have the size for proper sumo, but that didn’t stop the others from betting on who would win. The samurai turned out to be quite entertaining, and their party went on for nearly twelve hours before enough of them finally passed out that the rest put a halt to the festivities. They didn’t seem to have the same ability to purge their own alcohol like he was used to, but when the party was ending he learned they did have certain medicines that could do it, but they enjoyed staggering around and testing their limits till they passed out. They wouldn’t waste the medicine unless it was an emergency.

The Depths is really a perfect place to hold this sort of wild and unrestrained party, who would dare to take advantage of them here?