Molting the Mortal Coil - Chapter 857: Fight

Chapter 857: Fight

A shockwave rippled through the water, smashing against Sage’s chest and hurling him backwards. The Jade Mantle sheathing his body crumbled, instantly losing a quarter of its capacity while blocking the attack that made a cracking sound, yet amplified loud enough to shatter bodies. He quickly recovered and darted away from his current position, avoiding a massive object that was falling down onto him from above. He dodged the object and then changed direction, swimming upwards. The huge object struck the bluish bed of sand below and there was a massive rumble. Sand and debris shot up from the ground while the rumble caused other bits of rock and stone to come falling down from above.

Sage wove through the complicated curtain of falling rocks and then darted forward, crossing over the huge fallen object and heading in the direction it’d come from. Then he swerved to the side, dodging a shimmering silver harpoon. The tip of this weapon was glowing with shining light that rippled with deadly law energy. There was a ferocious clicking sound coming from the direction that the harpoon originated from, but its source was still out of Sage’s visual range. The water here was somewhat brackish and severely limited vision. Thankfully, some of the alternative types of sight that came from the Sea Locust’s eyes were more effective, but it only improved his visual range; it couldn’t make the water completely clear.

Changing direction, he swam directly towards the spot that the silver harpoon had come from. With his eyes now locked in this direction he saw the next two harpoons coming and easily avoided them. Then a man with light-brown skin and wearing large silver bands around his ankles and wrists appeared in front of him. A harpoon appeared in the man’s hands but he didn’t throw it. Instead he lifted it up to meet Sage as he approached and the viciously sharp point on the tip of it was deflected by a glowing blue-green blade. Sage twisted his wrist and threw his arm back, attempting to hook his forearm blade into the harpoon’s barb. His opponent gave their harpoon a twist and his blade caught nothing.

The man swam backwards while brandishing the harpoon with a spinning flourish. This quick gesture blocked the two openings that Sage was going to attack. Just as Sage predicted the perfect spot to attack the man’s move blocked him off. It was almost as if the man’s skill with the harpoon was able to negate the power of Foresight. Unable to see a perfect attack, Sage chose a completely different response. When the man stabbed his harpoon forward again, it shone with a bright silvery light, but it was helpless when the arm pushing it was restricted. The man started to swim away as he was suddenly faced with a massive net. Sage had pulled a large ball out of thin air and then lifted it up overhead. Then it suddenly expanded with a violent burst of speed, scrambling the water and also putting the man into his current difficult position. The net was hundreds of feet wide and when it suddenly appeared so closely there was no room to go around. It opened up rapidly to its full size and then fell downwards while the ends pulled themselves together. The net forced the man to swim a long distance to escape the large yet rapidly shrinking net, having to swim out of the shrinking hole where all the ends of the net would meet. Swimming out, the man lifted his silver harpoon over his shoulder, changing his grip to ready a throw only to find out that his opponent was gone.

Sage didn’t stick around as the harpoon wielding man was only a distraction from his true goal. He swam downward on a diagonal trajectory, and soon a large flat surface filled his whole field of view. Not slowing down at all, Sage shot forward and spun around, colliding with the wall using his feet. He positioned the flippers carefully so they wouldn’t suffer any damage, bringing himself to a sudden stop using this solid object. This collision sent all of his kinetic energy into the wall and unlike other walls this one gave a shake and there was a pained screech rippling through the water. He looked back and saw where the large object had previously toppled towards him. It swung around and while at his maximum view distance the object’s shape finally looked familiar.

A huge letter ‘C’, with a shape that looked squashed down and chitinous. The inner edge of the ‘C’ had many sharp fang-like barbs. The ends of this huge ‘C’ suddenly clamped together and the enormous pincer snapped closed. The two clamps met with great force and released another powerful shockwave just like earlier. At this distance, Sage had no room to escape and he lost half of his remaining Jade Mantle in one blow. There was a strange clicking noise from where the harpoon thrower had been, but he was currently outside Sage’s visual range. After taking the bad hit, Sage shot forward again, swimming across the wide surface beneath him and circling out from what was not a wall, but the massive exoskeleton of an immense crab.

He dodged around a tower-sized eye stalk and then avoided the yawning maw of this monster, two huge door-like appendages swung away and revealed themselves to be just the first segment on a set of huge maxillipeds. Another set of these strange mouth arms are concealed behind the first and the combination of four independent ‘limbs’ are used in place of a jaw, tearing things apart and then pushing them into its throat.

Sage gave a wide berth to this terrible zone, dodging the mouth parts before they caught him and swimming down under the crab’s body where it couldn’t easily grab him with its snapping claws. He swung around underneath it and then more noise broke out up above. The huge claws snapped again, releasing shockwaves again, but this time Sage had the crabs’ own body between him and these powerful attacks. He used the crab to block the attacks and swam around underneath and then behind the huge crab. Then he swam up and onto the creature’s back. To his side he saw a man carrying a large metal pole over his shoulder and swimming in the same direction as him. The two of them shared a look and then slightly deviated their paths away from each other.

There was another shockwave from the front this time, but there was still enough of the crab’s body in front of him to avoid another heavy hit. Sage swam forward towards a colored growth on the crab’s back. He shot down and led with his arm extended, smashing his forearm blade against the front of the large growth and it let out a loud crack. The upper half of this ‘growth’ separated and floated away, revealing that it had a hollow center. Inside this hollow cavity was a bag of woven kelp and seaweed which he grabbed and quickly strapped to his belt. Then he started swimming again, heading upwards along the steep slope of the crab’s back. His path took on a crooked set of zigs and zags as he stopped to crack open another pair of large barnacle-like objects that had stuck to the crab’s back. He retrieved more seaweed sacks and tied them to his belt just like the first one. Just as he grabbed the fourth one there was a loud detonation above him and he was struck by a shockwave and had to avoid more falling debris.

With some careful swimming and planning with Foresight he escaped danger yet again only to be rewarded by bright light flooding in from all around him. This sea of light shot in from all directions and changed the range of his vision from tens of feet to hundreds of feet, finally giving him a good view of what was all around him in this undersea cavern.