The arm left behind on the ship slowly faded away, turning back into mist before completely disappearing.

Then, the ship was rocked once more as the beast slammed into them once again. “Keep calm, boys. It won’t come close to the light. Its core needs to stay away lest it die all of a sudden,” the captain said. His sword glowed a dull orange, ready to attack.

Tim didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t a fighter at all. He was just a scholar. This was his first time in the open sea, and it had been for a treasure hunt no less.

He was freaked out, wondering if he had done the wrong thing by choosing to come out here.

“Father!” he let out a little unintentional whimper. He had heard how scary treasure hunts got, but this… this was bad.

A large tentacle shot out from the side of the ship, bringing with it a large burst of seawater.

“Protect the lamp and gunpowder!” the second-in-command shouted while at the same time moving forward again to open the umbrella.

The arm came swinging down and was blocked by the umbrella that opened just in time. “Urgh!” the man grunted behind the umbrella. Using a Zurin treasure back to back to do something so extreme took a lot of the man.

He unfolded the umbrella at the last second as the captain came and sliced off the arm just as it came down.

The arm fell to the ship and the beast ran away again, both in pain and in fear of the light from the sword that burned brightly as it cut something.

This time, it seemed to have gotten a lot more angry.

“Third row, ready for fire!” he ordered while looking all around him. The last dozen of deckhands had their rifles ready to shoot at anything that showed up.

The ship rocked again, and finally, the beast showed itself. “Come on you little **,” the captain said softly as the beast slowly surfaced above the ocean. “Come on! I’ll show you what you get when you mess with—”

His words stuck to his throat as the ship rocked, not because of the beast but because of the sheer volume of the water the beast was displacing as it came out.

“What in Zurinus’ name is this thing?” the Captain said slowly as his head raised upward to see the beast in its entirety.

The beast looked like an octopus, except it had 8 giant human eyes, and smaller tentacles that hung from its face. It stared down at them from above, a menacing figure that seemed to engulf the night sky.

Everyone stood still in shock.

“OPEN FIRE!” the captain shouted, breaking the silence.

No shots came in the first second, but when the first one was made a second later, everyone who had been ready with a rifle started shooting.

The beast moved its head around, as if in pain. The gunfire stopped a few seconds later as they were all forced to reload their rifles again.

“Damn it!” the captain shouted in anger. “How is this thing not phased in the slightest? How is it so big?”

Just as he shouted, the beast slammed the water, sending water onto the ship, rocking it and wetting it up. The lights went out in the front of the ship as the water took out the lantern.

“No!” the captain shouted. Aside from the light inside the bridge, his sword was the only thing that glowed there.

“Captain, you have to kill it quickly,” the second-in-command said. “If you don’t, we will—”

The beast swung a tentacle from the side and swept through the deck of the ship. A few of the men were crushed along the deck and ended up dying right there.

Tim saw the arm approaching from behind the captain and knew he was going to die too.

However, at the last moment, the second-in-command moved up and opened the umbrella to the side again and took the brunt of the attack. The entire beast’s momentum was gone in an instant, but in return, the man had to give up a lot.

He lost all energy and fainted, the umbrella closing on its own.

“Shit!” the captain shouted and took out the thing that had been inside his waistcoat this whole time. He lifted it out and let it jangle in his hand.

It was a small scale, golden in color, with plates the size of someone’s palm. The two sides of the hanging scale were empty, but one side seemed to fill up with something as they sank slowly, while the other side came up.

‘The Golden Scales,’ Tim thought. He had heard about the scales that had been found in the southern ocean. He had never seen it before, however, and this was the first time. He wondered what it did.

The captain put the scales back into his coat and suddenly jumped from the ship.

Tim watched with wide eyes as the captain jumped nearly 20 meters into the air, and slowly fell onto the beast’s head. His sword glowed bright orange as he swung down with both hands to kill the beast in one strike.

Just as he was about to get the attack in, the beast suddenly pulled out a dozen tentacles from the water, all reaching for the captain.

The captain still had to go through with his attack as he had already made the sacrifice. He could only hope this attack was—

A tentacle slammed onto him, throwing him into the sea. He had managed to cut through nearly 8 tentacles, but at the last moment, one of them managed to hit him.

Tim heard the splashing sound but gave no heed to it. He could hear the grunting of the deckhands, all of whom were on the ground, some dead, remaining wounded. But he couldn’t pay any attention to them either.

Instead, he looked up at the beast in fear as the beast seemed to look back at him. Was it looking at him perhaps because he was the only one still unhurt that the beast looked at him, or perhaps it was because of the pendant he held that did not belong to him?

Tim didn’t think either one was the case. It was most definitely because he was something special.

The beast rose all of its tentacles and slammed them down.

Tim watched in horror. What should he do?

He instantly jumped forward in the last second, out of pure instinct, and grabbed onto the umbrella as the giant tentacle fell on him.

At the last moment, he activated the umbrella and opened it. And then…

Nothing. Nothing happened at all. There was no attack. Not on him, or the ship. The umbrella closed on its own after 2 seconds, and what Tim saw in the sky shocked him. Instead of the beast, there was now a young man floating gracefully in the sky.

A giant silvery hole was open in the air behind him, pouring in bright sunlight into the ocean.

The man looked around at the ship and the sea. “Okay…” he spoke slowly. “What in the hell did I stumble onto now?”