Chapter 1 A Fishy Start

A sudden sound of ocean waves jolted Duncan awake from his dream.

He opened his eyes abruptly. The phantasms he had seen in his half-dreaming state had faded, leaving only wisps of memory. He remembered seeing fish swimming in the air, and those fish surrounding him seemed particularly delicious—but what did those fish look like, anyway?

Fish… swimming in the air?

Duncan blinked. A strange sensation, a tearing and merging of reality and dream, left him briefly disoriented. He looked at the three fishing rods fixed to the rod rack and saw no sign of a catch. In the distance, the sea had begun to swell, wave after wave crashing against the hull of the Vanishing Hitchhiker.

Then the waves grew larger. Visibly, wave after wave surged continuously from the distance. The Vanishing Hitchhiker's massive hull rocked in the swells, the sound of surging waves filling his ears.

Duncan glanced at the sky and saw that the weather was still fair. There were simply larger waves than usual, but there shouldn’t be any extreme weather like a major storm.

"This might not be a good day for fishing…"

He muttered to himself, wondering if he should reel in the lines. But just then, out of the corner of his eye, he suddenly saw the tip of one of the rods bend sharply!

The strong fishing line, specially prepared for sea fishing, tightened instantly. The short, sturdy sea fishing rod seemed to have caught something huge, the entire front half bending like a bow. At the same time, it was accompanied by a creaking sound. The fishing rod rack also made sounds of wood rubbing under the immense force, and all of this conveyed a single signal to Duncan:

Fish on! A big one!

He instantly dismissed the idea of packing up and resting. The angler's enthusiasm blazed in his chest. He took two steps to the rod that was “producing,” grabbed it to prevent it from falling out of the rack, and began to adjust the tension of the line little by little.

"I knew it! How could I possibly get skunked!"

Duncan muttered excitedly to himself, starting to contend with some behemoth on the other end of the line. It was a difficult struggle. The thing at the end of the line clearly had no intention of surrendering. A great force pulled on the rod, and even with Duncan's strength and the support of the rack, the standoff seemed precarious.

The waves around the Vanishing Hitchhiker grew larger, but for Duncan, this slight rocking was nothing.

He was merely angered by the stubborn "prey," and worried that the chance to improve his meals would slip away in vain.

The tension on the line was reaching its limit. The big fish was about to break free.

After an unknown amount of time in this stalemate, Duncan finally hardened his heart. A cluster of ghostly green flames suddenly spread outward from the hand holding the rod.

The green fire blazed, spreading like water, and quickly flowed along the rod and line. The spiritual fire burned all the way, forming a "fire line" that plunged straight into the sea. The next second, a ghostly green outline abruptly appeared in the depths of the sea around the Vanishing Hitchhiker. In the illumination and outline of the eerie green flames, a vast shadow emerged in the water.

The shadow resembled an undulating mass of flesh, almost covering the entire sea surface within several hundred meters of the Vanishing Hitchhiker. From its edges extended a large number of constantly changing, constantly growing dark things, writhing and waving in the ocean like thousands of arms, stirring the waters around the Vanishing Hitchhiker, controlling the rise and fall of the invisible waves.

Duncan heard some strange noises from the sea. While maintaining the stalemate with the "prey," he curiously leaned out for a look.

He saw nothing, only the rise and fall of the waves, not much different from before.

But he clearly felt that the opposing force transmitted from the rod had weakened a little.

The prey's strength was failing. This fact brought a bright smile to his face.

He began to tighten the line, gradually dragging his prey out of the water…

…

Alice was startled by the roar and whistle coming from outside the cabin. A violent shaking came from beneath her feet, causing the furnishings in the cabin to make a series of clanging sounds. She quickly grabbed a nearby railing to keep from falling, her face showing a look of surprise and uncertainty: "What's happening?"

The Vanishing Hitchhiker was rocking as if a huge storm was raging outside. From the depths of this ancient ghost ship came a muffled, suppressed strange noise, as if it were roaring and howling, fighting against the terrors of the deep sea, fighting against some behemoth trying to devour it.

All sorts of things in the cabin were clanging and banging. At first, Alice thought these were collisions caused by the ship's shaking, but she soon realized that many of these noisy objects were actually chattering in place—they were making sounds to communicate with each other, but Alice couldn't understand this language that only the Vanishing Hitchhiker could comprehend.

All she knew was that something was probably wrong outside.

The porcelain doll decided to go up on deck to see—she stumbled out of the cabin, holding onto the nearby walls to avoid falling, and headed toward the deck.

After nearly being tripped several times by flying ropes and runaway barrels, she finally reached the bottom of the steps. She pushed open the wooden door, which was swaying in the storm, and saw astonishingly huge waves rising on the boundless sea.

The sky was as black as ink, the ominous clouds almost solidified into heavy clumps. The dark clouds pressed down on the sea, and city-wall-like waves rolled and surged beneath the clouds, rising and falling around the Vanishing Hitchhiker like an encirclement!

Alice had never seen such a sight. She didn't know if this was normal for the sea, but she knew that she had to find the captain.

She looked around the deck and, with little effort, found Captain Duncan standing on the edge of the deck.

…

The surrounding waves were a bit annoying, but for Duncan, who was about to succeed, they were just insignificant "distractions." Under the dual feedback of the fishing line and the green fire, he could clearly feel that his prey had stopped resisting. The behemoth was being pulled out of the water little by little.

"Come on up!"

He shouted happily, pulling the rod one last time with all his might.

A large fish leaped out of the sea—really big, almost half his height.

In that brief moment, Duncan met the fish's eyes in mid-air.

"...Pretty ugly."

That was his first thought.

It was indeed an extremely ugly fish. The surface of its dark, black body was jagged and uneven, as if covered with some kind of growth, and strange gray-white patterns spread haphazardly along its fins. At the location of its head, many bone-spur-like structures could be seen, and a pair of empty, pale-white eyes stared at Duncan from beneath those bone spurs.

Duncan felt uncomfortable. He even felt that the fish was staring at him with ill intent.

But the next second, he saw the fish suddenly convulse. For some reason, its eyes, which had been staring at him, burst open out of nowhere, instantly spewing blood.

The fish fell heavily on the deck, jumping and twisting frantically as if electrocuted, and went still after a few short seconds. Blood seeped from its mouth and burst eyes, dripping onto the deck little by little.

Duncan stared in surprise as the hideous fish rapidly lost its life at his feet. He vaguely remembered some knowledge he had read in books: most deep-sea fish are indeed very ugly, and because they live in a high-pressure environment for a long time, their blood vessels will indeed rupture due to pressure changes after being caught, even causing them to die quickly—so the fish in this world are like that too?

Just as he was stunned, a crackling sound suddenly came again.

Curiously, Duncan looked in the direction of the sound and saw several more "monster fish," smaller in size, also landing on the deck.

They looked similar to the monster fish that was half his height, but were only about half a meter in size, and like the big fish—when Duncan noticed them, they were already bleeding profusely, and were soon on the verge of death.

Duncan was stunned for a while before finally reacting: "Hulu brothers saving grandpa? Sending them in a string?" (Hulu brothers saving grandpa: Chinese animated series where the brothers try to save their grandpa one by one, only to be captured).

…

Alice clutched the railing tightly, nervously watching the ferocious fighting scene not far away that was enough to drive ordinary people mad.

She saw Captain Duncan standing on the edge of the deck, his body ablaze with ghostly green flames. He stood against the sea like a burning giant. Three grappling hooks extended from the deck beneath his feet, one of which was burning with terrifying flames.

She saw a vast shadow suddenly appear in the boundless sea, followed by a tentacle, almost thicker than the Vanishing Hitchhiker's main mast, extending from the water. Countless malicious eyes opened on the surface of the tentacle, and countless sharp teeth rubbed and chewed between the eyes, as if they were about to bite the entire ship into pieces in the next moment.

Alice almost cried out in alarm. She wanted to remind the captain to dodge, to rush up and help, but before she could act, the tentacle slammed down towards the captain.

She saw Captain Duncan look up. Under the blazing flames, the captain's face was filled with the joy of a good harvest—he stared at the countless eyes on the tentacle, and the countless eyes on the tentacle stared at him.

The next second, all the eyes on the tentacle burst open, and the countless sharp teeth let out an ear-piercing and painful hiss. Then, the tentacle broke off out of nowhere—as if some huge body hidden beneath the sea surface had proactively severed contact with the tentacle, directly abandoning the severely damaged end of the tentacle on the deck.

The tentacle landed with a bang, and the turbid, viscous flesh that spilled from the break splattered all over the place, landing at the captain's feet.