I'm a Stingray?

Chapter 143: Ket (2)

"What?" Timothy asked, feeling that the brag he unleashed a bit earlier was the worst decision of his life.

After allowing for silence to stretch for an uncomfortable amount of time, the same lady who had approached, now explained. "Those anglerfish have kept us imprisoned for years now, none of us could harm them."

Thinking that last sentence over, she also added. "Trust me, we tried."

By now he was here enough to adapt against the light that damaged his vision. In exchange he got the ability to observe these fish rather than just noticing their light that was apparently imprinted on their faces.

This species carried various colours that mostly stretched in the light shade, and by shape they seemed short and bulky. The most important thing he noticed was just how small these species are. Most stretched just a centimeter or two, longer than him.

Hence he understood why this tribe that included seemingly hundreds of fish, were unable to fight a few humpback anglers. Still, being rude was the last thing he wanted to do but these species still could be reaped out of a few benefits.

But first and most importantly, he wanted information. It might come out as odd considering who he was as an individual, but the young one wanted to test out just how much he could memorize now, even if the requested information was totally irrelevant.

"How did you get up here? I never saw flashlight fish before so my guess is that you need to be down there in the black mist." This might be the most insightful question he had ever asked but yet it didn't play heavy value.

"We came here for peace." Ket answered with a firm tone, without knowing fear because the sentence she uttered was nothing but truth.

He understood that the deep mist carries many dangers but fish who are born there, should be mostly used to the environment enough to survive.

That fact poked another question he had to recite, "Isn't there peace down there?"

Hesitation was evident on her face, before the lady answered with a stretched out first word. "The dark mist is never peaceful but about 10 years ago it became unlivable down there. Crazed fish were kidnapping children and well..."

This pattern felt far too familiar, so the hero skipped that answer and replaced it with another. "Holy-tar worshippers?"

Upon answering with such a short sentence, the lady held a face similar to that of being slapped across the face with a hammer. For a second she thought that this flat boy was a mind reader, but that was too unrealistic.

Instead, she asked the obvious portions. "You know about them? How? No offense but you don't seem like a fish who can go deep enough in the mist."

"I'm not." Tim answered shortly and then felt it appropriate to describe since they were discussing a mutual topic, "They're up here as well. So far I discovered 2 of their tribes and killed all of their members of course."

"I don't know how many you killed but the dark mist has thousands of worshippers. At least it did 10 years ago. They spread up here too so my guess is that they have become even more dangerous now." This information came in as quite a shock, difficult to comprehend.

"This is becoming a big problem." He answered and felt it as the right thing to say. As just thinking about so many enemies managed to cause a massive sense of discomfort in his heart.

Still there was nothing he could do about it now apart from slaughtering any worshipper that lurked around up here. So he decided to end the topic, "Okay thank you for telling me all of this. You can go out of this place if you want to, no anglerfish will be on your way."

Ket had a great impression towards the young hero so she revealed a bit of her past, "Thank you but we will stay here. Those hump-backs have tricked us and used us just for food but without them around, these caverns will be a lot more peaceful."

"Okay but know that you will have to rely on the outside world for food. There are thousands of marble shrimp here and my men will come and kill them all for food." This portion was a bit awkward to explain especially considering Ket's last sentence but it had to be said.

Wanting to appear more of a hero, he assured. "I will tell my men to stay away from your people and they won't come down here again after we kill all the shrimp."

Considering the circumstances, the deal was made right away as the young hero had literally just saved them from slavery. He slowly swam out of the hole and then met with a group of western rock lobsters, who apparently had crawled all the way here as fast as possible once they were told about the plentiful food resource here.

The conversation with them was short, mainly because it was hard to maintain a conversation with individuals who kept thanking him. After assuring them which rules to follow, Tim scraped the area for a few marble shrimp.

He was already sleepy so the result just managed to bring down the sleep bar to the bottom. Knowing better than to sleep where thousands of shrimp could crawl in and put him out of his misery, the young one decided to head for the reef.

The elder had to be met and the conversation with that one was idle and short. The hero, simply assured that they will have food for a whole and explained how he has other stuff to do right now.

But if any topic required the king's attention, specifically the critically dangerous ones, a lobster was to be sent towards the very place where the battle against the white-legged shrimp had been halted before. There, the hero's name should be mentioned enough until someone familiar with the said name, pops up.

With all these responsibilities put aside, the young one found a nice private coral crack to sleep on and swiftly fell asleep with one thought in mind. "I must destroy the holy-tar cult."