"Lucky for you, the items in your hand should be enough to deal with a siren."
Edmond's tense voice seemed to relax once he saw the monster's appearance clearly.
"They're just a bit scary-looking. In reality, a siren's physical strength isn't that high—it's not even as tough as that carapace husk."
"However, pay attention to its song; it induces hallucinations."
"It can interfere with your spirit body through sound frequencies, making you jump into the sea of your own accord to serve as its snack."
"You're always like some old NPC, only knowing how to give introductions and never saying anything useful!"
Elias complained wildly while struggling to adjust his posture.
The bottom of the overturned boat was incredibly slippery, covered in fine seaweed and several hard barnacles that poked him painfully.
The waves constantly slapped against the hull, and every rise and fall challenged his sense of balance.
Elias gritted his teeth, holding the revolver in one hand while his left arm was encased in the headplate serving as a shield, maintaining an awkward defensive stance.
Bang!
Without any hesitation, he pulled the trigger.
The bullet sliced through the damp, cold air toward the siren.
This siren was perhaps the least Sanity-draining monster he had seen lately—provided its mouth was closed.
When the bullet veered due to the boat's swaying and sank into the monster's thick fish tail, the siren instantly flew into a rage.
"Hreeeeeee—!!!"
It abruptly tilted its head back, letting out a subhuman roar at Elias, who was sprawled on the boat's hull.
At that moment, Elias felt his sense of aesthetics take a devastating hit.
That face, which had previously looked somewhat human, instantly split open.
It literally split open.
Seeing this, Elias felt like he was splitting apart too.
The corners of its mouth were like two zippers, tearing all the way back behind its ears, revealing a bright red, squirming inner oral cavity.
There was no tongue inside as one might expect.
Instead, several dark red tentacles were dancing wildly, as if sensing the scent of blood in the air.
The thought that this thing wouldn't drain his Sanity was far too premature.
Elias felt his stomach churn.
"This thing isn't any more 'handsome' than the carapace husk!"
The siren let out a shrill cry, its tail scales shattered, oozing blue blood.
It shot a venomous glare at Elias before diving headlong into the water, vanishing into the murky depths.
Because he had seen this creature summon a giant beast in his hallucination, Elias felt a surge of fear for a moment.
Even though he had seen much yesterday and dealt with monsters, the phrase 'insufficient firepower' still filled him with panic.
He currently had only one gun with five bullets, two Molotov cocktails he wasn't sure he could throw accurately, and a dagger in his boot.
Plus a shield made from a transcendent creature's headplate.
In this Lovecraftian world, what was the difference between this loadout and being naked?
The deep-sea giant fish with three rows of teeth that appeared alongside the siren in his hallucination made the small sense of security he had just built up feel precarious again.
"Where are a human's weaknesses? You hit it there. Does that even need to be said?"
Although Edmond didn't understand what an 'NPC' was, he could guess that Elias was annoyed by his rambling.
"Humanoid creatures have roughly the same physiological structure—heart, brain, spine... you can't go wrong aiming for the head."
"I was aiming for the damn head!" Elias shouted through gritted teeth.
"But this broken boat keeps swaying! If you're so good, you come do it!"
"Your marksmanship is simply terrible!" Edmond mocked mercilessly.
"Back when I was making a living at sea, even if I was shooting flying fish in a storm, it was one shot, one kill..."
"Stop bragging!"
Elias had no time to listen to him reminisce about the past. Now that the monster had dived into the sea, it was in the dark while he was in the light; this was the most dangerous time.
He could only raise the headplate shield on his left arm, shrinking his body behind it as much as possible, warily watching the surrounding sea surface.
The sea returned to a state of calm, with only a few broken bubbles floating up.
This deathly silence was even more unnerving than the previous roars.
Elias felt his heart pounding wildly against his ribs, every beat accompanied by a surge of adrenaline.
At this moment, he felt like telling the siren he could 'do this all day,' using that classic line to bolster his own courage.
Thud!
Right then, the familiar sound of impact came again.
This time, the siren had clearly learned its lesson; it didn't show its head but instead slammed hard against the hull from underwater.
The violent tremor almost made Elias bite his tongue, and he slid half a meter across the boat's bottom. Fortunately, he managed to grab a protrusion on the gunwale.
Luckily, with mental preparation and the buffer of the carapace husk shield, this impact didn't affect him much.
Seeing that the physical attack hadn't worked, the siren seemed to realize such strikes were pointless.
A dark shadow darted beneath the surface.
It gave up on further ramming and instead swam quickly into the distance, putting a relatively safe gap between them.
At a distance of about thirty meters from the small boat, it poked its body out again.
Only this time, it didn't charge over with bared teeth. Instead, it straightened its upper body and made a strange gesture with its hands in front of its chest.
Immediately following that, a sharp, high-pitched, and rhythmic whistling sound erupted from its mouth.
The sound seemed like singing, yet it lacked any beautiful melody. Instead, it was like an amplified version of fingernails scratching a chalkboard, making one's scalp tingle.
"%￥#@……&%……"
A string of obscure and difficult-to-understand syllables echoed over the sea.
"Sea-folk language."
Edmond's voice instantly became serious.
"It's summoning its companions."
"?"
Elias froze for a moment, and then a wave of nameless anger rose within him.
"It's already this hard dealing with just one, and it's calling for backup?"
Unfair! This is so damn unfair!
We're all out here trying to make it; what happened to the 1v1?
Besides, that shot just now didn't hit anything vital; at most, it was a minor injury. Is it really necessary to call for help over that?
Sore loser!
What kind of unbalanced 1vMany match is this!
Elias felt his blood pressure soaring.
"I can't let it finish calling!"
Although he didn't know what it could call, it definitely wouldn't be anything good.
Elias took a deep breath, suppressing the panic in his heart, and rested the revolver on the shield of his left arm to increase stability.
Aim.
Front sight, rear sight, target.
Even though the boat was still swaying and the target was still moving, he had no choice.
Bang! Bang!
Two consecutive gunshots.
This time, Elias didn't aim for a one-shot kill to the head but fired two shots in quick succession based on feeling.
This was what you'd call suppressive fire—the budget version.
The bullets kicked up two small splashes on the sea surface.
Immediately, the distant singing came to a screeching halt.
In that instant, Elias clearly saw the siren's body convulse violently.
One bullet grazed its neck, opening a bloody hole in its shoulder; the other bullet directly shredded the fin-like ear organ on its left side.
"Aaaah—!!!"
A shrill scream replaced the previous chanting.
The siren clutched its ear, rolling painfully in the water.
"That's more like it!"
Edmond offered a rare word of praise.
"Those two shots were quite accurate. They almost have a hint of my style from back in the day."
"..."
Elias didn't respond, his expression somewhat stiff.
Because only he knew that he had been aiming for the heart and head.
Regardless, the accidental hit managed to interrupt the siren's progress in summoning its companions.
"Did it work?"
A sliver of hope rose in Elias's heart.
He wanted to follow up with a finishing shot.
No, it was already too late!
At the same time as that injured siren screamed, the calm sea on the other side of the buoy seemed to boil.
Countless bubbles surged up from the deep sea.
Then, one, two, three...
A total of over a dozen heads with wet long hair and greenish-grey scales emerged from the sea outside the buoy line.
Over a dozen pairs of pitch-black eyes without whites stared in unison at Elias, who was perched on the back of the boat, across the defensive line formed by the buoys.
Every mouth was split to the ears, revealing those signature, nauseating tentacle tongues.
"With these buoys, they won't be able to get in."
"However, you'd better cover your ears."
Edmond's voice offered a suggestion.
"It won't do much, but at least it can weaken the interference of the hallucinations on you."
"What are they going to do?"
Elias asked, pressing his hands tightly over his ears.
"They want to use their song to control you into disabling the buoys yourself and then walking out to them,"
Edmond explained.
"I..."
Elias wanted to curse.
He felt like cursing Edmond, this old ghost who couldn't do anything but talk.
But he pursed his lips and gave up.
Old Ed had already done everything he could.
As a spirit body that had been dead for fifty years, could he really expect the man to jump out and take a knife for him?
If anyone was to blame, it was the original owner of this body, that reckless fool who just had to take this suicidal job.
"Come on then!"
Elias closed his eyes, wearing an expression of someone resigned to death.
He could only do as told.
Sure enough, the moment he covered his ears, those sirens didn't launch a physical charge.
They seemed very wary of the buoys containing moonlight stones and opened their large mouths in unison.
A strange and ethereal sound pierced through the waves and air, even penetrating the palms Elias had pressed over his ears, drilling directly into his brain.
It was a strange ballad sung in the sea-folk language.
It wasn't as ear-piercing as he had imagined; instead, it carried a bizarre softness and poignant beauty, like a mother's lullaby in the middle of the night or a lover's whisper in one's ear.
Elias was already prepared to welcome the hallucinations.
Yesterday, he had seen more hallucinations than in the twenty-plus years of his previous life combined; after all, he hadn't been mentally ill in his past life.
He was wondering what he would see this time.
At least this brain filled with 21st-century culture could show him some things from his memories, so he wouldn't forget that a person named Jiang Huan once lived.
He kept his eyes tightly shut, his body tense, waiting for the moment his consciousness would be stripped away.
One second.
Two seconds.
Ten seconds.
Half a minute passed.
Elias had even started composing his last words in his mind.
But!
Nothing happened!
"Boy, can you hear my voice?!"
Edmond's anxious voice kept chattering in his mind.
"If you see something, absolutely do not believe it! It's fake! All of it is fake!"
"Remember your name! Remember that you are a Firebearer!"
"Just like before, I'll give you directions."
"Are you seeing some tempting imagery right now?"
"Ignore it! Listen to my commands!"
"Roll to the left! Then jump into the sea!"
"No, you can't jump into the sea... damn it!"
"Wake up! Elias! Wake up!"
Edmond talked to himself in Elias's head for a long time, his tone shifting from anxiety to despair.
He seemed to think that Elias was truly finished this time, having fallen into some inescapable beautiful dream.
Listening to the old ghost buzzing in his head like a fly, Elias finally couldn't take it anymore.
"Shut up!"
He let out a loud roar.
"?"
With that shout, the sirens on the other side of the buoys also stopped their singing in a daze.
Edmond's voice came to an abrupt halt, like a duck being grabbed by the neck.
Elias slowly opened his eyes.
The scene before him hadn't changed at all.
The gloomy sky, the murky seawater, the glowing buoys.
And those dozen or so members of the 'deep-sea choir' who were singing their hearts out.
Aside from the one siren he had injured who was still bleeding, everything looked so real.
He slowly lowered the hands covering his ears.
The singing became even clearer.
It was a polyphonic chorus, with ethereal high notes and deep low notes, interspersed with that unique wave-like vibrato.
If one didn't look at the singers' appearances, this was absolutely a top-tier audiovisual feast.
"Shut your old mouth and enjoy the show!"
The corners of Elias's mouth curled up slightly, revealing an inexplicable smile.
He adjusted himself into a more comfortable position on the back of the boat.
He even bobbed his head to the rhythm.
"Keep the music playing, keep the singing going!"
"I have to say, it actually sounds pretty good."
Rate on N.U.
