Chapter 740: Starstruck
[…and after saving the hot headed snake boy, I dove down to the River Drowner’s corpse and took out it’s beast core for you, director, and made sure to stash the shell elsewhere using my zakos. Your cousin managed to swim back to the boat, by the way.]
‘Huh…on the one hand, thank you for saving my cousin from the dangers of drug usage while in unfamiliar territory.’
[Anytime.]
[Remember to only ingest illicit substances in safe places, everybody,] Hurricroak joked.
‘On the other…why do you all know he’s now head over heels for Razorstella?’
[Oh, I can answer that,] Hurricroak interjected, again. [Since Razorstella was the first to dive into the water, the rest of us thought it’d prudent to hang back and see if things went sideways. Wouldn’t want another otter incident.]
[Funny of way saying: “wanted to see how things turned out because you wanted to see if it was going to be amusing or not.”]
[That too!]
__________________________________________
After the River Drowner was unceremoniously bisected like a cheap piece of meat at the butcher’s shop, Zhen Tai found that the tentacle that was originally holding him in place had become significantly easier to wiggle out of. Granted, the tentacle was surprisingly sticky given the suckers.
While he was doing this, the mysterious sharp featured girl(Razorstella) proceeded to ignore him and swim down towards the River Drowner’s corpse. Evidently, Zhen Tai was so focused on freeing himself that he didn’t notice that Razorstella had quickly gone back to her original form to summon a pair of zakos to take away the aether beast’s corpse while she extracted the core.
By the time Zhen Tai was free, Razorstella had turned herself back into her human form and was simply floating for no discernable reason.
‘Freedom! Looks I can just head back to the boat and…wait…but I could also swim to where that girl is and thank her properly…’
Now that he was free from what was sure to be a watery demise, Zhen Tai was torn between returning to the boat or trying to see if he could figure out a way to meet the sharp featured girl again in the future.
Unfortunately for him, this decision was going to be made without him.
‘The guys are worried about me, but as a gentleman-huh?’
Just as he was in the midst of rocking his head back and forth in order to determine which direction he should be swimming towards, the sharp featured girl had already begun to swim towards the surface.
‘Hey, wait up!’
Spurred on by the innate desire to not be left behind, Zhen Tai quickly swam towards the surface as well.
…
“Hey, am I going nuts, or did that sharp featured girl feel really-”
“Bah!”
“Xiao Tai!”
“You’re okay!”
As soon as Zhen Tai breached the surface and flop his upper body to the raft he was knocked off of, Zhen Guo and Zhen Feng moved quickly to drag the rest of him out of the water. He spent the next few seconds coughing out a mix of bad air and water from his mouth.
“Bleh! After this trip, I’ll never complain about the sand and caves ever again,” Zhen Tai complained to his cousins.”Wait…did you two see where that sharp featured girl went?”
“The one that rescued you? No, you’re the only we’ve seen-”
“Wait! Over there!”
“‘-never mind!”
On the shore opposite of where Zhen Guo, Zhen Feng and Zhen Tai were gathered, the mysterious, sharp featured girl exited the water with a surprising amount of grace. Not a single splash was heard, not a single drop was on her body and not even her clothes looked the slightest bit wet.
To Zhen Feng and Zhen Guo, this sight was impressive as it was sign that whomever this woman was, she had a high level of aether manipulation mastery.
To Zhen Tai though, and his lovestruck brain, it was a sign that this woman was an angel or a goddess sent from above.
This moment was technically one where he should be calling out to her in order to establish some means of communication or at least shout a thanks. But just like that moment in the water, she made the first move.
The sharp featured woman was initially facing away from the group, with her eyes pointed towards the forested parts of the wetlands.
Zhen Tai was just about to give his thanks from a distance when the woman turned towards him and his voice got caught in his throat. Piercing blue eyes had that effect on people.
The sharp featured girl gave him and his cousins a quick wave before disappearing into the woods like some kind of mythical fairy. Granted, she could’ve also had incredibly high speed abilities, but they wouldn’t know for certain.
Silence and calm befell them as soon as she left, the group of Zhen Clan young masters simply sat there and stared in the direction she left.
“Well…shit. That was like something out of an old storybook,” Zhen Feng commented in an attempt to break the silence.
“Who the heck was she? Some kind of wandering hero? I couldn’t even get a read on her,” Zhen Guo shared, picking up the vibe.
“Don’t know.”
“Well. We should probably-”
“Guys…I think I’m in love,” Zhen Tai suddenly said, ending whatever conversational subject this moment was heading towards.
“Ey yo?”
Zhen Guo and Zhen Feng looked at the cousin like he was crazy, all they could see was a starstruck look in his eyes.
“Oh damn…he down bad.”
__________________________________________
‘Really? They used the term “down bad”, to describe Zhen Tai?’
[Well, not that phrase exactly but what he actually said wasn’t as funny.]
[I believe the term they used was, “he looked like a maiden after being saved by a dashing hero” or something like that,] Nepherage added.
[Yeah…that…]
[Anyways! After that moment, we GTFOd as quick as our legs could carry us out of that scene and his ourselves away like toys…again. Not gonna lie, I feel like our little toy transformation is cheating.]
[It’s not like we can turn into intangible spirit forms. We ain’t ghosts…or undead zakos,] Spring Brawler added.
[To be fair, that statement only applies to the Spirit Zakos. I got their screams but not their intangibility,] Screamira interjected. [Also, hello my new friends.]
[Whoa! New voice! New comrade!]
[Welcome reality.]
[Hello…]
[So that’s how zako to Kaijin conversion works…]
‘Alright, enough,’ Zhen Liu intervened to keep his mind from becoming a conversational forum.’You can all meet Screamira in person once we reunite. Razorstella, once again, thank you for saving my cousin and remembering to keep your existence a mystery.’
[Of course.]
‘Now then, let’s… actually, not even going to say it. It’s going to happen anyways.’
[Pardon, manager?]
‘You’ll find out in probably a couple of hours.’
__________________________________________
“Hey guys.”
“Oh! Hey Xiao Liu, where you’ve been?”
“Nowhere, really. Just been walking around the flotilla out of boredom.”
“Preach.”
“And…what’s up with Zhen Tai? Did you give him something from your stash again, Xiao Feng?”
“Nah, he got a different kind of high going on right now.”
“The kind involving the heart.”
“Really…”
Other than that brief moment where Zhen Tai almost got drowned, the Zhen Clan’s flotilla didn’t really run into anything dangerous or exciting.
No bandits had tried to raid them, no assassins have attempted to ambush them to kill a member of their group, not even an angry aether beast attempted to come and eat them all.
It was, for all intents and purposes, a completely safe and boring float down the river.
Until…
“Huh?”
“What’s up?”
Someone spotted something. More specifically, a pair of perimeter sentries noticed weird movement coming from their position. Albeit, not in an obvious manner.
“That flower…”
“What about it?”
“Well, we’re going downstream, right? As in we’re heading down to the coastline on the stronger currents?”
“Yeah…?”
“So why is that flower flowing that way?”
“I’m not entirely sure what you’re-wait…you feel that weird flux of energy? Doesn’t that feel familiar?”
“Yeah…it feels just like…a ruin!”
“I’ll go check it out! Go find an elder, now!”
“Right!”
In a flurry of motion and excitement, one sentry went towards the center of the flotilla to go and find someone higher up in their clan’s food chain to determine their next course of action while the other went to go and make sure what they were sending was accurate.
As the two would find out later though, the entrance they found did lead to someplace as dangerous as a wandering ruin, it wasn’t a wandering ruin entrance.
It was something significantly more dangerous.
…
∆Ya think anyone will realize that they had been led to this particular doorway by our meddling?∆
=Probably not, our existence has long been since associated with myth and legend, even by this world’s standards.=
∆Yeah…how many people do you think exist that can confirm were real? Other than our lord, of course.∆
=Well, excluding the Pearl Scale Emperor…=
…
∆∆Well…congratulations, Patriarch Zhen Shi. Your clan has managed to stumble upon an entrance to the Abyssal Land.∆∆
“Oh…shit.”
