Chapter 188 — The Sea Witches' Excavation Plan

As for what the "Great Squid" actually was, the sea witches themselves could not quite say.

Their memories of that ancient forced landing had grown somewhat hazy; though they were ageless, deathless elemental beings, things too far in the past tended to slip from memory. But of one thing the sea witches were certain: ever since they had come down into this world of dry land, the "Great Squid" at the bottom of the sea had already been there.

It was the corpse of a creature far older than the ancient age itself. Its remaining tentacles meandered across the seafloor like mountain ranges, and the sheer bulk of the body could well be imagined. The sea witches had at first been stunned by the size of the carcass and had feared this world for a long while—terrified that this strange place might be crawling with dreadful beings of such magnitude—but before long they found their fears to be seemingly unfounded.

The deep sea held only native creatures weaker than themselves; the "Great Squid" seemed to be the sole exception—and that powerful exception was dead.

The "Great Squid" had been killed by some outside force; this much could be told from its shattered remains and the scraps of metal left embedded in the seafloor. But who had slain it remained a mystery. Across the long ages the sea witches had never found any trace of that mighty race. They had searched the various continents, yet found there only savage, backward native civilizations—civilizations incapable even of ocean voyaging, and so surely not the powerful beings who had killed the "Great Squid."

And once they understood that this world was subject to a periodic "magic tide" that wiped out entire ecosystems, the sea witches abandoned the search for that civilization altogether and settled down to live their own quiet lives in this ocean.

Excavating the "Great Squid" was one of their most important tasks, and this task was but one link in the chain of restarting the core engine. Though the day of success was still far beyond the horizon, the sea witches were creatures dull to the passage of time; like many elemental beings, they possessed ample patience and a poor sense of time. This trait had let them complete their civilizational transformation in the deep sea in the exceedingly distant past, and now it let them immerse themselves in their work, content and joyous.

The excavation team arrived at the appointed worksite. A vast mass of flesh and blood, torn loose from a tentacle, lay quietly in a deep pit on the seafloor. After several months of "rest cycle," this mass had regrown to its original size—which meant it could be dug again.

The sea witches spread out around the flesh, drove a dozen force-field screening generators deep into the seafloor, and pale blue energy barriers sealed off the entire area, lest the power leaking from the "Great Squid" contaminate the waters. Then, in groups of three, they hoisted their various devices and began cutting into the mass of extraordinarily dense flesh.

The squad leader circled the perimeter, checking whether the force-field generators were running properly. This work was vital, for the devices barely functioned at present; all manner of bizarre and outlandish breakdowns were their daily bread, and without careful watching, trouble came easily.

Still, it was far better than many years ago. At least more and more equipment had been brought back into operation—though the restart of the core engine still looked as distant as ever...

The squad leader swam around to the back of the flesh mass, where the next stage of excavation was to begin. She drew close to the coarse outer hide—like bark and fungal growths piled atop one another—and inspected the regeneration of this portion.

But just then the mass of flesh suddenly seemed to come alive, writhing and squirming!

Dark red blood gushed from the wounds; muscle and hide grew winding outward, rapidly coalescing into slender little tentacles marked with eerie patterns and bright edges, thrashing madly before the sea witch.

The patterns on the tentacle's surface gleamed, shifting through grotesque and outlandish forms as it twisted and writhed. Any ordinary mind would be driven mad by those patterns; even the stoutest mortal hero could not face them and walk away unharmed.

The sea witch captain stared blankly at the tentacle, made a bold hypothesis, calmly analyzed the situation, and decided to greet it in return.

And so her body in an instant dissolved and re-formed, her shape shifting in the blink of an eye into a tentacle identical to the other, which likewise began to writhe and curl swiftly across the seafloor.

An indescribable tentacle and a sea witch's mimicked tentacle performed a frenzied dance of ecstasy across the seafloor for a full ten minutes. The two reached no consensus whatsoever—and meanwhile the three sea witches who had finished their excavation had already swum over.

One of them, shouldering a shock cutter, poked the mimicked tentacle standing erect on the seafloor with the tip of her tail: "Captain, didn't you just say not to play too wildly with the Great Squid..."

The mimicked tentacle popped back into the sea witch's form with a puff, looking rather embarrassed: "I thought it was greeting me..."

Another sea witch flicked her tail curiously: "By the way, the Great Squid often has tentacles twisting this way and that... what does it actually mean?"

"Who knows. The deep-sea scholars have always thought it's some kind of communication signal, but after all these years of decoding, nothing's come of it. I suspect they just twist around for no reason, like seaweed."

"No, it's definitely communication—we just can't understand it," said the sea witch with the cutter, utterly serious. "Otherwise why do those land folk get so excited whenever they see these tentacles? And they even shout at them... That proves there's communication!"

The sea witch captain thought it over, gave her serpentine tail a flick: "Who cares. Cut this one off and take it with us—serves it right for popping out on its own."

The sea witch with the cutter started up her device, but before cutting, asked with a hint of anticipation: "So... can we eat a bit of it?"

"E... the reactor fuel should be collected by now... All right, we can eat a bit. But only a bit!"

"Yay~~"

The remaining sea witches cheered and rushed toward their "lunch."

Meanwhile, in the Cecil lord's manor, Gao Yang and Pi Yun's discussion about the sea witches had finally come to an end.

Pi Yun stroked his beard: "On the whole, the sea witches are just such a legendary creature. There are only a handful of sighting reports, and every recorded account fails to stand up to scrutiny. Their history is older than humanity's; they dwell in the eastern reaches of the endless ocean. They may occasionally come ashore, but most of the time they do not leave the deep sea, nor do they communicate with humans or other land races. Sea witches in the ocean are dangerous and guard their territory rigorously; any voyage passing through their domain invites attack—though now that all ocean routes have been canceled, that is nothing to worry about."

Gao Yang knitted his brows, looking at the knight's biography in his hand, and gave a faint sigh: "A legendary species, is it... If only I could find one sea witch to talk with. Well. Let's set that aside for now—those biological tissues I brought back from the Kant domain, have you examined them? Any progress?"