Chapter 144: Ill Be Back! (2/2)

Although they hadn’t really tried it against the fishmen, this party composed entirely of elite players had been teetering over the edge of a partywide-wipeout.

“Is this really going to work?” Eleena asked Edward in curiosity, being too young to understand the level of devastation of Joe crossdressing in the dancer outfit.

The whole party’s reaction had actually shaken Edward’s brimming confidence too. “I-it should …”

In the end, Edward decided to give it a try.

Joe had already crossdressed anyway, and stopping now would feel like they were just fooling around with him instead.

***

The fishfolk had caught a marine iguana from somewhere, but when they were just about to tear it apart to devour it, a voice suddenly caught their attention.

“Uh-huh~”

Nearby, the burly crossdressing Joe was clumsily twerking as he did his best to flirt and reveal his huge chest muscles as Edward told him too. In fact, he even added a little condiment, casting his taunt skill when all the fishmen turned towards him.

However, unlike his usual bellow at the top of his lungs, he was muffling his voice, using a weirdly sweet high-pitch tone. “Cometo daddy”

In another spot, Gou Dan was sprawled over the ground and unable to move with a look that said ‘oh no, I’m going to laugh myself to death’ while trying all he could to stifle his voice.

Then, just when Joe believed that the plan had failed and the fishmen wasn’t paying him any attention, the whole lot of them leapt up and surged like a wave towards him. From a quick glance, one would think that a third of the entire fishfolk population on the central plateau were in pursuit!

“Oh sh*t!” Joe only had the time to scream once before he turned to run.

Soon, right after Joe and the fishmen in pursuit had vanished from sight on the plateau, Gou Dan who finally recovered his ability to move gave Edward a thumbs up before sneakily chasing after the horde.

Since the dancer outfit has no speed buffs and the Spirit Swordsman class did not grant much agility, Joe would not last long. Gou Dan’s task was therefore simple—after Joe kicked the bucket, he would do he can to stop the fishmen from returning up the plateau. If push comes to shove, he would have to keep killing the closer fishmen to weaken their forces.

At the same time, with one-third of the fishmen gone from Joe’s beating, the creatures were spread rather thin and their perimeter a whole chunk smaller, which allowed Edward and the others to get within striking distance to the Fishman High Priest that was being shielded in the middle!

“Eleena, now!”

As their primary source of damage, Eleena charged her golden spear and launched her attack at the Fishman High Priest!

“Spear of Victory!”

The golden divine spear shot towards its target like lightning!

In the first place, Edwards’s party was still too far from the Fishman High Priest even if Joe had lured away a sizeable horde of fishmen, with neither Edward’s spells nor Goud Dan’s arrows could reach it. Only Eleena, the Saintess-in-training whose skills were buffed by his class could! In fact, that was why the fishmen would have sent out every available force from their nest when she startled them before!

However, the Fishman High Priest was another user of divine skill and therefore easily detected the charging of divine powers—the moment Eleena charged her spear, the creature had already spread out a light-blue semi-circle divine shield.

That was the same shield that had blocked Eleena’s previous ambush.

Despite the shorter distance and the quicker speed, the Fishman High Priest had suitably shrunk the size of the shield in exchange for a quicker casting, and it still would be protected. For the creature, it mattered not if it had to sacrifice every other fishman—its survival alone was victory!

The less-than-a-second advantage naturally did not break the Fishman High Priest’s shield—when the golden spear struck it, the spear itself broke like a fragile object made of glass, exploding into countless dazzling specks.

At the same time, the Fishman High Priest had already commanded every other fishman to attack the two ambushes.

Even so, in the cover of those countless fragments of light, the creature did not notice that Eleena had hidden a small red-white ball in the divine spear she fired!

The ball bypassed the shield that the Fishman High Priest casted to parry Eleena’s divine skill, bursting into a puff of white smoke the moment it dropped to the ground!

Every fishman nearby was stunned, unable to react immediately.

Then, in the next split second, Croakatoa the frogman had sprung away from the smoke, holding the Sea Sapphire he had stolen from the Fishman High Priest in his mouth!

“Joe is already dead!” Edward, who could keep watch of his party’s condition at all times quickly yelled at Eleena who was still flailing her meteor hammer (bible). “Retreat!”

“Croakatoa, return!” Eleena shouted at the frogman.

Even so, Croakatoa was already heavily surrounded by fishmen, and Eleena couldn’t directly recover him because he was out of the retrieval distance.

The colors of determination flashed through Croakatoa’s eyes when he saw that. No longer in a rush to run away, he promptly stuffed the Sea Sapphire down his own throat, titling his head to the skies as he gulped it down with a loud thud.

“Croak—!”

In the next split second, he was already drowned by the wild horde of fishmen, but he raised his hand high over them to make a thumbs-up sign even as he did…