Chapter 171: You Can Walk Without Three-Stage Sliding Slashes? (2/2)

But as those human-faced fish monsters kept increasing in number, even Marni started having doubts.

Could there really have been some major phenomenon that occurred in these marshes? He thought, doubting his existence when a Ranger returned from scouting up front.

“Mister Wilf, I think I found something and it doesn’t look good.”

One should also note that there had been twelve Rangers scouting ahead, but the others were now dead.

It only made it evident how scary the marshes were.

“What did you see?”

The Ranger did not answer, however, and instead led Marni and a handful of Players with him to a nearby spot.

There was a distinctly wider lagoon, and Marni was shocked to find almost thousands of swamp fishmen gathered closely beside the water with more coming to join them.

At the center of the lagoon was a swamp fishman high priest, wearing a ritual mask while performing some sort of ritual dance.

Although Marni and the others couldn’t tell how the priest kept himself from sinking, what happened next shocked them even more.

As the swamp fishman high priest continued its otherworldly dance, a globe of water that resembled an egg over two meters wide rose out of the water—the water was crystal clear as well, with no impurities inside.

That was when the many swamp fishmen that had been happy with standing aside and watch the show all jumped into the lagoon and swam towards the globe as if called upon, and then bounding headlong within.

Hence, in spite of its crystalline appearance, the water in the globe melted any swamp fishmen that had entered whole within seconds, reducing them to cheese as if they were acid.

And as the corpses in the globe increased, the cheese-shaped corpse changed further, fusing together like cotton wads and rapidly growing organs and skins.

Then, when the last piece of scale took form and every piece of organ ready, the dozens of fishmen corpses would have been cultured into one human-faced fish monster within minutes. Hence, with a deafening cry and a frightening horn, it would then break out of the globe!

After being born, those human-faced fish monsters would feed upon what the swamp fishmen brought from their hunt to grow into massive sizes, their scales slowly darkening and hardening.

Having witnessed all that, Marni was beside himself in shock.

The swamp fishmen which showed such emotions and made him doubt his existence was actually the same creature as that bizarre human-faced fish monster? If he had to describe it, it was a growth process similar to how caterpillars would metamorphose into butterflies.

Moreover, he remembered something else in the surprise.

So, there were no other creatures aside from swamp fishmen in these marshes… or at least this zone?

Moreover, the fishman priest’s dance must be some ritual, but it didn’t resemble an offering to the Ocean Goddess and was full of such mystery that no one would forget it. At the same time, the globe of water with which the swamp fishman turned into the human-faced fish monster must be the effect of the ritual dance, similar to a divine power.

And this sinister but alluring power certainly wasn’t the power of any deities of the light. These fishmen had to be followers of some evil god!