Whatever they were, they were approaching fairly slowly. Not at a snail’s pace, but they were definitely not as fast as the Tengu or the big wolf, which could sprint at several times these guys’ speed.

  The difference, however, was that these things were much more numerous, swarming to our location like flies to warm stool. Oh, I could imagine whatever it was licking its lips with gleeful gluttony.

  I would not be anyone’s lunch! That much I swore to myself, and I aimed to prove it. Sure, Mark was really scared of the creatures of the night, but I had serious doubts about whether they would be as unbeatable as he claimed. I looked to my right, and the difference between my and Crudia’s expression compared to Mark’s and Talisha’s was startling. Those guys depended on us, yet they didn’t trust us at all. Great outlook for humans once again.

  Whatever. We could take them. "Crudia, can you stand behind me and cover my flanks? I should be able to defend us both."

  "You sure? There’s a lot of them, Shrimpie!"

  Wow, did my fighting abilities yesterday not show my worth? I should be the one asking questions! Eh, I guess I couldn’t give her fault for this when she did have an option of using stealth to get away, unlike me. Not that I wanted an ability like that anyway - hiding my glorious colors would be an affront to all deities alive and dead, surely.

  After a brief silence, Crudia reluctantly stood behind me, her daggers gleaming from the reflection of the two moons overhead. The slight breeze blew in my face, prompting Crudia to say something I’d not expected. Did she have a better sense of smell, too? She definitely didn’t mention that ability, even though it seemed as useful as the stealth did.

  "Whatever that is, it smells like fish. You think we can eat them? I LOVE fish. At least those that I could catch - there used to be a lot of competition at-"

  "Shush, Crudia. You can tell me later, okay? We need to focus."

  For reasons unknown to me, her face scrunched up to an expression I immediately understood as "how dare you?" and she punched my back with force that I would not have expected from her tiny body. Hey, what did I do?

  Whatever it was, I had no time to focus on it that much. Whatever was approaching, it was just about to emerge from the canopy of trees.

  And then I saw them. There must have been a good thirty of them, all the same level of ugly, as if the same mother had them all. And god, the smell of fishiness was unbearable. Sure, I’ve grown up eating fish and whatever else I could find, but here, above water? Unbearable.

  The creatures were all about half as tall as I was, fully scaled and wearing simple loincloths. For being aquatic creatures, though, they sure were hideous - they looked like carp that god gave tiny legs and arms to, and decided to terrify the world above water with their ugly visage.

  Mark and Talisha both chuckled behind me, but I for sure didn’t. Though meeting one of these would definitely not be a challenge, there were so many that just one bullet punch would not help me here. And they didn’t look to be unarmed either - I could see the glint of primitive spears in their arms.

  Battling all my instincts that screamed at me to charge them, I remained where I was, my shields materializing in my hands.

  Mark decided to be useful in the middle of a battle for once. "Use [Analyze] on them! They are weaker than all the things you’ve fought until now. Lots of XP if you win!"

  Yeah, and I’d die if I didn’t. What a wonderful prospect. I used [Analyze], just as he suggested.

  [The Carp Man]

  Creature

  Level 3

  Did you ever want to see the ugliest, nastiest-tasting fish take up arms and hunt down intelligent beings for sport? No? Too bad, because we sure as hell do.

  What the Carp men lack in manners, visuals, smells, intelligence, and many other categories, they make up for in just one, simple thing - their watchability. Just look at the little guys, holding onto their spears like old men hold onto sticks! What a sight! Purely nocturnal, these fish usually hunt and compete while doing so, and once they are done, they bring their quarry to their big boss. He smells even nastier than these guys do, we promise.

  Oh yeah, they usually make up for their lack of anything remotely useful by swarming in huge numbers. They actually form tight, familiar bonds too, so killing just one means that the others will spend the rest of their short life (Their longevity isn’t the best either) hunting you down.

  Good luck!

  Well, shit. It looked like a retreat wouldn’t be an option if the fight didn’t go our way. The fact that they were just level 3 was good, though - I was significantly stronger, and even Crudia could probably take several at once. The problem was, their number just kept increasing.

  And they didn’t charge mindlessly, no matter how much the text berated them. They actually waited for all of them to group up, so many that I didn’t bother calculating how many were there.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  "Hey Mark, can you count them for me? Or do anything useful?"

  "Already on it! Can’t do more on this floor though!"

  Oh, that sounded somewhat promising. I wondered what he could do on the next floors then.

  Crudia, for all her bravado, shook behind me like a wet chihuahua, one of her hands gripping the dagger so tightly that I could even somewhat hear the leather pommel being squeezed. No, no, no, this was no time for cowardice.

  "Crudia, just stand behind me, and all will be fine, okay? I promise."

  She seemed to stop shaking for a while. "Okay. Just survive, okay?"

  What was I, a normal shrimp? Of course I’d…

  Oh shit, they started charging us.

  So many bodies moved towards me that it was hardly believable. Sure, my shields could block several of them, but this many? I had doubts. I seriously missed my chitinous armor, more than ever.

  What I’d give for protection now. Oh, wait, didn’t I have a skill related to that?

  It would still take a few more seconds until the weird fish reached me anyway. I quickly pulled up the skill description.

  [Block]

  Type - Active, Tied to an item

  Cooldown - 1 hour

  Create a little bubble around your body that lasts 10 seconds and makes you invulnerable. Yeah, hide in a shell like a little bitch. You think that’s interesting enough? Overuse the skill and we’ll take it away. Seriously. We mean it. You think we’d make this tournament just to watch people turtle in their shells?

  Okay, my boss is telling me that I can’t take away the skill, but I promise you shouldn’t overuse it.

  What the hell was that? What crackhead is making these descriptions of everything? Was it a god? Did becoming godly make you clinically insane?

  I could save those thoughts for later. The things got really damn close, and just as the first spear was about to make a new hole in my abdomen, I commanded the ability to activate.

  A shimmer surrounded my whole body, pants included, and the spears just… did nothing at all. Now that was a useful skill. There was a timer in the edge of my eyesight, rapidly dropping to zero. I had moments to clear space then.

  "Ninety-eight that I could count, Shrimpie! Get ready!"

  Mark didn’t have to tell me twice.

  I plunged my arms into the fish around me, each strike denting a head of one. Wet crunch answered my shields, and those that tried to pick at my sides were quickly dispatched by Crudia, her daggers darting in and out around me. The shield fizzled out quickly, but it broke their initial charge, throwing off their tempo.

  Each death enraged them more, their razor-sharp teeth wet with saliva, grumbling in a seething fury. Oh, these guys didn’t like their ugly friends being killed, right? Too bad for them. They shouldn’t have been so easy to kill if I was not meant to obliterate them.

  But soon enough, our advantageous strength stopped having any sense of use.

  This could work for longer if there were more of us, or less of them, but there were simply too many, and they were already climbing onto the bodies of their fallen comrades. Their spears reached for me from higher and higher ground, seeking purchase in my flesh, and blocking the jabs was getting harder and harder.

  Already, several cuts nicked me in my torso, and I was bleeding red. Mark assured me that none of the wounds were deadly though - finally useful, that guy. Not that I needed assurance - I lived for this. Every wound made me feel that much more alive.

  We would see who’d bleed out first. Me, or the damn fish. I liked my chances better.

  After a few dozen were dead, Crudia grabbed me by my shoulder. "Shrimpie, I think I know how we can turn the tide! Follow me!"

  I didn’t like leaving the battle. It was just getting good! But she didn’t suggest we run completely, and so we retreated. I didn’t like listening to others, but Crudia earned some cookie points from me today. Giving her the benefit of the doubt was against ALL of my instincts, but if we were meant to cooperate, I knew that I’d have to take her advice into consideration. Bleh, I was more human too, wasn’t I?

  We slowly backed toward our half-built house, quickly distancing ourselves from the wave of stinking enemies.

  No matter how many we killed, they didn’t let up for even a second, but their short legs let us retreat a bit more after all.

  The new location provided one vital advantage - with our flanks covered, Crudia could fight at my side as well. And so she did, as fearful as she looked. I found myself admiring her resilience - for a woman so scared, so used to running, she was holding up really well, standing steady, swinging her blades as if she was born with them.

  Standing in a corner of our soon-to-be house, surrounded by wooden walls instead of enemies at my sides, I realized I could utilize yet another skill, and quickly went to activate [Bubble flash]. "Crudia, close your eyes!"

  "What? They are right in front of us!"

  "Just close them!"

  I swung, not looking to see if she listened to my request. It would be her fault if she didn’t, and the fuckers wouldn’t be able to see her after it went off anyway.

  My swing complete, the light went off. The whole surrounding area was blasted in a flash of light, short but so intense that all of the Carp men closed their eyes, some of them dropping to the ground like rocks.

  That should be enough of a distraction.

  Whatever effect the skill had on the Carp men, it was substantial. Killing the Carp men around me took seconds, the fight more banal than the one with the Rock Crabs. Crudia thankfully listened to my warning, and was ready to help out too. Good for her. I didn’t want to give the gods the satisfaction of listening to their advice so closely.

  The effect seemed to affect the Carp men even more deeply than I assumed however, because the ones that managed to get up before we got to them were still lethargic, barely reacting to us charging at them. It was as if the fight went out of them.

  In the end, we stood in a battlefield of corpses, the smell so horrible that I wondered whether we should just abandon our base completely. Would the smell go away if we collected the corpses? No matter how badly they smelled, they should have a use, right?

  Mark and Talisha were speaking softly, words for them only, and so we decided to just loot the corpses while we could.

  Picking up the bodies rewarded me with a lot of loot, mostly useful wooden trinkets though. As I continued picking through the items, I remembered that I killed about… what, fifty of these? I checked my level.

  And was rewarded with an abundance of attribute points. Oh, how glorious.