Chapter 87: THIRD POV [BONUS Chapter]

"It’s right there, Captain! We can catch it!"

"Forget about that blooming beast and get us out of here!" Douglas shouted, this time more frantically.

His voice cracked with panic. He grabbed one of the oars and tried to push off, but his hands were shaking too much to get a good grip.

His fear was overflowing. He didn’t care about food anymore.

He didn’t care about the sea cow. He only cared about getting as much distance as possible between them and whatever was lurking in the depths.

Both Skinny and Fatty were completely confused, but the look on Douglas’s face told them that something was very, very wrong.

They didn’t ask any more questions. They grabbed their oars and began rowing and rowing with everything they had.

They pulled with all their might, their muscles screaming, their breath coming in short, ragged gasps.

Douglas let out a sigh of relief seeing this. He slumped down, clutching the sides of the boat, waiting for the sea cow to disappear into the distance.

But it wasn’t long before that relief vanished.

He noticed that although the men were rowing with incredible strength, they weren’t going anywhere at all.

The water wasn’t rushing past the boat. The sea cow was still in place, barely ten feet away, watching them with those same wide eyes.

The boat felt strangely stable, as if it weren’t even in the water anymore....

’ It can’t be!’ Douglas eyes were filled with even more fear.

The moment he propped his head out of the boat and glanced down, his heart stopped.

His face turned pale, when he saw the reason they hadn’t been moving.

Below, he saw that the boat was atop a large black sea creature that had surfaced completely.

They weren’t in the water; they were resting right on the back of a monster. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

The beast resembled a giant shark, but it was several meters long and covered in skin that looked as tough as iron.

They were stuck atop it, high and dry, with no water around the lifeboat to push against.

The oars of the two pirates were just hitting the air and the rough skin of the beast, making a hollow thud sound.

Douglas felt like he couldn’t breathe. They were trapped. They were literally sitting on the dinner plate of something that could swallow their boat whole without even trying.

Just then, he also saw two figures pop out of the water right next to the sea cow. They didn’t come up like drowning people; they rose gracefully, as if the water were a staircase.

Both were women, and both were incredibly beautiful, but in a way that felt dangerous.

They both had different colored hair that stood out against the dark sea. One had hair the color of the deep blue ocean, and the other had hair as bright and pink as a sunset.

They wore sea accessories for clothes that made their beauty more on the exotic side.

"I thought you said you smelt him?" Artria, the one with the blue hair, glanced at Persephone with a flat, annoyed look.

She didn’t even seem to notice the three terrified pirates sitting on the back of her pet monster.

"Shut up!" Persephone retorted. She crossed her arms, her pink hair swaying in the wind.

Clearly, she was embarrassed, but she was the type who refused to let Artria get the better of her, especially when she had made a mistake.

"It doesn’t change the fact that it isn’t him. I did catch his scent, I just didn’t expect it to come from these guys," Persephone said, waving a hand toward the lifeboat.

She looked at Douglas and his men with a look of pure disgust, as if they were trash she had found at the bottom of a pool.

" You’re so quick to blame me, what about you?"

"Why didn’t you find him yet?" Persephone scoffed, turning the blame back on her sister.

"You’re supposed to be the tracker."

"I told you I can’t track his exact location, only that he is within a specific area," Artria frowned and said.

She looked tired, her blue eyes scanning the horizon with a mix of worry and frustration.

It was true.

Ever since Jacob had vanished, she had been using every bit of her power to find him. But the Blueberry Sea was massive, and there were so many things that could interfere with her senses.

Right now, she only knew that he was still within the Blueberry Sea. He was close, but "close" in the ocean could still mean miles away.

"Excuses, excuses..." Persephone harrumphed.

She kicked the water playfully, but her eyes were cold. "We’ve been searching for days. If we don’t find him soon, I’m going to start sinking every ship I see until he pops out." Her voice was extremely chilling.

"Why you!" Artria glared at her sister. "You know we can’t do that. We need to find him quietly. If you start a war with the humans, it will only make it harder to bring him back."

Douglas, Skinny, and Fatty sat in their boat, frozen like statues. They were listening to these two goddesses argue as if they weren’t even there.

Douglas realized with a jolt of horror that these were the merfolk the legends talked about, the ones who sank ships and ruled the Blueberry Sea. And he realized that they were looking for someone.

"Mermaids?!" both skinny and fatty blurted out in amazement. Their eyes were wide, and for a second, their hunger was replaced by pure wonder.

They had spent years on the sea hearing tales of these creatures, but seeing them in the flesh was something else entirely.

However, Douglas was much faster than them. Before they could say another word or do something stupid, he was quick to clamp down on both their mouths with his rough, salty hands.

"Shut it, you fools!" he hissed through his teeth.

He turned back to the two women with a look that was half-smile and half-grimace.

His heart was hammering against his ribs, but he tried to play it cool. He was a pirate, after all; he was supposed to be good at talking his way out of trouble.

AN: Alright everyone, I appreciate the love and care you guys are showing me, but I decided to stick with the original arrangement. But don’t worry, doesn’t mean I’m abandoning studying, just going to push past my limits from now on. Hope you liked today’s Chapters.