Chapter 97: THIRD POV.

Those wicked pirates actually intended to drown this child in the water.

They had locked her up like an animal and dropped the cage into the sea, probably watching and laughing from above as the weight of the cage dragged her down into the darkness. It was an act of pure, unadulterated cruelty that went beyond normal robbery.

Jacob, filled with an immediate rush of fury, hurriedly swam over to the cage. But he suddenly halted due to what looked like a young guy in front of the cage.

Jacob stopped his forward movement, his tail swishing slowly to keep him in place as he watched, using that split moment to check whether he was friend or foe.

The young man was floating right against the cages bars, desperately trying to do something.

The guy’s face was filled with panic and frustration as he tried to pry the darn cage open with his two arms, but to no avail.

He was pushing and pulling with everything he had, his muscles straining so hard they were trembling under the water, but the heavy cage wouldn’t budge even an inch.

His black hair and black eyes looked disheveled, floating wildly around his face in the currents.

He looked young, maybe a few years younger than Jacob himself, but he was in terrible shape.

The boy was already bleeding severely from a massive wound on his side, his dark red blood clouding the water around them in a thick mist.

The loss of blood must have been making him incredibly weak, and yet he refused to leave her side.

He kept coughing out bubbles, his lungs clearly running out of oxygen, but he kept hammering his fists against the lock, refusing to give up on the little girl.

Inside the bars, the little girl with silver hair and blue eyes looked to be crying seeing him like this.

Her tears were lost in the vast sea, but the heartbreaking expression on her face was clear.

She was banging her little hands against the bars too, not to escape, but seemingly begging the boy to swim away and save himself before he drowned or bled to death.

To think such a young girl, who looked no older than ten years old, was forced to endure such horrific torment in the middle of the sea.

"Out of the way!" Jacob, who couldn’t control his rage anymore, bolted forward.

His voice roaring through the water.

The sound of his voice carried through the water, along with the sheer force of his movement which created a powerful current that ripped through the sea.

He shot forward like a blue rocket, his eyes glowing with a terrifying anger.

The injured guy turned his head in surprise, his eyes widening as he noticed the sudden movement.

His pupils turned completely vigilant on seeing a strange merfolk creature with a long tail approaching them at high speed.

He didn’t know if Jacob was a friend or some monster sent by the sea to kill them.

Despite his severe injuries and lack of air, the black-haired boy showed incredible bravery; he used his remaining strength to swim directly in front of the cage, using his own bleeding body as a shield to protect the silver-haired girl behind him.

Jacob ignored his defensive posture entirely. He didn’t have time to explain himself or argue with a dying boy.

On reaching the young man, he reached out a powerful arm and shoved him aside.

He made sure to control his supernatural strength so as to only send him tumbling a few meters away through the water, rather than hurting him further.

The boy floated backward, gasping for the last bits of his strength, his eyes still fixed on the cage.

Jacob turned his full attention to the caged prison. The sight of the little girl’s terrified blue eyes looking at him through the bars pushed his anger over the edge.

"RARRGH!!!"

The instant Jacob got his hands on those steel bars, with one raging roar, he pulled with all his might. The muscles in his back and arms expanded, glowing with the blue energy of his form.

With a single, explosive burst of power, he pried the seemingly impossible-to-destroy cage open as if he were folding soft tofu.

The thick bars snapped and twisted out of shape like cheap twigs, breaking completely apart under his bare hands and leaving a wide, open gap for the child to escape.

The young guy, who’d already stabilized himself in the moving currents, widened his eyes in absolute disbelief for a moment. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

He stared at the ruined bars that had just been twisted apart like paper, his mind completely unable to process the sheer strength of the creature standing right in front of him.

Judging from his expression, one could only think that the cage must’ve been made from something far more formidable than meer iron.

He had spent his last bit of energy trying to scratch a single mark into that metal, yet this being had destroyed it with one single pull.

Inside the broken cage, the young girl stared at Jacob in fear, unconsciously swimming back from this mysterious entity.

To her, Jacob didn’t look like a savior just yet; he looked like another terrifying monster from the deep dark sea.

His shining scales, powerful tail, and the formidable air around him were too much for a child who had just survived a horrific attack.

She pushed herself against the back of the cage, her small hands shaking.

But the moment she did, she choked, more air leaving her lungs and making her dizzy.

The sudden movement caused her to lose the very last bit of oxygen she had been holding onto.

A stream of silver bubbles escaped from her lips, and her eyes began to roll back as the cold water rushed into her throat. Her small body went limp, her strength completely vanishing in an instant.

’ No! Don’t you dare die on me!’

Jacob didn’t wait for formalities. There was no time to explain that he was friendly or to comfort her with words.