I didn't want to fight the Atlanteans' allies, especially not when they were already cornered by the undersea tribe. Hurting their marine spirit beast allies would definitely reduce their fighting effectiveness drastically, and in a time when they couldn't afford it, it might make a huge difference.
But I wasn't selfless enough to let them kill me. If they attacked, I would have no choice but to defend myself. It wasn't ideal, but sometimes I had to do what I needed in order to survive.
"Huh?"
To my surprise, the Lantern Fishes and the War Turtle didn't attack me. They simply floated there, watching me from afar. Well, it wasn't that far, to be honest. They were close enough to dart in and bite me before I could react, but for now they maintained enough distance to not invade my personal space. That meant they had no intention of attacking me. Yet.
Exhaling in relief, I jerked my head back toward where the main battle was taking place.
"Let's go back. The Atlanteans need our assistance."
That was when I saw the numerous notification windows. Blinking, I tried to make sure I wasn't seeing things, but the holographic windows wouldn't go away.
-Would you like to make a spirit contract with this Lantern Fish? –
-Would you like to make a spirit contract with this Lantern Fish? –
-Would you like to make a spirit contract with this Lantern Fish? –
-Would you like to make a spirit contract with this War Turtle? –
-Would you like to make a spirit contract with this Little Angler? –
-Would you like to make a spirit contract with this Little Angler? –
Now that I looked around, I saw that it wasn't just a shoal of Lantern Fishes. There were plenty of ordinary ranked Little Anglers as well, smaller variants of the Lantern Fish that seemed more like tadpoles than fish, though they were clearly angler fishes with bioluminescent anglers dangling from their heads. They had four webbed fins from their bulbous bodies…ugh, screw the descriptions. If anyone played a certain pocket monster game, they would know what I was talking about.
Let's just say Little Anglers would evolve into the Yellow ranked Lantern Fishes, they were both water and electric type spirit beasts and counted as deep sea Poke…I mean spirit beasts, and leave it at that.
The War Turtle, though…well, never mind. Again, I didn't want to refer to the game about pocket monsters, but you get the picture. Though it was much larger than me, with a shell that resembled a shield. No wonder similar turtle type spirit beasts were serving as Atlantis's defense. Their shells were near impenetrable, with the War Turtle's indomitable shell withstanding a bite force from the Megalodon that measured up to 200,000 newtons. That was about two million kilograms per square centimeter. And the War Turtle's shell didn't break under such tremendous bite force, suffering only a few dents that would hopefully heal by infusing spiritual qi into the affected areas over time.
…the reason why I knew that was because I heard Jun Hai explain it to me enthusiastically the other day. I really had to thank him for that knowledge.
A War Turtle was a peak Yellow Ranked spirit beast, close to evolving to a Mystic ranked Blast Tortoise later on. I definitely wanted a spirit contract with it, so I pressed the confirmation button without thinking. I decided to do the same for the rest of the Little Anglers and Lantern Fishes too. They were cute, and honestly, I was considering making them my contracted spirit beasts earlier, when I first saw them. Their dual electric and water type would make them very useful and versatile, and I looked forward to having an armada of my own.
I was so glad the super summoning system finally gave me a chance to forge spirit contracts with so many of them.
It took me less than a minute to add almost a hundred Little Anglers and Lantern Fishes to my system. I think I had like sixty of the little guys and forty of the bigger ones. This was going to be very interesting.
"Huh, but this doesn't…make any sense, though."
Even though I benefited from this exchange, I didn't know what sort of advantages the spirit beasts received in return. Sure, I had an army to summon whenever I needed help, but what could I do for these guys in return?
Perhaps I was being stupid for not taking advantage of my situation and just making use of these guys, but now that they were my subordinates, I felt as if I needed to look after them. They weren't just expendable tools or weapons that I could simply throw at the enemy. They were living creatures with their own lives and dreams too. Well, as far as spirit beasts could dream, anyway.
-War Turtle. Rank: Yellow. Elemental Affinity: Water. Nature: Steadfast and reliable. Gender: male. Would you like to give him a name? –
For some reason, only the War Turtle required a name. Probably because I had way too many Lantern Fishes and Little Anglers so I couldn't give all of them names. Even if the system wanted me to, I had to put that off because I was in the middle of a war. On the other hand, I didn't need as much time to bestow upon my new War Turtle a name.
"Uh, how about Da Hai?"
That sounded a little similar to my brother's name, and in fact the character for Hai was identical – it was the kanji for sea. Not gonna lie, that was what inspired the name because my younger brother was also dependable, so Da Hai reminded me of Jun Hai.
Da Hai appeared to be pleased with his new name, and he nodded eagerly before turning to face the stream of merfolk that continued to batter against the Atlantean defenses. I understood his meaning. We had to return to the fight and help protect Atlantis from the undersea tribe. I pushed my glasses up my nose and slowly drifted upward before swinging my hand.
"All right, guys, let's go!"
My newly contracted armada let out whistles and cheers before swimming forward. I followed them, kicking and paddling because I sucked at breaststroke. Unfortunately, unlike my marine spirit beasts, I ended up languishing far behind.
That was fine. I was still holding my bow and could offer support from long range, so I didn't need to charge forward among the vanguard. Not only that, I noticed a new window that showed up as another notification.
The super summoning system was pretty active lately. After a long period of silence, it was actually doing something for once. Other than simply assigning me missions, I mean. I was sort of relieved because I was sick of slaving away for its quests without knowing what kind of rewards I was getting in return. I mean, most of them had been rewards that I would want even without a system anyway, whether it was to restore my cultivation or rescue my mom and the relic her marine laboratory was safeguarding.
But now that I had a new army of spirit beasts that I could summon, the system seemed to have suddenly become very generous.
-New summoning ability (Passive): Boost. Effects: Enhance the elemental abilities of contracted summoned spirit beasts by 100%. –
-Additional summoning benefits: Contracted summon beasts have a 500% chance of evolving when compared to their counterparts in the wilderness. And their growth rates are improved substantially, including the possibility of unlocking hidden potentials and elemental abilities usually unavailable to wild spirit beasts. (User was wondering how his summoned spirit beasts will benefit from the contract)-
Did the summoning system just read my mind or something? How did it know what I was thinking? then again, this wasn't the first time it was responding directly to my thoughts, so I wasn't surprised. Just a little annoyed. But hey, if it worked, it worked.
As if to prove the system's point, Da Hai zoomed forward like a torpedo. Withdrawing into his shell, he began spinning around like a cannonball and smacked the face of a Megalodon. The mega shark crumpled, its cartilage skull caved in from the blow.
Even then, it didn't seem dead yet, but Da Hai popped out of his shell and carved it open with his claws.
Clearly, he was stronger than before, when he couldn't even defeat a Megalodon by himself.
Not to be outdone, the Little Anglers began swarming all over a giant squid, clamping down on its writhing tentacles and biting. Electricity crackled around them, and once all sixty of them descended and anchored themselves with their teeth, they unleashed a powerful current that burned the poor squid and left its convulsing corpse sinking into the depths.
The Lantern Fishes joined in, though they individually split off to engage targets of opportunity. Several of them lashed out at the merfolk, cutting them apart with highly pressurized jets of water, crushing them with underwater waterfalls (don't ask me how that worked, just watch a pocket monster game or something) or electrocuting them with powerful pulses of lightning. A few banded together to form hit squads to strike at larger Plesiosaurs or mosasaurs, keeping out of the range of their powerful jaws, necks or tails while spraying them with highly pressurized streams or webs of lethal lightning.
Though most of the Atlanteans were too busily occupied by their individual life or death struggles to notice, now that I was aware of them, I could see the huge difference between my contracted armada and the wild spirit beasts who had allied themselves with Atlantis. Their elemental abilities had been boosted tremendously, allowing them to fight on par with stronger foes.
"I can't let my own summoned spirit beasts show me up!"
Coming to a stop in the water, I drew my bow and fired off several azure arrows to assassinate merfolk from range. One of the undersea tribe's chiefs noticed that I was taking out his subordinates by great numbers and he swerved around to charge at me. Before he could plunge his trident into my chest, the three deadly points found themselves deflected by the impenetrable shell of Da Hai.
With a bellow, Da Hai spun around and sank his claws into the merfolk chief's shoulders before raking them across his chest, sending geysers of blood spouting out. The merfolk chief roared in fury and retaliated, but Da Hai twisted about, his shell impervious to his opponent's claws and trident.
Then my azure arrow nailed the merfolk chief in the head, splitting apart its skull. Brain matter leaked out from the gap, mixed with blood, but not taking any chances, Da Hai ravaged its throat to seal its death.
"Thanks!" I flashed Da Hai a thumb's up, and he smirked before paddling away. Spinning around, he smacked a pliosaur away with his tail, and a few of my Lantern Fishes swam in to help, blasting the reeling monster with electricity.
The undersea tribe's numbers were dwindling, but I could see that the Atlanteans had taken massive casualties as well. Countless bodies floated among the reddened sea depths, with several mega sharks driven into a frenzy and tearing apart anything that came near them, friend or foe. Even so, I saw the largest concentration of merfolk mustering for one final push into the heart of the defense.
There, Myria was leading her people in a stalwart defense, struggling to plug a gap in the inner territory of Atlantis. While the spirit beasts fought in titanic clashes around the outer dome where the barrier used to exist, the vast majority of Atlanteans had fallen back to their dome-shaped fortifications, luring merfolk and sea monsters to tight confines before counterattacking and killing them one by one. One of them had been reduced to rubble, though, the debris drifting away as Megalodons and Colossal Octopuses tore them apart, exposing more of the vulnerable Atlanteans not just to their teethy and tentacular embrace, but also a vanguard of merfolk.
That was why the huge muster of undersea tribe had gathered nearby. To force open the breach and end it once and for all. They were intelligent to know that if they took out the Atlantean commander, the rest of the kingdom's forces would fall.
Cut off the head and the body will fall. The same principle applied to the enemy, though.
"How do I stop them?"
While I was thinking of a plan, I saw a new notification window that conveniently popped up as a sort of Deus ex Machina that was so frequent in the very power fantasy web novels I derided.
-New summoning ability (Active): Synchronize. Effects: Coordinate all the relevant spirit beasts into a single formation to combine their elemental abilities into a single, united technique that is more than the sum of their parts. Applicable to: Offensive elemental attacks, defensive techniques, and buffs. –
"Oh, really?" I couldn't help but grin at the timely notification. The super summoning system was pretty generous today. To be fair, even without its help, I might be able to figure out something, but it certainly was making my job easier. I wasn't going to say no to that. Nodding, I gestured for my aquatic armada to form up around me. "Let's do this, guys."