Upper body human, lower body fish—that's called a mermaid. But what about a fish head with a human-type body?
[Race: Fishman]
Their eyes protruded like murky glass orbs, their bodies covered in irregularly embedded scales, with three bright red gill slits behind their ears that opened and closed rhythmically with their breathing.
In their webbed palms, they held crude weapons resembling fishing spears, clearly possessing considerable intelligence. The traps outside were most likely their handiwork as well.
Three diving puffshrooms found themselves surrounded by a group of these fishmen in the center of the great hall.
After Lin Jun detected these fishmen, he didn't have the puffshrooms flee. Trading 2.5 puffshrooms for more useful information was quite worthwhile.
Strangely, though they had surrounded the puffshrooms, they didn't attack. They just stared with their dead fish eyes, seemingly waiting for something.
Come to think of it, those three stone discs beneath the statue were altars, right? Waiting for an auspicious time to conduct a ritual?
Just perfect for one puffshroom each...
Lin Jun had no intention of letting these puffshrooms self-destruct. This ruin, which the fishmen treated as their territory, had considerable exploration value. Random explosions might cause a collapse.
Clearing rubble underwater was far more difficult than on land.
In his perception, another fishman appeared outside the great hall, arriving fashionably late.
The other fishmen actually parted to make way.
An elderly individual with wrinkles several times deeper than the other fishmen slowly swam over. Unlike the others who carried fishing spears, it held a staff in its hands—a fishman spellcaster!
The fishmen's intelligence had reached such heights!
Lin Jun pulled up its status panel, surprised to find it even had a name.
[Name: Gulu-gulu]
[Level: LV35]
[Fixed Status: Nefrela's Blessing (Wise One)]
[Skills: Water Magic LV7, Mental Magic LV6, Mana Storage LV6...]
[Title: Wise One (Intelligence attribute doubled)]
Wise One!
What was this Nefrela's Blessing? Could he get one for Little Black?
Speaking of which, this was the second "blessing" Lin Jun had encountered. The last one was the "Church Blessing" on Inanna.
However, compared to the Church Blessing that provided Light Element Affinity LV4 and Light Magic LV4, this blessing that directly granted the Wise One title was clearly more powerful.
Who was this Nefrela? How could they be more impressive than the Church?
Uh... a god?
The moment this thought emerged, Lin Jun immediately wanted to sever the connection to these three puffshrooms and never come down here again.
Nothing else—gods were too strange, completely belonging to unknown territory. Lin Jun didn't want to get involved with them at all, at least not now.
But Lin Jun forcibly suppressed this impulse. It was just a blessing...
Inanna, who had the Church's blessing, wasn't constantly monitored by the Church. This fishman hiding in an underground city probably wasn't being watched daily either.
Besides, whether this Nefrela was actually a god hadn't been confirmed yet.
"Outsider, I wonder what you hope to find by entering this place?"
!!!
The staff in old fishman Gulu-gulu's grasp glowed with magical light.
Telepathy?
Lin Jun was somewhat surprised by the spell the old fishman knew.
Unlike the fishman's ugly appearance, the voice in the old fishman's telepathy was gentle and intellectual.
If one forgot its fishman identity and just listened to the voice in the telepathy, Lin Jun might even imagine it as a white-haired elderly scholar in a library.
So this was what a [Wise One] was like!
He wondered if his own voice would become like this if he obtained this title?
It wasn't surprising that this clever old creature guessed the puffshrooms could communicate—after all, the first challenge to enter here was opening the mechanism door.
After brief consideration, Lin Jun abandoned the option of playing dumb and replied:
"I have no intention of disturbing you. Entering here was merely an accident. I'm searching the underwater areas for possibly existing rifts. Do you have any clues?"
If communication was possible, cooperation was possible. In this regard, these fishmen were even easier to approach than the tree demon.
The tree demon had the past grudge with Little Black standing in the way, while these fishmen had absolutely no previous enmity with him.
Moreover, regarding the rifts, Lin Jun and the fishmen should have aligned interests. As long as this fishman leader wasn't an idiot despite bearing the [Wise One] title, he should understand the stakes involved.
Sure enough, fishman Gulu-gulu replied: "Rifts? There were some before, but they disappeared long ago."
Had some before but disappeared—that probably referred to the period during the mana surge.
"Are there none now? The rifts I'm talking about might not be very large—even gaps smaller than a palm are possible. Have you recently discovered anywhere with very strange water currents, or any other anomalies?"
Hearing this, Gulu-gulu turned to look at a fishman beside him that was a size larger than the others.
The two fishmen made some "gulu-gulu" sounds—apparently their language?
Since they had a language, would dissecting a fishman corpse yield "Fishman Common Language LV1"?
After several minutes, Gulu-gulu said: "At least within our range of activity, we haven't discovered any."
"May I ask, what roughly is your range of activity?"
"From this building outward, most of the underwater area." Gulu-gulu didn't hide anything.
That was quite a large range.
Honestly, having searched for rifts up to this point, Lin Jun felt the seventh layer most likely had no rifts, though it was better to be safe.
"In that case, I'll go search elsewhere."
The puffshrooms attempted to return the way they came, and the fishmen showed no intention of blocking them.
"Wait," Gulu-gulu suddenly transmitted, "let them help search for rifts together."
At Gulu-gulu's gesture, three fishmen including the large one from before followed along. Lin Jun didn't refuse.
After leaving the ruins, the three fishmen proactively swam ahead, fully demonstrating to Lin Jun their survival skills underwater.
They maintained a triangular formation throughout, skillfully weaving between undercurrents and precisely identifying underwater paths.
When scattered magical beasts pounced from rock crevices and sand piles, the cold gleam of fishing spears always arrived before their roars.
Facing more troublesome predators, the fishmen would suddenly change their swimming rhythm.
And for those magical beasts that could truly bring danger, they would use aquatic plants for concealment, or hide in the complex terrain of rubble and ruins, waiting until the crisis passed.
Though there was no communication throughout the journey, the fishmen protected the puffshrooms very well.
The three puffshrooms barely had any chance to use their skills, and following behind them gave Lin Jun the same feeling as following behind the tree demon on the sixth layer.
After more than ten hours of continuous exploration, Lin Jun had basically toured the entire underwater area and indeed found no rifts.
Watching the three fishmen return to the ruins as the great door slowly closed, Lin Jun always had a strange feeling.
How to put it—they were too friendly.
If it were him seeing outsiders break into his home base, throwing them out naked would already show his good temper.
These fishmen were actually willing to help search for rifts together.
Of course, the reason definitely lay with the old fishman Gulu-gulu. The fishmen clearly all listened to him, and his friendliness presumably had some consideration behind it.
But it wasn't a bad thing overall.
Perhaps he should communicate more with them. Next time he could try asking about the ruins and their faith?
......
......
......
The three diving puffshrooms didn't return to the surface. Without [Mana Storage], a full day of exploration had exhausted their energy.
In fact, if the fishmen hadn't helped the puffshrooms save a great deal of energy, they should have starved to death much earlier.
The three diving puffshrooms stopped their activity not far from the ruins, disappearing into the mycelial network.
Not long after, a fishman found the three puffshroom corpses that hadn't been consumed yet, bringing them all back to the ruins.
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