Chapter 574 Reversal of the Situation

"Smash!"

The massive iron hammer, its surface stained with glowing blue blood, plummeted with a howling gust, carrying enough force to shatter solid rock.

The fishman's furious roar cut off abruptly. Its round skull burst like a water balloon, spraying thick blue-and-white fluid in all directions.

"Rarghhhh!!!"

With one foot planted on the fishman corpse whose skull he had just pulverized, Tieg, captain of the Raging Tide Warband, tilted his head back and let out a battle cry brimming with power.

As a half-barbarian, half-dwarf hybrid, he was noticeably shorter than the other adventurers, standing barely over one point six meters tall. Yet with his steel-like musculature, the ring-adorned beard braids that clashed together as he moved, and the wild, wave-like tribal tattoos covering his skin, he exuded an inexplicably savage, reliable sense of strength.

Because he laced the roar with battle cry techniques from his Barbarian Tribe, the morale of the Raging Tide Warband members on the field surged.

Even the unspoken doubts about their captain, Tieg—doubts that had quietly crept into their hearts due to their encounters in the Secret Realm—gradually dissipated amid the blood and battle cries.

Copper Rock, the dwarf who had previously possessed a wild boar and provided a good start for Xia Nan's evolutionary journey, fought with unmatched ferocity. Dual-wielding battle axes, he swung at the fishman lackeys before him like a hurricane.

Although the adventurers of the Raging Tide Warband had their combat strength drastically weakened by the Ritual Secret Realm, their combat experience and teamwork remained largely unaffected.

As captain, Tieg took the lead, charging forward to fight the sahuagin in close combat. His squad members followed closely, supporting one another, and for a moment, they actually managed to beat back the fishmen swarming toward them.

Meanwhile, not far from the Raging Tide Warband, the Windforged squad was also dealing with their own sahuagin encounter.

One might have expected their captain's earlier betrayal in the Secret Realm to deal a massive blow to the team's morale.

Surprisingly, despite their conflicting thoughts and the stiff, awkward atmosphere, the Windforged squad—still led by their captain, Zephyr—demonstrated a level of combat prowess that marked them as elites across the entire Southern Archipelagos as they faced the ugly, roaring fishmen charging ashore with harpoons.

"Swish! Swish! Swish!"

The sharp whistling of the air blended into one continuous note. Combined with the special footwork of his professional combat techniques, the pure-blood elf Zephyr moved with incredible grace. Like a noble dancing in a banquet hall, every thrust of his double-edged rapier left a dripping, bloody hole in a critical spot on his enemies.

Yet he didn't finish them off. Instead, he left these severely wounded fishman lackeys—now stripped of most of their combat strength—for his teammates behind him to clean up.

Leslie, the rogue whose actions had recently soured the team's atmosphere, was among them. Clearly not letting his inner resentment make him passive in battle, he swung his short blades with all his might, weaving between several sahuagin lackeys and leaving gash after gash on their bodies.

Of course, his ability to focus so intently on the battle, seemingly tossing his grievances from the Secret Realm to the back of his mind, was likely due in part to the fact that the object of his conflict—Fink, the deputy captain of the Windforged—had his head blown clean off by a Magic Missile from a fishman priest at the very start of the fight.

Twang—

A melodious lute tune drifted over from the rear of the battlefield.

Like Xia Nan, the halfling Alton had waited until the Secret Realm collapsed on its own before breaking out. Because of this, he was in peak condition; his combat strength hadn't been compromised at all.

Seeing Xia Nan charge directly into the enemy's rear, there was no way the diminutive halfling was going to sit by and do nothing as his teammate.

As a bard, he possessed some capacity for close-quarters combat, but in a large-scale melee like this, his ability to apply buffing statuses to his allies was obviously far more effective.

Alton's choice of melody was relatively conservative. After all, he didn't know the combat styles of the two squads on the field; picking something too aggressive could easily backfire.

Thus, he settled for a tune that would somewhat boost morale and accelerate stamina recovery.

Even so, as those buffs rode the music into the ears of every adventurer on the field, the pressure of the battle eased immensely.

Fishman lackeys fell one after another amid the adventurers' roars, and the scales of victory visibly tilted in the adventurers' favor.

But right at that moment, what brought the entire battlefield to a dead halt and completely reversed the situation was a blur that violently shot out from beneath the ocean surface, moving so fast it left only a deep-blue contrail in the air.

"Ah!!!"

From within the crowd, a shrill scream was abruptly cut short.

Everyone looked over, only to see Leslie—the rogue who had fought so valiantly against the sahuagin just moments prior, swinging his short blades like the wind—now pinned directly to the ground at a slant by a massive Deep-Blue Goldstone Harpoon.

The attack had come far too suddenly, far too fast.

Because his physical attributes had been crippled across the board by his death in the Secret Realm, Leslie hadn't even had time to react and dodge.

Almost the exact instant he heard the whistle of wind from his flank, the harpoon's sharp tip pierced his chest. Riding a tremendous kinetic force, it carried his body backward through the air like a javelin before violently nailing him into the dirt.

The fierce, blazing momentum of the battlefield froze in a flash. Blood spewed uncontrollably from Leslie's mouth, accompanied by wet, rattling gasps from his throat. Aside from that, the air was swallowed by dead silence.

"Splash."

Waves crashed against the reefs.

Flanked by several elite guards, the sahuagin commander rode the surf ashore.

Possessing ample combat experience against adventurers and well aware of the importance of crushing enemy morale with a grand entrance, the commander had deliberately waited in the seawater for an extra two minutes, hunting for the perfect moment to strike.

Only a moment ago did he finally select Leslie as his target, using him as the opening act.

His lower-left arm rose slightly.

"Thwack!"

The Deep-Blue Goldstone Harpoon—which had just pinned the rogue to the dirt and was still vibrating from the force of the throw—seemed to be manipulated by an invisible force. It abruptly yanked itself out of the soil and flew backward into the commander's grasp.

Under the watchful eyes of the adventurers, the sahuagin commander put on a bit of a show, casually flicking Leslie's impaled corpse off the harpoon like sliding roasted meat off a skewer.

He stomped down, bursting the still-gasping rogue's head. Amid the viscous fluid splattering between his webbed toes, he raised the harpoon high and let out a hiss: "Galu!!!"

In that instant, the situation on the battlefield completely reversed.

As an elite commander leading a fishman force of this scale, this heavily armed and exceptionally muscular sahuagin possessed combat capabilities far beyond anything a bottom-tier adventurer could muster.

His Challenge Rating was absolutely no lower than Level 5.

Under normal circumstances, if the Raging Tide Warband and the Windforged actually joined forces against this single enemy, securing a final victory probably wouldn't be too difficult.

But right now, everyone was trapped in a weakened state, and their enemy had brought a massive horde of fishman subordinates.

Combining these two factors, the adventurers—who had previously secured the advantage on the coast—were battered into a steady retreat.

As the captains of their respective squads, Zephyr and Tieg faced the newly arrived sahuagin commander. Regardless of how they had acted inside the Secret Realm, both spontaneously shouldered their duties as leaders—each bringing one or two elite members as backup and proactively charging out to intercept the commander.

At first, they could rely on their numbers to stall and contest the beast. But as the screams of their other members were continuously drowned out by fishman roars, the elite members grew anxious, and the commander seized upon their openings.

"Galu!"

The surface of the Deep-Blue Goldstone Harpoon was shrouded in a profound energy resembling the eerie glow of the deep sea. Accompanied by an air-tearing sonic boom, it swatted away the double-edged rapier thrusting from its flank, the impact nearly tearing the weapon from Zephyr's hands. Simultaneously, the commander's free upper-right arm rose high and chopped down like a whistling whip, interrupting the half-blood Tieg just as he charged an attack.

The long tail behind him swept out with the momentum. It didn't carry much force, but it was enough to force back two adventurers trying to exploit the opening to attack his rear.

The advantage that four arms provided in combat was fully realized in this moment.

Even while fending off four adventurers—Tieg and Zephyr included—he still had his upper-left arm free.

His webbed claws flashed with a cold, sharp gleam as he violently snatched downward.

Amid a nonstop torrent of filthy curses and frantic struggling, the dual-axe-wielding dwarf Copper Rock was hoisted completely off the ground by his head, held by the tall, brawny fishman commander.

Its grasp of Common wasn't very proficient, so it could only vaguely make out a few dirty words amid the short brute's barrage of vulgar slang and angry insults.

Yet he wasn't the least bit annoyed. He raised a leg to once again interrupt Tieg's charged attack next to him, and squeezed his left arm.

"Crunch."

His sharp claws sank deep into Copper Rock's scalp, sending rivulets of crimson blood trickling down.

The dwarf's wide-open eyes rapidly bloodshot until they were entirely flooded with crimson. Blood began to stream from his nose and mouth, and the filthy curses spilling from his lips gradually deteriorated into incoherent garbles.

Finally, accompanied by the crisp snap of shattering bone, his skull was completely crushed.

Ring—

Their comrade-in-arms had just had his head squeezed until it popped right in front of them.

This horrifying scene, playing out right before their eyes, inflicted a near-simultaneous deterrence effect on the four adventurers surrounding the fishman commander.

Zephyr and Tieg fared well enough. As captains with rich combat experience, they had witnessed teammates die many times before. However, the other two squad members assisting them in the siege were visibly far more affected.

The commander seized opening after opening during the clash, leaving an array of cuts and gashes all over their bodies.

"Tsk—"

Those cruel, fish-like eyes swept across the faces of the adventurers standing before him.

He stared at those expressions—visages that looked tough on the surface, but were clearly trying to suppress the terror beneath.

The sahuagin commander couldn't help but reveal a naked look of mockery and ridicule.

The racial culture of the sahuagin meant they harbored an intense, innate discrimination and hostility toward all other races.

Those living in inland regions were mostly fine, as the fishmen rarely came into contact with them.

But the intelligent creatures living along the Continental Coast, or on islands out in the sea, were viewed by the sahuagin as invaders stealing their habitats and environmental resources, and were consequently raided and slaughtered.

The sahuagin held a particularly deep hatred for the adventurers active upon the waves. They constantly fantasized about butchering their way into Barracuda Bay and flattening the Association branch stationed there.

Right now, having been ordered to lead his troops to assault this human-occupied large island, the commander had accepted the task with absolute glee.

Executing two adventurers just now right in front of everyone—in a method so cruel it bordered on torture—was naturally meant to terrify and shatter enemy morale. But to say it wasn't partly driven by personal sadistic pleasure would be a lie.

Now, as he single-handedly pinned down four elite adventurers on the shore, listening to the sounds of slaughter from his fishman subordinates, the commander's mood grew increasingly euphoric.

He could almost envision the beautiful scene in the near future: bringing his fishmen deeper into the island to converge with the other units, exterminating every visible foreign race, and finally allowing this island to return to the ocean's embrace in absolute purity.

However, before he could fully indulge in his bright vision of the future, a shrill, terror-filled shriek erupted from behind him.

Swinging his harpoon, he forced back the adventurers in front of him.

Taking the opening, the sahuagin commander subconsciously cast his gaze toward the source of the sound.

His fishy eyes, previously brimming with cruelty and tyranny, abruptly froze.

His pupils violently quivered as they shrank to pinpricks.

From the moment he had ordered his elites to block the ambusher while taking a portion of his forces to reinforce the shore, scarcely five minutes had passed.

Yet the rolling azure sea had already been dyed a chilling, glowing blue. That was—the blood of the fishmen.

Severed, mangled limbs and heads frozen in stiff expressions bobbed amidst the waves, looking like nothing more than kitchen scraps tossed off the deck of a human ship.

The one uttering the terrified screams was a somewhat hunched fishman priest.

Having likely cast some sort of life-saving spell, a spectral layer enveloped its body, temporarily breaking it free from the ocean and gravity as it levitated above the water, slowly drifting upward at a visible pace.

Its condition was completely wrong; it looked terrified out of its wits.

It unleashed piercing wails the likes of which wouldn't even be heard from the most cowardly, wretched human slave. Both hands gripped its rough-hewn Sea-Rock Staff like a lifeline as its unblinking fish eyes stared dead at the ocean below.

'What is that?' the sahuagin commander wondered in astonishment.

A profoundly deep, pitch-black shadow was coalescing and thickening just beneath the surface of the sea.

Amid the crashing waves, he faintly heard an eerie wolf's howl rising from a muffled rumble into a piercing crescendo.

"Boom!!!"

Right as the shadow beneath the surface reached maximum density, the seawater exploded outward, bursting with kinetic fury.

Droplets of water sparkled in the air.

In a daze, the sahuagin commander suddenly recalled the very first time he had gone out on a mission with his elders in his youth—when a terrifying demon whale had treated them as prey, swimming straight up from the abyssal depths with its bloody maw wide open, nearly swallowing him whole.

A pitch-black abyssal wolf beast—wreathed in dark, mist-like energy and exuding an indescribably horrifying aura—violently breached the surface of the sea.

Locking its sights on the prey trying to flee through the air, its Wolf's Maw snapped wide open. And a split second before it reached the apex of its leap and gravity dragged it back down—it clamped shut!

"Crunch."

The sickening sound of flesh tearing and bone snapping echoed slowly through the air.

The pitch-black wolf beast plunged back into the sea, dragging along the larger half of the prey's corpse that it had just bitten cleanly in two with its Wolf's Maw.

As for the fishman priest's remaining half—a head frozen in boundless terror and a single shoulder—it lagged a half-beat behind, floating up another futile inch or two under the effects of lingering magic particles.

Only then did it succumb to freefall, dropping like scattered garbage.

With a wet thud, it splashed into the blood-dyed sea, barely stirring a ripple.