Chapter 109: Chapter 97: Come Be Food for My Fishies

"What are you waiting for? Grab them," Mason Adle sneered, a wicked grin spreading across his face. The way his eyes roamed over Flora Bloom and Cynthia Grant made their skin crawl.

"I’m getting a little impatient. Cynthia Grant, if I’d known you had such an unparalleled beauty by your side, I wouldn’t have bothered chasing you so hard. No, wait. If I’d known, I could have been enjoying the best of both worlds, couldn’t I? HAHAHAHA."

Flora Bloom had no intention of wasting her breath on this pervert, who looked frail but was rotten to the core. But her party was surrounded by ten superpower users, and a dozen more stood menacingly behind Hugh Warren’s group. Escape was impossible.

So Flora Bloom took three deep breaths, finally raising her eyes to meet the gaze of the man who was endlessly spewing vulgarities.

"Listen,"

In that moment, Mason Adle saw Flora Bloom’s eyes as a shining moon in the night sky. His heart pounded in a way it never had before, and an ecstatic look spread across his face as he stared at her.

"Well, little beauty, you’ve finally decided to speak. What is it you want to say?"

Flora Bloom let out another slow breath. Her eyes narrowed, and she looked at Mason Adle as if he were already dead.

"Is there something wrong with you?"

"What did you say?" Mason Adle asked again, thinking he must have heard wrong.

"If you’re sick, go get help. And if you dare lay your eyes on me again, I’ll feed them to my fish."

Flora Bloom’s threat was met with scornful laughter from Mason Adle and the dozen superpower users behind him. Even the ten encircling her group snickered under their breath.

"HAHAHA. This little beauty’s got quite a personality. I like it a lot. If you want my eyes for your fish, I think you’ll have to come over and take them yourself. I’ll even... permit you to sit on my lap while you do it."

As Mason Adle spoke, the members of the superpower squad chuckled. They all thought this naive young girl was already a toy in the hands of the great young master from Argent. They paid her words no mind at all.

"Hmph. I see there’s no other way."

Suddenly, the calm surface of the sea by the lighthouse rippled, though there was no wind. Layers of waves, both large and small, began to rise from those ripples.

Each new wave pushed the one before it, surging toward the shore. It was as if countless hands were cradling the waves, shoving them farther and farther forward until they crashed into the steadily rising water. In a matter of seconds, a sudden tide swept the calm shore, and the water level at the base of the lighthouse rose by over a dozen centimeters.

The tide did not recede. The water level continued to rise.

The smile on Flora Bloom’s lips widened. The Water Element surged up from the seawater on the ground, wrapping around her companions’ ankles and holding them firmly in place, unmoving.

She stood at the edge of the sea, immersed in the water. The abundant Water Element around her made her feel completely filled with power.

At first, the ten superpower-wielding soldiers surrounding them were able to hold their ground.

But gradually, silvery-white fish began to dive out of the waves, swimming toward their feet. The sauries, each about twenty centimeters long, splayed their razor-sharp scales and swarmed toward the ten superpower users.

"AGH! What was that?!" A silver streak flashed beneath the water. By the time a soldier realized something was wrong, a hint of crimson had already begun to stain the surface of the water around their feet.

"AHHH!" An even more bloodcurdling scream rang out. A superpower user was suddenly dragged down into the water, instantly vanishing beneath a swarm of shimmering, silvery-white creatures.

The silver-white fish vanished as quickly as they had appeared, returning to the depths. A human skeleton, picked clean to the bone, bobbed to the surface, with only a few scraps of sinew still clinging to the frame.

It all happened so suddenly that no one had time to react.

The architects of this carnage were merely the underlings of the ten saury leaders Flora Bloom had absorbed into her space that day. ’I don’t even know how sauries communicate,’ Flora Bloom thought, ’so how can such a dense school distinguish friend from foe?’ They attacked only the ten superpower users who had encircled them, leaving her own people completely unharmed.

’I didn’t even know they could do that,’ Flora thought. ’Drag someone into the water, strip the flesh from their bones, and leave nothing but a skeleton.’

’It’s a little horrifying,’ she admitted to herself, ’but if it’s effective against my enemies, that’s all that matters.’

The remaining nine superpower users encircling them froze in terror at the sight of the skeleton. The first one let out a scream and fled. Then, one after another, all nine turned and scrambled toward Hugh Warren’s position.

But it was too late.

Through her mental link, Flora Bloom knew that ten giant sauries had already assembled in the waters by the lighthouse the moment Hugh Warren’s group appeared. They were waiting for her order to attack the targets she had designated.

"Since you’re here, you might as well become food for my little fish."

The words had barely left her mouth when sheets of silver flashed beneath the surface, reflecting the blinding sun. Of the nine men, only the first to react had made it back to Hugh Warren. The other eight were simultaneously dragged into the water. They flailed for just a moment before dense swarms of silver creatures enveloped them one by one, dragging them farther out to sea. A few waves crashed, and then they were gone without a trace, not even bones left behind.

As Mason Adle, Hugh Warren, Evan, and the others stared, dumbfounded, at the eight men who had vanished in an instant, a silver-white saury the length of an adult’s arm leaped from the crest of the highest wave. The sun reflected so brightly off its scales that its form was impossible to make out.

After its leap, the spike on its head aimed directly at Mason Adle. The scales on its body flared open, and it glided through the air toward his head.

Only then did Hugh Warren get a clear look at what had been attacking the superpower users.

They were those horrifying sea creatures. The same ones from Navy Avenue that had been attacking any living thing that passed.

Silver bodies, spiked heads, and the ability to glide through the air. Any living thing they attacked was left as a mere skeleton, stripped of all flesh and blood.

Seeing the giant saury about to pierce Mason Adle’s skull, Hugh Warren shoved him violently aside. If Mason Adle were to be killed here, then even in this apocalyptic world, she would likely have no place left to survive.

Mason Adle staggered and fell to the side, narrowly dodging the giant saury’s piercing attack. However, the spike on its head sliced his eyelid, leaving a deep, diagonal gash that ran from his eyebrow to the outer corner of his eye, like the strap of a pirate’s eyepatch. Blood gushed from the wound.

As the giant saury shot past, a short but piercing scream came from behind Mason Adle. A superpower user was seen with a massive, bloody hole where their eye socket should have been. The person stood frozen for a few seconds before collapsing backward.

After rocketing out of the person’s eye socket, the giant saury dove back into the water and vanished from sight.

In the eyes of Hugh Warren and the others, Flora Bloom’s smile was like that of a soul-reaper from hell. The more radiant her smile, the more it sent a chill down their spines, making their hair stand on end.

Fish food.

They finally understood what Flora Bloom meant by "fish food."

They had brought a squad of twenty-three superpower users, and in the first clash, ten were already dead. Flora Bloom and her companions hadn’t even moved, yet the enemy’s strength was already drastically reduced.

Of the thirteen remaining superpower users, seven were Fire Element, two were Earth Element, one was Wood Element, two were Wind Element, and one was Metal Element. They had never expected Flora Bloom to be able to control the very monsters that had been attacking people on Navy Avenue. Moreover, the creatures were cunning and agile, able to operate not only in the water but also for short periods in the air.

The most terrifying part was their sheer number. They now swirled around the feet of Flora Bloom and her companions, as if forming a protective barrier. The others dared not approach, terrified that the creatures would suddenly leap out and attack at any moment.

Hugh Warren had only known that Flora Bloom was a Water Ability User and hadn’t taken her seriously in the slightest. That was why she had assembled a team dominated by powerful Fire Ability Users—they were meant to counter Cynthia Grant’s Second Level Wood Element Ability.

But what she had never imagined was that Flora Bloom also possessed the ability to control sea creatures—the very same creatures they had tried and failed to defeat with every method they could think of.