Chapter 132: Chapter 120: Clearing the Ship Debris

It was already dark when Flora Bloom woke up. Caleb had also woken up and was sitting cross-legged beside her with his eyes closed. A dark, shadowy halo emanated in circles around his small head.

Although Flora Bloom knew Caleb was already Level 3, she was still astonished that at such a young age, he could grasp the key to advancing from an Initial-stage Superpower to a Middle Level one.

Condensing.

A user’s superpower is divided into low, middle, and high stages, each with three levels. Leveling up simply requires using items like Crystal Cores to accumulate energy, which allows a user to easily reach the peak of any given stage. However, advancing from the Initial Stage to the Middle Level requires learning how to condense one’s power.

To put it simply, condensing is the act of compressing the energy of one hundred Initial-Stage Crystal Cores into the equivalent of a single Middle Level Crystal Core’s energy. Advancing from the Initial Stage to the Middle Level might require a thousand or even ten thousand Crystal Cores, though some people might only need a few hundred. This process cannot be bypassed by simply using the Crystal Core from a single Middle Level zombie. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

It’s all based on the maximum amount of Crystal Core energy an individual can handle.

Flora Bloom’s movements roused Caleb from his condensing. Seeing that she was awake, he smiled and stood up. "Sister, you’re awake? I’ll go get Uncle Ethan Monroe to heat up some porridge for you." With that, he ran out.

Flora Bloom wrapped herself in a woolen outer coat and walked to the kitchen. Ethan Monroe was in the kitchen getting the porridge ready, and she smelled its faint aroma as soon as she walked in. Without waiting for him, she turned on the stove and heated it up herself.

Just as she finished a bowl of porridge and a pleasant warmth spread through her body, she suddenly heard the footsteps of several people on deck.

"Old Lynch, come take a look! There’s a lot of ship debris in the area ahead." Caleb Bloom’s voice reached Flora Bloom’s ears.

"Old Lynch, I suspect this debris is from the ship the base sent out to find the supply fleet."

Irvin Holden’s voice also reached Flora Bloom’s ears, so she came out of the kitchen, right into the path of Caleb dragging along a sleepy Ethan Monroe.

"Let’s all go to the bridge and see what’s happening. It looks like something’s up. Caleb, go wake up Cynthia and Auntie Jade, too."

Flora Bloom was worried something might happen in the middle of the night; it was better for everyone to be on alert.

Everyone gathered on the bridge. After a flurry of activity at the controls, Sherman Lynch told them that the ship debris ahead was blocking their yacht’s path. If they couldn’t manually clear a channel, the yacht would likely be damaged if it hit any of the larger pieces.

They had only been at sea for three days. A damaged yacht would be extremely dangerous for the rest of their voyage.

Caleb Bloom volunteered to take a dinghy with Irvin Holden to clear the debris, but Flora Bloom turned him down.

Flora Bloom stared at the ship debris on the control room screen, alarm bells blaring in her mind once more. Not even a collision with a large ship could reduce a military vessel to such small fragments. ’Unless...’ she thought, ’...it was some kind of enormous, ferocious sea creature.’

Flora Bloom stared at the edges of the debris floating ahead. The distinct, jagged indentations were clearly bite marks—signs that the ship had been torn apart by a living creature.

"Dad, you and Old Lynch have a mission. Use all your power to reinforce the yacht’s hull and external parts. You have to be fast."

Caleb Bloom and Sherman Lynch grew tense at Flora’s urgent tone. "Flora, what’s going on? Can you tell us?"

Flora Bloom sighed. "Look at the edges of that debris. Look closely. Doesn’t it look like it was chewed up by something?"

Sherman Lynch and the others looked, and their expressions immediately turned grim. "You’re saying something attacked the ship?"

Flora Bloom nodded. "Remember my school of horse mackerel? The ones I acquired back at the coast."

"The apocalypse didn’t just bring mutated zombies into the world; it also created mutated, evolved creatures. There’s no time to waste. You two are our Gold Ability Users. You have to reinforce the hull from the bottom up. Strengthen it as much as you possibly can."

"Then who’s going to do the clearing?"

"I’ll go. You all stay on the ship," Irvin Holden volunteered, only to be rejected by Flora Bloom again.

"Taking the dinghy to clear the debris would be a waste of time. Once it’s full, you’d have to keep coming back to unload. Cynthia and I will go. Irvin Holden, you stay on the bridge. Turn on the sonar and keep a close watch on what’s happening underwater."

Flora deliberately ignored the worry on Jade’s face. She crouched down to look at Caleb. "Caleb, you’re the strongest one among us now. You need to stay by Auntie Jade’s side and protect her, okay? Can you do that?"

Caleb puffed out his small chest and declared solemnly, "I can, Sister! I can protect Auntie Jade."

"Mom, don’t worry," she said to Jade. "Remember my space? If there’s any danger, I’ll hide inside immediately."

No one was a match for the unknown dangers of the ocean. But Flora Bloom had her space; as long as she could get inside, nothing could touch her. And Cynthia Grant was a Second Level Wood Ability User. Her vines were long enough to reach the yacht from two or three hundred meters away, allowing her to get back aboard quickly.

Irvin Holden helped lower the dinghy, placing Flora Bloom and Cynthia Grant onto the water’s surface. Caleb Bloom and Sherman Lynch also quickly left the bridge and headed for the storage bay in the yacht’s hull.

Flora Bloom held a flashlight, shining its beam across the sea ahead of them.

"Cynthia, just use your vines to grab the debris in our path and toss it far off to the sides."

Cynthia Grant did as she was told. Three vines worked in unison, grabbing pieces of debris and flinging them far out to either side. Meanwhile, Flora Bloom kept the flashlight trained on the water, and with each wave of her hand, a dozen or so pieces of debris would simply vanish.

In no time, they had cleared a large area. The two women continued to paddle further ahead.

After they had cleared another fifty meters or so, making the path for the yacht even clearer, a shout suddenly came from behind them—it was Irvin Holden.

"Leader! Cynthia! Ahead! There are supply crates about a hundred meters out!"

Superpower users had excellent hearing, so even at that distance, they both heard him clearly. Flora Bloom and Cynthia Grant looked toward the spot a hundred meters away. Sure enough, bobbing among a pile of debris were two or three boxes.

The boxes were wrapped in green waterproof bags, which kept them from sinking.

"Supply crates!" Cynthia Grant exclaimed, looking at the boxes. A vine shot from her hand toward the target, unerringly wrapping around one of the crates and pulling it back.

When the first supply crate was pulled into the dinghy, they opened it. Inside, besides compressed biscuits, water, dehydrated vegetables, and canned meat, there were even several handguns and spare ammunition.

Seeing that there were guns in addition to food, Cynthia Grant had Flora Bloom stow the items away, then happily extended three vines at once, reaching for the remaining crates.

Of the three remaining crates, one was about a hundred meters away, while the other two were about fifty to sixty meters from each other. The farthest crate was also the largest.

As she was pulling the three crates back, Cynthia Grant suddenly frowned. ’Why won’t that crate move?’

Flora Bloom turned her head to look at the largest, most distant crate, which was entangled in Cynthia’s vine. She reached out, grabbed the vine, and gave it a hard tug.

With that tug, the resistance that felt like something was holding the crate back suddenly gave way, causing Flora Bloom to stumble and fall backward.

By the time she sat up and looked back toward the large, distant crate, it was already much closer, pulled steadily by Cynthia’s vine. But trailing right behind it, slicing through the water like a massive flag, was a gigantic triangular fin, moving at the same speed and heading right for them.