Markets and Multiverses

As the fish glared at our boat, I scanned our surroundings, desperate to find a way to survive. I wasn’t done with this world yet - I wasn’t ready to die.

The fish teleported closer to our boat, completely disregarding the fact that we were out of range of its teleportation. We began desperately flying away, completely ignoring any opportunities to attack the fish. The other boats would take care of that - we needed to survive first.

The fish’s odd rune began glowing brightly.

Realizing what it was about to do, I pushed my water manipulation abilities as best as I possibly could, dragging a head-sized bubble of water up from the ocean and towards our ship. I realized I couldn’t manipulate enough water for it to matter, so I turned to the other ships.

“Shield! Get us a shield!” I screamed, hoping the other ships could hear me.

Luckily, a few other water users from other boats noticed our plight, and a screen of water and sand rose up from the ocean before turning into a thin screen, shielding our ship and protecting us from the glowing fish. Realizing the water would obscure its vision, I quickly took control of a small chunk of the water, before creating three copies of our ship and making them fly in different directions. With its view already distorted by the sand and water, the glowing fish might not know which boat to target.

A blast of lightning tore into the bubble of ocean water, before it harmlessly dissipated into the screen of water and sand. I laughed out loud, fear and adrenaline making my heart run wild as I realized we had survived a blast from the fish’s lightning.

However, the glowing fish wasn’t done yet - just like the first time it had used its lightning ability, it hadn’t stopped glowing yet.

The fish used an exploding pillar of water to launch itself towards us, as our boat and my fake boats flew in erratic patterns. The glowing fish’s hulking body tore through the screen of water and sand, before its eyes settled on all four copies of our boat. It launched another lightning bolt towards us. I strengthened my body as much as possible with my mana, and prepared to die if the fish attacked the correct target. I didn’t know which boat the fish would hit, but just in case, if I strengthened my body to the limit with my mana, I might survive.

And, completely defying my expectations, the bolt of lightning burst forth from the skin of the glowing fish, before bending like a noodle in midair.

I felt burning agony lance its way through my body, and felt the urge to scream. A burnt smell reached my nose - it was my hair. 

However, I was still alive.

The glowing fish had bent its lightning bolt in midair several times to hit all four boats - our boat, and all three of my illusions.

However, perhaps because of how hard it was to control lightning so precisely, the fish hadn’t actually hit the passengers of our ship. Two of the lightning bolts tore whizzed across the top of each boat, which would have killed any passengers on the boat, and had missed one illusion completely. The lightning bolt targeting our boat had hit us - but since the glowing fish had shrunk the lightning bolt by dividing it in four, it hit the side of our boat, instead of hitting the passengers. 

However, the heat and electricity from the lightning still pierced through part of the boat, hitting us with a much weakened version of the lightning bolt. I gasped in pain, and I saw most of the other hunters and fishermen do the same, but I felt relief when I saw that. 

Even though we had been injured, nobody had died. Moreover, none of our injuries were that severe; we could keep fighting. 

However, while we were still alive, our situation was desperate.

The lightning bolt may not have killed us, but it definitely confirmed which boat was the real one. Its eyes were firmly locked onto our boat, and it was too close for us to flee or trick it again.

I started panicking. I was out of ideas now. Its lightning and teleportation were on cooldown, but the moment it could use either ability, we would die. I was out of tricks, and nobody on my boat could do enough damage to cripple the fish or distract it.

A moment later, I saw a massive spear made of red sand fly out of the sky and towards the fish. It took me a moment to realize that the sand wasn’t actually red. It was a pile of hardened sand, soaked in blood.

The fish completely ignored the spear, as it continued staring at us. Its teleportation ability would be ready in two seconds… one…

As I prepared myself to die, the spear suddenly sped up in midair. It zoomed towards the fish, then tore through several of the fish’s eyes, before exploding into corrosive sand. Nearly a tenth of its eyes turned into mush.

The fish wheeled around, bellowing in pain and hatred as its eyes focused on the origin of the bloody spear. Instead of teleporting towards us, it teleported above the boat. I frowned, wondering why the fish seemed to have slightly overshot its target. What was going on?

However, the fish’s incorrect positioning gave the others a chance to rescue the boat. A gust of wind hurled the boat out of the way before the fish could kill the village chief who had rescued us.

I heaved a sigh of relief. The fish’s attention wasn’t on us any longer. I suddenly wondered if the fish had even been targeting us because of my illusions - perhaps it was sheer bad luck it had swapped targets to our boat.

Regardless of my thoughts, the fish wheeled around, preparing for another charge. Wind and water mages started using their abilities to slow it down, and our boat flew towards the edge of the formation. I quickly handed out a few fish cores, and we took the opportunity to replenish our mana after spending a huge amount strengthening our bodies to survive. My heart slowly stopped hammering as I observed the fight, and I realized we weren’t going to die just yet.

The fish charged towards the boat which had rescued us again, and began glowing more brightly. I noticed that a huge amount of strange, milk-colored liquid tear itself out of the ocean, before it formed a shield around the boat. I wondered what the liquid was, before I laughed out loud. 

Someone was using the fish’s own blood to shield themself from a lightning bolt! 

The fish, seeing the shield of blood, shrieked in rage, before it teleported. It appeared right above the boat, and tried to chew through the boat. For some reason, the sphere of blood started expanding… and then suddenly reshaped itself, before the blood turned into a ball of stone spikes. The fish shrieked in agony, before spitting out the ball of stone spikes, while the boat flew away, assisted by gusts of wind.

The fish, seeing the little wooden boat escape destruction, fired a lightning bolt at the escaping boat.

The boat, now unprotected by a blood sphere, took a direct hit. The boat stopped flying, instead listing to the side. I frowned, worried, but couldn’t spare much attention to the boat. Hopefully the people on board the boat were still alive, since they saved us at a critical moment. I saw a nearby boat start flying towards the burned boat, and hoped the damaged boat and its crew could still be saved.

The fish tried to blast another boat, but this one formed a shield in time. Then, it splashed back into the water, searching for a new target.

Before it had time to stabilize itself, another hail of magical missiles rained down on it from above. A few more of its eyes popped, before it growled and locked onto a boat in the distance. Once it started charging them, I made another giant illusory stone spear, and fired it at the fish.

It didn’t even bother dodging, and the stone spear collapsed into fragments of light the moment it made contact with the fish. Since my attack was just an illusion, I dealt no damage to it at all.

And then, another stone spear made by the village chiefs blasted through another dozen of its eyes, turning them into bloody goop as the creature shrieked in agony.

I grinned. I had a better idea why the village chief felt I would be helpful in this fight now. With a random mixture of real and fake threats tearing into the fish, it was having an incredibly hard time figuring out when it needed to dodge and when it could just ignore an attack. 

The fish’s remaining eyes spun around, before they locked onto one of the village chief boats. It seemed to have located one of the boats responsible for forming the massive stone spears that heavily injured it, and it decided to remove them from the fight.

I created another illusory spear before ‘attacking’ it. The fish seemed to hesitate when it saw my attack, but ultimately realized it might be a threat. The fish teleported out of the way, putting its ability on cooldown long enough for the chief’s boat to fly away, with the help of some gusts of wind. In the meantime, the surrounding boats continued to pepper it with small but important attacks, slowly draining its mana reserves as it healed away its small injuries over and over again. 

The fish seemed enraged when its prey escaped, and threw a few lightning bolts into random clusters of boats. I saw five boats go down, before the fish began looking for a new target again.

For a few minutes, the fight settled into a steady rhythm. The fish would find a target, and then I or the village chiefs would hit it with a big attack to distract it. The fish would sometimes dodge and sometimes get hit, but it often disengaged from its original target and swapped to a new, totally random boat. It would still destroy a few boats with its lightning attacks sometimes, because they were fast and hard to dodge, but the boats were getting better and better at defending each other, forming shields quickly, and staying out of range of the fish’s teleportation ability. As the fish’s mana reserves slowly drained away, our casualties also increased, but we were losing fewer and fewer people as we got used to fighting the fish.

Finally, after several minutes of grinding away at the creature’s mana reserves, I noticed something that made me feel hopeful. The skin of the glowing fish was starting to grow dimmer. Was it finally running out of mana?

The fish had been teleporting around left and right during this fight, and had also used several pillars of water to toss itself around, and bolts of lightning to shoot down our ships. Most importantly, a swarm of nearly a hundred and fifty boats had been raining down small but dangerous attacks on the creature the entire time we had been fighting. It had been healing itself during the fight, but even if it had more mana than a human with eight runes, there was a limit. And the glowing fish seemed to be reaching that limit.

The fish also seemed to realize it was falling into a predicament. However, it didn’t show any of the fear I thought it might. Instead, it searched for a new target, eventually settling on the boat carrying my village chief. It sneered at the boat, before it began swimming closer to it. I felt my heart leap into my throat. Was it going to kill village chief as its last act of the fight? I formed an illusory spear, but it didn’t dodge, letting my attack scatter harmlessly against its skin. 

The fish flung itself forward with an exploding pillar of water, before vanishing into thin air. An ominous feeling sprang up in my heart.

Then, the fish appeared to the left of my village chief’s boat. It looked directly downward, sneering in delight, before its expression warped. It seemed confused as its remaining eyes whirled around, trying to figure out why the boat wasn’t underneath it.

The village chief, who was now floating above the boat and glowing brightly with mana, also seemed confused. He and the fish looked at each other in complete bewilderment as the fish plummeted back into the ocean, completely missing its target.

It took me a moment to realize the fish had messed up its teleport. It had been trying to teleport on top of the chief’s boat and then swallow it in one gulp, but it had somehow teleported to the wrong spot and missed entirely, taking both sides totally off guard.

My village chief, however, laughed out loud. “Aim for its eyes! I’ve been thinking some of its positions were strange - it needs to see where it’s teleporting to! If we can destroy its eyes, its teleportation will become useless!”

The fish shook itself off after belly flopping back into the water. Its remaining eyes spun wildly before they fixed themselves on the village chief’s boat again and it growled. However, I could definitely tell it was starting to run out of mana. With several of its eyes destroyed, and its mana reserves running low, the fish was near dead.

Another volley of heavy spears popped a few more of the fish’s eyes, as hunters started focusing on its remaining eyes. Less than a minute later, one of the other village chiefs decided it was time.

“Move towards the trap area!” Yelled a village chief. People took a moment to process the order, before the boats seemed to start ‘retreating’ towards the island. The glowing fish bellowed in triumph, seeming to realize it had broken the will of its prey, and then began charging after the fleeing boats. From time to time, a few of the boats would pause long enough for some of the hunters to lob a few more spears into the eyes of the fish, adding fresh injuries and popping an eye here and there, but for the most part we just fled towards the island.

Once we were above the island, the boats stopped fleeing, before we spread out again, preparing for the final phase of the hunt.

The fish, who had been chasing after us and occasionally teleporting after us, stopped for a moment, and gave us a wary glare. Almost half of its eyes had been destroyed now, and its body was covered in small wounds. It wasn’t regenerating smaller injuries anymore - its mana was too low for that. Despite the fact that it was near death, it eyed us angrily.

Another volley of stone, bone, and sand spears rained down on the fish, popping a few more eyes and enraging it. Finally, it leapt out of the water, towards the boat that contained my village chief, before teleporting towards him - and appearing directly above the island. Its aim wasn’t perfect, but it was close enough to my village chief to pose a danger to him.

My village chief began to glow with mana, and a halo of white light sprang into existence as another village chief boosted his power.

My village chief managed to dodge the fish’s teleportation by the tiniest of margins, winds swirling around him and keeping him afloat in midair. As the fish’s jaws were about to clamp over the boat, he burst forward with incredible speed. Then, he grabbed the fish’s tail again. At the same time, a giant flat paddle made of stone, sand, blood, and bone suddenly appeared on the other side of the island.

The fish’s dozens of remaining eyes widened as my village chief grabbed it in midair.

My village chief threw the giant fish towards the center of the island, before the massive paddle swatted the fish into the ground. The island rumbled as the leviathan crashed into its surface, leaving a massive fish-shaped imprint on the sand.

The fish bellowed, before teleporting back into the air in a desperate attempt to escape. It started glowing, preparing to punish us for daring to trap it - before another of the village chiefs tore through several of its eyes with a spray of ability-boosted blood. The fish launched a lightning bolt into a cluster of ships, but only downed two of them. Its second lightning bolt missed entirely.

The fish teleported again, but messed up its teleport location. It only moved straight up, before flopping back onto the island, nowhere near the water.

Another of the chieftains  grunted as she summoned a sandstorm underneath the fish, her ability rapidly starting to tear away the flesh and skin of the creature as it shrieked. A few seconds later, the fish teleported towards the ocean, before my village chief grabbed it by the tail and threw it back towards the center of the island again. The village chiefs quickly surrounded the fish, and began blasting the giant fish with their abilities. Whenever the fish tried to teleport away, one of the village chiefs would blast it back towards the center of the island with their attacks. The village chiefs would have had a hard time coping with several blasts of lightning or physical attacks from the glowing fish, but it was nearly out of mana now. It was too exhausted to toss out lightning bolts like they were nothing. And with the healing village chief boosting their abilities, they were just barely able to juggle the fish and keep it trapped while everyone pummeled it.

The glowing fish shrieked in horror, realizing its death was near, and then opened its mouth, trying to bite at a nearby boat that had gotten a little too confident. The boat didn’t manage to dodge in time, and disappeared into the fish’s maw, but the other boats used that time to pop the rest of the fish’s eyes with a spray of abilities. The glowing fish’s lightning rune began to glow more brightly, as if it was trying to blindly blast down a final wave of boats through sheer dumb luck, but a water shield quickly appeared and surrounded the fish. Two blasts of lightning hit the curtain of water, accomplishing nothing.

The fish finally stopped trying to attack at all. Its mana reserves were too low, it was stranded out of water, and we had learned how to effectively counter all of its abilities.

The glowing fish that had destroyed dozens of boats and nearly caused the islands to fall into a famine was no longer a threat. It was just wobbling in place, trying to move while the hunters, village chiefs, and boats ground it into dust..

After a few more minutes, the fish stopped moving entirely.

We had won.

 

acaswell

 

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