Chapter 122: The Tide Shifts

Bruce materialized beside another towering bronze crab, twisting his body just enough to avoid a blind, desperate pincer swipe. His foot touched the sand for only a fraction of a second, then he lunged, both daggers crossing in a downward X-shaped slash.

Four legs hit the ground instantly, severed cleanly at the joints.

The crab toppled with a heavy thud, kicking up sand as it struggled helplessly. Bruce was already several meters away.

His speed bordered on unreal. To any onlooker, he would appear as nothing more than a streak of black hair and flashing steel. Each time he resurfaced for an instant, a crab would collapse behind him, crippled beyond recovery.

Slash. Move. Slash again.

He struck like a surgeon with the instincts of a predator, cutting only what needed to be cut, wasting nothing, conserving everything. He didn’t even break rhythm. Every movement flowed into the next.

A crab lunged at him from the side.

Bruce tilted his head slightly, letting its massive pincer whoosh past his cheek. Without looking, he stabbed backward, both blades piercing the soft flesh where the leg joined the body.

The crab screeched as its limb burst apart.

Bruce spun with the momentum, landing a clean follow-up slash that severed its second pincer at the base. The creature crashed onto its side, helpless.

He exhaled once, calm, steady. Then he disappeared again.

Dozens of crabs tried to surround him, sensing his presence at last. They slammed their massive pincers together, creating an echoing thunder that rolled through the coast.

Bruce answered with silence, and speed.

He exploded upward, twisting midair, his daggers slicing downward in twin arcs. The blades struck the exposed joints of two different crabs beneath him.

SHINK. SHINK.

Both crabs collapsed at the exact same moment.

Bruce landed lightly between them, sand spraying around his feet. Before the grains even finished falling, he shot off again, his body bending and weaving between the enormous bronze monsters.

His daggers carved lines through the battlefield, marking each crab he passed. Limbs flew. Bronze shells cracked. Immense bodies thudded lifelessly, not because he had killed them outright, but because he had rendered them utterly incapable of movement.

His movements grew even smoother, almost elegant. Every slash was a whisper. Every direction change was instantaneous. Every step carried him directly into another weak spot waiting to be destroyed.

It was like watching a storm move with intention on fast forward.

A crab screeched as Bruce carved out the joints of all its legs in a single flowing motion, his blades moving too fast for the naked eye. Before its body hit the sand, Bruce had already disabled three more in rapid succession.

His breathing remained steady.

His eyes sharp.

His smile faint but present.

He danced across the battlefield like a man who had finally found a worthy warm-up, carving through the horde with terrifying efficiency.

In minutes, half of the once unstoppable tide of bronze-shell monsters became a field of twitching, crippled giants, unable to advance, unable to attack, unable to do anything but slowly die as their vitality drained away.

Bruce stood amidst them, daggers dripping and wind sweeping through his hair, still poised for more.

At this point, Bruce was taking everything so casually that he even began singing in rhyme with each slash…

“She loves me,” Slash!!

Swift movement, swoosh!!

“She loves me not,” Slash!!!

With that playful rhythm, Bruce continued the slaughter, cutting his way through the horde of beasts with frightening ease.

The disabled bodies of the crabs piled up around him, forming natural barricades that hindered the mobility of the advancing monsters. One toppled crab crashed into another, creating a cascading chain reaction that only added more chaos to the bloody battlefield.

Bruce used the chaos like a weapon. The stumbling, immobilized bodies slowed the horde far more effectively than any wall could, and he effortlessly kept them at bay, preventing even a single crab from slipping past him toward the village.

With each slash, he would leap onto the shell of a fallen crab and propel himself forward, traveling deeper toward the shoreline where more crabs were still emerging from the waves.

His movements flowed like water, cut, leap, land, slash again.

But as time passed, the number of crabs rising out of the sea began to thin. The waves no longer churned with new threats. Eventually, the surface fell still.

Bruce exhaled lightly. ’This fight is interesting and boring at the same time…’

The beasts were so mindless that a simple tactic, targeting their weak points, was enough to handle them. That made it boring. But their durable shells, the strange angles he had to attack from, and the control required to strike every weak point cleanly? That made things… interesting.

Each crab was like a miniature puzzle he had to solve with speed and precision.

He estimated there were only a few dozens of bronze-shell crabs left before he could confidently declare the village free from further danger.

However, his moment of reprieve was short-lived.

A deep, guttural gurgling sound rumbled from the sea, low at first, then rapidly growing louder, sharper, almost unbearable. The water vibrated with each pulse, sending tiny ripples racing across the shoreline.

Bruce froze mid-step, instincts sharpening.

He turned toward the ocean.

Out on the surface of the water, a single bulging spot began to rise. The sea itself swelled unnaturally, as though something massive pressed upward from below. Thick bubbles burst from the surface in rapid succession, dozens at a time, each explosion followed by a sickening, wet gloop that echoed across the beach.

The sound was wrong. Not like crabs. Not like anything he had heard so far.

The bulging mass expanded, the water heaving and swirling around it. Waves began to churn in spiraling patterns, as if the ocean was being stirred from beneath by gigantic unseen limbs.

More bubbles erupted, huge ones this time, each the size of a human head, rising and bursting violently, releasing foul-smelling steam into the air. The sea hissed and frothed, turning from blue to a murky, swirling green.

Bruce narrowed his eyes. “Hmmm…”

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