Chapter 97: Fast and Furious: Swamp Drift

“Row! Row like you’re trying to impress a female!” Ren screamed, clutching the sides of the boat as they careened through the muddy water.

Viper and Syris were rowing with superhuman speed, their muscles straining, veins popping in their necks. The pole hit the muck—thud, splash, thud, splash—propelling them forward. But the fish beastmen were faster.

They were torpedoes of gray slime. They breached the water like dolphins from hell, shrieking their high-pitched war cry.

Screeee!

A webbed hand slammed onto the gunwale. Then another. Then three more.

Kael stood in the center of the boat, a towering figure of muscle and feral rage. He roared, his massive arms moving in a blur as he swiped at them with lethal claws. He grabbed a fish beastman by the throat with one hand and hurled it back into the murky depths. But for every one he killed, two more took its place. They were swarming him, climbing over his broad shoulders and clawing at his legs, their needle-teeth trying to find purchase on his tough skin.

“Get off him!” Ren yelled.

The cast-iron frying pan appeared in her hand from her inventory.

She didn’t hesitate. She swung it with the desperate strength of a woman who refused to be eaten by sushi ingredients.

CLANG!

The pan connected with a gray skull. The sound was incredibly satisfying—like a gong signaling dinner. The fish beastman’s eyes rolled back, and it slid off the gunwale like a wet noodle.

Ren blinked.

They looked terrifying, but they had the constitution of wet tissue paper. One hit and they were out.

“Take that!” CLANG. “And that!” BONK

. “Get off my husband, you calamari reject!” WHACK.

Ren was a whirlwind of kitchenware violence.

“Oh god, oh god, oh god! There’s so many! Why are there so many?! Stop touching me! You’re slimy!”

But despite her frying pan prowess, the sheer weight of the swarm was dragging them down. The boat sat lower in the water. Kael was disappearing under a pile of gray bodies, taking the blunt of their offense to keep them away from Ren.

“Faster!” Ren screamed at Syris, whacking a fish man who tried to bite Syris’ oar. “We’re losing speed!”

“We cannot go any faster!” Syris yelled back, gritting his teeth as he shoved the boat through a tangle of roots. “The drag is too great!”

Ren looked around wildly. Her eyes landed on the massive wooden trunk sitting in the center of the boat. It was huge. It was heavy. It was an anchor.

“The boat is too heavy!” Ren yelled.

Syris looked at the trunk, then at Kael, who was currently punching a fish man in the face.

“We could kick off the Tiger King!” Syris suggested breathlessly, hauling on the oar. “He weighs as much as a boulder!”

Ren whipped her head around to glare at him, her frying pan raised threateningly.

“Just kidding!” Syris yelled quickly.

“This is not the time for jokes, Syris!” Ren shrieked. “We need to dump the trunk!”

Syris’ face fell. “No! That trunk contains my best robes! The meats! The jewels to bribe the Fox! We cannot arrive empty-handed!”

“It’s either the luggage or our lives!” Ren shouted, batting away a fish man that lunged at her face. “We’ll figure it out on land! Dump it!”

“But the pearls—”

“DUMP IT!”

Ren didn’t wait for permission. She holstered her frying pan and threw her shoulder against the heavy wood. She grunted, shoving with all her might.

It didn’t budge. It was packed too full.

“Fine!” Ren growled.

She flipped the lid open.

“Eat capitalism, you freaks!”

She grabbed a handful of glittering gemstones—rubies, diamonds, emeralds—and hurled them at the swarm.

Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

Her aim was impeccable. A diamond the size of a golf ball beaned a fish man right between the eyes. He went down instantly. A ruby ricocheted off another’s teeth.

Syris watched in horror as his treasury was used as ammunition. “My hoard! My precious stones!”

Ren grabbed a bundle of black silk robes. “Fashion distract!”

She tossed the fabric into the air. It landed on the heads of three attacking beastmen. They shrieked, clawing at the silk blinding them, thrashing around and knocking their comrades into the water.

Ren dug deeper. She hit the bottom layer. The food.

She grabbed a handful. It was cold, slimy, and wet.

“Ew!” Ren gagged.

It was raw fish. Eels. Dead toads. Freshly killed and still bloody.

Ren sighed in dismay. ’Of course. He’s a snake. I don’t know why I expected sandwiches.’

She grabbed a massive, dead eel and hurled it at a fish beastman who was about to bite Kael’s thigh.

Slap.

The eel hit the creature in the face.

The beastman froze. It sniffed the eel. Then, its jaw unhinged, and it snapped the eel out of the air like a dog catching a frisbee.

Chomp.

Ren paused.

She grabbed a dead toad and threw it to the left.

Two fish beastmen broke off their attack on Kael and dove for the toad, fighting over it in a frenzy of splashing water.

Ren’s eyes widened.

’They’re hangry,’ she realized.

Like the tigers, like the wolves, like Kael and Syris—everything in this world was driven by the stomach.

“They just want dinner!” Ren yelled.

She didn’t waste time throwing individual snacks. She grabbed the handles of the now-lighter trunk.

“Hey! Buffet is open!” she screamed.

She shoved the trunk with her foot. With the heavy gems and robes gone, it moved. She tipped it over the edge.

SPLASH.

The trunk hit the water, spilling the rest of the bloody feast—piles of raw fish, toads, and eels—into the swamp.

The effect was instantaneous.

The swarm turned as one. The fish beastmen climbing on Kael abandoned him, jumping off the boat to chase the sinking trunk. The wall of gray bodies ahead of them broke apart as they swarmed the free food.

“Go! Go! Go!” Ren cheered.

Without the weight of the trunk and the fifty fish passengers, the boat surged forward. Viper and Syris found their rhythm, and the vessel shot across the water, leaving the feeding frenzy behind.

Ren collapsed onto the floorboards, panting heavily. Her frying pan lay beside her. Kael stood there, chest heaving, water and slime dripping from his defined muscles. He ran a hand through his soaking wet white hair, flinging swamp muck away, looking annoyed but unharmed.

Ren pulled herself up to look back.

The fish beastmen had stopped advancing. They were clustered around the spot where the trunk had gone down, fighting over the scraps of raw meat.

A strange glint of sadness touched Ren’s eyes as she watched the horrific monsters.

“Poor fishies,” she whispered, shaking her head. “Fighting over dead toads and raw eels. They’ll never know the joy of a lemon-butter caper sauce.”

She sighed, wiping fish slime off her arm.

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