Looking at the decorations of the ship, like the figurehead and the flags being flown, she couldn't see anything that looked like a government emblem. It looked like a private ship.
But it was very big, so could she have encountered wealthy pirates?
Wealthy pirates, or a leisure boat owned by some wealthy person, these were both possibilities.
Catlen wouldn't have been worried if she were a regular player, but she was a villain in this game now. She had to be very careful, since she didn't know what the rules of interaction were yet.
This was a fantasy game, and logically speaking, the players and NPC's shouldn't be hostile to the mythical races in the game. Again, she couldn't be sure. She wasn't exactly a harmless fairy.
Catlen sank back into the water, and decided it would be none of her business. She wasn't going to sink the ship, anyway.
"Ah!"
Even through the water between them, the shrill screams above the surface could be heard very clearly. She stopped swimming away and turned around, only to find that the ship was slowly tipping down into the water.
"…"
Alright, she wasn't going to sink the ship, but something else definitely was. A massive tentacle had wrapped around the body of the ship and was pulling it under.
The people on the boat had started throwing themselves into the water out of desperation, trying to swim away, only to be sucked down into the depths by the force of the tentacles pulling downward.
She looked down, and saw a gigantic octopus head with barnacles attached to it in scattered groups. Two large, gelatinous eyes with red rims turned shiftily in all directions, and the tentacles not sinking the ship were waving in all directions.
[Lvl. 2 Kraken]
Catlen gasped. That was a level two kraken? It was already huge! If that was level two, what did a level three kraken look like? What did a level twenty kraken look like? Did they keep growing according to their level, or was this its final adult form?
She shivered. Nope. No way. She could eat grilled octopus, but she could not handle live ones, especially ones this big. Forget it, this was none of her business.
Without hesitation, she decided to leave, leave, leave!
Ding! {New Mission: Appease the Kraken!}
"… What?!"
{As a Queen of the waters, not only should you care for your minions, but you should also care for those creatures in distress! Reward: 300 XP}
Alright, she was defeated by this game. Whatever, it was just appeasing a kraken. It was her first time gaining experience points and she couldn't afford to be picky!
Catlen turned back to swim toward the gigantic sea creature, and perched herself on top of its head. With her tail, she tapped its head to establish a connection with it.
"Hey, why are you so angry?"
The kraken surprisingly responded to her. It's screech exploded like ripples in the water, but it was full of grievance. "It hurts! It hurts!"
Catlen watched as the kraken angrily destroyed the ship in its grasp, and the people that sank to the bottom of the sea like fish flakes. The surface had returned to its stillness, but underneath, who would've expected such a scene to be happening?
"These insolent humans hurt Seaweed!" The kraken screeched again, reaching down to pick up the people who were flailing in the water, slowly sinking. It picked them up and crushed them into a pulp one by one.
Catlen grimaced, unable to bear such a gruesome sight. She was a fan of and was used to seeing all sorts of gore in games and movies, but the graphics in this game were too realistic, and she could perceive everything like it was real life.
Actually, in essence, it was real life now. She was trapped in the game, unable to escape, forced to wake up and go to sleep every day inside of it. Whether virtual or not, the game was now her reality, and she had to comply.
But while she wasn't used to seeing people dying in front of her, she did not have the capital to stop the kraken from killing them. She didn't want to be next!
And she had seen that they were NPC's, so they should just be recycled by the game for later. Maybe this was just a game segment that was happening just for her!
"Where does it hurt?" She continued to ask the kraken, in the tone of voice one would use to soothe a volatile child. "Can you show me where it hurts?"
"Look!" The kraken thrust a tentacle up into her face, or the tip of one.
Even though it was just the tip, one single suction cup was already the size of three of her holding each other's tails and making a circle.
On the topside of the tentacle, several lances longer than her body were embedded into the flesh, and dark blue blood kept flowing out slowly.
It would have looked very painful on any other creature, but the kraken was so big that it just looked ridiculous to Catlen. She imagined that to the kraken, this was probably the equivalent of being pricked by a thorn.
"I can pull it out, if you wish. I'll heal you and it won't hurt anymore."
The kraken paused its rampage, hesitant. "Really?"
"Really," she promised. "It will hurt when I pull out the lances, but it won't hurt anymore afterward. Can you be patient?"
The kraken was still hesitating, but after a while of thought, it agreed. "Okay."
So, it sat very still and let Catlen pull out the lances one by one. When she did so, she discovered that they were embedded a lot deeper than she'd thought they were, and every time she pulled one out, the blood flowed consequently.
The blades were actually serrated. She frowned in disgust and secretly gloated that those NPC's got what they deserved. Why would they use serrated lance heads to hunt?
No wonder the kraken was so irritable. She had misjudged.
She did her best to pull out all the lances without causing the creature any more pain, and pulled out her jar of pool water. She poured some out and smeared it around the edges of the wound, and it began to regenerate.
Even Catlen couldn't understand how she could pour out water while underwater and the contents wouldn't dissolve and spill everywhere, but she was in a game in the first place, which went against common sense, so this wasn't very weird.
She didn't question it and put the jar back when the wound was completely healed. The kraken was overjoyed and flailed its massive tentacles again, but happily this time.
Facts proved that even happy flailing was as destructive as angry flailing. The kraken stirred up waves big enough to account as a tsunami. Thankfully, they were in the open sea and there was nothing around for it to destroy further.
"Thank you, master! You saved Seaweed's life!"
Catlen was shocked. Why was another terrifying creature calling her master?
"It's nothing, it's nothing. No big deal." She didn't dwell on the fact that this sea monster said its name was Seaweed. Her skin was still crawling with goosebumps.
Ding! {Mission Accomplished: Appease the Kraken! Reward: 300 XP}
Catlen felt a comfortable current of warm energy flow through her, and her level broke through to level one!
{Congratulations! You've levelled up!}
Her experience bar was already halfway full, and she still had 150 XP to go until she could reach level two.
Ecstatic, Catlen clapped her hands and even found the kraken to be a kind of cute that only sea monsters could be. So what if it was cold and slippery, with slimy skin? Beauty was in the eye of the beholder.
"Master, master, Seaweed will remember this life-saving debt! Please allow Seaweed to reward you!"
"Oh, that's not necessary." Catlen waved her hand dismissively. What reward could a kraken possibly give her?
"Ah." The bulbous octopus head actually dropped when it heard that, and the waving of the tentacles became a lot more listless. "But Seaweed has so many treasures to give master."
"Treasures?" She perked up at once. "Like what?"
"Like a Soul Searching Stone, Concealing Clasp, Mystifying Mirror…"
Catlen listened attentively as the marine creature listed off a bunch of things she'd never heard of before, but sounded very useful.
Thinking of the lore of the game, it actually made sense. This kraken had probably sunk a lot of ships, so how could it be poor with so much loot?
Impossible.
"Well, since you feel so indebted to me, I'll accept your offer," she said solemnly. "Just so you won't feel guilty later."
"Really?" The massive creature's bulbous head stood up again. "That's great! Please follow me, master!"
And that was how, one enormous sea creature and one smaller sea creature descended into the depths of the ocean, completely unaware of the chaos that had been unleashed above the surface of it, or the trouble that was coming.