Chat Channel

“I’m alive! I made it out, HAHAHAHAHAHA!” ʀᴇᴀᴅ ʟᴀᴛᴇsᴛ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀᴛ Nov3lFɪre.ɴet

“Crap, the ship’s leaking! Anyone know how to plug it? This water hits harder than a pressure washer!”

“In deep water, hull damage basically means death. Sorry, pal.”

“I made it to the surface, but how long is it gonna take to fix the ship? (Attached image: a barren deck with nothing left but a broken mast)”

“I resurfaced too, but the ship flipped, what do I do now?”

“Salt really works! (Attached image: a small, shriveled chunk of meat on the ship’s edge)”

“Haha, I found I can breathe underwater! But the seawater is so sweet… and my body feels itchy…”

“………”

Yang Yi glanced at the sea chart.

There were still over 40 nautical miles between the Bountiful Sea Region and the Black Fog, but at the current rate, they would soon merge, and the tsunami would surge into the fog.

Most players had already experienced the tsunami. Judging by how active the chat was, the number of survivors was still quite considerable.

As long as they secured their ships and protected themselves, players with Level 4 standard ships had a fair chance of surviving the tsunami.

Still, losses were inevitable.

Many couldn’t secure their supplies in time and had to abandon them, and ship repairs afterward would consume a massive amount of materials.

Overall, the outcome was better than expected, mostly in line with Yang Yi’s predictions, except for one thing: players were somehow surviving in deep sea for extended periods, and even able to chat in the channel.

But their messages were… off.

Curious, Yang Yi selected one player and sent them a private message.

“How are you feeling?”

“The seawater is so sweet. I drank my fill, but I can’t stop. My stomach’s exploding.”

Yang Yi frowned, it didn’t sound like a joke.

He asked a few more questions, but the responses quickly became incoherent:

“So sweet.”

“So full.”

“Please stop feeding me.”

“I can’t eat anymore.”

They could barely hold a conversation.

And then, at the end, the person suddenly replied:

“I’m full now… but what about you?”

Yang Yi’s heart skipped a beat. He quickly followed up, but by then, the player’s account had vanished, no longer contactable.

Most likely, they’d suffered mental collapse and were declared dead by the system.

Yang Yi closed the chat interface, growing increasingly wary of the white seawater.

He reviewed the strange phrases again. It sounded like there was someone feeding that player. Was it a hallucination… or something else?

Yang Yi shook his head, unwilling to dwell on it too long.

He stood up and returned to the cabin, preparing to salt every corner, including the witch’s lab, to further reinforce the defenses.

There were still around 1.8 tons of unused sea salt aboard the Nightmare Star.

Yang Yi decided to go all-in. After all, the salt wouldn’t leak out of the cabin. It was just a matter of transferring it from the barrel to the floor.

He opened one of the barrels, transformed into wolf form, lifted a massive 40 kg barrel, and dumped the salt out.

The spreading work would be handled by the skeletal arms; it wasn’t difficult.

Yang Yi emptied several barrels until the salt layer beneath his feet was four to five centimetres thick, then finally stopped.

Around three tons of sea salt were used to cover the entire floor of the ship’s main cabin and the witch’s laboratory, even the stairwell and handrails leading to the hatch weren’t spared.

Now, only the walls remained unsalted. That could wait.

Yang Yi opened the ship interface to check on repair progress.

The Nightmare Star’s durability had risen to 3,200, and at this rate, it would likely be fully restored by tomorrow.

It was the second half of the night.

Suna woke up, and the two switched shifts. By the time Yang Yi awoke again, morning had broken.

He noticed a thin layer of salt coating the cabin walls, thinking Suna must’ve applied a saltwater mixture during her watch.

Once dried, the wall retained salt crystals that could damage hostile flesh masses and interfere with their ability to cling or corrode surfaces.

The ship’s outer edge could also be treated this way, leaving almost no blind spots.

Yang Yi stepped out onto the deck.

The sunlight was glaring, the temperature was high, and the air felt thick and humid, like stepping into a steam room.

Then he saw Suna.

She was directing skeletal arms to climb the mast, and they were harvesting mushrooms from the sails?

“These grew overnight?” Yang Yi asked, walking over.

“Seems like it,” Suna replied, glancing back.

At her feet sat a basket full of freshly picked mushrooms, some long and thin like enoki, others wrinkled like wood ear, and some meaty like porcini.

Their colours were vivid, and they looked surprisingly appetising.

Yang Yi picked a few and checked their data.

All were classified as “Delicious Mushrooms”, non-toxic, edible, highly nutritious, and extremely tasty.

“There’s something wrong with this region,” Suna remarked.

“Everything grows way too fast, and with unnatural energy.”

She shared some player-submitted photos with Yang Yi.

Some showed potted vegetables maturing overnight into oversized, brilliantly colored crops. Others showed rations growing mold in just a few hours, and the mold turned out to be edible, labeled Delicious Fungus.

Yang Yi opened the chat channel, where players had been discussing the phenomenon since early morning.

Nearly every ship had started growing mushrooms, grass, or even flowers.

“Damn, I should’ve cut those chives last night!

Survived the rain, survived the tsunami, and still got wrecked. Those wild chive sprouts weren’t easy to find, I couldn’t even bring myself to eat them!”

“You call that chives? (Photo: A stalk thicker than an adult’s finger, someone commented it looked more like aloe.)”

“That’s nothing. I nearly had a heart attack from this cabbage this morning. (Photo: A giant cabbage, its pot shattered, so big you could literally stand in its shade.)”

These mutated vegetables showed no aggression, but their descriptions had changed, now labeled Delicious [X], and they were no longer safe to eat.

Any player who’d focused on farming was essentially wiped out.

Even worse, the accelerated food spoilage had dealt a huge blow to supply chains.

Only two types of food survived unscathed:

Players scrambled to can whatever unspoiled food they had.

As long as they had steel or crystal containers, they could sterilise and seal the food for preservation. At worst, they buried their food in sea salt; better too salty than inedible.

Yang Yi was barely affected.

He’d known ahead of time that the sweet air would contaminate food and water, so he had already canned all his food.

Food prices were sure to skyrocket.

Almost no one was willing to sell food now, supply lines were severed.

Eventually, as hunger spread and players found themselves surrounded by Delicious Mushrooms and Delicious Weeds.

Few would resist the temptation, and once they took a bite of those deceptively appetising things, they’d fall right into the trap.

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