The Hollow God - 4 Take Care!

If someone was looking at us from a distance away they would only see a inky dark spot moving at a fast speed through the water as a ball of blue light moved right behind it. Unfortunately the blue light seemed to be moving a little faster and was slowly catching up.

As I looked back, I found that those fish were much faster than anticipated. They were now so close that I could see how most of them were splattered with an inky black fluid all over their bodies. ‘It was blood! It was definitely manta blood! I had gotten a small cut from the spiky crab before so I quickly recognized it, no wonder there seemed to be only around half us here!’

One of the older mantas in the center which i had happily recognized to be grandpa manta seemed to have also realized how close the enemy was and sent out a message to everyone around him.

“Darkness!!”

Once he did so all the mantas young, old, and myself included released black mana in a large but constant stream leaving behind a long black cloud. Even the ball of mantas itself was also completely shrouded; however, I don’t know if it was because our eyes are special or because we are the same species but our vision was fortunately not affected.

The massive ball of light had slowed down significantly as soon as it entered the black cloud so I quickly lowered the amount of mana I was wasting. I had already used up almost half of my reserves in panic and I could already feel exhaustion setting in. As the fish got farther and farther away for some reason I couldn’t relax whatsoever. Even though everything seemed fine now my instincts were screaming ‘danger!’

I quickly turned around to look back at the blue moon only to be met with a powerful beam of light that blinded me instantly. Fortunately I had another pair of eyes underneath my body which I used to spin my body around to keep up with the other mantas.

I clenched my teeth trying to ignore the pain in my eyes as I went over the last scene I saw right before everything went white. The fish’s hanging light ball had brightened up, easily pushing the black magic away and almost like a spotlight it cut through the darkness shining onto the mantas.

The chase started once more for almost 10 minutes before grandpa manta gave out an order once more.

“Gray fight! Black scatter!”

Immediately all the older gray mantas which amounted to around 50 stopped moving and turned around facing the blue moon that was quickly approaching , everyone else kept moving but scattering into different directions. After going a certain distance away I found a large clump of sea plants which I could watch the fight from and quickly jumped in. ‘Grandpa Manta has been sharing his food for me almost every day, I can’t watch as he sacrifices himself without even trying to help!’

The gray mantas started to quickly ready themselves as the blue moon came closer. Very quickly many arrows and large spears started materializing all over the place. There were easily over thousands of them, each gray manta creating hundreds!

‘There are many fish but there definitely isn’t 1000 of them so couldn’t we win as long as we shot out a couple more volleys? Why were we all running???’ However it didn’t take very long for him to understand.

As soon as the light fish were close enough, the gray mantas released all their attacks at once. Like black rain the spears and arrows smashed into the group easily knocking any of them that was hit into the sea floor! However the little mantas’ happiness was quickly crushed when he noticed that all the ones that had gotten hit easily dug themselves out of the ground and rejoined their brethren as if nothing happened!

As if they were zombies no matter how many times they got hit they would quickly back up and keep on charging as if not taking any damage. As they got close enough many of the mantas started attacking using their tails by imbuing it with white mana, hardening it and stabbing onto the long fish. The ones hit would be easily thrown back but would then get back up and rejoin the fight just as quickly. Looking at them closely he noticed their bodies were covered in bones that protected them like full body armor. Only a very small amount of unlucky fish didn’t get back up, they were the ones that were unfortunate enough to have gotten stabbed on one of their very small eyes which in turn had crushed their small brain.

Very quickly there started being casualties. Once they had gotten close enough the fish opened their mouth and their jaw extended out of their body at an extremely fast speed like a Sling jaw fish from earth except it reached much longer!. The only difference was that the sharp teeth would take a large bite out of their prey before it was pulled back to be swallowed leaving a small hole behind. Those small bites quickly accumulated leaving some of the gray mantas in tatters that bled out like a water balloon full of holes until they stopped moving.

‘No no no no. this can’t be! They are too strong! Can I only escape and leave them to die??’ the little manta could only watch helplessly as the old gray mantas started to quickly die out with the remaining ones being slowly encircled. Grandpa manta which was the grayest of them all was still fighting as hard as it could using his tail as a spear trying to hold out as much as he could.

‘Wait there is still something I could try!’ From his daily training the little manta had not only perfected much of his magic but created many new ones and one of those might work perfectly in this situation! Slowly charging up most of the dark mana he had left leaving only enough behind for him not to pass out he cast his first original magic in this world.

‘Shadow Manta Clone jutsu!’

Immediately hundreds of small mantas that were his size started flying out of his body, fortunately since they were mostly illusions it did not cost much mana individually. Controlling the tiny grain of white mana he left on each one he sent them to fly out and surround the light bone fish throwing them into confusion!

The fish quickly turned around and started to attack the manta reinforcements while completely ignoring the wounded and exhausted old gray mantas.

It wasn’t just the fish that were stunned but so were the mantas, they stood still in confusion as the fish turned their attention to the new attackers.

‘Since when did we have reinforcements??’

The little manta also noticed this and using his mana he shouted at them ‘Run!’. It was then that the gray mantas noticed the opportunity and swam out from the enclosure in all the confusion. The younger mantas already had enough time to escape so there was no more reason for them to stay here.

As the little manta was trying his hardest to concentrate on controlling the small clones he felt a gaze on him. Startled he turned towards it thinking it was an enemy only to find grandpa manta was watching him with a complicated look in his eyes, he seemed to want to say something but maybe because mantas IQ were not high enough he couldn’t find what words to say.

‘Hehehe don’t get emotional on me now grandpa’ the little manta understood his dilemma and waved goodbye towards him with his tail.

The old gray manta was confused at the gesture but understood its meaning, he copied it and left two words behind with complicated feelings before he turned around and left

‘Take care’

The little manta instantly felt his nose sour as he held back tears. Even though it was just two simple words he could feel that the old manta meant it from the bottom of his heart. What he didn’t know was that even though he was able to hold back his tears, the smiley face underneath his body has become a sad crying face that was sobbing uncontrollably as his tears merged with the salty ocean water.

His past life he was cursed to lie on a hospital bed for 15 years without being able to move or talk! He was never able to even make one friend and even his parents that had cared so much about him when he was a child had already given up on him, just those small words of concern was all that was needed to make him feel extremely touched.

After a few seconds he got himself back together and found that everyone had already escaped so by controlling the 100 something left of illusions that were left he made them speed up towards the opposite direction to where the other mantas had gone. It was only after the fish had become a small blue light speck did he disperse his clones and jumped out of the sea plants, he then plunged towards the unknown darkness all by himself.