Second Life: Welcome to Gaia

Chapter 52: Underwater Communication

The needle spitter penis fishes were weak to slashing and magical attacks, however, smashing weapons couldn't damage them. Because of this, Ashardalon had to store his shield in his space bag and took a two-hand sword that he kept inside his bag for situations like this, where his shield is ineffective.

If it was in the dry land, Ashardalon could smash it to the ground. In this way, even monsters immune to smashing damage can be crushed to death. But it is impossible in the water, not just because of the reduced speed that enables the monster to escape before the process end, but also because the players didn't walk on the seafloor. If players are swimming, it will be difficult to crush the monsters on a hard surface.

Players can use their creativity to smash marine monsters on underwater cave walls to deal damage but it is hard to achieve and even harder to do it repeatedly to do constant damage.

Ashardalon, using his two-handed sword, which is three to four times the size of the penis fishes, started hitting his targets.

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[Penis Fish] (Normal)

Description: This marine spoon worm has a very peculiar appearance.

Level 5

HP: 150

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The ones that are having a harder time dealing damage to the penis fishes are Harpy and Demon Fox because it is not easy to hit them with their arrows, even with the help of the system.

It is too difficult for the archer to hit small or moving targets. For normal players to be able to hit the monster, they just need to aim in the monster's direction for it to hit. However, if the archer can aim at the weak part of a monster like its eyes, the damage dealt would increase more than it would when using other weapon types.

They continued slashing and freezing the penis fishes until every one of them was killed. They collected the loot but most of the team members didn't want to keep it.

As happens with most monsters of the game, the items dropped from the penis fishes are the things that originally belong to them, as parts of their bodies or something they are holding.

The bodies of the penis fishes were the loot dropped. It could be used as cooking ingredients or to make potions.

Another item that dropped from the monster was poisoned needles that could be used to craft weapons.

From the two items, only the needles were fought over, while the other one went to My Girl's space bag. Ye Yan doesn't even want to know what My Girl will do with it.

After storing the loot, they went further into the tunnel.

Soon, they started to see other types of marine life, like fishes, crabs, and turtles. But contrary to real life, these creatures were aggressive, and some even have strange expressions on their faces, like the turtle that looked like it was giving an evil smile.

Ye Yan doesn't like to hurt animals. He learned from his father that live creatures should be cherished and only could be killed if it is for eating. He hates when people hurt animals for fun.

When he was a little child, despite enjoying fighting, he wasn't violent but everything changed after he saw other children hurting a cat.

Those cruel children put a rocket in the cat's ass to see it explode[1]. It was just too cruel that Ye Yan couldn't stand it and beat down those children. After it, every time he sees someone being bullied, he went to help.

Sometimes, humans prove to be worse than monsters from books. Not even Edgar Allan Poe could think children could be capable of such cruelty with a cat.

For Ye Yan, bullies should be beaten until they understood that there is punishment for their bad deeds.

Ye Yan always thought that being good all the time is not good because those that try, will be trampled by others. He always remembers a quote from Niccolo Machiavelli, one of the great thinkers of history, that says 'Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good. Hence a prince who wants to keep his authority must learn how not to be good, and use that knowledge, or refrain from using it, as necessity requires.'

Ye Yan is not a bad person but he can learn how to be bad when it is needed.

His mother taught him that he should be strong because if someone tries to bully him, he should bully them back until they regret it.

Contrary to his father, his mother was hotheaded and always got herself into trouble. Because of this, they could never stay at the same place for long or his mother would go to jail for beating their neighbors. Every place they lived, there was a problem with one of their neighbors. Sometimes was noisy, others were because the neighbor pets would enter their house, and many other similar situations. Because of this, Ye Yan's family always rented houses, never buy one.

Ye Yan looked at the monsters that are like real animals and started to attack. These monsters are stronger than the penis fishes, but they could fight more than one at the same time without problems.

As the party has two tanks now, both of them attached 3 monsters each, to speed things up. Ye Yan is tanking three Grouper Fishes while Ashardalon is fighting three Wicked Turtles.

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[Grouper Fish] (Normal)

Description: A giant ugly fish with tasty flash.

Level 5

HP: 1000

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[Wicked Turtle] (Normal)

Description: This evil turtle shows its evil thoughts on its face.

Level 5 HP: 1500

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As Ye Yan can move underwater faster than Ashardalon, this arrangement was the best, because the turtles are fast but the grouper fishes are faster than them and also has a harder time maneuver.

Ashardalon used his shield to smash the wicked turtles while activating his skills to build aggro. He used [Provoke], and [Roar] for the monster to focus their attacks on him and attacked using skills as [Shiel Strike], [Shield Bash], and [Shield Boomerang]. Ashardalon's build is focused on using his shield to attack and defended, thus he chose skills that focus on the shield.

Ye Yan is different from Ashardalon. He uses his own abilities to tank the monsters, not relying on equipment. It makes him weaker than other tanks in defense, making the monster's attacks sometimes fatal if hit. He depends on his passive skills to mitigate the damage taken when necessary.

After a few seconds of Ashardalon bashing the turtles and Ye Yan performing an aquarium show as he evades and attacks the grouper fishes, they signaled for the others to attack.

They have agreed beforehand in using some gestures to represent certain actions. Thus they can understand most of what the signals mean. Just when they need to say something that they didn't design a signal that the problems arise, as happened when I Love Skooma asked Hello Kitty to use the Cast Light Spell.

At times like this, people who know Sign Language have an advantage.

In real life, people use their communication devices to translate other languages, including Sign Language, thus most people don't learn the language.

In Second Life, deaf people use Sign Language to communicate and others, like in real life, can use their communication stone to translate. Or deaf people can use the communication stone to translate what others are saying to Sign language. This translation can only happen if the Sign Language is from the same country as the other language, otherwise, they will need to do a quest first.

Some deaf people decided to use common language in the game but many didn't because they see deaf as a culture with their own language and giving it up is the same as negating everything they achieve until now.

As Ye Yan and the others don't know CSL (Chinese Sign Language), they have to use creative ways to make others understand them underwater.

When the Wicked Turtles used a skill that others never saw before on Ashardalon, they didn't know what was its effect on him. Ashardalon tried to make some gestures while fighting for My Girl to use the spell [Dispel] on him but with no success.

No matter how much Ashardalon signaled My Girl, the other couldn't understand a thing. After some time fighting with his strength reduced because of the turtle's special skill, Ashardalon gave up and made a signal to My Girl that almost any person in the world can understand, the international sign of 'Fuck you[2]'.

My Girl couldn't see that Ashardalon attacks become weaker because the amount of damage the monster takes doesn't show to players, only the severity of the wounds.

Only when the battle was almost ending, My Girl noticed that Ashardalon attacks are hurting the monster very little compared to the beginning of the battle and used the Dispel on him.

After having his strength back to normal, Ashardalon would have yelled Hallelujah if he could.

The team focused their attacks on the Grouper Fishes first because their defense was low compared to the turtles and they killed them fast, and focus fire on the turtles after.

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[1] This cruel act traumatized this author as a child.

[2] In some countries, the middle finger really represents 'Fuck you' in Sign Language. In Japan, if you make the sign with both hands, the meaning is different, it's the gesture for siblings.