Chapter 1: I'll get you for this author! Mark my words!
The sun had been beating down on me for what felt like an eternity, turning the interior of this metal rust bucket into a literal oven while the endless expanse of the ocean mocked my thirst.
It had been days since I first found myself floating aimlessly in this godforsaken tub, and the relief of having survived a supernatural abduction had long since worn off, replaced by a grinding, salt-crusted misery.
Every time a wave surged beneath the hull, the boat would lurch violently, dragging me toward a new horizon that looked exactly like the last one, leaving me with absolutely no idea whether I was drifting north, south, east, or west.
I was a speck of dust on a blue marble, trapped in a repetitive cycle of tides that rose and feel as my constant mood swings, with nothing but the annoying creaking of this rusted ship to keep me company.
The sheer absurdity of my situation was enough to make me want to scream until my lungs gave out, especially when I let my mind wander back to the reason for this shitty disaster.
I facepalmed the moment the memory resurfaced, the heat of my palm against my sun-reddened skin serving as a painful reminder of just how incredibly stupid I had been to engage with that online community.
All of this, the isolation, the starvation, the looming threat of a watery grave, had happened because I decided to bad-mouth a Webnovel online, a decision I know regretted wholeheartedly.
In my defense, it really wasn't my fault that I had lost my temper, because that goddarned book was quite possibly the most insulting piece of literature ever conceived by a human mind.
The plot wasn't just foolish; it was a combination of stupid tropes with an illogical plot that made my brain ache just thinking about the thousands of words I had wasted my time reading.
The characters themselves were beyond foolish, existing only as cardboard cutouts designed to worship a protagonist who lacked even the most basic levels of common sense.
"How can so many women suddenly fall for one stupid guy who can't even tell what's blocking his asshole when it's obvious it's his hand that's far up there?" I snarled, the words coming out as a raspy growl as I gnashed my teeth in a fit of lingering anger.
Even out here, surrounded by nothing but water and the threat of death, the memory of that protagonist's incompetence made my blood boil.
I had once harbored such great expectations for that story, drawn in by a decent premise, only to watch it devolve into some crappy, brain-rot harem fantasy that lacked any semblance of soul or internal logic.
It felt like a personal betrayal to see well-written, powerful female characters suddenly lose every ounce of their agency and intelligence just to compete for the attention of a dense asshole when they clearly had better options in every single chapter.
Even if the guy wasn't intentionally being a jerk, the very least he could have done was show some spine and politely decline their advances to maintain some dignity for everyone involved.
But no, the author had to double down on the wish-fulfillment nonsense in the most irritating way possible, leading to a scene that I still couldn't think about without feeling my blood boil with rage.
"The dumb fuck said he would love them all equally? Who the fuck even does that?!" My voice cracked as I shouted into the wind, my self-control finally snapping as I swung my arm and punched the side of the metal boat with everything I had left.
"ARRGH! Damnit!"
A scream of pain followed almost instantly, the dull thud of my knuckles against the unforgiving iron sending a jolt of agony straight up my arm and into my shoulder.
I pulled my hand back, cradling it against my chest and clenching my fist as I waited for the throbbing sensation to subside.
Taking several deep, shaky breaths, I tried to force my heart rate down, realizing how pathetic I must look, throwing a tantrum in the middle of a literal ocean over a fictional character.
"Honestly, it doesn't even matter whether he strings all of them along at this point," I grumbled to myself, leaning my head back against the side of the boat and staring up at the vast, uncaring sky. "Why am I even thinking of something so dumb when I'm stranded in the middle of the ocean with no food or water?"
I've already tried drinking sea water due to desperation and of course that was a dumb idea, so yeah, I really had nothing to eat for several days.
The silence of the sea offered no answer, which only served to irritate me further as I glared at the clouds, imagining the author of that cursed book sitting somewhere looking down on me.
"If you wanted to prove a point by dragging me into this world, you could've just made me a real side character, you know? Why the hell would you leave me out here to die in the middle of nowhere!" I shouted, hoisting my middle finger toward the heavens.
I let out a long, helpless sigh, the weight of my reality finally beginning to crush the anger out of me, leaving only a hollow sense of helplessness.
In my mind, I couldn't help but curse the author again, thinking that even if they truly were a god in this realm, only a kindergartener would resort to something as petty and dumb as this.
It felt like the work of some emotionally unstable bastard who couldn't handle a single bit of constructive criticism without throwing a literal tantrum and casting their critics into a watery abyss.
I was about to lay back down and wait for the sun to finish me off when my heart suddenly skipped a beat, a strange sensation prickling at the back of my neck.
I then noticed that something was different about the water around me. a subtle shift in color that didn't match the deep blue or the white foam of the cresting waves.
Straining my aching muscles, I stood up and cautiously approached the edge of the metal boat, gripping the rusted rim with both hands to keep my balance as the tipsy waves threatened to throw me overboard.
I leaned out as far as I dared, squinting against the glare of the sun to get a better look at the water surrounding my vessel, and my breath hitched in my throat.
The water wasn't blue anymore; it was actually becoming red, a deep, swirling crimson that was blooming outward.
"The hell?" I blurted out, my voice trembling with a mixture of confusion and genuine fright as the color intensified.
My mind immediately went to the darkest possible conclusion, wondering if that was actually blood I was seeing clouding the brine.
If there was that much blood in the water, did it mean there was some kind of viscous monster lurking beneath me, hunting something large enough to dye the sea red?
The thought caused my face to turn a ghostly shade of pale, and I suddenly felt a lot more content with the idea of dying of starvation on this shitty boat than being torn to shreds by some unseen horror from the depths.
I remained frozen, my knuckles white as I gripped the metal, watching as the red stain continued to spread and thicken until it looked like a red carpet laid out across the waves.
The tension in the air felt like it was rising, a heavy silence falling over the ocean as I waited for the other shoe to drop.
Plop.
A soft sound broke the rhythm of the waves, and my eyes widened in sheer surprise when a shape emerged on the surface of the water, some distance from me.
It wasn't a shark or a sea monster, but a person's body that had suddenly bobbed up to float along the sea surface, drifting slowly toward my boat.
From this distance, I couldn't get a perfect look at them, but they were definitely nude, their pale skin standing out starkly against the dark red of the stained water.
I could only catch a glimpse of the head as the body rolled with the current, though it was hard to tell much else due to the long, wet pink hair that was matted against their skin and trailing in the water like seaweed.
'The hell is a body doing all the way out here?' I wondered, my fear momentarily eclipsed by a profound, haunting confusion as the pink-haired stranger drifted closer to my rust bucket.
My gut screamed at me that something was fundamentally wrong with this situation, as finding a lone body drifting in the middle of a vast ocean was never a sign of good fortune.
Especially as I watched the crimson stain in the water continue to expand and thicken with every passing second.
I knew enough about the sea to understand that this much blood would act like a dinner bell for every predator within a ten-mile radius, and it wouldn't be long before sharks or something much worse arrived to investigate the source.
Even though every rational part of my brain told me to paddle away as fast as my weakened arms could manage, I couldn't ignore the fact that if I didn't do something immediately, this person was going to die right before my eyes.
The thought of being the reason someone breathed their last breath was heavy, but the part about attracting predators was what truly kept my heart hammering against my ribs in fear.
I couldn't afford to have a feeding frenzy happening right next to my thin metal hull, because one stray bump from a large shark would be the end of my miserable journey.
"Alright, let's get a closer look and see if there's anything left to save," I muttered to myself, leaning precariously over the side while trying to ignore the metallic scent of blood that was now thick in the air.
I reached out with a trembling hand, extending my fingers until I could just barely snag a handful of that long, matted pink hair that was floating on the surface like silk.
I used it as a makeshift rope, slowly and carefully pulling the body closer toward the boat until I could reach down and grab what I believed to be their hands.
The skin felt unnervingly cold and slick, almost like it was covered in a thin layer of mucus, which sent a shiver down my spine nevertheless, I didn't stop.
As I began the arduous task of pulling them halfway out of the water, the weight of the body felt strangely heavy, far more than a person of that size should have been.
The moment I hauled the upper torso over the rim of the boat, I caught a full, unobstructed view of what I had just rescued, and a gasp of pure shock escaped my throat.
My grip failed instantly as my brain struggled to process the sight, and I hurriedly let go of the body, allowing it to splash back into the bloody water with a heavy thud.
'You've gotta be fucking with me right now!' I screamed internally, my heart nearly leaping out of my chest as I scrambled back toward the center of the boat.
The reason I had dropped them back into the water so violently was because I had finally gotten a better look at the physique of the creature I was trying to save.
That thing, or should I say she, actually had a long, powerful fishtail resembling that of a sharks, where her legs should have been, covered in shimmering scales that glinted even in the clouded water.
Her hands weren't human at all, but were equipped with translucent webbing between the fingers and tipped with sharp, hooked nails that looked like they could tear through flesh with ease.
It wasn't a human girl drifting out here in the middle of nowhere, but an actual, living mermaid.
'Fuck, just how stupid did I get out here in the sun to think this was a normal survivor?' I cursed my own dumb luck, realizing that my desperation for company had blinded me to how suspicious the entire scenario was from the start.
I knew that back in my old world, some people would probably call me a heartless bastard for dropping her back into the sea without a second thought.
After all, who wouldn't want a beautiful, exotic mermaid as a companion in a survival situation, especially one with such striking features?
But those same people didn't understand the reality of the world I had been dropped into, and their romanticized ideas of sea maidens were nothing more than a death wish in this environment.
I wasn't in some lighthearted, fluffy fantasy novel where everything worked out through the power of friendship and love; I was trapped in the world of the "The Knight of Blood and War."
In this specific, shitty story, mermaids weren't the singing, friendly creatures of folklore, but were instead cold-blooded, apex predators who loved feeding on the flesh of humans more than anything else in the world.
They were notorious for using their beauty and apparent vulnerability to lure sailors to the edge of their ships before dragging them down into the crushing depths to be consumed.
CLAMP!
The sound of a powerful, wet hand slamming onto the bow of my boat made my entire body shudder with a sudden, icy terror.
My eyes darted toward the front of the rust bucket in fright, seeing those webbed fingers digging into the metal with a strength that shouldn't have been possible for a creature of that size.
'She's still conscious?!' I thought, my panic reaching a fever pitch, only now were my fears founded, because it was now obvious that she wasn't some drifting corpse, but a predator that was very much awake!
I hurriedly lunged toward the bow, reaching out to grab her wrist in a desperate attempt to pry her hand off the rim and push her back into the depths where she belonged.
I strained with every ounce of strength left in my malnourished body, bracing my feet against the floorboards and pulling back until my muscles screamed, but to my sheer horror, she didn't budge an inch.
Her hand remained locked onto the metal like a vice, her grip so firm that the rusted iron actually began to groan and deform under the pressure of her fingers.
'Just how strong is she?!' my fears continued to soar as I realized I was completely outmatched in a contest of pure physical power.
My terror reached a breaking point when her other hand shot out of the water and gripped the opposite side of the boat, effectively pinning my small vessel in place.
I looked down into the water and saw the faint outline of her tail thrashing with immense force, creating a whirlpool effect that began to destabilize the already tipsy boat.
"FUCK!" was the last thing I managed to shout before my entire world turned upside down in a chaotic blur of motion and sound.
In a flash, the mermaid used her incredible leverage to flip my boat over as if it were a toy made of paper, and before I could even take a final breath, I found myself submerged in the freezing embrace of the sea water.
The transition was so violent that the air was knocked out of my lungs, and the sudden darkness of the underwater world disoriented me as the metal hull of my boat now floated above me like a heavy lid.
"URRGHHH!!!" I struggled frantically, my limbs flailing as I tried to swim out from beneath the overturned boat and reach the surface where the air was.
Just as I thought I might break free into the light, I felt two slippery, powerful hands wrap around my ankles with a grip that felt like bands of steel.
I glared downward through the stinging salt water, my eyes widening when I saw the cunning bitch smiling up at me, her luminous eyes glowing with an eerie, predatory light in the shadows cast by the boat.
She wasn't just trying to drown me; but was clearly enjoying all of this.
Her expression one of pure, sadistic triumph as she watched me struggle for my life.
I tried to kick her away, lashed out with my heels in a desperate attempt to strike her face or her throat, but my efforts were completely useless against someone capable of overturning a heavy metal boat with a single movement.
It stood without question that she was the master of this environment, and she easily began to drag me lower and lower into the sea, her tail propelling us downward with terrifying speed.
Even as I continued to struggle, twisting and turning in a vain attempt to break her hold, it was all for nothing because the only thing my exertion achieved was increasing the speed at which the seawater flooded into my suffocating lungs.
I could feel the cold liquid rushing into my chest, extinguishing the last of my strength and replacing my consciousness with a dull, heavy throbbing.
And before I knew it, the light from the surface began to fade into a pinpoint of distant gray.
"ARCK...." A few bubbles escaped my lips as I slowly lost consciousness, my vision blurring into total darkness.
By then, the immense sea pressure around me had grown unbearable, pressing against my ribs and temples with such intensity that I felt as if I was going to get squished into a pulp at any moment.
The last thing I felt was the sensation of being pulled deeper into the cold, silent heart of the ocean, as for what this cunning witch was going to do to my corpse, I had no idea.