"You should've said so earlier! Second Elder, if you wanted to come down earlier, you should've said something. If you didn't say you wanted to come down, how was I supposed to know you really wanted to come down? Even though you looked at me so sincerely, you still had to tell me you wanted to come down..."
"Misery! Stop the curse! Stop the curse! Great Sage, spare my crown!"
"Why... didn't... you... say so... earlier..."
"Glub glub."
Bubbles floated up. Seeing that Second Elder Clam was nearly suffocating, White Ape shifted his hips, raised his buttocks, braced with both legs, then smoothly rolled backward off the Second Elder.
Freed from the crushing weight, the great shell abruptly sprang open and spouted water outward, two faint threads of blood drifting out with it.
"Cough, cough, cough..."
Deathly silence.
The young Giant Clams trembled—not from boredom, but from profound fear!
What had White Ape done?
A bear hug!
Not smashing, not prying, not drilling.
A hug!
Long-lived and hard-shelled, the Giant Clam Tribe's only two signature abilities could be said to lie entirely in their shells, which were also close to an arched structure.
Put another way, there were many ways to crack an egg, yet someone had chosen the hardest one—squeezing it! Spreading all the force apart!
Naturally, a Giant Clam's shell was not one complete arch and could not distribute force as perfectly evenly as an egg. But what White Ape had done truly terrified them.
Looking at the faint, slender cracks appearing on Second Elder Clam's shell...
Overwhelming brute force!
Monstrous strength!
If even the shell could not withstand it, everything else was useless effort.
A big black fish had come to the tribe—one they could not fight by force!
Damn it.
The First Elder had gone out