The "Abyssal Glutton" had been hunted down as soon as it appeared, immediately becoming the anniversary event's "defining moment"!
After the exceptionally violent champion of Dagon was wiped out at some cost by Transian warriors, the morale of every NPC still fighting in the undersea war soared. The allies the merfolk girls had brought in from the surface had once again proved they could handle any kind of trouble, and the unbroken string of victories on the front lines heralded a bright future for the undersea war.
In particular, when the Tide Warriors froze the hideous head of the aberrant worm and set it up as a trophy on the Gray Trench battlefield, every merfolk warrior who had marched out from the trench drew courage and inspiration from the sight.
Now, even the "conservative" Lady Bechuka had stopped talking about waiting for divine reinforcements. She'd suddenly realized that the surface folk weren't just bragging when they said they could win without the gods' help.
In any case, with the merfolk's most important festival, the "Abyssal Celebration," drawing ever closer, this great victory—one worthy of being recorded in detail on merfolk stone tablets—was seen as an auspicious sign.
The silver-tongued priests of the Great Reef seized the opportunity. At Lady Bechuka's personal direction, after she'd changed her mind, priests began spreading all manner of epic tales throughout Great Reef Province. Governor Hood also took the chance to recruit a new wave of soldiers to replace the veterans guarding less important stretches of the southern border.
This also meant the merfolk had finally moved beyond their previous complacency and entered the fierce, ambitious spirit that should accompany undersea expansion.
The following days' campaign against the fishmen on the front lines went even more smoothly. According to the advisers Old Qin had sent