Cursing inwardly, Nalant headed toward the shore. He wanted to take one last look at the "sea monster" on the beach and make sure.
"My lord, it's dangerous over there!" Quick and the others had been frightened by the dozens of enormous "sea monsters" in the water. They were all on edge, and when they saw Nalant heading for the shore, they immediately hurried forward to stop him.
"Those aren't sea monsters. They're a kind of fish!" Nalant was at a loss for words. He walked a few steps farther and spotted the "sea monster" stranded on the beach. How could that be a sea monster? It was clearly a whale.
Its gray skin and enormous body, seventeen or eighteen meters long, had led the ignorant serfs to imagine it was a terrifying sea monster.
"Fish? A fish that big?" Quick and the others exchanged glances. They had never seen a fish so enormous. Its mouth could probably swallow a carriage in one bite.
"That's called a sperm whale. It's a gigantic mammal... a type of fish, but it doesn't eat people. It only eats little fish!"
"So that's what it is! My lord, you truly are a wise and learned noble!" Seeing how confidently Nalant spoke, Quick and the others finally believed him, more or less.
They had also seen that the sperm whale on the beach had none of the terrifying tentacles or rows of sharp teeth described in knightly tales. Apart from its huge size, it really didn't look any different from an ordinary fish.
"My lord, c-could we eat the sperm whale too?" Kenbi Cowdung had finally recovered from his fear. The next moment, he asked about the thing he cared about most.
To serfs, the most important thing was always having enough to eat. Seeing a fish this big, he immediately imagined that if he could live inside the whale's belly, he could lie down and munch on fish meat all day.
"We can!" Watching the sperm whales chase the Slippery Flying Fish all over the water, Nalant smiled.
He didn't know why sperm whales liked eating Slippery Flying Fish, but it meant that the Blue Sprite had already proven its worth.
Whale meat might taste bad, but it was still meat. A sperm whale weighed dozens of tons, enough to feed over a thousand people for several months.
Besides, the oil inside a sperm whale was excellent for making lamp oil. It burned for a long time and didn't smell bad.
"Could this be a lucky accident?"
Nalant didn't yet have the means to send the serfs out to hunt whales, but this one whale had directly solved their immediate food shortage and would let him quickly complete the side quest issued by the system.
As for the Lure Fishing plan, of course he would continue with it. He could catch the fish and sell them as goods to other territories to make money.
"Kenbi Cowdung, go to the village and tell all the serfs to bring baskets and tools to the shore!"
"Yes, my lord!" Kenbi Cowdung grinned like a chrysanthemum. He had already guessed what the lord intended to do.
"Quick!"
"My lord, I'm here!"
"Bring the guards with me!" Nalant waved his hand and headed for the beach.
The whale was enormous, and not only were Kenbi Cowdung and the other serfs afraid of it, the mermen had also retreated far away. That made it easy for Nalant and the others to reach the beach.
By the time Nalant and the others arrived, the sperm whale had stopped breathing. It had probably been stranded on the beach since last night, and struggling just now had used up its last bit of strength.
"It's huge!" Even the burly Quick looked like a chick standing in front of the sperm whale.
"All guards, listen up! Start cutting up the meat now! Move quickly!"
"Yes, my lord!"
Then Nalant and the others launched into a vigorous fish-cutting operation.
Once the sperm whale had been cut open, blood flowed everywhere, but Quick and the other guards, along with the villagers from Misfortune Village who had just arrived, were all grinning from ear to ear.
Looking at the chunks of pale whale meat, everyone could almost smell the fragrant fish soup.
"Move faster! If the mermen come over, there won't be any meat left!" Kenbi Cowdung urged the villagers as he hauled chunks of meat weighing dozens of pounds.
At the same time, he kept repeating to himself, This is lovely, lovely fish meat! After saying it, Kenbi Cowdung felt a surge of strength fill his body.
And so, the whale that had weighed dozens of tons was mostly butchered in just one afternoon.
"Hmm, those mermen can't hold back any longer?"
Nalant watched the mermen cautiously approaching to within a hundred meters and decided it was about time to stop cutting.
They had yet to cut up the last half of the whale, but they had already obtained more than ten tons of meat.
Putting away his longsword, Nalant went to the water's edge to wash the blood from his hands.
"Hmm? What's this?" But just as he finished washing, a wave pushed a hard object to his feet.
It was a grayish-white object about the size of three fists. It looked a bit like a stone, but it wasn't one.
"Could this be ambergris?" A bold idea suddenly came to Nalant. Sperm whales and Slippery Flying Fish...
He had seen pictures of ambergris online before. More importantly, sperm whales—the creatures that produced ambergris—had been hunting nearby today...
Nalant didn't mind that it was dirty. He immediately picked up the hard object that might be ambergris. It was much lighter than he had expected.
"Quick!"
"My lord, what are your orders?"
"Cut open the sperm whale's stomach and see if there's anything like this inside." Nalant raised the suspicious lump of ambergris.
"Yes, my lord!" Without hesitation, Quick immediately led several men to cut open the whale's organs, which they had planned to discard.
"My lord, there really is some! It's just a little smaller than yours!" A moment later, Quick came running over with a grayish-white piece of ambergris still stained with whale blood.
"Excellent, hahaha!" Nalant was overjoyed. There was no need to doubt it now: this had to be ambergris.
"Let's go. Those mermen are coming closer!"
At Nalant's command, they abandoned the remaining half of the whale carcass and began to withdraw from the beach.
"The mermen are awful! There was still so much meat left!" As they withdrew with Nalant, Kenbi Cowdung and the others seethed with hatred for the mermen.
Nalant didn't feel it was a waste. Yesterday, the Blue Sprite had made its home in the Coral Reef, attracting Slippery Flying Fish, which could give people and other animals diarrhea.
The gathering of Slippery Flying Fish had, in turn, attracted the whales.
Nalant surmised that the whales had come to chase and eat the Slippery Flying Fish because the ambergris inside them was such a large foreign object. They wanted to eat the fish and then pass the ambergris out of their bodies.
If his guess was right, sperm whales would keep appearing off the coast of Storm Territory. More importantly, ambergris might keep washing ashore in an endless supply.