After exchanging just a few words with Lilia, Lin Yuan discovered that this wretched creature had an astonishingly punchable mouth.
And she was not even doing it on purpose. She was simply born missing a few screws.
That only made it more infuriating.
Could she have been beaten unconscious because her mouth was so punchable, leaving even her memories hazy? Lin Yuan could not help wondering.
Still, setting aside Lilia's tone, she had provided plenty of useful information.
The most important points were how the underwater world was divided into tiers, and her estimate of the strength of that enormous dark shadow from earlier.
According to Lilia, even the strongest beings in the Main Sea were only a hundred times stronger than Lin Yuan, and that shadow might not have reached that level.
Besides, Lilia had only taken Lin Yuan's exceptional strength into account. She did not know he also had skills.
But no matter how he worked it out, that shadow was still far stronger than Lin Yuan.
In terms of stats, a shadow that massive probably had at least as much strength as Lin Yuan.
In terms of skills, neither the wooden deck nor the steel harpoon would be very effective against such a gigantic creature.
Only Emergency Repair counted as a truly useful skill, but that alone was not enough to bridge the gap in strength between Lin Yuan and the shadow.
And that was without even considering whatever powerful abilities the shadow might possess.
Overall, the two sides were not on the same level right now.
Fortunately, according to Lilia, that thing probably would not be able to break through the surface anytime soon.
But there were many more things like it in the Main Sea, and although reaching the Paradise Sea was difficult for creatures from the Main Sea, it was not impossible.
Lin Yuan had a feeling that he might encounter the terrifying creatures of the Main Sea before long.
That gave him an urgent drive to grow stronger.
The stars filling the sky and the three moons gradually faded away, and the golden sun appeared on the horizon once more.
Knock, knock, knock.
"It's morning! Time to get up, Captain Lazybones!" Lilia's voice came from outside the coffin.
"No giving your captain nicknames!" Lin Yuan lifted the coffin lid and sat up.
His left hand had fully recovered.
As captain, he could acquire some of his crew members' traits. This was one of the benefits of the contract.
Lilia's trait allowed her to resurrect through the coffin, but in Lin Yuan's case, the weakened version only allowed him to recover slowly through it.
So last night, he had driven Lilia out of the coffin to keep watch and spent the night lying inside it himself.
Now both his health and his left-hand weapon chamber had fully recovered, saving him quite a bit of wood.
"Finally, the second day. Yesterday really was a long day..." Sitting atop the coffin, Lin Yuan felt the sunlight fall on him and sighed.
Then he opened the regional chat channel.
Quite a few people were already talking, though there were noticeably fewer than yesterday.
He did not know whether the others had yet to get up or had failed to survive the first night.
Most of the discussion concerned what had happened last night.
Most people had encountered strange occurrences during the night, such as odd knocking sounds or the creaking scrape of something scratching wood.
Everyone speaking in the channel had chosen to ignore them, and they had indeed encountered no actual danger.
But when they stepped out of their cabins today, they discovered considerable damage to their decks that needed repairing.
An acquaintance from yesterday, "Never Skunked," had been less fortunate. His cabin door had been smashed open, and a half-fish, half-human monster had crawled inside.
If Air Force Bro had not raised his strength to 11 beforehand and fished up a long saber to use as a weapon, he probably would have died on the spot.
Even so, Air Force Bro had been at a disadvantage in his fight against the fishman monster.
Fortunately, dawn had been approaching when the monster appeared. After Air Force Bro held out for a while, the fishman retreated on its own.
Air Force Bro was now boasting endlessly in the channel about his fight with the fishman, drawing gasps of amazement from the others.
But Lin Yuan noticed something.
According to Air Force Bro's account, although the fishman had been strong, it was actually only comparable to a strongman among ordinary people, weaker than Air Force Bro's 11 points.
However, seeing the fishman had dealt a severe blow to Air Force Bro's sanity, preventing him from fighting at full strength.
But Air Force Bro had discovered something else: after his sanity took that hit, he had instead vaguely sensed that the fishman was not all that powerful. This had bolstered his confidence, allowing him to hold out until the end.
So sanity was something like a scouting method? You could sense an enemy's strength based on how severely your sanity was damaged?
Lin Yuan mulled over this information.
If that was true, sanity appeared to be a negative attribute, but was actually an early warning mechanism that helped players avoid disaster while they were weak.
For example, if a player saw a seemingly ordinary creature and suffered severe sanity damage, they would know they had to flee immediately.
Without a sanity stat, Lin Yuan would not lose combat strength from sanity damage, but he had also lost that alertness to the presence of powerful creatures.
Perhaps this was also why, although he had vaguely felt the oppressive presence of that mysterious shadow earlier, he had been unable to judge just how powerful it was.
An ordinary player would already have suffered severe sanity damage and fled as far as possible.
Doesn't that mean I'll be liable to charge straight in no matter what I encounter from now on? Lin Yuan suddenly felt a headache coming on.
Being a reckless brute in this eerie sea sounded like a good way to get himself killed.
But not necessarily.
When you were weak, it was called brainless recklessness. When you were strong, it was called dominating through sheer might.
So whether having no sanity stat was good or bad depended on whether Lin Yuan was strong enough.
Get stronger! I have to get stronger!
Lin Yuan set himself a modest goal-first, become invincible throughout the Paradise Sea.
While these thoughts churned in Lin Yuan's mind, the chat channel took another turn.
Wind-Ear: "Skunked Bro, after all that talking, all you ran into was a fishman on the level of a strong ordinary person? Doesn't sound like much."
"Never Skunked" immediately flew into a rage. "Easy for you to say! You'd have died a hundred times over in my place! And I'm never skunked! Stop calling me Skunked Bro!"
Wind-Ear posted a sneering emoji:
"In your place? You don't even know what I ran into yesterday!"
His words immediately sparked curiosity throughout the channel.
Wind-Ear did not keep them in suspense:
"If your sanity is low, do yourself a favor and don't look. Otherwise, you're responsible for the consequences."
With that, he posted an image.
It was a photograph taken from above, looking down at the sea at night.
The sea reflected the light of the stars filling the sky and the three moons, turning silvery white and reflecting the things in the center of the image.
There stood a white-haired girl wearing a long black Gothic dress, with an enormous black scythe on her back, quietly standing before a black coffin that looked steeped in an ominous aura.
With her back to the coffin, she gazed into the distance, seemingly guarding it against disturbance.
The image was very clear. They could even see the girl's blood-red eyes and her wooden skin.
"God! My sanity! My SAN is plummeting!"
"What is that thing? Why is there a coffin floating on the sea?"
"Idiot, you should be more concerned about that creepy girl. She's standing right on the water!"
For a moment, the channel erupted!
Wind-Ear posted a smug emoji, then continued:
"You're all focusing on the wrong thing!"
"The most terrifying thing isn't that creepy coffin, or the strange girl who can stand on the sea."
"Don't you think whatever's inside that coffin, something guarded by a thing like her, is the most terrifying of all?!"
Before you continue