Chapter Summaries

Dick investigated the murder of Alps and Guoguo’s mother and tracked a fishman guard he believed was the killer. After capturing one attacker, he chased a second guard, who escaped through the protective barrier into the turbulent sea.

• Alps told Dick that her mother had been murdered, and he examined the body, finding signs that she had been strangled and stabbed with a sea fork.
• Dick followed clues near the village and found a fishman guard hiding nearby, then wounded and pinned him with his sword.
• The captured guard’s accomplice attacked Alps and Guoguo, forcing Dick to pursue him through the coral forest.
• The second guard reached the protective barrier, opened a narrow passage, and escaped into the dark sea.

Dick pursued the fishman guard beyond the village barrier and fought a gigantic toad-like monster in the deep sea, but the guard was killed and the monster escaped. Returning to the village, Dick found it burned and its portal destroyed, then learned from the dying landlord that Guoguo controlled giant creatures on the seabed.

• Dick followed the fishman guard into the dark sea, where a gigantic toad-like monster killed the guard.
• Dick fought off the monster, severed one of its glowing feelers, and watched it retreat into the depths.
• Dick returned to find the village burning, its residents dead, the siblings missing, and the portal apparatus destroyed.
• Dick found the dying landlord, who said that Guoguo controlled giant creatures on the seabed before he died.

Dick traveled through the deep sea toward a settlement and attacked a submarine surrounded by hostile sea demons. After defeating them and resting aboard the vessel, he was caught by an enormous tongue as he went outside to investigate the submarine’s violent shaking.

• Dick suspected that someone had sent the murloc guards to capture Guoguo, then set off toward a nearby deep-sea village or town to find a portal to the capital.
• Dick encountered sea demons around a submarine, killed many with the Dawn Sword, and drove the survivors away.
• A giant sea serpent attacked Dick, but he killed it with his sword and dagger, which shattered under the pressure of the deep sea.
• Dick boarded the submarine, rested, and saw that killing the sea demons and serpent had earned him Energy Points and upgraded his Hypnosis Sign.
• The submarine began shaking as the water outside churned, and Dick went out to investigate before an enormous foul-smelling tongue wrapped around him.

Dick killed the deep-sea giant toad and returned to Poseidonia’s capital, where he tried to reach the Siren palace. Palace guards turned him away under a new decree barring contact with land races, and Niuniu accused them of being part of a conspiracy.

• The giant toad ambushed Dick, but he broke free, attacked from inside its mouth, and burned it with Xiya’s Fire Signs before killing it.
• Dick gained 200 Energy Points, returned to his original size, and piloted the submarine back to the city.
• Dick used the portal to travel to the capital, intending to visit the palace and check whether the Siren sisters had returned.
• Niuniu confronted Dick and insisted on another arm-wrestling match, then accompanied him to the palace gates.
• The guards said the empress and princess were away and refused Dick entry under an order banning contact with land races.
• Niuniu challenged the guards over their treatment of Dick and demanded to know whether a conspiracy was underway.

Dick returned to the palace and led Morgana, Stein, and Lao Ba out after warning them that fishman guards had murdered a family and destroyed a portal. At the sacrificial hall, Valkyrie, Medusa’s daughter and its temporary leader, invited them in and asked Dick why he had come.

• Niuniu and a fishman crowd persuaded Alki to let Dick enter the palace, where Dick told Morgana and Stein they needed to leave and explain what he had discovered.
• Stein freed Lao Ba from his restraints but released him from the experiment only after discovering that he was Niuniu’s biological older brother.
• Dick told Morgana and Stein that fishman guards had murdered Guoguo’s family, seemingly tried to abduct the boy, and destroyed the village’s portal.
• Dick and his companions left for the sacrificial hall, where Valkyrie invited them inside after the guards initially refused them entry.
• Valkyrie introduced herself as the temporary leader of the sacrificial hall and asked Dick what had brought him there.

Dick fought Valkyrie to prove his strength, then agreed to accompany her while Morgana and Stein were sent elsewhere. He recognized Klaik as the younger brother of the priest he had killed and learned Klaik held a grudge against him.

• Dick told Valkyrie about his discoveries, and she challenged him to a fight before agreeing to help if he won.
• Dick and Valkyrie traded attacks until Valkyrie used illusions and vine whips to bind his legs.
• Dick unleashed Piercing Cold Shockwave, dispelled Valkyrie's illusions, and defeated her with his sword at her neck.
• Valkyrie invited Dick to accompany her and sent Morgana and Stein to the priest's laboratory with a snake warrior.
• Klaik arrived and offered to escort Morgana and Stein, but Valkyrie warned him off and told Dick that Klaik resented him for killing his older brother.

Dick found Medusa unconscious and learned that her consciousness had petrified anyone who approached her, then agreed to investigate whether her condition was connected to the empress’s illness. He visited Niuniu’s tavern to relax, but a fishman guard arrived carrying a sharkskin scroll.

• Dick saw Medusa asleep on her throne and learned from Valkyrie that she had been unconscious for about five days, while nearby fishmen had been petrified by her consciousness.
• Dick told Valkyrie that the empress had fallen ill on the same day, and Valkyrie asked him to investigate the possible conspiracy threatening Medusa and Atlantis.
• Dick searched the temple for clues, then encountered Niuniu outside and accepted his invitation to the commoners’ district.
• Niuniu brought Dick to Niuniu Tavern, where Dick met Niuniu’s family and talked with him over food and drinks.
• After Dick and Niuniu clinked mugs for the seventh time, a fishman guard entered the tavern clutching a sharkskin scroll.

Dick challenged a merman guard’s war propaganda in Niuniu’s tavern, then shared human-world food with Niuniu and Lao Ba. Late that night, Alps and Guoguo arrived, and Dick asked how they had ended up there.

• A merman guard urged the tavern’s patrons to join the resistance army and wage war against humans, but Niuniu confronted him.
• Dick disputed the guard’s claims about human pollution, eating sea creatures, and Princess Nazi’s abduction, then challenged him to discuss the matter with Nazi at the Siren Palace.
• After the guard fled, Dick described human food to Niuniu and used his spatial badge to lay out snacks, cake, pork chops, and steak.
• At midnight, Dick, Niuniu, and Lao Ba drank together, and Lao Ba celebrated escaping a dwarf’s control.
• When Alps and Guoguo arrived at the tavern, Dick told Niuniu to close up and asked the siblings how they had ended up there.

Alps told Dick how Guoguo awakened his power to control giant deep-sea creatures and how Slithereen Slark hunted them, leading Dick to suspect a conspiracy connected to the sleeping Medusa. The next morning, Dick joined Niuniu at the square, where a crowd gathered to watch them arm-wrestle again.

• Alps explained that Guoguo was adopted, awakened his creature-controlling ability while protecting their village, and had been hunted by fishman guards who killed their mother.
• Alps identified the guards’ leader as Slithereen Slark, and Dick connected Slark’s return to the capital with the empress and Princess Nazi.
• Dick suspected a conspiracy involving Medusa’s sleep and the possibility that Guoguo’s controlled sea beasts might run wild, then planned to return to the palace.
• After learning the Siren sisters had not returned to the palace, Dick went with Niuniu to the square, where Niuniu defeated two fishmen at arm-wrestling.
• Dick challenged Niuniu to another match and offered a hundred Siren silver coins as stakes, prompting fishmen in the crowd to place bets.
• The man in the cowboy hat announced the championship arm-wrestling match between Dick and Niuniu.

Dick and Niuniu staged an arm-wrestling match so Niuniu could win enough money to expand his tavern. After a fishman guard delivered a speech branding land-dwellers evil, Dick challenged his claim and argued that fishmen were guilty of the same sins.

• Dick and Niuniu arm-wrestled, and Niuniu won after forcing Dick's hand onto the stone table and splitting it.
• Dick secretly signaled Cowboy Hat, who slipped him a money pouch; the two had arranged the match to help Niuniu win gambling money for his tavern.
• Dick and Niuniu went to hear a fishman guard rally the crowd for war by accusing humans and other land-dwellers of the seven deadly sins.
• Dick told the crowd that fishmen also bore the seven deadly sins, repeated the guard's accusations with fishmen as the subject, and declared neither race wholly righteous or evil.

Dick challenged the fishmen’s war propaganda, but Empress Nami returned and publicly agreed to attack the surface world. After Nazi helped prevent Dick’s arrest, he warned Valkyrie that the Deep-Sea World was recruiting troops and war could begin soon.

• Dick accused the fishman guard of using human writings to stir up conflict, but Commander Sparta stopped their argument and declared that Nami had approved a war against the surface.
• Dick waited for Nami and Nazi to return, then Sparta ordered guards to arrest him for disrupting the war propaganda.
• Nazi reminded Nami that Dick had saved her life, and Nami ordered the guards to release him.
• Nami announced that the fishmen would invade the surface and recruit warriors, while Sparta sent her and Nazi back to the palace.
• Dick returned to the sacrificial palace and told Valkyrie that the Deep-Sea World was preparing for war.

Dick and Valkyrie suspected that a traitor had used the Kraken’s mental power to put Empress Nami under control and knock Medusa into a sleep, so they entered the Sea God Temple to seek the Sea God Trident. They reached an altar holding a dagger, where Dick received a message in his mind.

• Dick suggested that Empress Nami and Medusa might have been hypnotized by the Kraken, and he and Valkyrie suspected Priest Klaik was helping it.
• Valkyrie ordered a snake warrior to secretly watch Klaik and learned that the empress had ordered the Sacrificial Temple’s priests to join a campaign against the human world in seven days.
• Valkyrie decided to seek the Sea God Trident to save Medusa and the Siren queen, and she led Dick toward the Sea God Temple.
• Dick and Valkyrie descended 999 steps, opened the sealed entrance, and chose the middle passage through the dark temple.
• They reached an altar with a dagger in a stone bowl, and Dick suddenly received information in his mind.

Dick began the Labyrinth Trial of the Sea God's Trial and fought his way through a maze filled with water rats. After he defeated the swarm surrounding the exit circle, the formation activated and Valkyrie appeared beside him.

• Dick cut his wrist and filled the stone bowl with blood, activating the maze.
• Dick entered the maze, ignored the arrow-marked passage, and followed the blood-scented path as water rats gathered behind him.
• Dick reached a clearing and stood inside a protective circle, but the trial did not advance while the water rats surrounded him.
• Dick left the circle and used his sword, Piercing Cold Shockwave, and Fire Sign to kill the water rats.
• Dick eliminated the last water rat, causing the circular formation to glow and Valkyrie to appear beside it.

Dick and Valkyrie passed the first two trials, then entered the final Trial of the Same Self, which required their symbiotic blood. In the mist-filled arena, they encountered red-eyed mirror images that attacked them with arrows.

• Dick found that the water-rat corpses and traces of battle had vanished after he completed the first trial.
• Valkyrie took the Trial of Faith and followed her faith in the Sea God to find the true path through the darkness.
• Valkyrie chose to take the next trial, and Dick agreed to let her proceed for the sake of her people and her mother's safety.
• Dick and Valkyrie used their blood together to activate the Trial of the Same Self and entered its arena.
• As they walked through the mist, Dick tackled Valkyrie aside, and she blocked three arrows with a curtain of water.
• Dick fired a Piercing Cold Shockwave at the attackers, revealing mirror images of himself and Valkyrie with glowing red eyes.

Dick and Valkyrie defeated their phantoms in the Sea God's trial and passed through a glowing gate. They arrived on a floating stone platform in a disorienting realm, with the Sea God Trident and Dick's mother still ahead of them.

• Dick fought his phantom in the mist while Valkyrie battled hers, and Dick realized the trial could help him hone his skills.
• Dick activated Blood of Madness, overwhelmed his phantom, and beheaded it, causing it to dissolve into light.
• Valkyrie defeated her phantom and asked Dick to spar with her again so she could test herself against his full strength.
• Dick and Valkyrie vanished from the arena and reappeared at the entrance to the Sea God's palace.
• They entered the glowing gate and found themselves on a floating stone platform above upside-down storm clouds, beneath a deep-blue seabed filled with giant sea-beast skeletons.

Dick and Valkyrie reached Medusa’s spirit form in the Sea God’s palace and freed her from the chains restraining her. They returned to the priest’s palace as Medusa reappeared, while the fishman army’s attack on the human world may already have begun.

• Valkyrie recognized the platforms as the legendary divine abode, and she and Dick leaped across them to reach a bound woman.
• Valkyrie confirmed the woman was her mother, Medusa, who explained that Klaik had used the Kraken Sea Monster to trap her spirit form.
• Medusa told Dick and Valkyrie to channel their magical power into the chains and warned that the fishman army had begun marching toward the human world.
• Dick and Valkyrie joined Medusa in a prolonged effort, then shattered all three chains together.
• Medusa vanished, and Dick and Valkyrie entered a portal that brought them back to the priest’s palace, where Medusa sat on the fishbone throne.

Dick and Medusa gathered allies to rescue Nazi and stop the fishman army, which Empress Nami and Sparta had sent toward the human world. They left the underwater world aboard a submarine, hoping to catch up before the war began.

• Dick and Medusa captured the priest Klaik, who revealed that Sparta and the fishmen had taken Niuniu and Lao Ba to the battlefield and controlled Empress Nami.
• Medusa explained that Sparta hated humans because they had caused the deaths of Sparta's explorer parents, and the group learned that Nazi was imprisoned in the imperial palace.
• Medusa freed Nazi, who agreed to challenge her sister's control over the sea beasts, while Medusa explained that teleportation to land was too dangerous.
• Medusa, Nazi, Dick, Stein, Morgana, and Valkyrie boarded the submarine as Medusa ordered the remaining warriors to secure the underwater world.
• The submarine passed through the teleportation gate despite shifting coordinates, and Medusa used sonar to track the slower fishman army as Stein claimed his modified engine could reach fifty knots.

Red Hair spotted a vast army of fishmen and sea beasts attacking from the Deep-Sea World and ordered the estate’s people to warn the country and evacuate. He stayed behind with the butler and his guards as the attackers advanced, realizing the battle’s end had been set in motion by his imprisonment of Nazi.

• Red Hair saw giant sea beasts and fishmen crawling ashore and summoned the butler.
• Red Hair ordered the butler to sound the alarm and call for troops, but the butler explained that Princess Ortega had taken the Sea Guard’s deployment tokens.
• Red Hair warned the estate’s people that tens of thousands of fishmen and sea beasts were attacking and told them to spread evacuation orders.
• Red Hair ordered the butler to stay and hold the estate with him, then recalled the legend of the Tide Prisoner as the attackers began their assault.
• Red Hair armed himself and sat with his guards as a poisoned harpoon struck the gatepost.

The fishmen attacked the coastal kingdom’s military camp, where the commander rallied his soldiers but could not overcome their powerful monsters. Sparta killed the commander and routed the army, leaving the fishmen to slaughter the fleeing soldiers.

• The commander dismissed the report of monsters until a guard told him that fishmen were attacking the camp.
• The commander killed two frogmen and rallied his soldiers, briefly pushing the attackers back.
• A Dark Iron Sea Turtle smashed through the camp’s defenses and injured several soldiers, while arrows failed to harm it.
• Sparta introduced himself as supreme commander of the fishmen and offered to spare the soldiers if the commander defeated him.
• The commander attacked Sparta, who caught his sword, impaled him with a trident, and unleashed a blast that killed or incapacitated nearby soldiers.
• Sparta’s fishmen chased down the fleeing soldiers and continued the slaughter.

Sparta forced Niuniu and Lao Ba to join the slaughter of humans while plotting revenge against Venice’s king. Meanwhile, Dick left the submarine to face Slithereen in an abandoned village, where their rematch began.

• Sparta recalled how Venice’s king had imprisoned his family and caused his parents’ deaths, then vowed to avenge them and conquer the human world.
• Sparta pressured Niuniu and Lao Ba to kill humans, but Lao Ba instead killed a chicken to claim they had completed the task.
• Sparta entered the general’s residence, ate the food, and drank Bacchus wine while imagining using Venice’s king’s skull as a cup.
• Dick spotted Slithereen ahead of the submarine, and Slithereen drew him away to keep the vessel out of danger.
• Slithereen led Dick into a deserted village and challenged him to a rematch before lunging at his throat with his dagger.