Super Gene

"This is not right." Han Sen saw the fish floating belly-up, but noticed something amiss.

If he had killed the transparent blighter then he should have received an announcement, but there hadn’t been one.

"Is that transparent fish faking its death?" Han Sen watched it intently and saw the Z-steel bolt still resting embedded inside the fish’s body. He didn’t believe it had survived.

If it was indeed faking its death, however, then how powerful or clever must the fish have been?

Han Sen inched his way towards the pool, and this time, the silver fox did not stop him. He summoned his Flaming Rex Spike and set about trying to retrieve the fish from the water.

Although the fish had indeed died, the bolt proved to be too heavy, and it made the fish sink. As a result, it was going to be a finicky trial attempting to fish up the fish.

Han Sen placed the tip of the Flaming Rex Spike in the water, which caused it to fizz and produce heavy steam like water upon charcoal. The rex spike was a powerful thing, but the weapon appeared to corrode and melt at its submerged end. Quickly, Han Sen returned the weapon.

Fortunately, he had only put the Flaming Rex Spike in by about ten centimeters. If Han Sen had put it any deeper, he was certain the entire weapon would have been destroyed.

"What is this? The Flaming Rex Spike surely cannot be any weaker than the Z-steel bolt, so why is the bolt okay and this fire-wreathed hunk of metal isn’t? Does the liquid in the pool have an adverse effect when coming into contact with beast souls?" Han Sen then summoned a sacred-blood weapon to try it out, and upon touching the water, it was immediately destroyed.

When he prodded the water with another Z-steel bolt, it was okay. It did corrode ever so slightly, but very slowly. The changes were granular in comparison to what happened with Han Sen’s throwaway beast soul.

"Strange water." Han Sen had much surprise in his heart, but he had an idea.

Han Sen brought out his Z-steel bolt and tied a rope to it. He was going to fire it at the dead fish and retrieve both the fish and bolt by pulling the rope.

He only needed to pull it once. Even if the rope broke, he should be able to nab the fish before it melted.

But when Han Sen fired the bolt, the fish seemed to move once more. It twisted its body and evaded the bolt.

The Z-steel bolt in the creature’s body was starting to look awfully corroded by this point, and when the fish moved, the bolt snapped in two and broke completely. It was shaken from the fish’s body and sank to the bottom of the pool to suffer a corrosive demise.

The transparent fish swam in a few circles, and the arrow wound immediately healed. Not even a scar remained.

"It really wasn’t dead. This little fish is pretty strong." Although Han Sen had more Z-steel bolts, he didn’t want to risk losing them to the troublesome fish.

The fish had seen what the bolt could do, and now it swam around frantically. It refused to stay in one spot as it did when it was struck. It swam so fast, Han Sen couldn’t have hit it even if he wanted to.

Han Sen guessed that the fish didn’t make much fuss last time because it believed that any arrow or bolt that struck the water would be useless; hence why it did not bother to dodge.

Now, it knew it could be hurt, so it wasn’t willing to stay still.

The silver fox tilted its head and looked at Han Sen. Its eyes squinted as if it was humorously mocking Han Sen’s failed attempts. This made the flustered master blush.

"If I knew things would turn out like this, I would have used the rope with the very first bolt." Han Sen circled the pool, unable to come up with a solution for dealing with the fish.

Han Sen acknowledged that the fish was something special; if it wasn’t, the silver fox wouldn’t have been behaving the way it was. But if there was nothing they could do to deal with the fish, their efforts thus far would be entirely wasted.

Han Sen thought about filling up the pool with rocks and draining it that way, but when he dropped in one rock, the fish swung its tail and batted the rock away like a baseball. There was a big splash, too, which almost soaked Han Sen.

Fortunately, he was quick to react and dodge. God knew what would have happened had he not moved out of the way.

"F*ck you! I don’t believe I cannot kill you." Han Sen summoned Moment Queen and consulted her, curious to see if she could come up with a solution to his ordeal.

After Moment Queen was summoned and given a description of the problem, she looked at the fish and her cold face dropped into shock.

"What is it?" Han Sen asked, noticing her reaction.

Moment Queen did not answer immediately, and she looked as if she was trying to remember something. She looked at the fish in the pool again and said, "When I was in the Third God’s Sanctuary, in one of the king’s shelters, he had a fish..."

Han Sen noticed her immediately drop the tale she had begun, but his curiosity had been piqued. He wasn’t too interested in the fish, but more about her herself.

Moment Queen once told him she had been to the Third God’s Sanctuary and had killed the son of a king. Now, she was telling him she had seen a fish in one of the king’s shelters.

If she leveled up ordinarily, how would she have received such an opportunity? And how was she left alive after slaying the son of a king? Merely being sent back to the Second God’s Sanctuary seemed a rather tame punishment.

"This woman is an enigma."

Moment Queen did not know what Han Sen was thinking, but she decided to continue her dialogue. She said, "The fish was three feet long, and it was transparent. It looked like jade. Its back possessed three blood vessels and it had the name ’Third-Life Bonefish.’ Although it was a fish, it was not a creature. It was in fact a water spirit. It had the ability to turn you into a walking skeleton. However, as long as you weren’t dead, eating one of those fish fixes you right up."

After a pause, Moment Queen continued by saying, "But Third-Life Bonefish only live in their bonepools. The bonepool can melt everything, and a mere drop of the water can turn an entire living creature into walking bones. If a beast soul touched it, it’d be gone in an instant. Nothing can survive its touch."

"So, you mean to tell me that this is a bonepool? And this fish is the Third-Life Bonefish?" Han Sen asked, filled with much surprise over her revelations.

"It certainly looks like it, but genuine bonepools are much stronger than this. Without fitness, all it would take is the steam from such a pool to turn us into a pair of skeletons." Moment Queen eyed the fish once more and continued to say, "Besides, this fish does not look like the real Third-Life Bonefish. The lifeforce is not pure, unlike the one I used to know."