The elderly person held the fishing rod steadily, chuckled at the words and said, “That’s not bad. His beloved turned into 1,800 pieces by the propeller, and he now has 1,800 beloved ones.”
Luo Huayue shook her head in confusion, “But, the captain said his beloved can speak, have emotions, have empathy, and would not harm players actively. But now, these mermaids do not fit any of these characteristics!”
“Have the cloned mermaids degraded?”
The elderly man replied nonchalantly, “You young people, why bother so much? He said helping him find his beloved would also help us. Now that we’ve found her, just tell him, that’s it.”
“As for whether he accepts this kind of ‘beloved,’ that’s his own business. The emperor is not as anxious as the eunuch…”
“In my opinion, you are too concerned about that trickster! Not worth it.”
Raymond frowned, “How is he a trickster?”
The elderly man scoffed, “He said he would help us, but when you were in a life and death situation yesterday, did he come to help? Saying one thing and doing another, a trickster.”
Raymond countered for the captain, “He’s a boss from the instance. Just not helping the mermaids kill us is already helping!”
The debate among the group gradually veered off-topic, and Rong Yi decided to call the captain.
Zhang Haiyang casually remarked, “How can you call him? Can you find the cockpit by yourself?”
Ice quickly nudged him with her elbow and gave him a stern look: “One pot can’t stir another!”
Rong Yi securely wrapped the small octopus in a cloth bundle, placing it in their safe house. With Zhang Haiyang’s assurance as an “expert,” Rong Yi firmly believed that the octopus would wake up, not as low-spirited as Ice had imagined.
She summoned a holographic screen, “No need to worry about this. I added the captain as a friend yesterday.”
Shortly after, the captain responded to her summons on the deck, still in the instance storyline, repeating only a few lines, “Respected passenger, what can I do for you?”
“You look pale, I suggest you go to the restaurant and have a good meal.”
“Our casino has always been prosperous, why not experience it?”
Rong Yi activated the skill [Meeting the Parent], and the captain’s programmed smile stiffened slightly, fading away.
“Big sister,” he said with restrained excitement, “You said you found her…really?”
Rong Yi replied, “Do you keep your promises as you did before?”
“Of course!” The captain couldn’t contain his anxiety, “As long as you help me find her, I will do everything in my power to help you! Where is she?”
Rong Yi led him to the mermaid’s corpse:
“The words you are about to hear are the analysis results from our marine biology expert. Although it’s unbelievable, this is currently the most logical explanation.”
Although she always thought the current mermaids had nothing to do with the one who died for them, when the captain saw the rotting and gutted body, he instinctively paled.
It was still a body with the face of ‘her.’
Rong Yi spoke solemnly, “First, think about it, did these mermaids appear after your beloved passed away?”
The captain nodded blankly.
She sighed, “That’s it. Zhang, come.”
After listening to the explanation from the “marine biologist” about the identification of the mermaid species, their predatory characteristics, and body regeneration, the captain was a bit puzzled:
“Are you saying… her, it’s her?” He looked out at the vast sea. “They – all of them are her?!”
Zhang Haiyang cleared his throat, trying to appear professional and mature: “From a biological perspective, that’s correct.”
The captain shook his head. “…No, I can’t accept this.”
He held his head, squatting down in agony. “My mermaid… she’s kind, pure, smiles lovingly, never intentionally harms players – how could she turn into such a monster!”
Rong Yi crouched beside him, patting his back. “Actually, I have a theory.”
“When you transform from a human into an evil spirit, is it an instantaneous change or a gradual one? After becoming an evil spirit, do you still retain human memories and thoughts?”
The captain looked up, recalling, “It wasn’t instant… It probably took over half a month of a transitional period for me to smoothly switch between human form during the day and evil spirit at night.”
“When I became an evil spirit… my thoughts were indeed a bit confused, but with the memories of being human stored in my mind, they kept me from getting too lost.”
Rong Yi said, “I think your mermaid should be similar.”
The captain was puzzled, “What do you mean?”
“To change the setting, it’s not possible to just change one NPC like you. The mermaid’s body must have undergone changes too.”
“Like you, she transformed from a mermaid into a creature similar to a starfish, not an instant change but a lengthy transformation process.” Rong Yi gently lifted the white digestive net that was almost mermaid-shaped:
“As she was nearing the end of her transformation, she saved you from death. The starfish’s characteristics allowed every fragment of her body to regenerate, becoming an identical ‘mermaid’ to herself.”
“But, while regeneration is possible, there’s one thing that can’t be.”
“And that is memory.”
The captain repeated those two words in confusion, “…Memory?”
“For example, it’s like your mermaid is a USB drive.” Probably due to thinking about exchanging rings with the USB drive before, Rong Yi’s first instinct was to use this as an example:
“You stored all your daily joys, emotions, experiences with her on the USB drive. But one day, you accidentally lost the USB drive.”
“You search in the market, finding many USB drives of the same model that look exactly alike.”
“But you just know, none of them are her.”
“Because you’re aware that neither finding the USB drive nor finding those lost data within it is what truly matters.”
“What makes your USB drive so unique? Not the appearance, not the model, but the data accumulated over time inside it.”
She looked at the mermaid corpse on the ground. “So, these, they are your mermaids, they do have completely identical genes after all; yet, they are not your mermaid, because their minds are empty, devoid of any of your past memories.”
The captain fell silent, then took off his sailor hat and clenched it in his hand, bowing his head, his voice hoarse, “Sister-in-law, you’re right.”
“I’ll never get her back, will I?”
“That depends on how you define ‘her’.” Yung Yi said, “Is it □□, or is it a spirit.”
He was silent. All that could be heard for a while was the clamor of the players having fun on the deck.
Seeing the heavy atmosphere, Zhang Haiyang said, “I say, regardless of whether this USB flash drive is the one with your data, but the ‘mermaid’ that you are looking for, we have found it, haven’t we? Then, do you have to fulfill your promise and help us return to the ship?”
The captain, still immersed in the pain of possibly losing his love forever, looked up at those words and gave him an odd look:
“When did I say I would help you return to the ship?”
Rong Yi frowned: “Didn’t you promise me before that if I could help you find the mermaids, you would help us–”
The captain interrupted her, “Sister-in-law, what I promised you was to ‘do my best’ to help you.”
Zhang Haiyang clapped his hands, “That’s good enough. You are the captain of the ship, can’t you help us return to the ship?”
The captain shook his head, “I’m sorry, just because I’m the captain of a ship doesn’t mean that I can steer this cruise ship.”
Rong Yi hard to look at him: “You …… you a captain …… will not drive the ship?”
The captain coughed: “From the previous copy, my task is to advise players not to be seduced by mermaids; in the current copy, my task is to prevent players from coming to their senses to return to the ship. None of this requires the skill ‘steer the ship’.”
“So I’m just hanging on to my duties. I’m told that this is still quite common in your human society.”
Rong Yi: …… As an NPC, you know quite a lot.
“Bang!” A loud bang drew their attention to Raymond.
He punched his fist on the ship’s ramp wall with a hateful tone, “What are you suffering from? Hasn’t your beloved come back to life? Just because she didn’t turn out to be as beautiful as you thought she would be, you’re going to treat her as if she’s dead?”
The captain also got angry: “What do you mean by treating her as dead? She died trying to save me! She was so beautiful, and these evil monsters are desecrating her!”
“If that’s what you call resurrection, you might as well be dead!”
“Then, at least, she’d still be alive and well in my heart ……”
Raymond raged, “Coward! Do you love her or do you love the memories? It’s just a memory, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be better to create it again?”
The captain shook his head firmly, “You are using another mermaid as her double! I would never do such a thing, because I love her, because I respect her!”
“Fine!” Raymond roared, “Then we’ll help you kill all the mermaids so that the first mermaid can live on in your memory perfectly, okay?!”
“Ha! Whimsical!” The captain yelled back, “Didn’t you hear what the experts said? She can come back to life with just a few pieces of her body! You can’t kill her!”
Raymond pointed to the rotting mermaids on the overtime, “They’re afraid of the sun, so if we put their bodies on the deck to dry the salted fish, I don’t believe they’ll be able to come back to life!”
The others looked at the captain and then at Raymond, and couldn’t tell what they were arguing about: the captain’s “lack of greed”? Or was it Raymond’s whimsy?
Or rather, they had no idea why Raymond would get so angry with the captain.
Rong Yi vaguely felt that Raymond was like a little boy who couldn’t play basketball, seeing other boys with great basketball talent but wasting it without any appreciation. He felt jealousy and resentment, always wanting to pick a fight with someone.
However, killing the mermaids was indeed one way to solve the problem. Although it seemed somewhat incredible.
They had dealt with the captain, so the monsters they would face at night would only be the mermaids.
Without the mermaids, it meant they would have half a day every day to freely explore and move around the ship.
Just think, having the freedom to come and go in the cockpit would be very advantageous for their return journey.
But the difficulty lay in the fact that one mermaid was already quite powerful, and with the ability to multiply infinitely, did they have to ensure each one was completely killed and then laid out on the deck to dry in the sun?
Rong Yi thought of the desperate situation they faced last night against three mermaids. How many more mermaids would attack tonight? Even if they managed to kill them, would they be able to escape unscathed?
“What’s all the fuss about!” The old man who had been silently fishing finally spoke, catching a rainbow fish and skillfully gutting it.
“Who said mermaids can’t be taken care of.” He threw the colorful fish skin into the sea. “As long as I’m here, it can be done.”
Instantly understanding, Luo Huayue exclaimed, “Grandpa, is it your skill –”
The old man interrupted, “Ah. I’ve been with you children for a while now and can see that you have good hearts. We may only meet by chance and may not see each other again in the future, but I don’t mind telling you.”
“My skill is called ‘Unrivaled in the World.'”
With a wry smile, the old man continued, “Ironically, cancer, to put it simply, is the unlimited abnormal growth of tissue cells. My ideal is to eliminate all cancer in the world, which I can’t do in reality, but in the game, it gives me the ability to ‘prevent biological cell proliferation and regeneration.'”
“Wounds I’ve inflicted won’t heal. NPCs I’ve killed can’t respawn.”
“Most NPCs typically respawn after a round of dungeons, so my skill sounds domineering in name but is quite futile in reality.”
“I didn’t know mermaids had this characteristic before, but now I realize it’s quite fitting for this dungeon.”
“Mermaids I kill will remain corpses forever.”
His sharp gaze peeked from under his straw hat, and for the first time, Rong Yi realized clearly: the old man before him had soloed through many dungeons and was truly a master who could bravely survive high-death-rate A-level dungeons and move on to the next round in the game.
They had arrogantly treated him as an ordinary old man these past two days, taking care of him everywhere and not letting him join the battles, underestimating his true strength.
The old man put away his fishing rod, leaped lightly off the ship’s side, still hunched over with his lean back, chuckled and patted Rong Yi’s unbroken right arm. “Thank you for these past two days. I’ve eaten well and rested well.”
“For tonight’s battle, if you kids don’t mind me dragging you down, this old man will join in.”
