I thoroughly explained the usage of the nets to my little precious, Mo Na. At times like these when she wasn’t busy poking fun at me, she was truly a dear. This perfect little angel of mine didn’t disappoint me this time either as she immediately got down to crafting the first fishing net the moment I finished my explanation.
‘Speaking of which, it has been a while since I used my Dark Alchemy…’
Ever since I stumbled onto the fact that Mo Na was talented in Undead Magicks and Dark Alchemy, I was basically able to adopt a hands-free approach to those matters.
‘I should just leave the equipment crafting to her from now on then…’
With regards to the fishing nets, the material required to craft them were all gathered from the ten or so Flame Devouring Fishes and split off Demon Fire Worms that I had my new subordinates capture. Materials in hand, Mo Na’s first move was to summon the signature black mirror face used during Dark Alchemy. She then channelled her mana to pick up the gathered ingredients and tossed them wholesale into the mirror face. A while later, the mirror face disappeared and all that remained was a jet black net that was half a meter wide and had a five meter long pole.
“So what’s that for?” Even though Nola was exhausted, her fatigue simply couldn’t curb the curiosity within her. “Doesn’t look like a weapon to me, seems really fragile too.”
“That’s a fishing net, as for its uses…you will find out soon enough.”
I clasped both of my hands around the pole of the fishing net and slowly sauntered up to the lava lake, dipping it into the molten liquid shortly thereafter. As expected, there wasn’t much reaction to the fishing net entering the lava seeing as the net itself was crafted from creatures who lived in said lava.
A while later, I got my first catch of a couple of Demon Fire Worms. Staring at my catch, I couldn’t help but recall the fond childhood memories I had of me and Nicole fishing…those were the days…
With a bit of excitement in my heart, I pulled in the pole and dumped the two worms onto the ground. The two worms immediately started wriggling as hard as their white wormy bodies could to try and crawl back to the lava lake, but try as they might, their efforts were swiftly thwarted by a tiny paw on each worm from Cinderel.
“Ruff ruff!”
Paws stuck fast to them, the worms soon discovered that there was no way they could struggle free from this demonic little puppy’s clutches. Thus, with unwillingness in their heart, they finally split into halves and crawled dejectedly back to the lava lake, their bodies bearing the scars of their shame.
‘Success!’
The moment I saw the two worms split off, I knew I had succeeded!
As I had noticed before, these worms would split into halves as a defensive mechanism, just like how a lizard would sever its tail when needed. Naturally, this was a lot more high level than just some tail splitting. After all, I hadn’t heard of any lizard being able to survive after having lost half of its body.
Still, while the test was a resounding success, actually foraging the needed materials to craft this fishing net was still a hassle. Thus, I had to put off any plans of large scale fishing in order to have some of my newly captured subordinates, three Flame Childes to be exact, capture more live ingredients.
Having done that, a thought immediately occured to me. ‘Factoring in the speed at which my Flame Devil Childes captured those fishes, and then factoring the speed of Mo Na’s crafting as compared to my subordinate count…crafting a sufficient number of fishing nets…would probably take quite a while…’
“Mo Ke, is your plan to capture the Demon Fire Worms as a means of procuring meat?” Nola’s curiosity came knocking unannounced amidst my ruminations.
“Mhm, that’s exactly what I had in mind.” Because I was a little worried that she would try to stop me out of a fear that I would fish those worms irresponsibly, I hurriedly followed that up with this: “Don’t worry, I will ensure that all the worms we capture split off. That’s all we need from them. If they truly won’t split up, I will just let them go.”
“I can see that even without your assurances, I just wanted to tell you that, if this is really your plan, I think I might have a solution to aid you.”
“You? Aid me?”
I was stunned for a second. ‘My ears aren’t broken right, did she just say that she would help me catch Demon Fire Worms? From her standpoint, it would be a miracle that she didn’t try to stop and yet here she was, offering to help me…’
“What I’m saying is that we can work together.” Nola paused for a second at that point as if she was thinking about something. A short while later, she firmly nodded her head and said: “I have a proposition…”
She then proceeded to lay out her thoughts for me…
It turned out that she was alright with the worms offering themselves up to me. In exchange however, we had to extend our protection to the worms while promising not to needlessly kill or harm them. As long as the worm had just split off recently, we weren’t to force it to split again in the short term.
Basically, we were to run this whole operation like a sheep herder would. In that case, me and my newly minted subordinates would take on the role of shepherds or sheepdogs. As for the archenemies of the worms, the Flame Devouring Fishes…they were naturally the wolves in this story.
“I roughly get what you’re saying here, but my subordinates…I don’t have that many subordinates who can actually enter the lava lake and protect them.”
I still had those Abyssal Golems, but those clearly couldn’t step into the lava lake. Even if they weren’t afraid of its scorching heat, they would sink like a rock thanks to their frightening weight. Plus, they probably weren’t able to learn swimming either. With that in mind, I was left with a scant few who could actually operate in the lava lake. Even if I counted in Sinmosa and her husband, Sasani, that number wouldn’t cross the ten mark.
Truly, this was an awkward moment. Even if Nola was willing to cooperate with us, we had no way of meeting her terms.
“Actually, there so happens to be a Demon Fire Salamander Sanctuary nearby, I can have them come over to help.” Nola thought about it for a second before continuing: “To be honest, the Flame Devouring Fishes massively outnumber us Salamanders. Had it not been for the fact there are so many Demon Fire Worms and they all possess the ability to split themselves…they would have most likely been wiped out by now…”
“Furthermore, once they split up, they would enter a temporary state of weakness. Their movement would slow down drastically, and they aren’t able to split up in the meantime. They need a safe environment to recuperate…”
‘A safe environment?’ I paused for a second there. Suddenly, an idea struck me and I knew what I had to do.
I turned around to face my precious daughter and, in a soft voice, said: “ Sweetie, can you help Daddy for a second? Go fetch No.6 for Daddy.”
Mo Na batted her pretty little eyelashes before giving me a slightly confused look: “Mama, do you mean that Small Imp?”
“That’s right, that Small Imp you just saw, he should be with No.3 right now.” I pointed at the not too distant location where the prisoners were being managed. “No.6 should be persuading those prisoners right now with No.3”
“Mhm, Mo Na gets it. Let’s go, Cinderel!”
