Tara struggled to keep himself afloat, his entire body splashing on the surface of the water. He seemed to have enough energy to keep swimming, but from what Alex could see, he was still going under.
Something was dragging him.
Alex immediately dragged the giant fish with him, making his way through the ocean. He kicked the water behind him so fast that he exploded forward, even surfacing. There, he continued kicking on it, and at some point, he was pretty much running on water.
Tara went under right as Alex arrived, so Alex immediately dove in, swimming toward him. To Alex’s amazement, the thing that had caught onto Tara was an octopus, wrapping its tentacles around his leg as it dragged him.
The water around him was pitch black from its ink, making it difficult to see, but Alex could make out its shape.
What surprised Alex the most was that the octopus was rather small. It wasn’t a regular-sized octopus, of course, but it wasn’t that big that it should be a problem for Tara. This octopus was nearly three times smaller than the fish he had caught the other day.
Tara still flailed around underwater, panicking so much that he couldn’t even think straight at the moment. All he really had to do was unwrap those tentacles and swim away.
Alex didn’t blame him much. He was still a kid, after all.
He raised the broken half of his harpoon as he got closer to the octopus and shot it down at it. The harpoon streaked through the water, past Tara, like a bolt of lightning. Since there was no Qi coating the harpoon, it shattered even further, the remnants carrying the momentum until they tore through the octopus’s bulging body.
The octopus died from that alone, but the tentacles still stuck to the young man’s legs, dragging him further down.
Alex quickly grabbed the young man and pulled him to the surface, the octopus coming along with him.
Tara took a single large gasp of air when he appeared on the surface, his body still in panic mode.
“You’re okay!” Alex shouted, holding his arms from flailing too much. He left Tara and started releasing the octopus’s tentacles. As he did, the young man began calming down and swam on his own.
Alex pulled the octopus up and was thankful that his fish hadn’t gone anywhere else either.
He looked toward Tara next, who, despite calming, was still very much scared. His face looked like one that was about to cry.
“Hey, are you alright?” Alex asked.
That alone was enough to get him to start crying. “I can’t do this! I’m not fit for this.”
Alex froze for a few seconds, not knowing what to say. “Hey, it’s okay. Just calm down. It’s your panic speaking. Take a deep breath, and you’ll be fine.”
“No, no, I won’t. I can’t do anything. I shouldn’t be out here. I should be dead.”
Alex caught him by the shoulders and shook him. “Get a hold of yourself. Did you forget who you are? You are Tara, the man who caught the biggest fish in the ceremony, aren’t you? Just take a deep breath, and you can continue catching some more.”
The young man stopped his cries, taking slightly deep breaths before letting out a wail. “I’m not that. I’m a fraud. I caught no fish at all.”
Alex was taken aback. “What? But the fish I was in… it was you who got—”
“You killed the fish,” the young man shouted. “I was nearly killed by it, but you fell on it and killed it. I didn’t know what to do, so I stuffed you deep into its gullet and took the fish with me. I didn’t want to die out here.”
Tara’s confession was something Alex hadn’t expected to hear today at all.
“You didn’t kill the fish?” he asked.
“No, you did.”
Alex didn’t remember. He had been so wounded and lacking in Qi that the moment he hit the water, he had been knocked out. When he woke up, he was already in the tribe. So everything that happened in between was a mystery to him.
But he expected the young man to have done what he said he did. There had been no reason for him to doubt him. No one in the tribe did.
Alex sighed in the end. “It’s alright. You’re still young. You have time to continue your cultivation and get stronger. At that point, there is nothing stopping you from doing all of this for real.”
The young man slowly nodded, but he did look a little confused. “What is cultivation?”
“Cultivation, you know. The thing you guys do to make yourself strong. I suppose since you body-cultivate, I should say your training.”
The young man frowned. “With our harpoons?”
“Do you use your harpoon when training?” Alex asked.
“To learn how to use a harpoon in water, yes,” the young man said.
“No, for your body. To make yourself physically stronger.”
The young man shook his head. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You know what I mean. How do you guys get stronger in your tribe? There should be something you guys do, right?” he asked.
The young man slowly shook his head. “Don’t you get stronger as you grow? Do you have to work to become strong?”
‘What the hell is going on here?’ Alex thought. “Can you tell me the usual routine you guys go through?”
“Me? Uhh… it’s changed now since I’m an adult. I now go to the mountain in the morning, help with firewood or sharpen stones for harpoons in the afternoon, and go catch the fish in the evening. Although, I probably can’t do that.”
Alex listened to the young man with a stunned expression. “Is that the regular routine for you guys?” he asked.
Tara nodded.
Alex couldn’t help but frown at his lack of understanding of the overall situation. If they didn’t train, then how the hell did they get so physically strong?