Liam saw this and immediately knew what was going to happen.
"Talon, use your whirlwind attack."
He pushed his mana reserves and jumped forward, putting more distance between him and the fishes.
The wind ripper bird screeched, its cry louder than the merfins and it flapped its huge wings, sending out several forceful gusts of wind that combined together to form a huge whirlpool.
Liam jumped ahead right on time and half of the fishes that were chasing behind him got caught in this whirlwind.
They couldn't handle the slicing winds and were tossed around mercilessly.
Meeeerrrr. Meeerrrr.
The fishes screeched and tried to fight back but one after another they down into the swamp waters.
Plop. Plop. Plop.
Everything was in shambles and the fishes were scattered everywhere.
Liam stopped running away and before the whirlwind completely subsided, he used a branch to jump towards the fishes that had been hit by the attack.
He had kited enough and the number in front of him was nothing that he couldn't handle, especially when they were waddling around helplessly.
Before they could regain their balance, he slashed at them with his sword and chopped down one fish at a time.
Liam hunted for every spot of red that he could find and finished off all the merfin spellcasters first.
Watching his actions, Luna and Talon as well used this chance to pick away the floundering fishes one by one.
Their combined efforts halved the remaining number of merfins within seconds.
Unfortunately, all of them received the debuff now but it didn't matter because the messy fight was almost over.
They pushed more and more and as the last fish dropped down dead, Liam and his two pets were only barely standing.
All three of them rested on the shores of the swamp looking at the massive destruction in front of them. Just like that, the entire colony of fishes was dead and belly up.
Liam let out a long sigh and then picked himself up off the ground. He bent down and picked up a small blue crystal ball that was near him.
"1" He smiled and looked around to see several of these blue crystal balls lying nearby. He chewed on the recovery berries, and slowly moved here and there to pick up all the drops.
Luna and Talon as well helped him.
All of them together covered the vast swamp and collected the loot that was scattered and submerged in the dirty waters.
It was quite a chore and a few merfins were still alive, caught here and there in between brambles.
Liam finished these leftover remainders and collected all the crystal balls not leaving even a single one behind.
These were special crystal cores that formed only in these walking fishes. They were not worth anything, save for a single purpose.
And that was the reason for Liam's visit to this swamp.
As he combed through every inch of this swamp carefully looking for these special blue balls, Liam also noticed a few treasure chests around.
"Damn. What a good haul!" He whistled and quickly hurried over to these chests.
Normally, in other games, treasure chests respawned but in 'Evolution Online' once a treasure chest was used, it would disappear forever.
It was 'first come first serve' and available only once.
However, it didn't contain anything groundbreaking, or rather the chance of that happening was very low.
These mainly had gold coins, gemstones, precious herbs or minerals, skill books, and recipes.
Basically, anything that could be obtained from hunting down monsters could be found in a treasure chest but compared to the low drop rates from a monster, these were sure-shot loaded.
And typically there was more than one treasure chest lying around grouped together, so if a player chanced upon these, there would be several good things waiting for them inside.
Liam knew about the merfins but he had no idea that this was a treasure chest spot.
Luckily, he had already obtained the [Unlock] skill at the beginning of the game itself, so he now had no problems opening these treasure chests.
He hopped over to the floating puddle of treasure chests and started hurriedly popping them open one by one.
[Ding. You have obtained 10 gold coins and 200 blue crystal balls]
[Ding. You have obtained [Swamp Vines] skill book and 200 blue crystal balls]
[Ding. You have obtained [Mana Net] skill book and 200 blue crystal balls]
"Heh. This is getting good." Liam's eyes gleamed in happiness as he had never expected to find so many blue crystals within these treasure chests.
From the entire colony of merfins, he had only managed to obtain around 200 blue crystal balls but every treasure chest ended up giving him the same amount.
And these were 10 treasure chests to boot!
He quickly unlocked more and more chests and found 200 blue crystal balls in each. By the time he finished opening them all, he had obtained a whopping 2200 balls!
Liam took it all and quickly left the swamp even though it was a good grinding spot for experience points.
If he stayed here for some more time after the merfins respawned he could repeat the same set of moves to grind them all down again.
But that was not his first priority at the moment. Besides, he had better ways to farm experience points.
He quickly hopped onto Talon's back and they rose up, flying out of the disgusting and suffocating swamp air.
Only now were they able to breathe freely and the debuffs as well disappeared.
"Let's gooo!" Liam grinned and patted the wind ripper. "I will get you guys something good to eat when we return to the royal city."
His mood was very good as this mission had been a resounding success.
The bird chirped in delight and they flew onwards reaching a small patch of land that was away from the pungent swamps.
"Get down here," Liam muttered.
The wind ripper nodded and the fox smiled. However, it didn't last long.
As they descended down, the air became thick and heavy and this patch of land was even fouler compared to the swamps.