Luckily, my foot found a rock under the water, and it gave me the leverage to throw Khanna onto the island. She somersaulted elegantly and landed on her feet. Good girl.

  I used every bit of my jumping optimization to launch myself out of the water. I came down on land and spun, ready to fight. The shark bus came zooming up from the depths with the four shark men back on board.

  But they hadn’t overturned our canoe. So who did?

  A dozen shark men came swimming through the frothing water. They were armed with a variety of coral weapons from spears to axes to machetes.

  Khanna gripped her spear, ready for a fight. I didn’t see her bow and quiver, and so I figured her other weapons had been lost when our canoe overturned. Our waterlogged boat floated just below the surface.

  The first of the new shark men emerged from the ocean. Water dripped off his scaly skin. He didn’t simply have the seaweed harness. He wore a coral necklace around his thick neck. At the center of the necklace was a small crystal, glowing red.

  He pointed his glaive, at me, a weapon crafted from driftwood, tipped with a coral blade. He bellowed out some words in some strange, very loud shark language.

  His lackies surged forward.

  “Get behind me,” I warned Khanna.

  The shark men swarmed the island. With them were the four shark fucks I’d fought before. I wasn’t going to mess around. No way was I going to die without getting into the Fodoron Obelisk. And I had Billie and Holly to take care of.

  I turned Betsy into a Yuskavarna chainsaw stick. I sawed off the head of one shark man, and then cut through the leg of another, the chain squealing through bone. Blood splashed my face. Cutting up shark men was so much easier than cutting wood. Yes, the bone took a little energy out of me but not that much. Besides, Opal was 99% of full. I had energy to spare.

  Khanna darted forward and speared the wounded shark man in the eye.

  A knife slashed my shoulder, but I cut off the offending hand with the chainsaw, enjoying both the shriek of the chain as well as the howls of pain. Khanna finished him off with a thrust of her spear.

  I just needed to dismember them a little. Khanna could act as cleanup.

  We took out another batch of shark men, then another, until finally, the chieftain shark came splashing out of the water. He landed and slashed at me with his coral glaive.

  I tried to cut through the wooden shaft, but he parried me every time I even got close.

  Besides, after using the chainsaw almost continually, I was feeling a little dizzy. I’d only recently been optimized for underwater action, so my energy levels weren’t at their maximum levels. I knew Opal’s own charge was dropping precipitously. I wouldn’t get a warning until she fell below 10%.

  The shark man spun and bashed me with his tail, which I’d forgotten he’d even had.

  It knocked me off balance, and then, with a flourish, he beat the chainsaw stick out of my hand. It fell to the rocks, going quiet. Without the chainsaw screaming, the world felt completely silent.

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  Khanna called out. “More fish men coming out of the ocean on the other side!”

  I glanced up.

  Khanna hadn’t lost her bow after all. With her quiver on her back, she’d scrambled onto the obelisk, standing high above me on the top of the base. Balanced there, she sent a feathered shaft into the eye of another shark man.

  Somehow, I knew they’d keep coming until I killed their chieftain.

  At the moment, though, I didn’t have a weapon.

  Every time I went for it, I found myself nearly impaled by the chief’s glaive.

  I plucked the coral knife out of the fist of a dead shark man, and then, I had to duck and dodge as the chieftain came at me, again and again.

  Another shark man had come from the depths, one of the four that I’d evaded with Grandma Otter’s help. This guy had the net full of power crystals. Perfect.

  I drove my knife into his belly, and spun him around, using him as a shield against the chieftain.

  The glaive tore half of the wounded shark man’s face away, and I shoved him forward.

  “Opal! It’s crystal time!”

  Then, I felt the ring start pulling in the crystals, powering herself up by all those crystals that the shark man had collected from the depths of the ocean. The numbers flashed before my eyes until I saw she was back at 99%.

  The power hit me all at once, and the next time the chief stabbed at me, I grabbed his own weapon from him. I was powerful enough to rip it away, and then I used own glaive on him. I drove it into his heart. Then I whirled and slammed it into his neck, cutting off his necklace.

  Gore splattered me, but I was quick enough to catch the gleaming red crystal.

  It was gone in a flash as Opal used it to give both her and me more power.

  Near max power, I tossed away the glaive, scooped up my chainsaw stick, and got to work, ripping through the last of the shark men. There wasn’t that many, though, since my huntress had been busy with her bow.

  She pointed. “Sid Marshall! More coming! So many more!”

  That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I wasn’t the least bit tired. I’d been using the saw, but I still had a ton of energy. All those power crystals, all at once, had me feeling like a superhero.

  The shark men broke out of the water, but they didn’t come for us.

  They dragged the corpses of the other shark men back into the water. At first, I thought they were retrieving the corpses for some kind of funeral, but no, they all started to eat them. The water was blood red around us, which brought in another couple bus sharks, who also started to snack.

  Khanna climbed down from the base of the obelisk and stood there, sighing. “Sid Marshall. Shark men take arrows before Khanna retrieve them. Now we have to make more arrows. Khanna not happy!”

  “Look on the bright side, though. We don’t have to fight every single shark man in the ocean. They seem to be leaving us alone.”

  Khanna laughed grimly. “Because they know we kill them if they don’t flee.”

  She wasn’t wrong.

  I didn’t want to get stabbed in the back, so I waited until the shark men finished their cannibalistic buffet. When all the meat was gone, they grabbed hold of the harnesses on their shark buses and disappeared into the depths.

  Soon, the wasn’t red anymore. It was strangely peaceful.

  Watching all the shark cannibalism had ruined my appetite, not that we had any food. Khanna had rescued her weapons and one basket of water, but the rest was under the sea. She sipped some water while I went after our canoe.

  Once it was safely on the island, I drank some water and then collected up any stray crystals. I had a little basket full. It would be a good snack for Opal.

  We were losing daylight, which wasn’t good, because while we’d captured the 10X crystal, I didn’t want to leave without checking out the skyscrapers. There were monsters in the ocean, and underwater fighting was not something I liked.

  Finally, it was safe for me to try the obelisk.

  Khanna stood behind me. “Khanna does not like this, Sid Marshall. Khanna hate this place. She hate that building. She spit on it.”

  And she did indeed spit at the Obelisk.

  “Just stay behind me and keep watch.” I wasn’t sure what to expect.

  Taking the 10X crystal, I slipped it into the Celtic knot above the blank stone. A second later, the rock melted away, and the air vibrated with a terrible energy. It was even worse than what we’d felt back in the Dinosaur Swamps.

  I couldn’t help but wince. But for Khanna, it was worse. She let out a strangled cry.

  Inside was darkness for a second. And then, way in the distance, a crimson light flashed. It was impossible, but the Obelisk was bigger on the inside than it was on the outside.

  I kinda wasn’t surprised, but I didn’t take that as a good sign.

  To get to that light, we had to walk through a lot of darkness.

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