The Culling of Man: A litrpg adventure (Peril's Prodigy Book 1) by Craig Kobayashi (ereader android TXT) 📕

Gary smiled as he processed what had just happened. "Blast fishing is actually the term used for fishing with dynamite," he said, laughing to himself at the irony. "I don't know if that blast killed them or just knocked them though.” He turned to the boys watching from the dock. “Let's see if we can't get them out of the water before we find out."

Without further instruction, all five red-headed boys ditched their shirts, jumped into the water, and started to drag the bobbing fish to shore.

"Hey Gary, you guys okay? I just heard an explosion from your direction, me and Athios are heading your way!" Garath's voice boomed into Gary’s mind over the Raid communication channel.

"We're fine," Gary replied as he pulled his own shirt over his head, exposing a wild mess of flaming red body hair. "Daisy was just doin' some fishing."

"You look like a rug," Daisy observed with a crinkled face.

"Fishing?" Garath asked over the Raid channel. "Daisy? Does she have the patience for that kind of... oh. Never mind," came his voice over the communication channel again as he and Athios popped into view from the east.

Standing side by side the Necrologist and Dimensionalist fell through a white disk below their feet and disappeared, only to reappear falling from a second disk thirty-meters closer to the shore. Before they hit the ground, Athios cast another disk and placed it between the two of them and the grass below, they fell through again and emerged from another white disk a few feet from where Daisy and Gary stood at the edge of the dock.

"You look like a rug," Garath observed.

"I've heard," said Gary. He and Daisy looked at each other and burst into laughter.

Satisfied that nobody was in mortal peril and thrilled about the haul of fish coming back to BOTH HQ (The Church of Immaculate Conception), Garath ruffled Daisy's hair - a gesture she didn't appreciate as much as he would have hoped. Garath's intense features and eyes that glowed white in the sockets frightened the young girl. Athios laughed openly as Daisy shied away from his touch, wincing.

"Good work, Daisy." Garath settled for verbal positive reinforcement and turned to Gary. "Your boys need a hand?"

Gary turned to the west and squinted into the setting sun. Garath, Athios, and Daisy winced at Gary's flaming sheepskin back.

"You know, I think they've got this," he decided as one after another red-headed boy threw a fish onto the sand before jumping right back into the water. Gary's oldest son, Braden, gathered each beached fish and bashed its head with a rock before throwing the slimey corpse onto a blanket laid out on the sand.

"I think you're right," Garath noted, impressed with their efficiency. "Well," he said, parking his butt in the sand, "this would be a wonderful time for a Corona."

"Cheers to that," Athios agreed and took a seat in the sand next to him, then gestured to Daisy to join them. The little Elementalist eyed Garath suspiciously before sitting in the sand with Athios between her and the Raid Leader.

"That's a pretty cool way to use your Skill," said Garath. "How did you think of that?"

Daisy looked at Athios, who nodded comfortingly, before replying. The words flowed from Daisy’s mouth at the speed of sound.

“I didn't know it would kill the fish. I just got mad because Gary caught one and I wanted to catch one but we were just sitting there for EVER and Gary's like, 'be patient' and I'm like, 'how do the fishes know if I'm being patient' you know? So then I got super mad and used blast and they popped up dead in the water like that. Gary said people do that kind of thing on purpose with dynamite and he thought it was funny that blast fishing is what they call it. But like, if people can just do that on purpose, why do people just sit there for EVER with bait on a hook in the water?"

Garath made a face. "How did you even say all of that without breathing? You know what, never mind. I have a long answer and a short answer," he told her.

"Short answer," Daisy decided, nearly instantly.

"It's cheating."

"Cheating? Don't we need to get fish so that people can eat? Who are we cheating?" she asked indignantly, her hands flying out to her sides.

Garath gave that a moment's thought and laughed. "Well, it WAS cheating. Back when we could just buy fish at the grocery store..."

"That's a really good point," Daisy agreed fervently. "You can just buy fish at the store! Why do people even go fishing at all?"

"That one I can answer, but there isn't a short one and a long one. Just a long one," Gary chimed in, still supervising his boys from the shore and, much to Daisy's relief, had his shirt back on.

"I don't really care that much," Daisy said. She yawned expansively and laid back into the warm sand.

"So G," said Athios, who had been listening quietly and tugging on a lock of shiny black hair, "why don't you pull out that egg and let us have a look?"

Daisy sat back up with a start and looked inquiringly at the Necrologist. "Egg?"

"Yeah, I got a reward for being the Raid Leader of a group that defeated over one-thousand monsters without any members dying. It's an egg. The description said it would stay in stasis if I left it in my Items panel but would hatch if taken out and cared for. Thing is, I don't know how to 'care for' some mystery egg so I was kind of nervous about taking it out," Garath explained.

"Wait," Daisy said, her expression perplexed. "Didn't YOU die?"

"That's right. You did die," Athios agreed, nodding.

"I got better..." Garath said, shoulders dropping slightly.

"Can we see