4 Take Care! (1/2)
The Mantas started moving Quick and organized as if they had practiced it many times. They quickly came together and formed a sphere on which the old and young were in the middle and sped away towards the opposite direction of the blue moon. I was of course right in the middle of it as well, as soon as I saw it I felt the danger and instinctively bunched up with everyone else.
If someone was looking at us from a distance away they would only see a inky dark spot moving at a fast speed through the water as a ball of blue light moved right behind it. Unfortunately the blue light seemed to be moving a little faster and was slowly catching up.
As I looked back, I found that those fish were much faster than anticipated. They were now so close that I could see how most of them were splattered with an inky black fluid all over their bodies. 'It was blood! It was definitely manta blood! I had gotten a small cut from the spiky crab before so I quickly recognized it, no wonder there seemed to be only around half us here!'
One of the older mantas in the center which i had happily recognized to be grandpa manta seemed to have also realized how close the enemy was and sent out a message to everyone around him.
”Darkness!!”
Once he did so all the mantas young, old, and myself included released black mana in a large but constant stream leaving behind a long black cloud. Even the ball of mantas itself was also completely shrouded; however, I don't know if it was because our eyes are special or because we are the same species but our vision was fortunately not affected.
The massive ball of light had slowed down significantly as soon as it entered the black cloud so I quickly lowered the amount of mana I was wasting. I had already used up almost half of my reserves in panic and I could already feel exhaustion setting in. As the fish got farther and farther away for some reason I couldn't relax whatsoever. Even though everything seemed fine now my instincts were screaming 'danger!'
I quickly turned around to look back at the blue moon only to be met with a powerful beam of light that blinded me instantly. Fortunately I had another pair of eyes underneath my body which I used to spin my body around to keep up with the other mantas.
I clenched my teeth trying to ignore the pain in my eyes as I went over the last scene I saw right before everything went white. The fish's hanging light ball had brightened up, easily pushing the black magic away and almost like a spotlight it cut through the darkness shining onto the mantas.
The chase started once more for almost 10 minutes before grandpa manta gave out an order once more.
”Gray fight! Black scatter!”
Immediately all the older gray mantas which amounted to around 50 stopped moving and turned around facing the blue moon that was quickly approaching , everyone else kept moving but scattering into different directions. After going a certain distance away I found a large clump of sea plants which I could watch the fight from and quickly jumped in. 'Grandpa Manta has been sharing his food for me almost every day, I can't watch as he sacrifices himself without even trying to help!'
The gray mantas started to quickly ready themselves as the blue moon came closer. Very quickly many arrows and large spears started materializing all over the place. There were easily over thousands of them, each gray manta creating hundreds!
'There are many fish but there definitely isn't 1000 of them so couldn't we win as long as we shot out a couple more volleys? Why were we all running???' However it didn't take very long for him to understand.
As soon as the light fish were close enough, the gray mantas released all their attacks at once. Like black rain the spears and arrows smashed into the group easily knocking any of them that was hit into the sea floor! However the little mantas' happiness was quickly crushed when he noticed that all the ones that had gotten hit easily dug themselves out of the ground and rejoined their brethren as if nothing happened!
As if they were zombies no matter how many times they got hit they would quickly back up and keep on charging as if not taking any damage. As they got close enough many of the mantas started attacking using their tails by imbuing it with white mana, hardening it and stabbing onto the long fish. The ones hit would be easily thrown back but would then get back up and rejoin the fight just as quickly. Looking at them closely he noticed their bodies were covered in bones that protected them like full body armor. Only a very small amount of unlucky fish didn't get back up, they were the ones that were unfortunate enough to have gotten stabbed on one of their very small eyes which in turn had crushed their small brain.