Chapter 114: Beautiful Leg Muscles Vs. Fish

The fishing life was a quiet life, if done right.

It was supposed to be quiet. The subtle warmth of the red morning sun was comforting, but Jimmy’s stomach insisted on having its orchestra.

It whistled and gurgled, demanding more food, and the few bugs he ate seemed to have stirred it up even more.

"Calm down, boy, you’re scaring the fish." He said.

Jimmy waited for a bite. He expected quite a battle, since according to his friends, the fish in this lake were quite big.

This quickly broke the illusion he tried to cling on, regarding fishing life being peaceful. He knew that he could easily get pulled in the water, or get cut by the plant-fibre line, if he wasn’t careful.

"I wonder how many people were pulled into the lake by a fish?" He spoke to himself, "It looks like they still tie the lines around their arms, or their waist, so maybe they haven’t learned their lesson yet? If I was them, I’d invest in a bunch of iron poles. They can tie their lines around them, and risk those poles instead of their fingers if they hooked a monster."

[+6 system points]

Jimmy slapped down a few more bugs as he waited. He had to eat, but the line he casted hadn’t moved much, and he had half a mind to abandon the idea altogether, and go ask his friends to show him how they caught fish.

"I could try and snatch them out of the water," He said, "But aren’t fish supposed to be very quick?"

Not a single idea sounded good enough to pursue. He didn’t want to risk burning the few calories that he got from eating the bugs.

To be safe, he slapped down a few more of them, and swallowed them whole, two-or-three at a time.

[+9 system points]

[Total points: 6,581]

Jimmy’s stomach finally stopped screaming. He felt a little bit better too, or at least, he got rid of the impending sense of doom that his hunger pushed him towards at the arse-crack of dawn.

The line he casted was yet to move.

To make matters worse, he heard footsteps behind him, which sounded human. No matter what body he was trapped in, he could never mistake the rhythm of a human’s footsteps.

Cautious, he sprinted towards the crates that were initially behind him, and stuck close to them.

The human approached from the right side of the bundle of crates, and in contrast, he hid around the left side.

Poking his head out to have a better look, he couldn’t help but feel weird. He didn’t feel threatened, as he took measures to have the upper-hand in any potential altercation. He was just weirded out.

The human, a beautiful, tall, and muscular ginger woman, stared at the lake, contemplating, as if she was trying to solve the mystery of the century.

Jimmy heard her waffling about something, but he couldn’t pick up on what she said. He wasn’t out of ear-shot, he just couldn’t understand her language.

Nevertheless, he was enthralled, and thought, ’That has to be the most beautiful human woman I’ve seen. Her skin looks... peckable. Should I peck at her?’

The raw muscle behind her checked short-skirt got him feeling all sorts of ways. He began to wonder if crows liked to peck at checkered clothing.

It was hard for him to figure out how to react. He never expected a human to make him feel the slightest bit good, as there only had been one, single instance before, when Rogbeard the Mortician, took him in and fed him in the temple. Any emotions he had towards the humans of this world that weren’t sour, were completely foreign to him.

It also explained why he quickly evolved his slightly sweet emotions into selfish, self-serving plans.

Jimmy kept listening to her rattle, and talking to herself. Every now and then he picked up on a word or two, learned it, and had the equivalent of a sinus-targeted brain-freeze every time his brain registered the new words, never to be forgotten.

The woman was inspecting the very fishing line that Jimmy had cast. From what he assumed to be local, violent curse words she tossed around, she believed that one of the kids had been playing around with the fishing gear last night.

After five minutes of her constant waffling, the line below her was suddenly pulled straight, and slashed at the waters as if it was trying to split a path between the lake.

A fish took the bait, and it was a big one.

It abruptly dragged the rock that Jimmy had the other side of the line on. The rook flew up, and it headed towards the lake.

Quick as a whip, the woman stopped cursing, thrashed forward, and grabbed the rock, nearly slapping it into pieces.

"No ye don’t!" She groaned.

Stubborn as a mule, she tightened every muscle in her body, and started backing up.

The wet, small rocks around the edges of the lake made it nearly impossible to find a firm footing, but she found it. Every step she took was the epitome of perfection, skillful, as if the endless rage she had was just a facade to far deeper matters.

’Holy fuck, did she hook a whale?’ He thought.

Whales weren’t supposed to be in lakes, but in this world, it was hard to be sure.

Anyway, Jimmy felt adrenaline pumping through his veins as he saw this very powerful woman, man-handle the rock, and the line that was attached to it.

Although she wasn’t struggling, Jimmy’s body apparently misfired information, because he had a deep sense, a deep fear that she was going to be pulled into the waters.

He had half a mind to shoot a fireball at the line, and snap it, for her sake, but he feared that a battle would break out if he did so. For a reason he was yet to understand, he did not want to upset her.

Instead, his adrenaline pushed him towards the lake. He subconsciously decided to help.

However, a roughly five pound crow could not do much to beach the absolute monster that was hooked on the other side of the line.

He ended up grabbing the line with his claws, five or so feet away from the woman, and since he couldn’t possibly bend the line to his will, he simply hung upside down from it.

"Whit?" She grunted.

In a great attempt to communicate with her, he bundled together the few words of her language he learned today, and tried to tell her that he was trying to help.

What he ended up saying though, was, "The coo kens whit love is, ye wank stain!"

"Hahahaha!" Her chest rose as she laughed, "I hooked a fish, ye overgrown bawbag, no’ a coo!"

The main confusion he made was that he called a fish a cow, and he said that a cow knows what love is. It went without saying that despite his best attempt, his exclamation had no relation to fishing whatsoever.

Nevertheless, the woman didn’t mind him hanging upside down on the line. She kept pulling the surprisingly strong line away from the lake, and she has not been forced to take a single step forward so far.

Jimmy found himself distracted, looking at her sweaty leg muscles. They looked like they were going to explode.

"Yeah, nothing’s pulling her in the water." He cawed.

The hooked fish couldn’t beat her, that was a fact. She kept pulling, up until she beached the monster.

It was a ten minute struggle. The woman had tired out nearly every muscle in her body, but she won.

Much like a fisherman would never let go of their rod, she did not let go of the rock that the line was tied around.

The beached fish, a 9 foot (2.7 meter) monster, was not a whale, but it was still a powerful animal.

Its whiskers, and wide flat mouth was prolific enough even for Jimmy to recognize. It was a catfish of some sort.

He wasn’t sure what species it was, and he didn’t care. The catch was fat, with plenty of meat to give.

It had to weigh shy of four hundred pounds (181 kg). It was an absolute, white-bellied, and black-backed beast!

Jimmy’s stomach gurgled as he looked at it. He was ready to eat it as soon as he dropped down from the line, but then another problem arose.

The catfish wiggled so much once it was beached, that it finally got the hook out of its mouth.

With nothing to keep it in place, it started rolling towards the lake. It tried to get back in the water.

The woman rushed to grab it, but the prior battle she had with the fish had tired her out. Her knees hurt every time she touched the ground, and this slowed her down significantly. Big, muscular people like her weren’t exactly known for their running.

Jimmy was quick to notice what all the commotion was about.

Quick as a whip, he yelled out, "Blue Fireball!"

[-200 mana points]

[Remaining pool: 2,000 points]