Chapter 30: Snail Tom

“Yo! Sykes, my old friend, long time no see!”
The person on the other side of the mirror grinned at Sykes.

“I’ll be passing through the Sea of Death soon, so I’ll drop by to see you! Do you have any goods you need to exchange recently? A lot of people have been asking me when the magic potions will be back in stock.”

The person speaking had light golden hair, and his appearance seemed as cheerful as his hair color.

At first glance, he looked like a slender human, but on his back, he carried a giant snail shell dozens of times larger than himself.
The combination of these two unrelated things was unexpectedly horrifying.

Sykes’s eyes were also stung by this scene.
“Tom, this look of yours… why don’t you use your snail form?”

The person laughed heartily.
“Don’t you think I look particularly heroic in human form with the shell on my back?”

Sykes was silent for a long while.
“I don’t think so.”

“You fish are as boring as ever~”
The sunny boy on the other side pouted, and then with a ‘thump’, he changed from a human form into a giant snail.

The two antennae on his forehead poked the magic mirror in retaliation.

“Looking at you, you probably have something you need to exchange, right? Otherwise, you would have told me to crawl far away by now.”

“Honestly, you smelly fish are always so cold to your friends. Do you know how much effort it takes for me to run to your cursed sea? Alas, the delicate human form can’t withstand those damn curses!” this snail named Tom began to mutter.

Sykes completely ignored his complaints.
“As long as you shrink into your shell, even if this curse is a hundred times stronger, it can’t possibly hurt you.”

“That’s natural!”
Tom the snail became visibly happy—heaven knows how one could see happiness on a snail’s face, but sea creatures were just that magical.

“Otherwise, how could I, old Tom, become the greatest traveling merchant in this ocean? Isn’t it because I can go to places others can go, and I can also go to places others can’t!! Even a dragon’s lava nest, I can try to roll around in it!”

His whole body shrank into the shell, with only two antennae still exposed.
He shook them smugly until he rolled to the edge of the Sea of Death, then ‘swoosh’, he retracted them.

Sykes cut off the magic mirror’s connection, his mood already much better—there was the relief of having solved a major problem, and the anticipation of meeting an old friend.

That’s right, even a dead otaku fish who had been in the deep sea for hundreds of years had friends.

This snail was named Tom, a weirdo among the sea snail clan.

Sea snails were one of the rarer species among the sea clans.
Strictly speaking, they didn’t belong to the classification of long-lived species, but their lifespan was almost no different from long-lived species, so the fish professors who studied biology counted this species as a semi-long-lived species.

Every sea snail was very large and inherently lazy.
They would never engage in any strenuous activity, let alone go on long journeys.

What they often did was shrink into their shells, then find a place to stay quietly for a few hundred years until the nutrients stored in their shells were all consumed.
Only then would they stick their heads out and feast on the unsuspecting small fish outside, then shrink back into their shells to continue hibernating.

So, to see a lively sea snail on the road was almost like seeing a siren that couldn’t lie.

Not long after Sykes had snuck out back then, he had run into such a weird sea snail, Tom.
At that time, Tom was not yet a lord.
He was sitting on the ground crying his eyes out because he had gotten lost in the sea witch’s maze.

The passing Sykes had casually led him out, and from then on, the other had unilaterally decided that the merman was his best friend.

At that time, Sykes was also out of curiosity to observe a special case species and tacitly allowed this snail to travel with him for a while.

The other introduced himself, saying that his dream was to travel all over the ocean, but he couldn’t leave behind his brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, grandpas and grandmas who were still sleeping in the clan.

“What will happen if there’s no one to keep watch for them after I leave?” the small snail worried.

“Why not strive to become a lord? After becoming a lord, you can have your own domain. You can put the domain in your snail shell and then carry them on your back,” Sykes was studying this aspect at the time and mentioned it in passing.

A snail’s talent is space.
Their snail shells can hold things many times larger than the shell itself.
Of course, most of the time it was used to store their favorite various colored stones, small and cute corals, and other miscellaneous items.
If the space was integrated into a domain, perhaps there would be even more considerable results.

The other had a sudden realization as if waking from a dream, so excited that tears streamed down his face.
Because he wasn’t tall enough, he…

“Good brother! You Sike!”

Then with a ‘smack’, he was slapped onto the wall by Sykes’s tail—a fool who can’t even remember a name, what more is there to say?

…the possibility of learning magic, Tom also went back to his clan to cultivate properly, and the two lost contact.

The next time they met was when Sykes returned to his clan and was staring blankly at the empty sea territory.
The other was the first to visit him after the merfolk clan’s accident.

Just like now, he was also dragging a huge snail shell, huffing and puffing.

“My old friend! Is there anything you need me to bring? I’m already an outstanding traveling merchant now. Even if you’re unwilling to step out of this ocean, just tell me what supplies you need, and my family and I will definitely give you a discount!”

Tom patted his snail shell with a ‘thump, thump’, beating his chest and making a promise.

Sykes indeed needed his help.
In the days that followed, Tom brought him alchemy and potion-making materials from all over the ocean, and Sykes also provided him with some alchemy equipment he had made himself, or potions with unique effects.

The seabed and the land had always been in a subtle state of division.
Few sea creatures would actually run to the human world, let alone learn any useful knowledge on land.
But Sykes was different.

His wisdom allowed him to integrate the knowledge of the ocean and the continent.
The efficacy of the potions he made had improved a lot, and they even had almost no side effects.
The alchemy equipment that occasionally flowed out was also ingeniously conceived and extremely practical.

Once these two types of goods were launched, they were wildly sought after by the ocean races and were almost monopolized by the powerful species.
Even the sea elves, who had always been aloof and disliked the stench of merchants’ copper, had contacted Tom to buy a batch privately.

This made the snail Tom’s reputation even more famous, and he truly became a great traveling merchant known throughout the entire ocean.

When Tom’s name finally appeared on the front page of the Undersea City News, he even excitedly ran to the Sea of Death to find Sykes, hugging his tail and crying his eyes out.

“I knew it! The first time I saw you, I knew you, Sikes, must be my best friend in this life, Tom!”
The snail’s body was soft and limp, and his tears were also sticky.
And in his excitement, he once again called the merman by the wrong name.

But that time, Sykes didn’t throw him off.

Right now, Sykes needed all sorts of plants to supply the players in order to start the potion-making/cooking system, and this traveling merchant was the best choice.

But the only thing the merman was worried about was—his domain had so many players, and the players always had so many strange and wonderful ideas…

Between the players and the snail, nothing should go wrong, right?

The players were originally still struggling with the patch of land behind their houses.
Only a minority, like the foodie, had managed to finish farming peacefully.
The vast majority had more or less encountered the same problems as the 123 team.

Although the Flower-Planting Nation where the players were from had always been famous overseas for its farming skills, ever since mechanized and automated equipment replaced manual labor, farming in many people’s minds was basically the mode of clicking once to loosen the soil and twice to water in games.

A more realistic version would probably be the kind of farming at an occasional farmhouse, where you use a small shovel to dig a few times in the soil.

So despite their ambitious words, 80% of the players probably couldn’t even keep the simplest potted plant alive ╮(╯▽╰)╭

Just as a certain player was crying and rescuing his other crops from the mouth of a big-mouthed vine, he looked up and suddenly found something on the street—a rapidly rolling wheel?

No, this is…

A snail??

Are snails in Sea Realm really that big?!

He held his breath, not daring to make a sound, and just watched that snail roll past him with a ‘swoosh, swoosh, swoosh’, and then ‘thwack’, it crashed into a certain player’s small house in front.

It flattened half of the garden behind the small house.

“Old Li! Yan Er’mao!! Level one alert!”
Hua Yibing, who came out after hearing the noise, was first dumbfounded, then he craned his neck like a chick whose neck was being wrung and shouted at his teammates.

“Our vegetable patch has been crashed into!”

Yan Shuangwen and Old Li jumped up from their seats with a start and quickly swam outside the house.

Only to see that on the vegetable patch that a few people had spent a great deal of effort to plant, there was now a huge snail shell, standing right in the middle of the vegetable patch.

On that light golden snail shell, there were two big-mouthed vines hanging, dead with their eyes open.
They were clearly the two that Old Li had planted!

“What is this thing!” Old Li was startled.

“A snail… that lives in the sea?” Yan Shuangwen was lost in thought.

“A snail? Such a big one, it looks like it could last for a long time,” Hua Yibing captured the main point.
“It can also make up for the loss of the vegetable patch.”

As he said the last part, there was a hint of gritted teeth in his tone.

Just then, the snail shell in front of them moved, then moved again.
A pair of antennae poked out from inside.
The pair of antennae flexibly looked around.
After confirming that the surrounding environment was safe, its body slowly squeezed out of the shell.

“Eat? Eat what? Was someone just discussing delicious food?” Tom poked his head out, and then his eyes lit up.

“Hi~ you few little merfolk over there, are you Sykes’s descendants?” The giant snail greeted them enthusiastically.
“I’m your Uncle Tom. It’s a pleasure to meet you for the first time!”

“One, two, three? Speaking of which, Sykes’s children don’t seem to be like him. Which brave lady managed to tame that stone and even gave him three cubs?”
The snail muttered to itself, then raised its head to look into the distance, trying to identify where the merman’s tower was.

The 123 team: “!”

Tom: “!!”

Hua Yibing looked at this snail that could speak human language in a daze.
“Snails can talk, is this an NPC??”

Tom, on the other hand, looked at the players who had gathered to watch the excitement in the distance with a dazed expression, muttering incessantly, “My old heavens, so many merman cubs? How did Sykes do it?”

“Sob sob sob sob, I’ve brought shame to the snail clan. If only I could be as capable as my old buddy, revitalizing the snail clan wouldn’t be just a dream QWQ!”

“Tom, shut up.”

Sykes had finally arrived, just in time to hear the fool’s self-talk.
He only felt his temples throb.

The shiny golden merman grabbed the edge of the snail shell and lifted this thing, which was dozens of times larger than himself, as if lifting a vegetable basket, and turned to swim towards the mage tower.