Godmode: The Dead Game Odyssey

Chapter 17: The Siren’s Bounty

The sailors cast their nets over the sides of the ship, their voices low and rhythmic, chanting something strange under their breath. 

Liam Watson caught only fragments of their words—something about the Siren King’s gift. Gerald, standing at the ship’s edge, peered into the dark water below, his face twisting into a wild, almost unhinged expression. “They’re praying to the Siren King,” he said, his voice feverish. “Begging him to bless them with a bountiful haul of mermaids.”

Before Gerald could finish, the sailors began leaping into the sea, one by one, clutching the edges of the nets as they plunged. Lucy let out a shrill scream. “What are they doing?! Aren’t they supposed to be fishing for mermaids? Why are they jumping in?!”

Liam’s expression remained calm, almost detached. “They are fishing for mermaids,” he said softly.

After what felt like an eternity, a massive net broke the surface and dragged up from the depths. Inside were mangled limbs and shimmering fishtails, a grotesque tangle of a dozen or so mermaids, all dead. Their tails were tattered, sticking to the netting in clumps. The creatures looked like broken dolls discarded in a junkyard, their bodies contorted unnaturally, their eyes wide open in expressions of rage or terror. Bite marks covered their flesh as if some ferocious deep-sea predator had torn them apart before they were ensnared.

Under the beam of the ship’s spotlight, Liam studied the mermaids’ faces, his breathing slow and deliberate. 

Their features were identical to the twelve tourists reported missing in the local paper.

The sailors gathered, their whispers buzzing with excitement:

“These’ll be turned into wax figures for the museum…”

“But the wax museum only needs four figures tonight—only four tourists came. What do we do with the extras?”

“Stow them on hold for now. They’ll tide us over…”

The mermaids were quickly hauled to the back of the ship, disappearing to some unknown destination. 

Soon after, the three tourists—Liam, Lucy, and Andrew—were offered a meal of fresh fish caught alongside the mermaids. The fish were prepared and set before them. 

The fish carried an eerie hint of the mermaids’ flavour, giving the dishes an unsettling, otherworldly taste. 

Lucy, Andrew, and Gerald tore into the meal with abandon, licking their fingers and devouring the fish with a fervour that bordered on madness. A platter of sashimi-style fish fillets sat at the centre of the table, glistening under the dim light. Lucy cradled a fish head, gnawing at it hungrily, so engrossed she didn’t notice strands of her hair slipping into her mouth. 

She tugged the oily strands free and flashed Liam a grin. “Liam, why aren’t you eating? Tonight’s catch is so fresh.”

The fish head’s milky, unblinking eyes seemed to fix on Liam.

Andrew gnawed on a fish tail, his teeth now sharp and jagged. His face was transforming—his eyes had slid to the sides of his head, his nose flattened into nothing, and his mouth stretched impossibly wide, dribbling foul-smelling saliva. 

Gerald, wielding a fork, sliced into the fish’s plump belly. He seemed to cling to some shred of control, but his movements grew frantic, stuffing fish into his mouth mechanically.

The sailors watched Liam closely, their faces splitting into strange smiles as they shoved a plate piled with fish toward him. “You don’t want to miss out on fresh catch like this, Mr Watson,” one said, his tone almost mocking.

Liam wanted to refuse, but a notification flashed before him:

[Task Alert: Refusing the sailors’ fish will result in failure of the mermaid fishing event.]

He paused for two seconds, then took a bite.

The fish hit his tongue with a bizarre, rancid tang, like something long spoiled. But as it slid down his throat, it morphed into the sweet, clean taste of fresh seafood. Suddenly, the table of fish before him seemed impossibly alluring. Even Liam, who rarely indulged in food, felt an overwhelming urge to gorge himself.

The sailors, satisfied, turned and left.

Liam fought to keep his mind clear, forcing himself to look away from the table. He stepped to the ship’s edge, letting the salty sea breeze wash over him. He pressed his coin pendant to his nose, inhaling its metallic scent. 

The smell grounded him.

He began piecing things together.

The Siren King, after being dredged from the sea, had fallen into a deep slumber; his power over this stretch of ocean weakened. According to local legend, those who died here transformed into mermaids, reborn from death to roam the waters. The twelve mermaid corpses they’d just hauled up—matching the faces of the missing tourists—proved the legend true.

People who died here did become mermaids.

But why did this remote patch of sea produce so many? Enough to fill an entire wax museum and still have leftovers? Why were there so many dead in these waters?

When Liam saw the tourists’ corpses in the net, it clicked. 

This was a dumping ground.

The missing tourists’ bodies had likely been tossed into this sea, then fished up by the sailors, treated like some kind of exotic catch, and moulded into mermaid wax figures. 

But who was killing them?

Liam had a suspicion. Eclipse Harbor wasn’t the quaint tourist town it seemed. The sheer number of robbery-related disappearances reported in the local paper painted a grim picture. This place didn’t thrive on tourism—it thrived on the robberies that came with it. 

What better prey than tourists, far from home and flush with cash?

In a town this ruthless, it wasn’t hard to imagine tourists being robbed, murdered and dumped here. Liam doubted the mermaids themselves were the culprits. Given their aversion to bright light, they were unlikely to hunt on land during the day. At night, during the peak tourist season, they were being hauled up for the fishing spectacle, making it even less likely they were killing anyone.

Then it hit him.

The mermaid fishing event required deaths in these waters. No deaths, no mermaids. The ones they’d just pulled up were the last batch of missing tourists. 

The townsfolk might be orchestrating it all—killing, dumping bodies, and letting them transform into mermaids to fuel this twisted tourist trap. It was a perfect cycle: attract visitors with the mermaid spectacle, rob them, kill them, and turn their bodies into the next batch of bait.

No wonder the museum keeper had said there’d be no fishing without tourists. The mermaids were the tourists.

And Mayor Harris? Liam could imagine him as the kind of “benevolent” leader who’d cover up the town’s crimes to “protect” its people and keep the tourist dollars flowing. He’d likely have no qualms about turning the fished-up mermaids—or rather, corpses—into wax figures for the museum or letting the townsfolk “dispose” of the extras.

The police would never find the bodies. They’d been processed, poured into wax, or worse.

Those wax figures weren’t just art. They were cages for the tourists’ spirits, twisted into monstrous forms. And those spirits, seeking revenge, had begun to curse the town, transforming its residents into their own likeness—fish-like creatures. At the same time, the wax mermaids took on human shapes, swapping places.

If Liam’s theory held, the warehouse of “amulets” below deck wasn’t filled with trinkets—it was packed with Eclipse Harbor’s residents, warped into monsters. And the sailors on this ship? They weren’t human anymore either—just ghosts or creatures born from the deep.

But something was still missing.

The wax mermaids had three forms—pupa, cocoon, and butterfly. Yet, Liam’s eyes narrowed. There was one more stage in the cycle: the larva, the most numerous, most fragile stage.

And the larva was…

Liam’s hand drifted to his stomach. The bite of fish he’d eaten seemed to writhe inside him, slick and alive against his insides. He glanced at his fingers, now tinged a sickly blue-white, faint scales glimmering on his skin. His jaw itched as if gills were trying to sprout.

He turned slowly. Lucy, Andrew, and Gerald were still devouring the fish, their human forms slipping away. Andrew was the worst—his hair had hardened into bony, fin-like spines, his nose covered in dark green scales. He crouched over the table, shoving food into his mouth with feral intensity.

[Warning: Player Liam Watson is entering an altered state. Mental stability is declining. Please distinguish between game reality and game illusion.]

Liam realized it then. This was the final monster in the book—the mermaid’s larval stage. 

Every tourist who came to Eclipse Harbor, every resident who stayed too long, was destined to become this: a frail, fish-like creature, weak and ripe for slaughter or robbery.

And right now, Liam was that creature—the mermaid’s weakest form.

[Eclipse Harbor Monster Book Updated — Mermaid (4/4)]

[Monster Name: Mermaid (Larval Stage)]

[Weakness: ??? (Unexplored)]

[Attack Method: ??? (Unexplored)]

[All pages of the Eclipse Harbor Monster Book have been unlocked. Please continue exploring to uncover the missing details.]

Andrew wiped a smear of rotten fish from his mouth, shoving the table aside. His mouth had become a grotesque maw of needle-like teeth, stretching across his face like a clown’s grin, bits of bloody fish falling as he spoke. “Liam, remember our bet?”

Liam felt a pull, drawn to the rancid, intoxicating scent wafting from Andrew. He blinked slowly. “Yeah. Spending the night on the ship, right?”

Andrew’s lips split into a hideous smile, stretching to the back of his head. His long tongue flicked out, licking the scraps from his cheek. “How about we spend it right here, in these mermaid-infested waters?”