Chương 60: Fishing Village

"All the fish are dying." The fisherwoman chewed thoughtfully on a slice of whiting fillet before adding, "Kind of." The fishing village was the last one on the way to Ygg Latten Bay. The party had found lodging in a hut where the middle-aged woman lived with her son.

"It isn't just the fish either," the son said. He was a young fisherman just entering adulthood.

"Any boat that goes too far south starts to fall apart. Like the wood is rotten."

"South toward Ygg Latten Bay?" Lady Amberlin asked.

"The navy has set up patrols to warn people away," the son continued.

"It's inadvisable to boat any further than our village. That doesn't help the fish, though. Half my catch is too rotten to eat, it's only good for fertilizer."

"The fish is rotten, but it's still swimming?"

"Before the entire Ygg Latten Peninsula closed down, there was a stretch of time—maybe a couple of weeks—when dead fish were washing up on shore. By the thousands! Then one day it just stopped. And then word came around that the governor was calling up all the adventurers and knights in the region, and the peninsula was closed off to everybody else."

"The fish stopped dying before the governor closed off the peninsula?" Havlo asked.

"None have washed up since. Instead it's like, you know." The son lowered his voice.

"They haven't realized they're dead."

"Do you have any idea what's happening at the bay itself?" he asked. The mother and son looked at each other.

"Please," he urged.

"Anything you can tell us." The mother looked apologetic.

"We aren't sure if it's related. We don't want to be spreading rumors, you see. Not when the governor doesn't want anyone talking about it."

"We're heading down to the bay to help," Havlo explained.

"We'd just like to know what we're getting ourselves into." The fisherman family looked at each other. A moment of silent communication passed between mother and son before the mother nodded. It was the son who spoke.

"Something washed up on the beach a couple of days ago. We thought it was a corpse, but like none we've ever seen before. Not human, not animal, not fish."

"If there's something in the water causing boats to rot, maybe it made that thing mutate," Lady Amberlin suggested. The son shook his head.

"The fish may be rotten, but they're still recognizably fish. This thing... it was like a child's attempt at molding clay into a person."

"Where is it now?" Havlo asked.

"We'd like to see it."

"It's gone."

"Gone?"

"It washed up at sunrise. Its skin dried out pretty quickly, and then—fwoosh! Up in flames like kindling."

"Normal corpses don't do that," Amberlin helpfully pointed out.

"Do you think it could be a vampire?" And then murmured to herself, "Does this mean Ygg Latten Bay is under attack by marine vampires?"

"We're just simple folk," the mother said.

"We can only tell you what we saw. As for what that creature was, or what's happening on the Ygg Latten Peninsula, I'm afraid we don't have any answers for you." After dinner, Lady Amberlin entertained their hosts with Havlo's flute while he tutored Maelle. They took their lessons outside, as she already had an excellent grasp of the theory and was only lacking in practice. While Maelle shot off [Firebolts] into the sea, he studied her mana presence.

She was far better at suppressing it than he'd have expected of someone her age. Either she was a natural talent, or she'd had some great teachers—or both. None of this was surprising, since she was already at Tier 2, a feat that already put her above the mass of practitioners who never got past Tier 1. If she managed to break into Tier 3 before coming of age, that would put her in the category of potential archmages. But that was a very big if.

Mages guilds across Kalimor were filled with promising young students who eventually hit their limits. He could get a better idea of her potential if only he could sense her true mana presence and gauge the depth of her mana well. There wasn't a single time in any of their training sessions that she'd run out of mana. This already put her mana levels at a depth far greater than any Tier 2 mage he'd ever met.

But you simply didn't ask another person about their stats, and he wasn't about to break a taboo with one of his students.

"Your spell efficiency has improved a lot," he said.

"Have you noticed your [Firebolts] burning hotter and consuming less mana?" Maelle beamed.

"I've been practicing every day!"

"It shows. What exercises have you been using?" She listed a few of them off, and he noticed that most weren't any that he'd taught her, but ones she'd come to him with on her own. Out of curiosity, he asked, "They certainly seem to be effective. Where did you pick up on those?" At this point she started fidgeting and avoiding his eyes.

"I'm not mad if you're getting instructions from someone else," he said gently.

"I'm just interested in what other resources are out there." Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. She approached him and offered a book from her inventory.

"I have this other training manual." He moved his [Light] over to get a better look at the title. The Third Tier without Tears. It wasn't an author he recognized. The handwriting was rough, and the quality of the paper looked homemade.

"Would you mind if I borrowed this?" he asked. She handed the book over and he stashed it away in his inventory for later. While Maelle continued her training on the beach, Havlo returned inside, hoping to catch the last of Lady Amberlin's songs. She was as good on the flute as she was with the gittar, though he missed hearing her lovely voice in accompaniment to the music.

After she was done, and was returning to him his flute, she said, "Say, Havlo, do you happen to have any books on you that discuss the fundamentals of magic, theories on what makes magic works, that sort of thing?"

"As a matter of fact, I do. Would you like to take a look at them, Lady Amberlin?" He pulled two texts from his inventory. One was written by himself, and the other by the Noble Scholar, and old associate of his. When she looked at the titles, her eyes lit up.

"These are perfect! Thanks, Havlo! I'll give them back to you in the morning." Later, when everyone was preparing for bed, Havlo noticed the two books stacked neatly next to his pillow, and couldn't help chuckling to himself. He didn't imagine that such a dry topic would hold his master's interest for long. The spare bedroll that their hosts had laid out for Lady Amberlin remained untouched. This wasn't unusual, as she often stayed up later than the rest of them.

He imagined she was outside gazing up at the moon, as she liked to do at this hour. Instead of going to sleep, he went outside and made his way over to the seaside. There he stood alone in the company of crabs and gazed out over the waves. The cliffs of the Ygg Latten Peninsula could be seen in the distance, a day's journey to the south. Geographically it was as if the Goddess had taken an island and pushed it up against the mainland. The result was high hills where the two joined, and tall cliffs facing the sea.

But as you went farther into the peninsula, it eventually dropped down into pleasant beaches and the bay that gave the region its prosperity. As for the Ygg Latten Keystone, it was located underwater, not in the bay itself, but many miles offshore. Which was why he was considering flying there tonight. If he could just confirm for himself that the keystone was safe, there would be no reason for Lady Amberlin to enter the peninsula, which was currently under lockdown.

"Lovely, isn't it?" He spun around.

"Lady Amberlin! I didn't hear your approach." She flashed him one of her lovely smiles.

"I like to [Muffle] my footsteps when walking around at night so that I don't wake anyone." That was very considerate of her, but very inconvenient for him.

"You should get some sleep." So that she wouldn't notice if he slipped away for a couple of hours. But he couldn't say that. Instead he said, "We'll need to make a good impression on the border guards if we want them to let us in." She looked at him for a moment and then said, "I'm relieved."

"Sorry?"

"I was worried that after hearing those stories about zombie fish and clay vampires, you'd no longer want to go to the bay." He remained quiet for a moment while trying to think of how to respond. It almost sounded like—"I can't wait to see them for myself!" she gushed.

"If they burn up in the sun, can you imagine how fun it'll be exploding them with a [Fireball]? It might even be more fun than popping slimes!"

"But once we're in, we won't be able to leave," he reminded her.

"I'm sure that'll work itself out." She looked up at the moon.

"Isn't this what adventuring is all about?" She seemed eager to find out what was happening at the bay. In that case he didn't have to take the risk in flying out to the keystone tonight.

"I've already talked to Maelle," she continued.

"She wants to proceed. I guess spending a day wandering alone through a haunted forest really made her fearless." He imagined that Maelle simply didn't want to get separated from the party. He would have to talk to her in the morning to check what she really wanted. There was supposed to be a small settlement just outside the restricted zone. It might be safe to leave her there until they dealt with business on the peninsula.

"Hey, what's that?" Lady Amberlin pointed. He followed her finger. At first it looked like a dead body had washed up on the beach, but that notion was quickly dispelled when it flexed its limbs. Back when the fisherman couldn't tell what manner of creature had washed up onshore, Havlo had believed it to be a simple lack of familiarity. A fisherman wasn't an adventurer and had no need to learn about the different types of monsters that could be found in the area.

But this monster truly was unlike anything he had ever seen. Its form was misshapen, with three limbs that couldn't decide whether they should be arms and legs. There was no clear head except for a hole in the torso that had a lot of teeth. It looked completely rotten, more like sea slime than flesh, yet it moved—it charged right at them, far faster than it had any right to. He moved to protect his master.

"Be careful, Lady—" But she'd already shot a [Fireball] at it. The creature tried to shuffle out of the way, but its poorly designed limbs were unable to arrest its own momentum, and it caught the spell right in the teeth-hole. The explosion was spectacular. Chunks of flaming goop rained down on the beach. Thankfully a [Shield] that he'd cast on reflex kept any from getting on him, or he would've had to burn his robes. Lady Amberlin had a big grin on her face.

"Did you see that? Not quite as satisfying as popping a slime, but maybe there will be some bigger ones at the bay. What if I can get them to stack on top of one another and blow an entire load at once..." While she was talking, he went up to the nearest chunk, pulling a spare handkerchief from his inventory to carefully pick it up. To his surprise, the sample tried to squirm free of his grasp, like it was still alive. An idea came to him, and he found another bit of goop and held his sample near.

The two pieces reached for each other. With all the talk of dead fish and undead fish, he'd been expecting necromancy to be involved. But if this was necromancy, it was far more advanced than anything he'd ever seen. With normal necromancy, each corpse had one center of control. If you cut off a skeleton's arm, you didnt have to fight both a skeleton and an arm. But from what he was seeing, even these small, inconsequential pieces of the creature had a will of their own.

The problem was, if it wasn't necromancy, then he had no idea what it could be. No, that wasn't quite true. This behavior did remind him of one particular line of magic, even if very loosely. And that was devil magic. Was this creature perhaps an amalgamation of devil magic and necromancy? But even then it didn't make any sense. No devil would want to create a monstrosity such as this, or share their secrets with a necromancer. Yet...

Unlike demons, who formed into societies large enough to rival humans, devils liked to live independently. Where they cooperated with other devils, it tended to be in very small groups. In this way, they were very much like ogres. But unlike ogres, you could never be completely rid of a devil. Even death couldn't stop one forever. While he was lost in thought, he went around the beach and burned up all the goop he could find.

There weren't many that weren't already on fire, but he didn't want to leave any behind that could reform and cause trouble. Whether it was a necromancer or a devil that was behind this, he couldn't shake the feeling that it must have something to do with the keystones. There were powerful forces who would love to see the keystones gone, and the only hope of achieving that was through the study of new and novel magicks. And there was another thought nibbling at him.

Lady Amberlin had destroyed the creature effortlessly with a single [Fireball]. If this was all they were up against, why was the Ygg Latten Peninsula still closed?