Chương 49: Preparations for the Deeps

Two more years passed. Felix and I turned fifteen, and Sallia turned fourteen. Perhaps due to how hard it was to keep improving my weapon mastery, I didn't get any improvements to my Swordsmanship, Spearmanship, or Archery Skills. Sallia was still improving quickly, but according to her own assessment, she was still years away from reaching [Advanced] Grade Swordsmanship. Which probably meant Felix and I were at least a decade or two of hard training away from reaching the next Grade.

This was a bit of a shame, since I wasn't sure if we would even live that long, but I kept working on my Swordsmanship with the others every day. Even if I didn't reach [Advanced] Grade Swordsmanship in this life, I would be able to carry my memories of my hard work with me to the next life, and that was still worth something. This also made me wonder just how difficult it actually was to reach the next grade of a weapon skill.

According to Felix, there were only three hunters on the island renowned for being excellent with weapons. Two of them used Spears, and one used a bow. According to our guesses, these three people probably had [Advanced] grade weapon skills, but we were already on par with most Hunters in raw weapon mastery.

This was probably because Hunters trained how to add their Abilities into their fights and deal with the terrifying abilities of land beasts, but I was still fascinated by how few people had actually reached [Advanced] Grade weapon mastery here. Apart from weapon skills, Felix and I continued to work on our runes. I could probably form my sixth rune within a few months, at latest, and Felix said he could probably form his seventh rune before he turned eighteen.

Even though I didn't get any Achievement for mastering more weapon skills or forming runes, I still earned Achievement in other ways as the years passed. In particular, for two years in a row I got a rather interesting Achievement notification during Storm Season.

Influence: Play a [Moderate] role in increasing the Strength of the Islands by a [Moderate] amount Achievement +800 Influence: Play a [Minor] role in increasing the Strength of the Islands by a [Moderate] amount Achievement +500 The storm season after I absorbed a fragment of the ocean's heart, the Village Chief and a few other village chiefs decided to try something risky, which had never been done before.

Since the village chief had observed the strange and powerful ability of Teleportation I had gained after absorbing the fragment of the Ocean's Heart, he decided the benefits of absorbing a few storm orbs was worth the permanent reduction to Willpower. Therefore, after discussions with the other village chiefs, during the next storm season several village chiefs, along with a few specialized fishermen, flew directly into the storms to retrieve a few storm orbs.

They used a variety of Abilities to keep themselves safe during the retrieval attempt, especially water and wind manipulation, and nearly got crushed by the massive waves being flung around during their first attempt. However, all of the village chiefs and fishermen returned alive. The floatwood boat was damaged, but not to the point it couldn't be repaired. Two weeks later, they tried again, and this time they succeeded in retrieving a Fragment of the Ocean's Heart.

After that, every week or two, a few village chiefs would work together to retrieve another storm orb. They managed to retrieve about seven during the season, divided amongst the three villages who worked together to take the orbs. The following year, after the renewal festival, the strongest hunters of the village who still had enough essence to form another rune were given tests on how effectively they could resist the Call of the Ocean.

Of the six hunters who could almost completely ignore the call of the ocean, the two with the highest combat ability were given storm orbs, and the village chief paid me a few fish cores to get me to personally explain their use, as well as my experiences with absorbing a storm orb. For the next two months, I guided the two hunters through the process of forming a rune with the Storm Orb and mastering the use of their new abilities.

The hunters didn't both form teleportation abilities, the way I had assumed they would. Instead, for his eighth rune, one hunter got the usual mental bonus for forming a rune, and then gained the ability to directly attack people's minds with his ability. He could directly try to knock out another party by using his new Ability, so long as the other party's Willpower was low enough. Meanwhile, the other hunter gained a weaker version of the lightning ability of the Glowing Fish.

While the abilities each got from a storm orb were different, both proved extremely useful in managing landbeasts. The second year, far more village chiefs from other islands participated in the retrieval process. Interestingly enough, even though my innovation was spreading far wider, and creating a much bigger ripple effect, I got less Achievement the second year.

It took me a while to realize that this was because even though the increase in the island's strength was greater, my overall role was much smaller now. While I pioneered the use of storm orbs as a method of increasing strength, the ones who did most of the work now were the village chiefs and fishermen who worked to retrieve the storm orbs. As a result, my contribution was lower and I got fewer overall rewards.

I was a little sad about this at first, since I would have loved to just sit around and gain ridiculous amounts of Achievement, but I had already gained a massive amount of Achievement for what I had done so far. I had gained 400 Achievement for owning and then using a Storm Orb, and I had gained 1300 Achievement for pioneering the use of the Fragments of the Ocean's Heart. Even though I had hoped for more, I definitely couldn't say that the rewards for my work and the risks I had taken had been low.

Of course, I still gained Achievement from other sources as well. Influence: Successfully heal 50 humans with [Moderate] Injuries Achievement +250 Naturally, I didn't stop healing villagers. I had burned through a good chunk of my fish cores during the fight with the Glowing Fish, and now that there wasn't any immediate danger to the village, I wanted to recover my stock. Right now, I felt that it was most reasonable to start exploring the ocean once I turned sixteen years old and passed my adulthood ceremony.

At that point, the villagers wouldn't object to me risking my life anymore, because I would officially be an adult. And with some luck, I could also get the village chief to assist me somehow during the investigation.

Free use of fish cores, for example, would drastically reduce the strain I would face while exploring the ocean, and if he gave me priority on healing and the assistance of a few specialized rune abilities, my exploration of the ocean might become far easier than it would be if I did everything on my own. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. And I did feel that I had a better chance of convincing the village chief to help me than before.

I had already proven that there were strange and useful resources in the ocean by pioneering the use of Storm Orbs. If there was another useful resource or two laying around in the ocean, it might give the village the rest of the power we would need to resist external invasions in the future. We just needed someone to lead the way into the deeps - and I had build my rune abilities explicitly to make myself as effective at underwater exploration as I could.

There was nobody on the island better positioned to explore the deeps than I was. I just needed to wait until I was an adult. Slaughter: Assist the Locals in killing a Great Fish for the 125th time Achievement +500 Finally, my hunts with the fishing boat continued. With the help of teleportation, as well as the ability to manipulate water, our boat become one of the more successful boats on the island.

Most Great Fish had the ability to manipulate water, and this sometimes let them escape beneath the ocean once they were targeted for a hunt. My water control let me seriously weaken their control over the ocean, making it harder for them to escape, and after some practice, I also learned how to teleport our attacks towards the fish, allowing us to deal damage faster and reducing the amount of times we missed during each hunt.

The amount of Achievement I got for killing Great Fish wasn't great compared to my other sources of income, but it was still useful to get as much Achievement as I possibly could. With all of the Achievement I gained over the past two years, my Achievement total increased from 6, 208 Achievement to 8, 258 Achievement.

Since the Influence Achievement I had gotten for strengthening the village almost exclusively came from the aftereffects of killing the Glowing Fish, I noticed that the rewards for killing the Glowing Fish were simply massive. Of the 8, 000 Achievement I had gained in this life, nearly 3, 000 of it had come from killing the Glowing Fish. 1, 200 of it had come from the initial hunt, and then I had gotten another 1, 700 from handling the glowing orb after the fight.

This let me know just how much bigger the income could be if I focused on major events, compared to just randomly hunting monsters and crafting items. By comparison, Felix and Sallia had earned much less Achievement than I had on this world, because their rune counts were too low to participate in the hunt and their Abilities weren't unusually effective against the Glowing Fish. Of course, I also wasn't under the illusion that things would go just as well next life.

A lot of the reason I had done so well this time was because I had happened to form the illusion ability with my fourth rune, and it happened to counter the Glowing Fish. If the Glowing Fish had been a little smarter, or if I hadn't been working with the other villagers and village chiefs, I wouldn't have earned any of my Influence Achievement. It would be a miracle if such advantageous conditions appeared in my next life.

However, with nearly 3, 000 more Achievement, it would be much easier for me to increase my strength before my next life, which would help me stand out in the next world even if I wasn't so lucky. I was definitely realizing that standing out and being able to do weird and unusual things was the most important factor in earning Achievement, and the more Achievement I earned, the easier it would be to do weird and unusual things effectively.

About halfway through my fifteenth year in this world, however, something I hadn't expected appeared. Something that sent thrills of terror down my spine, because it represented a threat I had always thought about, but which hadn't resurfaced for a long time. One day, after the fishing boat finished hunting down a Great Fish, the boat dipped dangerously close to the ocean. This wasn't completely unusual, since the boat would occasionally go up or down during a fight with a Great Fish.

However, today, Olav squinted at the ocean after we finished killing the Great Fish.

"Does anyone else see that?" He said, after a few moments.

"Huh?" I immediately went on alert, scanning my surroundings as closely as possible. The Glowing Fish had shown us just how dangerous 'weird stuff' was when it came from the ocean. The last time I saw something 'odd' in the Ocean, it required a swarm of flying boats from the villages of the islands to kill. Olav seeing something strange was terrible news. However, as I scanned our surroundings, I couldn't see a thing. My father, Edel, and Claus also expressed their confusion.

"I don't see a thing. What are you talking about, Olav?" Asked Edel, still on alert.

"Down there. On the surface of the water. There's a really, really small… thing. It looks kind of mixed in color. It's a white, but mixed with a little blue…" said Olav, pointing at something I couldn't see.

"Should we fly closer and take a look?" Asked my father, after hesitating for a few moments.

"Hmm…" Olav hesitated, and I also got an uneasy feeling. If whatever Olav had spotted was dangerous, getting closer would make it hard to escape if something went wrong. However, after a few moments of hesitation, Olav nodded.

"Let's take a look." We flew closer to the surface of the Ocean. As we got closer to the water, I also noticed what Olav was afraid of. On the surface of the ocean was a very, very strange fish. It was the size of my fist, and swam like it was drunk. However, oddest of all was the fact that it didn't look like it was made of organic matter. Instead, it reminded me of…

"Paper?" I said, after a few moments. Olav also frowned, although the other fishermen just looked confused. Curious, I looked at Olav for a moment.

"Do you mind if I bring it closer to us?" Olav nodded, and I created a gate in front of the paper fish. It didn't seem to notice, and quickly swam through my gate, before appearing almost right in front of our boat.

"It didn't avoid my teleportation," I said.

"And it doesn't seem very intelligent, either." Olav nodded, before he cut the tip of his finger. A drop of blood floated out of his body, before it suddenly tore into the paper fish. In a fraction of a second, the paper fish collapsed, turning into a sheet of paper. I was shocked. The strange creature had died, just like that? However, I quickly realized I hadn't gotten any Achievement for helping to kill something.

I looked more closely at the paper fish, before realizing that it wasn't a 'creature shaped like a fish that had paper biology.' After the fish had 'died,' the fish had unravelled, revealing an ordinary sheet of paper. As I got a closer look at the sheet of paper, my heart clenched. The sheet of paper wasn't blank. Instead, it was filled with scribbles. I couldn't read, so I had no clue what was written on the paper, but I could definitely tell that the paper fish had writing on it.

"What is this thing?" I asked. Olav looked at the sheet of paper as well, before he frowned.

"It's writing. I've heard it's very rare in the Megailian Empire, because only the elite know how to read, but there are a few people who can read and write. It's supposed to be one of the ways orders are transmitted from their king to the generals. I've never heard of one taking the form of a fish and swimming around, so maybe it's a rune ability or something, but…" Olav's expression slowly turned white, and I had a sinking feeling in my heart. I didn't know how it had happened, or what Ability had been used.

I might never know. However, if a paper fish carrying writing was wandering around our village, and Olav had barely spotted it out of the corner of his eye while we were hunting, other paper fish might have been wandering around our ocean for an unknown period of time already. And while nobody here could read, if the writing on these paper fish was Megailian… That would be very bad news.

Our boat flew back to the island to inform the Village Chief what we had found immediately, and the islands all entered a state of high alert. Everybody vividly remembered the first fight with the Outsiders, and news that they might have returned immediately put the villages on edge. Some of the fishing boats from each village began to fly much farther away from the islands than usual, scouting our surroundings to see if the Outsiders had returned or not.

Two weeks later, one of the fishing boats which had flown farther from the islands than usual reported seeing sails in the distance. The boats of the Outsiders seemed to fly the flag of Megailia. The boats were heading in completely the wrong direction, but their presence still confirmed my worst fears. The outsiders had returned.