My head bobbed with the gentle waves of the lagoon. I looked up and saw the bright green canopy of the small forested island I created. I had to make a fairy ring, prepare the terrain for some fairy spawns, and visit by personal meadow, the reward from Yznera’s quest.
But I couldn’t because I was trapped. My mom and Queen was venting out her worries about me, to me. It was refreshing after what Lakerta went through but I had that doubt if it was necessary. Added all the time I spent alive and conscious in all my lives, I’ve been around for about two hundred Yznarian years. Two-sixty-six Earth ones.
*WHACK*
Damn that hurt. "Ouch! What did I do, mom?”
Eathelin was not having any of my BS. "Princess Arista, are you listening?"
"No... maybe?" It’s a teenager’s racial Perk. I’d tuned out her rant.
"What was I saying?" Mom's gaze was shooting daggers at me.
"That the mermaids were thankful we now have fruit-bearing trees to eat from?"
"No! What you did was dangerous. If Lady Nenandil hadn't found you, you could've died! I had no idea you bought the Perk to grow legs! You should’ve talked to me first. I don't know any of your Perks at all."
“Do you have a few weeks?” I chuckled. She glowered. I steeled my face. "Mom. I took Medaya's harpoon in the back and survived. I’m level eighty."
"You got petrified and they tossed you in the abyss!" She retorted. "I don't know what that was! You have a lot of things to explain!”
I tried my best to calm her down. It didn't work. "It's a Perk that I have. When my life is in danger, I can create that barrier so I can heal inside of it."
“What perks did you buy?”
“Hug me, and I’ll whisper in your ear. She did and I explained them to her. Each and every one of my two hundred plus entries. Hugging like this, there was no way some god could listen in to us without using mundane magic and if that happened, I’d know.
Once I was done, she didn’t fully believe but was unwilling to let it show. She had a terrible poker face.
Mom parted and stared at me with determined eyes.
"Fight me," She said.
I floated away and gasped, "What?"
"Fight me!" She repeated.
"Seriously, mom?"
"Yes," She was adamant. There was a glimpse of battle lust in her eyes. A warrior through and through. I wanted to make her proud. To do that, I needed to take the next step of my journey.
“Mom, tell me, you have two Paths, right?”
She nodded. “I have three now. I picked my second path when they imprisoned me, and the third when I was crowned Queen. The Heralds granted me a free {Third Path} Perk. I have [Reef Huntress], [Deep Sea Explorer], and [Mermaid Queen]. [Deep Sea Explorer] is great for survival. Even though Lady Nenandil was with me, I didn’t want to be a burden. I can’t stay underwater forever, but its Perks let me survive the pressure and go without surfacing for two days.”
“That’s great, mom. Say, do you get the warning your Exp will be divided when ranking up even though you have two paths?”
She stared at me as if I should know the answer. “Yes, it does. It divides by a thousand when you move to the first rank, then ten thousand, a hundred thousand, and a million as you reach the higher ranks. It’s to keep people from delaying their ranking up to farm more Exp.”
Like I (Lakerta) did with the Lamia knights.
We parted ways to prepare for our duel.
----------------------------------------
I had to rank up before going into a fight. My species had two choices. Focus on magic or focus on the spiritual side. I went with the latter for better SP. The few million Exp I had left after spending everything giving the mermaids quests just vanished, divided by ten thousand. I didn't have Exp to raise a single level after ranking up, a brand new nerfing experience. I'd like to thank Loki, Wyxnos, and the Obama administration.
I ignored the usual warning about not having a second path and ranked up my species.
> You ranked up. Your available Exp was divided by 10,000. You have 500 Exp.
> Your species ranked up into a Veiled Dolphin-Mermaid. Due to the diminished population of your species, you are classified as {ultra-rare}. Adjusting bonuses. You gain:
>
> 1 Attribute point at every level.
>
> 1 Magic and Soul every odd level.
>
> 1 Willpower every even level.
>
> 1 Mind, Charisma, Endurance, and Luck. Alternating every level.
>
> 3 (+4) HP per level
>
> 6 (+4) MP per level
>
> 9 (+2) SP per level
>
> 11 (+3) Skill Points per level
>
> 1 Human Perk every 2 levels (modified by {Human Royalty}).
>
> You gained the Perk: Pierce the Veil (very rare): You can create a rend in the veil between this world and the ethereal plane. This allows you to cross over to the immaterial world and back.
The Perk was basically a toggleable incorporeality. My new species gave me the innate feeling that this immaterial world was very dangerous.
I checked my new appearance with a mirror. My first-rank tail was clear gray with a graphite black color on the lower half of the fins and on a strip across the back. Now the fins and the entire back were all pitch black, with a clear white "belly" decorated by two black strips coming up from the caudal fin looking like two blades of grass. It made my tail appear streamlined and speedy. Not that there were any changes
> Congratulations! You took the next step in your Path.
>
> Your Class ranked-up into a Wayfarer...
>
> WARNING: This is a legacy Class. Alerting Administrators... blocked.
>
> UPDATING ENTRIES (...)
>
> ERROR. DATA VALUES ARE CORRUPTED.
>
> Applying weights... Done. Final rating: {Common}.
>
> This Class grants:
>
> [Error] to All Attributes.
>
> -2147483648 (+4) HP per level
>
> 6 Stamina per level
>
> -2147483648 (+4) MP per level
>
> -2147483648 (+2) SP per level
>
> -2147483648 (+3) Skill Points per level.
Fuck me and this bugged System. Stamina? Really? What the fuck just happened? Underflow? No. What the hell was with these lame thirty-two bit signed integers? Where did I see it before...
This is an old trick to return an absurd value as an error code instead of raising and treating an exception. It would be laughably amateurish if not for the fact that I believed if this stupid bugged Class gained a single level, I'd be done for. Error code or not, my resources would drop to the negative and I’d die. Thinking that way with a cool head, it was a nice way to fix the error. Ensure that the error treatment killed the bugged entry, a living breathing person. In this case, yours truly.
Goddammit, Wyxnos. Truncate your database before you reuse it! Should I notify him? No. He’ll fuck up my first path, for sure.
I needed to change paths ASAP. System, show me the {Common} Class options.
> Farmer (common): The farmer is the master of crop growth and domesticated livestock nurturing. This is a production Class and is not suited for combat. [WARNING: This Class is blocked. Everyone eligible for Farmer can pick the uncommon Dark Farmer instead.]
>
> * Quarryman (common): The quarryman extracts stone for construction. This is a production Class and is not suited for combat.
> * Lumberjack (common): The lumberjack can harvest great amounts of timber. This is a production Class and is not suited for combat.
> * (...)
Ugh. That was a freaking stupid list. Back to the Class I'd unlocked. I sat on the sand for an hour, waiting for the Path change to happen. Once it changed, I became “classless” and checked my status. The loss of the Class bonus hit me hard.
> Strength: 18+12 / 27 - Dexterity: 10+14 / 27 - Endurance: 24+14 / 27
>
> Mind: 24+14 / 27 - Willpower: 24+12 / 27 - Charisma: 8+12 / 27
>
> Magic: 24+12 / 27
>
> Ego: 24+12 / 27 - Luck: 8+17 / 27 - Soul: 24+12 / 27
>
> HP 1,141,850 (371 HP/s)
>
> MP 723,800 (85,615 MP/h)
>
> SP 411,140 (27,499 SP/h)
Without a choice, I resigned myself to lose the rarity Exp bonus and quickly accepted my new Class.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
> You became a [Spell-Singer] (ultra-rare).
>
> You gain:
>
> +1 to Magic at every level.
>
> +1 to Charisma and Mind, every even level.
>
> +1 to Dexterity, Willpower, and Soul every odd level.
>
> Nothing, then +1 to Strength, Endurance, and Luck at every level, alternating.
>
> 3 (+4) HP per level.
>
> 11 (+4) MP per level.
>
> 7 (+2) SP per level.
>
> 1 Perk every 2 levels.
>
> You gained the Perk: Spell-Song (rare, situational): You can cast spells you know with song. The spell ends if the song ends.
That was so not helpful. I didn’t have the Exp or the time to level it up. I spent another hour changing back to the glitched path and set my Exp allocation to manual. It was time to fight.
----------------------------------------
Mermaid Kingdom to-do list. Item number a gazillion-forty-five. Get a sparring arena.
I wasn't wearing my wetsuit and was in my own body, both tail and fused hands. I didn't want to defeat my mother wearing body parts other than the ones she gave me. Not that I blame her for my disability. It wasn't genetic but Loki's curse. Which after almost a year, was sitting at comfortable 0.12% erosion status. At this rate, I would break it in eight centuries. Easy peasy.
The mermaids assembled to watch our duel. Sparring match. Even the heralds came out of the cave.
I fitted my bracer and put an extra layer of silk to protect my forearm underneath. I knew it would bruise like hell during this fight but that was par for the course.
"I'm ready, Your Majesty," I told her.
She moved her spear and did some practice stabs, "I'm sorry if I have to hurt you, my daughter. But I need to know how strong you are."
"The duel shall be to First Blood," Nenandil stepped in the middle to referee. "Begin!"
Mom dashed forward with her spear aimed at my center of gravity. I turned incorporeal and dodged. Even so, the spear passed through my chest. It would've scraped some ribs.
"What?" She gasped, confused. "I hit it!"
I thrust with the bone dagger and struck at her arm. She deflected and the bone scratched her skin but didn't draw blood. A thick skin Perk. Great.
"Come on, mom! You can do better than that!"
She turned around and we assumed our stances. Eathelin focused. "{Hunter's Mark}!"
> Contested Willpower test failed.
She came with her spear again. I parried it away with a circular motion, trusting {Master Aikido} to really protect me from taking damage. I barely felt the spear's shaft as I deflected it.
I counterattacked with the dagger but Eathelin moved with preternatural agility even though she wasn't looking at my arm. I pushed down with my tail, lifting my body just enough to dodge a wide swing with the spearhead. She staggered and lost momentum. I used the opening to strike. The [Huntress] smiled as I fell into her trap.
"{Defang Prey}!"
Her spear blurred and sliced my bone dagger, leaving only a stump. I recoiled and that gave her an opening to strike. Once more I was forced to go incorporeal to avoid losing the duel.
"What are you going to do now that you have no weapon?" She taunted me.
I turned invisible and {Shadow Warped} to some mermaid's shadow.
"I can still see you," She said staring right at me. "{Hunter's Mark} pierces camouflage and invisibility."
I might get that one day when Class Perks are persistent again. I attached a {Force Blade} spell to my bracer and then {Flash Step} to strike her.
She didn’t dodge. With a flick of her fins, she set her spear. "{Chargebreaker}!"
All my momentum vanished as mom broke my charge and left me staggered for a moment. The sharktooth speartip flew my way and I dodged. She put pressure with a barrage of stabs. I dodged again and she adapted to the staggering effects of {Grandmaster Dodge}, but so long I kept dodging, she would suffer a huge accuracy penalty.
I would tire out if I kept dodging as she was forcing me to move too much with only a flick of her wrist on the spear’s haft. I fainted an attack.
"{Defang Prey}!"
"{Disarm}!"
Our abilities clashed. Mom's spear tried to sever the {Force Blade}. I tried to wrest the spear off of her hand.
> Contested Strength test won.
The magical blade severed the haft of the spear near the tip. She released the broken dowel and I closed in for the “kill”. I wasn't going to murder anyone, much less my mother. As I pushed the Death Princess’s killing instinct down, my concentration faltered.
"STOP! It's finished!" Nenandil shouted.
I paused. "What?"
"Your left arm!" The fairy pointed.
Yes, there was a faint trail of blood. Mom chuckled. "I think I need to trim my fingernails."
"It's my loss," I smiled and healed the scratch with water magic. "I couldn't defeat a hunter's tenacity."
----------------------------------------
After the duel, I took mom to the beach. Even though she couldn’t transform her tail into legs, she could lay down on the sand and stargaze with me. Her tail was right where the waves washed the sand so it would not get dry.
I told her about my many lives, now that she was open to listening. The sound of the small waves crashing on the sand soothed my aching heart. Reliving my previous lives reopened many wounds.
Before the duel, she just took it as ramblings from a slightly loony girl. After I’ve proved my mettle in battle? Not so much, thank you. Eathelin was beaming with pride.
"You could've defeated me anytime you wanted then," She said after I explained to her my Force spells. "It's hard, you know. Some girls even asked me why aren't you the queen. You can do so many things. Like the reef and the island. Who makes an island?"
I swam around her and hugged her. "If the Heralds tried to make me queen, I would've killed them. So they nailed me in a way they knew I'd be powerless against. They made you queen."
"Kill the Heralds?" She gasped as if I was speaking heretical words.
Which I was kinda doing. For good or bad, they were the mermaid’s deities. After Bundeus’ death, humans lost a lot of their power. Not only the {Human Royalty} Perk was no longer granted to the newly-activated princes, the “Human shop”, their biggest advantage became crap. The odds of getting a high-rarity Perk plummeted. Even though they were two demigods, their blessing was a boon to the mermaids.
"They kidnapped and tortured you, mom!" I protested to defend myself. I felt my chest seizing from pain just thinking about losing her. "I would destroy the world before I let anyone harm you. Yes, if the price of your freedom was the lives of those demigod avatars, We'd be feasting on sea dragon steak now. With giant takoyaki balls as a side dish. I've lost my mother in a previous life because of a god's cruelty. No. More."
She hugged me back. "Don't kill anyone."
I sniffled. "No, mom. I killed the mermaids that ambushed us but I promise to not kill anyone else. Unless I really need to. But there are too many lives burdening me already. Kings, Wizards, soldiers, bandits. Tens of thousands. I decimated whole armies back then. I even killed a God. But that is in the past. The ones that did that were me but they weren't me, Arista."
"Would you tell me of that mother you lost?" Eathelin asked, doing a poor job of hiding a sob.
"Sure. Rosalinda was a human, a single mother in the village of Tambrillia, in the Kingdom of Pekothas. She had a daughter named Lily, me. As she couldn't work, she had to rely on the village trollops and gossips for support. One day, a wandering Priest of the Human God came to visit, and he tried to use magic on me. Divine magic and I mix as well as wind underwater. The wrathful God struck the village and killed everyone. Only Rosalinda and I survived because she was holding me and that nullified the magic around us.
"The gods descended to see what happened. That's when the Human god asked another to summon a monster with the power to turn flesh to stone. Rosalinda became a statue. She's out there, waiting for me. There's a promise from the God of Justice to clear her name once I find it."
"Poor thing," mom hugged me. "You were a just baby when your mother died. Human babies are more helpless than salmon larvae."
"Yes. But one Goddess, Yznera, took pity on me. She sent wolves to help me."
"What are wolves?" Eathelin asked with genuine confusion. She’d never set foot outside the water.
"I'll show you," I transformed into one.
She rubbed my wolf fur and I taught about the land animals to her. We wasted the long night away.
----------------------------------------
With mom pacified and busy ruling her country, I had time to enchant the illicium into tools to help grow food. I transformed into Rosewise and walked with Nenandil through the island forest. After I found a decent tree, I used the Perk Yznera gave me for the first time.
> Tree Refuge
it was as the label said. A circular, plain meadow surrounded by trees twenty meters across. The ground was covered by a carpet of emerald grass and the starlit sky above seemed painted. Walking to the treeline brought me back to the tree I entered from. I went back to the meadow and started to set my workplace. I took a small stone building from storage and placed the workbenches for enchanting, jewel crafting, the forge, and anvil. Once that was done, I prepared the materials I'd be working on.
Making light was easy with the huge affinity the organ had. All I needed to do was to supply it with a steady flow of MP. A big magic core would work as both battery and generator but there was one problem. How would I keep the tools safe from theft?
I sat in Rosewise's form before my enchanting workspace in the meadow. All my enchanting and jewelry tools were sized for her small eleon hands so that was the best form to work.
The mermaids were vain and frankly speaking, not very smart. Primitive might be a better word. The world underwater wasn't very receptive to tools and they didn't need more than what they had. That didn't mean they couldn't feel greed. Or envy. They did feel lots of that. One jelly mermaid was all it'd take to lose an item worth a King's ransom.
I needed to make the item immobile. And invulnerable. A Force barrier was the best solution. That would add a huge burden on the MP, maybe even more than the main function. It also wasn't absolute. Force barriers could be forced through with enough determination. It was my best shot anyway.
I added a trigger to shut down the light if the sun was out. That should save some MP. Most of the core was used to generate MP. I wanted it to generate more MP per day than the required amount for its operation. The MP storage wasn't small either and it alone could power the artifact for a week.
I melted some gold coins, taking care to see if they weren't exhausted. A whiff of Earth magic created the mold I needed and I poured the molten gold. The end product was a rod with a setting for the core on one side and the esca on the other. I fit the core on one side and the glowing esca on the other. I discarded the stem of the illicium.
The next step was to engrave runes on the side of the rod. These would control and direct the flow of the magical energy to the two main enchantments. Repeat two times and we're set. The organs started to glow faintly. I could control the brightness and right now it was at its lowest. No need to make them glow like the sun now. There was one final step before they were ready to be deployed.
I needed to hide the gold. The item was valuable enough for those that knew what they were, but any fool would see the yellow metal and think of destroying the artifact for the metal. Between the esca, the core, and the gold, the latter lost in value to the former two by one or two digits. The whole item? I let the job of setting the value to the System. Not now. It wasn't finished.
I moved to my anvil. There, I heated the steel ingots with fire magic and hammered them flat, mixing Earth magic and pure physical force to shape them into sheet metal to make a sleeve for the rod. It would cover the gold shaft and the crystal core at the end, leaving only the glowing anglerfish organ exposed. Shaping metals with Earth magic was hard. But together with the hammering, I did it.
The finished product was as follows.
> Sunrod [3 in inventory]
>
> Estimated price: 75 kingmetal coins.
>
> MP generation: 20 MP/hour.
>
> MP Storage: 9,000 MP. Can be charged by anyone willing to donate MP.
>
> Attunement: The sunrod is attuned to a wearer and obeys only the attuned's orders. The sunrod can be attuned to another person only with permission from the attuned or after their death.
>
> Light: The sunrod's orb can glow from as dim as a candle for free up to as bright as sunlight for 13 MP/hour. The cost for intermediate stages of brightness is proportional to the light emitted. Light can be set to turn off when exposed to light as strong as sunlight.
>
> Force Barrier: The sunrod is protected by a Force Barrier when deployed. The barrier uses 10 MP/hour and activates when the sunrod is targeted by an attack or an entity attempts to move it when it is immobile. It deactivates after one hour.
>
> Immobile: The sunrod can become immobile and hover in place at the cost of 1 MP/hour.
>
> Self-repair: If damaged, the sunrod shuts the light off and starts to repair itself over time. The Force Barrier remains active.
Each rod cost me two hundred and fifty million Exp to enchant. A bargain.
And while I am at it, let me make a few other enchanted items for the mermaids. Something to store large amounts of food without spoiling… What about low-capacity storage rings that chilled the contents?
----------------------------------------
Finding the right spot to put the rods was more daunting than crafting them. The mermaids started a pleading war, each one of them wanting a rod over their own farm. But no. I would put them where they could benefit the largest amount of farms possible. Well-defended places closer to the heart of the mermaid king... queendom. A mermaid king wouldn't even exist unless I decided to play one and set the title right.
Even so, I lacked the... proper regalia to be a King, and by regalia, I meant male genitals capable of reproduction. So far away bygone that I didn't even miss it much nowadays. Not that I got any action going this time around. I'm afraid of hurting myself.
Enough of that. I decided to make the damn coral move away so we could make some large kelp farms to make the most of the rods. They were set one north, one south, and one west outside the atoll. Then I put the rods, three glowing stars that hurt the eyes if you stared directly at them. I dialed down the brightness by thirty percent until it consumed only nine MP per hour. I fully charged the battery and set the barrier to remain always active. The balance was twenty-seven positive MP per day as the light would turn off during the three hours of the day.
The rods worked like a charm. With light around the clock and the [Dark Farmers] powers, the kelp grew at astonishing rates. Seven times as fast. There were only two problems.
The first one showed up one week after I set the rods. Floating algae, phytoplankton, proliferated like crazy, drawing other marine animals that ruined the farms. Whole schools of fish, enough krill to look like a cloud, lobsters, even a shark that was quickly beaten to death by the pod-quartet. We got a lot of meat to eat, but no algae. Unless you counted free-floating sargassum, which the mermaids didn't eat. The damn weed spread like the pox upon the surface of the ocean near the rods.
I tried to nibble on a bit of sargassum. It tasted horrible.
I was forced to change the schedule for the rods. They would activate for six hours at full power, after the sunset. That would extend the "daylight hours" to nine, a healthy amount. Some mermaids took the sargassum and started to raise sea urchins with it.
The first problem wasn't a huge problem and it basically solved itself a month after I changed the schedule. The "night" hours allowed the ocean currents to carry a good portion of the floating algae and plankton away. Lesson learned. All things in moderation.
The second problem was a hairy, bellicose, and complicated one. Gotta see to believe, and I was looking at it right now.
We had visitors. Landlubbers ahoy.