After the hunt of the glowing fish, months passed. Life returned to normal within the village. Two months later, I stabilized my fourth rune, something that made me extremely excited. I had waited a long time to form my fifth rune, and I was finally ready.

On top of my usual excitement to form a new rune, my fifth rune was going to be even more important than usual. This was because I finally had an opportunity to explore the mysteries of the ocean. Since I was going to use the unusual fish core from the glowing fish during my rune formation, I hoped something useful and unusual would occur during the rune formation process. If I was lucky, it might be something that would propel my personal power to a new height, despite my average rune count. And with any luck, it would be something the rest of the islands could also use, making us safer in the future.

With a mixture of nervousness and excitement, I let Olav know that I would be gone from the boat until I finished my next rune, and then grabbed all of my resources that I had prepared for my fifth rune. Even though I was going to use the storm orb from the glowing fish as the ‘primary resource’ for my fifth rune, one fish core had nowhere near enough mana to form an entire rune. I hoped that I wouldn’t dilute its effect too much by using other fish cores, but I needed my other fish cores nearby to make sure my rune formation was successful.

After that, I went to the village chief and let him know that I was going to start my fifth rune. The village chief gave me a long, mournful look, before he sighed.

“Are you absolutely sure you want to do this? You don’t have to try this if you don’t want to, you know. You can definitely leave it to someone else.”

“I’m sure,” I said.

The village chief simply sighed again, and then led me into his hut. A few hours later, a few healers from the village came to watch over me while I made my fifth rune, along with the village chief, who was prepared to kill me if I went berserk and started attacking my fellow villagers. I was relieved to know that the village chief was prepared to take this seriously; part of the reason I was willing to take this risk at all was because I knew the village chief would stop me if I went mad. I wanted to make the islands stronger, so having a backup plan never hurt.

Then, I walked to the container holding the fish core, before I opened the container, pulled out the unusual core, and closed my eyes.

As I touched the core, I felt that I could vaguely feel… something unusual. Something very, very different from a regular fish core. If most fish cores were sort of like balls of light that I could consume without difficulty, this fish core was more like a storm contained in a sphere. The mana inside of it swirled and surged like the waves, crackling with violent energy. As I held the storm orb in my hand, a System notification popped up.

Wealth: Gain ownership of a [Minor Fragment of the Ocean’s Heart]

Achievement +200

A System notification broke me out of my thoughts. I looked over the notification curiously.

The System notification didn’t refer to the storm orb as a storm orb, much to my surprise. Instead, it referred to the storm orb as a ‘fragment of the ocean’s heart.’ This was a tidbit of information I hadn’t expected to learn from a System notification. Apparently, a ‘storm orb’ wasn’t as unique of a resource as I had first expected. It seemed like a storm orb was a component of something greater. Perhaps the ‘Ocean’s Heart’ was the reason the ocean here was so unusual?

After a few moments of thought, I put my questions aside. I couldn’t answer them right now, and I needed to get working on my fifth rune.

I turned my attention back to my fourth rune. Inside of my fourth rune, I once again saw an image of the waters outside of the island. Sunlight glittered on the surface of the waves, and I could see fish swimming around on the surface of the ocean, providing sustenance and life to the islands.

This was the rune that let me convert water into illusions and healing. However, this rune was also a fragment of a complete ‘painting’ I had begun making when I created my first ability rune. I had started my fourth rune with the intention of making a complete painting of the ocean, and it was time to fill in more of the missing pieces of the painting and bring it closer to completion.

Then, I started working on my fifth rune. My image of the surface of the waves was already complete, so it was time to dive deeper into my image of the ocean. I focused on what lay beneath the waves this time. I didn’t know what the ‘deeps’ of the ocean looked like yet, but now I had some ideas about what lay underneath the ocean’s surface. I thought back to the glowing fish that had terrorized the islands, as well as the sense of mystery I still held towards the ocean and its depths. The ability to teleport, the ‘fragments of the Ocean’s Heart…’ they evoked a sense of terror, as well as a sense of wonder in me as I thought about the occasional monstrosity that surfaced from the depths of the ocean and wreaked havoc on the islands.

Then, I began using absorption essence to start mapping out my image of the depths of the ocean, turning my guesses, inspirations, and ideas about the ocean into a rune, one drop of mana at a time. And at the same time, I began to absorb the ‘fragment of the ocean’s heart’ that we had recovered from the corpse of the Glowing Fish, adding it to my fifth rune and using it to build the basis of what my future abilities would be.

As I used my mana to map out my rune, a new image began to surface in my painting. The glittering sunlight remained bright and resplendent on my fourth rune, while below the surface of the ocean light began to fade away, replaced with an ever growing sense of dread. The darkness began to creep in, and shadows of great, mysterious beings that lay where the light never reached began to show up near the bottom of my painting, hinting at creatures that lurked beneath the waves. Eddies and swirls of ocean currents and water whirled about underneath the water, hiding shadows of greater creatures in between.

And within my painting, mana from the core of the Glowing Fish warped the shape of my painting and my thoughts, creating something different. Distortions in the waves. Terror. Madness. Hints of things I couldn’t quite see, and couldn’t understand, but which lurked, ever present, in the darkness which had never seen the glittering sunlight above the waves.

Mixed into my drawing, I also added in components of my memories of each storm season in this world. I drew orbs of light that were yet to be devoured by glowing fish, funneling water around them as they lit up the water in their surroundings like stars that had fallen into the sea. The ocean in my drawing seemed to swirl and rage, bending and buckling like the pillars of water that clawed their way towards the heavens with every storm, threatening to tear apart any who sought the mysteries of the ocean without being strong enough to learn the truth.

Over the course of the next month, I returned to the village chief’s hut each day to continue working on my rune. I slowly perfected this image under the watchful eyes of the village chief and the healers, slow turning my imagination into reality. Finally, I finished building my fifth rune.

The moment the rune was complete, I realized something was strange. There was a sort of madness in my thoughts, a discoloration in the way I looked at the world. I couldn’t fully understand what was different, but it was like there was… something different in my surroundings. When I looked at the world, out of the corner of my eyes, I saw something that wasn’t truly there.

Power: Successfully condense your fifth rune

Power: Utilize a fragment of the Ocean’s Heart without going mad

Achievement +500, Achievement +200

I frowned, barely taking a moment to confirm my new Achievement total. I had gone from 5,308 Achievement to 6,208 Achievement over the course of forming this rune. Then, I opened my Status Screen to see if it had more information on what was different this time. The first thing I noticed was that my Willpower had DROPPED a grade.

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I felt a trace of unease as I scoured my Status Screen for any other differences.

Runes: 5 Successfully Condensed

(+60 to all Physical Attributes)

(Water Conversion - light and healing)

(Shadow of the Waves - Teleportation, Madness of the Waves)

Current Vessel: Teenage Body - born from the parents of your current body, this vessel has no leaks and is truly ‘alive.’ You may check the Stats of this physical vessel in your status screen. Your body is nearly grown up, and you no longer experience any Stat penalties due to your immature body..

Due to absorption of a Damaged Fragment of the Heart of the Ocean, your body exerts a certain influence on its surroundings. Your eyes are forever changed from their original color, allowing you to see things you couldn’t before.

Note - due to the characteristics of a Transmigrator, it is impossible for a physical vessel to ever have Stats BELOW 70 or ABOVE 130 without input from your soul. If you wish to exceed grade 6 you must purchase Stats.

Organic Brain: A partially developed human brain that has yet to finish growing. Made primarily of physical matter, with slight bits of Absorption Essence mixed into a few key parts of the brain to allow for rudimentary absorption-type spellcasting and interaction.

This brain has been influenced by the user’s training regime of watching the waters of the Althala islands during storm season. Due to the mixture of unique Mana and careful observation of the water during Storm season, the brain is now slightly stronger than before.

Willpower +10

You have absorbed a damaged fragment of the Heart of the Ocean. As a result, your aggressive tendencies are amplified, permanently destroying part of your Willpower. In exchange, your mana pool, as well as all of your rune abilities, have been amplified, and you have unlocked abilities that are impossible to naturally form.

Willpower -20, if you lose control of your thoughts you may snap into a state of heightened aggression. Effects of your Fifth rune are dramatically different than a regular ability rune.

I shivered, realizing that my Grade 7 Willpower had dropped from 140 to 120. I had lost a full Grade of Willpower, permanently sacrificing the advantage I had spent years watching storms in order to acquire in exchange for whatever benefit the ‘fragment of the ocean’s heart’ gave me. However, I was also glad to realize I had gained multiple abilities from my fifth rune. This also confirmed that the reason the Glowing Fish had used so many different abilities during the fight was because of the storm orb.

“How is it? What happened?” Asked the village chief, who had been standing near me while I worked on my rune.

I turned towards him, and felt a strange tug at my thoughts. For just a brief moment, I wanted to hurt him. To drown him in water and make him become one with the waves, devouring all that made him human and endlessly dragging him into the darkness…

I snapped out of it almost immediately. My willpower was too high to be seriously influenced by this, even after I permanently lost a Grade of Willpower to form my fifth rune.

The village chief, however, tightened his grip on his spear as he looked at me. “Miria?” His voice shook, and he sounded both afraid and as if he were mustering up his courage.

I finished shrugging off the strange desire to harm the village chief, and shook my head.

“I’m fine, village chief. I do feel slightly more inclined towards violence than before, but I can control it really easily. My willpower has always been good. But I can definitely see why the Glowing Fish began to rampage through the islands after absorbing this thing; anything with a weak will would definitely go on a murderous rampage after absorbing this thing. And the Great Fish have never been very smart. I don’t think that villagers with lower Willpower should absorb these orbs, if we encounter any more of them. If they do, they might seriously hurt people they care about.” I said.

“But hunters are probably fine, and people with unusually strong Willpower should also be fine. I don’t think it’s a problem to absorb these, it just needs to be done carefully.”

The village chief frowned, before nodding.

“Your eyes have changed color. The pupils in your eyes are gone. And the color of your eyes has turned much… darker. Before, your eyes were the same color as everyone else’s, but now it’s like… when I look at your eyes, I get this eerie feeling that I’m looking at the bottom of the ocean. It’s… not a bad color, but it’s a bit unnerving,” said the village chief. I frowned, and then nodded as the village chief continued speaking.

“In any case, I’m glad that you’re still yourself. How strong is the influence of the storm orb?”

As the healers and the village chief carefully observed me, I described everything I was feeling, from the odd sense of seeing things out of the corner of my eye to the occasional mild impulses to hurt people in my surroundings. The village chief, as well as the healers, nodded and frowned as I spoke, occasionally prodding me with new questions, but largely content to just listen as I described my experiences so far.

Afterwards, the village chief and the healers led me out of the house, so that I could experiment with my abilities while they watched.

The first thing I realized was that I could now easily control water in my surroundings.

Previously, I could technically control water without converting it into light or healing, but my control was very, very weak. It was at the point where it was almost worthless, since I could barely control a blob of water the size of my head, and I couldn’t move it very quickly. Now, however, I had a level of control and power equal to, or even exceeding, someone with a normal water control rune. Since this ability was already common in the village, I quickly took it in stride, before I focused on the more unique Abilities I had gained from my fifth rune.

The next thing I realized was that my illusion ability was different from before. I had one new, unique ability I could add to my illusions - namely, I could directly make them create a special, weakened version of the Call of the Ocean. I could only create around 30 or 40% of the real Call of the Ocean’s effects, but the fact that I could make my illusions now drive people insane or force them to drown themselves if their will was weak enough was… both novel and slightly terrifying. I was more than a little glad the village chief had insisted that we test my abilities away from the village, or else a few children might have gone mad during my Ability Testing.

My healing abilities hadn’t changed at all. I realized that one of the two Abilities I had gained with my Fifth rune was an overhaul to my fourth rune. My fourth rune, originally, granted me the ability to convert water into light or healing. I had used this to make illusions and heal villagers.

However, my fourth rune now granted me the ability to manipulate water itself, and the illusion ability could easily become several times scarier than before if I used it against humans now. I could still use the ‘original’ version of my illusion ability, but I could just as easily mimic or enhance the call of the ocean if the outsiders returned.

However, the second ability I should have gotten from my rune, teleportation, was incredibly hard to use.

After several hours of experimentation, I realized that the strange ‘distortion’ I was seeing out of the corner of my eye wasn’t me seeing things, or an illusion.

Instead, it was a kind of… ripple in space itself. What I was seeing wasn’t a figment of my imagination, but something like a distortion in reality that I could manipulate if I ‘latched on’ to a certain distortion in reality and then bent it to my will.

This realization left me slightly frustrated, because seeing what I was supposed to be manipulating was incredibly difficult when using my rather mediocre human eyes.

Apparently, the dozens of eyes the Great Fish of the ocean had were more useful than I thought. During the hunt of the Glowing Fish, my chief had made everyone aim towards the eyes of the Glowing Fish at some point in time, since he had realized its teleportation was dependent on its eyesight. However, as I reflected on the fight as a whole, and thought about how and when the Glowing Fish had teleported, I realized a few interesting facts about the fight. At some point in time, the glowing fish had started to miss its teleports, more and more often, and this seemed to correlate to the number of its eyes we had destroyed over the course of the fight. I was beginning to think that all the extra eyes of the Great Fish helped them see the ripples of ‘space’ around them, which was part of what helped the Glowing Fish teleport around during the fight. Since I only had two human eyes, it was much harder for me to figure out how to use my teleportation. If the fragment of the Ocean’s Heart hadn’t warped my eyes while I absorbed it, I might not have been able to use my new teleportation ability at all. Luckily, I could see these ‘ripples’ in space now; but I didn’t know how to use them yet.

I reported my findings to the village chief, and after some thought, he told me to keep working on it. Clearly, I would need a lot more practice if I wanted to teleport around like the Glowing Fish. After some thinking, I nodded and sighed. It didn’t matter if I couldn’t use the ability right now. I just needed to keep practicing until I could do it.

With that, my initial testing of my fifth rune, as well as my analysis of the effects of a Storm Orb on rune formation, came to an end.