Fritz, leader of the village, looked at the destroyed boats in the distance before taking another look at his own people and sighed.

The islanders had lost too much today.

He thought back to Miria, the little child who he had watched grow up for the past decade, and sighed as he looked again at the outsider’s ships. She was one of the first who had died in the battle. Lost before the main fleet had even arrived.

Miria had been… a bundle of joy to the village. And Aria (Sallia) had been a young girl who hadn’t even reached adulthood yet. Felix had been one of the fledgeling hunters of the village. The three of them had died too young.

When Miria had brought forth her idea to scour the deeps for a weapon to beat back the outsiders, he had hesitantly agreed, because he had been desperate for a way to improve the village’s odds. But he couldn’t help but wonder what kind of village needed to sacrifice its children for a chance of winning. He looked at the ships of the outsiders again, wishing the islanders had sunk the remaining three ships.

They were turning around, now. Of the mighty fleet of eight massive ships that had sailed towards the islands, only three remained. The remaining Megailians would offer no further threat to the islands, for what remained of their fleet was fleeing from their waters. Even if the remaining three ships reached the islands, too many outsiders had died. They wouldn’t win the battle against the islanders, even if they found their destination. So their commander had turned around and begun sailing back home. And the cost had been dozens of hunters and sailors, all returned to the Ocean Mother’s embrace to force the outsiders back.

Fritz hoped they never returned, but after they had come twice in the last decade, he knew that was probably a dime in hope. It might not be today. It might not even be this year, or this decade.

But, much like the landbeasts, they would eventually return. And the Islands would be ready for them.

The islanders had won this battle, but it had cost them far too much. He dreaded returning to the island and informing the families of the fallen that their loved ones had died. Miria’s mother, Astra, had lost her husband and her child on the same day, leaving her alone. Aria (Sallia)’s parents had lost their second child, the same way they had lost their first fourteen years ago. Felix’s mother had lost her only reminder of her dead husband. Nearly thirty percent of the islanders who had come to raid the outsiders and force them away from the islands had died, even after Miria successfully destroyed two ships solely by using the black pearls and the great monster of the deeps.

He sighed again, before shaking his head. The cost of this battle had been ruinous, and many islanders had lost their lives. The only thing he could do now was carry on as chief of the village, and make sure that if the outsiders returned during his lifetime, the village was able to beat them back again.

* * *

The king of Megailia read the report from the returning commander of the islander expedition, and felt rage bubble up in his body. And besides rage, he felt a slowly rising feeling of despair.

They had lost. The last chance for Megailia had been lost.

First, the war he had begun with the Lacanarians had ended poorly. For some reason, his troops, who won a war against the Lacanarians only thirty years ago, had failed to achieve the same results on the battlefield this time. Less than a decade ago, he had started a war with them, hoping to distract the nobles and general populace from his unpopular rule by achieving victory on the battlefield. After he won, he had intended to seize the treasury of Lacanaria, and use it to placate the populace and jump-start the economy. While Megailia had many internal problems right now, he felt that an injection of enough money would solve many of these problems. It would have stabilized his rule and allowed him to obtain the resources he needed to form his seventeenth rune. With seventeen runes and a history of successfully plundering their weaker neighbors, his throne would have been secured, and he would have had a solid base of support to keep ruling in the future.

Unfortunately, Megailia had not won the war against Lacanaria. Instead of seizing the Lacanarian treasury, Megailia had lost dozens of ships, and in the peace talks following their defeat, the Lacanarians had instead drained the Megailian treasury dry and seized several Megailian towns and farms in the peace deal. Nearly a fifth of their land had been lost; and most of the land that had been taken was the farms and mines most removed from the forests of the land beasts. The already overstrained Megailian military was having a hard time keeping the rest of the country safe, now that they had lost so many supplies and so much land.

The economy of Megailia was weaker than ever before, and its war strength had been at an all time low.

In an attempt to rejuvenate the collapsing nation of Megailia, the king had ordered some of his remaining elite troops to invade a small and unimportant set of islands. The commander who had died there had used the paper fish rune ability to convey the existence of the islands to the capital of Megailia, in a desperate attempt to prevent his family from being executed for his failure on the battlefield.

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Since the man had given the Megailian king a way to save the empire, he had left his children and his wife alive. After all, service to the empire needed to be rewarded. The rest of the families of the failed soldiers had been executed, as per the king’s orders. Failure couldn’t be tolerated, after all, and if the other soldiers thought that he was weak and willing to forgive failure, they would be less motivated to succeed in future battles. He hadn’t been entirely certain if the message held any truth to it, but after losing the war with the Lacanarians, he had been desperate for any way to get Megailia back on track.

The message had spoken of a land rich in pearls, and strange wood that could float in the air. The pearls could have been used to restock the Megailian treasury and save the empire from its economic crisis. The floating wood could have been used to restore some of the power of the military, and perhaps even create a new branch of weapons. The Lacanarians would never expect boats to fly during the next war, and seizing control of a large supply of floatwood would have been enough to ensure Megailia’s future military dominance once Megalia recovered. The pearls could have made up for the catastrophic losses in the war and restore the Megailian treasury. It may not have perfectly fixed the damages to Megailia after losing the war against the Lacanarians, but it would have helped fill in the gaps and added something to the Megailian treasury, at least.

Unfortunately, the invasion of the islands had also failed. Even with four thirteen-rune commanders leading the way, the soldiers and commanders spoke of a great sea monster that had torn two of the eight invading ships to shreds, and vicious attacks from the islanders followed in the wake of the beast. The ambush and the timing clearly weren’t coincidental. Somehow, the damned island primitives had managed to tame the creature, or at least coordinate their attacks with it.

The great sea monster’s attack had already crushed the morale of most of the invading troops, and the massive attack from the islanders had sank three more ships, killed two thirteen rune commanders, and destroyed most of the food supplies for the invading troops. What remained of the invasion fleet had fled home afterwards, to beg for forgiveness for their failure.

The Megailian emperor felt a growing headache as he realized that he had underestimated those misbegotten whelps of the islands. After losing more than half of the invasion fleet he scraped together from his decimated military, his empire was struggling to maintain its military and economy at all. A supposedly easy conquest had turned into another ruinous failure, right on the heels of the previous failure. He had lost several hundred troops on this expedition, and the empire could barely scrape together garrisons for its held cities now.

He sighed, rubbing his temples as he felt his frustration rise further. No matter how he thought about it, he couldn't think of a way to deal with the damn sea monster, even if he personally led his troops in another expedition against the islanders. Which meant the islands were also impossible to attack.

There just didn’t seem to be a way out of this mess.

* * *

The next decade was a time of tumult on the mainland. The Megailian empire, reeling from two consecutive military catastrophes, ultimately entered a state of decline. Its economy was nearly ruined from the failed war against the Lacanarians, and the failed invasion of the Al’thala islands only a few years after the end of the Lacanarian-Megailian war sent the empire’s military and economy even further into decline. The attempts of the Megailiain empire to reverse the decline of the empire, especially the countermeasures taken by the emperor himself, proved ineffective. Combined with the increasing aggressiveness of the empires of Megailia, as they realized the weakness of the remaining military of Megailia, the Megailian empire sank into a slow but irreversible decline as their weaker neighbors tore into the weakened city-state.

Historians would alter claim that one of the reasons for Megailia’s decline was due to its overemphasis on individual combat ability. Its insistence on placing those with higher rune counts in positions of command, ended up creating major distortions in its military command structure. Even though the seventh through ninth runes increase a commander’s intelligence, and the tenth through twelfth runes boost the abilities of the previous nine runes, the thirteen through fifteenth runes had no impact whatsoever on one’s ability to command troops. Since many of the Megailian commanders had thirteen or fourteen runes, this often meant that the most powerful individual fighters of Megailia were stuck in a command tent while potentially more competent commanders were barred from holding higher positions, due to their lacking Absorption Essence.

The incompetence of the emperor exacerbated this issue. While he did not live to see the collapse of the empire he had ruled over, as that came decades later, the empire continuously grew weaker and weaker as a result of his paranoia, poor decisions, and cruelty towards his own citizens.

The islands also faced a massive reduction in their combat ability following the battle of the ocean. Many of the young men and women who went on to fight the outsiders were the best and strongest of the islands, and many of them did not return after the fight.

However, the Megailian empire did not return. Miria’s innovations spread, as more and more islanders began to use Storm Orbs as a means of increasing their power to face a potential third invasion, but for reasons unknown to the islanders, the Megailians simply never showed up again.

Many of the villages on the island shrank after the battle of the ocean, due to land beast attacks and the weakened hunter forces of each village, but the use of Storm Orbs gave the islands their own unique form of power as they slowly recovered. Even if the use of Storm Orbs was very limited, since hunters needed to be incredibly mentally resilient to absorb one, and the use of Black Pearls never caught on because people couldn’t return to the deeps without a rune ability set like Miria’s, her actions left a lasting impact on her former homeland.

As for Sallia and Felix, their names quickly faded into obscurity, and even Miria was only really remembered for pioneering the use of Storm Orbs after a few generations passed. As generations passed, she became a popular folklore figure, known as ‘Miria the pioneer,’ for her willingness to take risks others weren’t willing to in order to protect her homeland, and for pioneering the path to using a new resource. It was a small step forward for the islanders, and one that someone else might have stumbled onto eventually, with or without Miria.

But while small, her impact extended far beyond her death.