The leviathan was no ordinary monster. This much was obvious information to anyone who had heard of its legend. The children of some fishermen would even use the leviathan as a boogeyman, where children would eat their vegetables for fear that the leviathan would come for them. Although it was theoretically possible, the subjugation of a leviathan had never been attempted in human history. Their most precious resource, their scales, would be naturally shed and left behind by them every few decades anyway, so trying to kill the leviathan would be no different than throwing away precious resources in the form of powerful mages just to kill a golden goose.

Of course, leviathans did more than just meander about. There certainly were some reasons to attempt to subjugate them, such as how some leviathans built their lair in what could be a golden trade route or how they would irregularly attack boats that did not wander into their lair, for no reason in particular.

Still, they made up for it with how the lair of a leviathan would evict entire schools of sea creatures, pushing them into the nets of fishermen or enriching areas unoccupied by any leviathan. These areas would span up to the size of a minor nation, which is why the sheer number of sea creatures evicted could be so beneficial to fishermen. There were downsides to this sort of aggressive and forced relocation, but those could be overlooked.

So, what would happen when one of the few dozen of these behemoths on the continent died?

A power vacuum.

Suddenly, a region rich with resources opens up, and these sea creatures that have been starved for resources flood in and contest the space. A small region around the corpse of the beast is still left untouched due to a residual primal fear, but over ninety-five percent of the area is now up for grabs. Marine populations in the region that was used to hunt by fishermen would experience an initial dip but then explode. Society as a whole, mainly in countries such as the coastal Ebonreach Kingdom, experiences a social and economic impact.

This was part two of Noah's plan to profit from the leviathan, which he had planned to launch now, three months after the death of the leviathan. Investment. His target was the Ebonreach Kingdom. By providing significant investment to merchants in the Ebonreach kingdom, who directly or indirectly were largely affected by marine trade, in the words of Noah,

"I'll be swimming in racks! Ariel, I can already see it. Below me, white-gold coins. Above? White-gold coins. Left and right? Haha, more coins! I'll drown in a pool of coins!"

"Doesn't sound very comfortable. It would be an uncomfortable pool of joy…!"

As one might be able to tell, Noah's tendencies had been rubbing off on Ariel recently. It started with Noah celebrating every deal he closed with another merchant or whenever another cart of white-gold coins was sent to him. After a few weeks of that, his joy would infect her, and now making money was a dear passion, only second to battle.

Noah and Ariel had just finished another training session, and they were currently resting on the small balcony Noah had built outside his study, right beside the training grounds his window overlooked, on lounge chairs.

Ariel then asked the question she had made a habit of asking following their training sessions.

"So?"

"Not quite yet. You're still at that wall."

Ariel sighed, slightly exasperated.

"If I had a copper coin for every time I heard you say that, I could exchange them for enough white-gold coins to fill several pools."

"It's not my fault you can't breakthrough; I'm just saying it as I see it. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the difference between a Lord and a Sovereign is precision, aka control. Breaking through this barrier is not dissimilar to inserting a key into a lock. The raw power comes later. In our spars, all I see is you swinging about a hammer onto the lock like you're roleplaying Thor."

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"Thor?"

"A thunder god of myth from my homeworld."

Her eyes lit up like two mini suns, and she asked,

"How strong was he?"

"Up there, I think. I mean, thunder and lightning are scary and strong, and stuff. The man got a bunch of movi—plays written about him too."

"Would he be stronger than the six major monarchs?"

"Probably. He's a god, right, so he's gotta be—I feel like we're digressing. Point is, pursue control rather than power. I think your instinct pushes you to use power, so fix that."

"Can we try?"

"Sure."

Noah and Ariel got up for another round of sparring. He had been able to make a fair deal of progress, even if Ariel was currently overwhelmingly weaker than him.

'Mimicry - Ogre x3, Wyvern x2, Arachne x2!"

The biggest downfall of using multiple formats at the same time was the mana consumption. He could not freely change forms, since a change in form required several uses of mimicry.

What Noah was doing was alternating the monsters used in each form to control the strength and utility that they could generate.

For example, what he had currently discovered was that travelling at the fastest possible speed wasn't most efficient by just stacking eight wyverns, but he would be much faster rather with one arachne, two wraiths, and five stacked wyverns. With this arrangement, he would turn a portion of his mass incorporeal to lighten the load on the wings. He would jump with the powerful arachne legs then allow the wyvern wings to rocket him to the nearest cliff, where he would land and repeat the process. However, this form was really only efficient in mountainous terrain, where cliffs are more commonplace.

'If there were to be greenery nearby, it would be faster to replace one vampire with one dryad, as the vine creation and control would allow me to use them like spiderman's webs. Honestly, there's a million most efficient forms for every scenario, which is why this training is so useful. I'm able to experiment with mimicry against a durable training dummy.'

Mentally apologising to Ariel for treating her as a training dummy, Noah continued to dodge and weave. Obviously, a fight would end in milliseconds. Noah was moving to get used to the power of his current form, and Ariel was improving by trying to hit an enemy that resembled a blur.

At least, he was supposed to, but was he slowing down?

And then, a slice of her spear cut off an arachne leg.

'...!'

That wasn't supposed to happen. Her speed was nowhere near enough to actually hit him. Immediately coming to a stop, she watched Noah turn into a unicorn, reattach his leg, then turn human.

"That's weird. Why did…that…"

Noah looked at his hands, almost as if curious as to why it happened as well, before he began to wobble on his feet. The world began to blur. His words slurred, and Ariel watched, increasingly alarmed, as he began to careen off to the side, and his eyes shut. The last thing he saw was Ariel's moving mouth, but no sound. In his hazy mind, his final thought was,

'Can someone turn up the volume…'

The world faded to black.