The next morning, we woke up early. We were going to leave just before sunrise. I’d woken up this early fairly often in my life but even so, it was always a pain to leave behind your beauty sleep after a fun night.

Daine waited for us outside. Originally, she was supposed to be my escort and help me find my parents. I wasn’t going to spend my life here, so they weren’t going to send one of their warriors with me, since she needed to be here for the next hunt.

“The elder is still sleeping so I’ll hand you over these things in his stead,” she said, giving me a dress?

An overcoat of sorts. “I mean, I did kind of want something warm for the cold sea,” I said.

“We’ve sown four Great Carapaces inside this. So when you button up, even if you’re stabbed from the back or front, you should be alive at least.”

So this thing would block stabbing attacks to some extent. It was awfully light and… rather comfortable. Warm too. “Thank you. But you said, things?”

The coat was a bit big for me but oh well.

“Yes. And this. Your bracelet.”

Yeah, I’d almost forgotten about Mrs. Barrack’s bracelet.

“It’s not the same?” I said.

The bracelet had been remodeled into a bigger bracelet with multiple gems. They looked like crude cuttings from the big gemstone I’d seen earlier in the week.

“We took the liberty to remodel it for you. It should work much efficiently now.”

“Thank you.” I wore it right now. It covered roughly half of my arm. “A bit big for me…”

“It should shrink on its own. Give it some mana.”

I did. It shrunk!

So technically, a magical device.

It didn’t have fancy functions but it reduced my mana usage tremendously. Heck, I could probably form a fire ball for real now without passing out!

“Amazing,” I said.

“It is,” Daine agreed. “Come, I’ll see you to the off skirts of the village. There shouldn’t be any Hermon patrol, but do be careful.”

When I came here, I barely had my clothes on. But now I was leaving with loads of supplies, nice equipment, and even wine for the road (or rather for a feisty young lady)!

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“We will,” the fishman said.

Usually by this time, most of the hunter goblins were up and ready for work. The farmers also woke up early. Usually, at least. Today they were still sleeping. I suppose they had some after parties after we left.

Goblins hunted weekly and ate fish. They also hunted a major prey every few months when fish became scarce; big things like giant squids or sharks and stuff. And yes, there were sharks in the ocean….

They hardly ever fought something as dangerous as the Giant Shrimp but this time they were really desperate. Food around these parts were getting scarcer by the day, and hence they wanted me to stay here. Help them survive.

“What’ll happen if you can’t find enough food the next time, will you fight another big creature like that?”

“We always do. We have to, if we want to survive.” She paused. “Some of us will die, but the rest will live on. That’s how we’ve always done things.”

“Why don’t you expand your farmlands?”

“The safe zone is far too small,” she said. “We’ve tried to expand it but to no success. Our ancestors were great Space Rationers, but compared to them, we’re not good enough.”

We reached the end of the village rather soon. I usually walked this amount just for warmup every day, so I didn’t feel much.

“This is as far as I can go. Please… be safe, and come back. Although your time with us was short, we do consider you our hero and would treat you really well here.”

“I will eventually come back. I gave you my word. So as long as I don’t die, I’ll come back,” I said. “But next time, I’ll probably bring my parents. I know at least one of them will love the idea of seeing the ocean.” And mermaids….

Whether they’d be able to breathe or not was a whole different matter though.

“We’ll be waiting,” Daine said.

And with that, we pressed our faces against the edge of the safezone and popped out into the fucking ocean with all its fucking water pressure.

I felt like my eyes were being crushed and I was literally leaking blood through my nose. Fuck!

Both the mermaid and the fishman grabbed my hand and together, pulled me toward the great darkness.

The nearest safe zone was roughly half a day’s travel. As long as we didn’t run into anything significantly shit, we were good to go.

We didn’t run into anything significantly shit but I was still dying. My head was light, and I could probably faint any moment. The other two weren’t in that better shape. Sure, they were doing better than me, but they were kind of fucked.

Apparently, the goblins lived in super comfortable safe zone settings, and lived near the very bottom of the ocean (with very ‘not’ comfortable settings). So, when we got out, we got hit by a rather pressurized ocean that fucked our bodies hard. It was kind of like living in super comfortable 30-degree hot weather and then suddenly entering a different area with less than freezing temps. In this case, the temperature difference wasn’t much or maybe I just didn’t feel it thanks to my overcoat but boy did I feel absolutely shit because of the pressure. Also, not being able to breathe through my nose sucked!

“Dkionbra should be just two stops away. But it’ll take at least two days of nonstop swimming,” Roksha said.

Nonstop?

Fuck…

“We can take the Gilt pass. It’ll be hard to ride but that wave takes us straight to the southern gate of Dkionbra,” she said.

“And how do you propose we get out of the pass?” The fishman asked.

Roksha stared at me. And then the fishman did the same.

“If you can use that wave thing to get us out of the current,” Roksha said. “We might be able to enter Dkionbra tomorrow.”

“I can’t guarantee it’ll work,” I said.

“As long as you can manage a similar wave… it should be fine,” the fishman said.

I wasn’t confident and I’m sure they knew that.

Yet… we didn’t have much of a choice.

So it was decided, we were going to ride a rather violent sea current and hope it’d work out.