“Well, of course I can talk, you cheeky bastard. What, did you think I’m one of those dumb animals who swim around all day, eating barnacle shit?”
Nathan breathed in quickly. “Oh god, I’ve finally lost it. I’m so alone that I’m hallucinating animals talking.”
“What the hell are you on about?” the fish said. “You act like you’ve never seen a talking fish before!”
“That’s cause I’ve never seen a talking fish before!” Nathan said.
The fish blinked. “Oh.” Its eyes stared at Nathan, then at the surrounding area.“Wait a second, this ain’t Circle Seven.”
“N-no. This is a tutorial. Can we get back to the part about you being able to talk?”
“The tutorial? Oh, that explains why I couldn’t get out of that pond...”
Nathan’s hands shook. “Can we please talk about you being able to talk!?”
“What’s there to talk about—? Oh, yeah. Okay. I’d bet your world doesn’t have a talking fish, don’t it? That’s why you’re acting like a newborn cod.”
Nathan adjusted his grip on the fish. “Alright, okay. Whatever. I’ve been fighting ogres and mutant sheep and all sorts of random crap. Why should I be surprised by a talking fish?”
“That’s the right attitude, mate!” the fish said. “You’ll go far. Might even make it to the eighth circle if you’re lucky.”
Nathan took a deep breath.
“Let’s back up. Can you explain who you are?” Nathan said. “And, like, what’s happening? And just… please chat with me? I haven’t talked to anyone besides myself for over a week.”
“Blimey, mate. You haven’t run into anyone else? Isn’t this supposed to be the tutorial?”
“Yeah, what does that have to do with anything?”
“Well, I’d expect you to have run into someone at some point, unless there are only twenty members of your race.”
Nathan furrowed his eyebrows. “Last I checked, the global population was seven billion?”
“That’s decently sized. You should’ve run into someone. Hold on, do you remember what difficulty the tutorial assigned you to?”
“Ultra hard nightmare or something like that, I think.”
The fish blinked. “Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that in my whole life. And trust me, I’ve been around the reef for a while. You must have a pretty damn high number of talent points.”
“Yeah, I remember the System saying something about that.”
The fish hummed. “Lemme take a guess. I’d say five hundred?”
“A thousand, actually, but good guess.”
The fish’s eyes bugged out and it flopped around in Nathan’s hand. “You’re a right monster is what you are!”
“Uh, thanks?”
“You’re destined for great things, lad, I can tell you that much.”
Nathan groaned. “Look, you still haven’t explained who you are.”
“My apologies, mate.” The fish seemed to smile. “The name’s Captain Finnacious Gambino!” The fish winked. “But you can call me Finny!”
Nathan groaned internally. How did things reach this point?
I’m currently conversing with a talking fish named Finny. Kill me.
“So, how’d you end up in this pond, Finny? You don’t seem like the monsters around here,” Nathan said.
“Of course not!” Finny said. “Those dumb shit-for-brains are just generated by the System. Me and my mates, on the other hand—we’re like you.”
“Like me? Last I checked, I didn’t have scales. Or the ability to breathe underwater.”
Finny rolled his eyes. “Not like that, lad. I mean that like you, we were stolen from our homeland. One day, I was in my living room with my wife, the next, there was an odd blue box telling me to distribute talent points.”
… Do fish have living rooms?
Nathan tilted his head. “So you’re one of those other races that the System was talking about? But how do you know so much?”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“Because I’ve already finished my run, mate.” Finny sighed. “We made it bloody far, too, but at the Sixth Circle, there was an impossible quest. Nobody knew how to finish it.”
Nathan frowned. “Then how are you here? Shouldn’t you have been ‘recycled’?”
“The System offered us a choice,” Finny said. “Rather than get killed at the end of the time limit, it told us that we could join it, you know?”
“Join it? How did you do that?”
The fish isn’t about to sell me out to the System or something, right?
“Well, it costs energy for the System to make and maintain things. Much easier if the materials are already there. We’re those materials. The System uses us for quests and asks us to do things. In exchange, we get to live in the Circles and gain a sort of immortality. Not a bad deal, to be honest.”
“But how did you end up here, in the tutorial? Did the System place you here?”
“Oh, no, mate. The System prefers to save us for the circles. I got here because I was on the run, got in trouble with the coppers.”
“Coppers? Like, police? Wait, are you a criminal?!”
The fish coughed. “You didn’t have to put it so blunt. And I’ll have you know, it’s not like I do anything really dangerous. All we do is move things around.”
“You’re a smuggler?” Nathan said.
“Yeah, just announce it to the whole damn world, why don’t you,” Finny said. “We’re a pretty big operation too.”
Fish mafia. What.
“I’d bet we have a cache somewhere around here too.” Finny paused. “Wait a second, Gin was mentioning something about one of our locations getting cleaned—“
Finny looked over at the fishing rod. Nathan rotated his body so that Finny couldn’t see it.
“You’re a bleeding thief!” Finny cried. “How dare you!”
“I didn’t know it was yours! Besides, it was probably stolen in the first place!”
“That doesn’t make it right for you to steal it back!”
Nathan was about to respond when he paused.
“Hold on a second. How are you even moving things around like that?”
The fish smirked. “Us fishies figured out a way to travel from circle to circle through cracks in space. The System still hasn’t caught on, ha!”
Nathan’s eyes widened. “Can you take other people with you?”
Finny’s head drooped. “That’s the question everyone asks. Afraid not. We’ve tried, but we can only bring ourselves along with the things in our inventories. That’s it.”
Nathan shrugged. It would’ve been neat if he could go from circle to circle—it might’ve helped him find his sister.
“Well, I guess I should let you go now,” Nathan said. “Thanks for answering my questions—“
“Hold on a moment, it’s my turn now,” Finny said. “Did you think I’d just walk out of here? I want some answers.”
“O-oh. Sure, what do you want to know?”
“Just let me use Advanced Inspect,” Finny said. “I want to know how the hell you got a thousand talent points.”
Nathan paused. Was this a good idea? He’d be letting his capabilities leak… but then again, Finny had been forthright and helpful. Not to mention, he didn’t make a huge deal out of Nathan stealing his organization’s goods. In the long run, too, it might help to have allies like Finny, and this could be the first step in building that kind of trust.
Nathan nodded. “Go ahead.”
Finny looked at Nathan. After a moment, Nathan felt a wave of energy run over the outside of his body. His skin burst with goosebumps.
No wonder monsters notice when I use Basic Inspect.
They stood in silence.
“W-well?” Nathan said.
The fish didn’t respond.
“Finny? What’s going on?”
The fish shook in his hand. “Y-you didn’t tell me you had the sea watching you, mate.”
“You’re gonna need to explain what that means.”
“You don’t know? How don’t you know—damn it, you really have no idea, do you?”
“Know what?”
“You haven’t gotten a quest mentioning it? That she’s watching you?”
Nathan groaned. “Who are you talking about!?”
“Your sea, damn it!”
Nathan was about to respond when he paused. Back when he got the class-up quest, didn’t it suddenly change? It said something about the sea… watching him. Oh.
“Okay, um, let’s say that I got a quest mentioning something about that, what does that mean?”
“It means you’ve got someone very high up watching you. If you play things right, you could end up in a very favorable position, lad.”
“Uh, what if I don’t play things right?”
“You could get turned into a piece of plankton, depending on how bad you screw the pooch.” Finny sighed. “I’ve got to get back and tell everyone about this, damn it.”
Nathan raised a hand. “Could you tell me more? This is all very vague…”
“I can’t. Sorry mate, I’d help if I could, but if she wanted you to know more, then she’d tell you. I don’t feel like getting turned into a barnacle.”
“Can you tell me one thing, at least?”
The fish stopped. “Depends on what you ask.”
“The quest told me to make an offering to the sea, but I don’t know how to do that. I’ve tried holding fish up to the sky, but that didn’t seem to work.”
Finny snorted. “An ordinary fish isn’t going to do the trick. You’ll need something much rarer. You’re on the right track, though—a sea creature would probably please her. When you get the right type, throw it into some water. If she’s as powerful as I think she is, she’ll get it, don’t worry.”
Nathan nodded. “Thanks.”
“Alright mate, I think I’d best get going. Can you throw me back into the pond?”
Nathan thought for a few seconds. He had a few other questions to ask, but he didn’t want to trap Finny. None of his questions needed to be answered at the moment.
“Got it,” Nathan said.
He threw Finny into the water. After a few moments, Finny popped his head out.
“Hey, wait a few minutes, then cast another line,” he said. “You might find something interesting.”
Before Nathan could respond, Finny disappeared back under the water. Nathan could feel that the fish had… vanished. After a few minutes, he felt something appear from the edges of his senses at the bottom of the lake.
Nathan cast a line. The red bob appeared, then disappeared with a mental command. The hook sank to the bottom and he felt it latch onto something.
He reeled it up and up, then slung it out of the water.
He blinked.
It was a box labeled FLASHBANGS.
Huh. He looked over to the right and spotted the blue window he’d ignored.
[Quest Complete: Phantom Minnow]
[You leveled up!]
[Achivement get: Lucky Catch]
[Lucky Catch]
Congratulations, you lucky angler! You’ve caught an exceptionally rare fish, one that has only been caught a hundred times before, if that!
+10 Luck
----------------------------------------
Nathan had returned back to his cavern, and then fallen asleep. Beside him, a campfire flickered gently. When he woke up, he’d decided to check on how much time he had left to clear the circle.
13/15
Two days left.
Shit.