Last night was… restless and long, to say the least. It was long since the Princess slept from early in the morning through the entire day and until the next morning. I thought that it would be fine to sleep that long, but sleep was just a dream for the entirety of the day.
Nearly ten minutes after I first fell asleep, I awoke to the constricting feeling of a python around my body. I was startled at first, but I quickly realized that the ‘python’ was Princess Illway. In her sleep, she had wrapped herself around me and was squeezing extremely tight. I thought I was going to die at that point! I could barely even breathe, let alone get away from her. For such a scrawny looking girl, she squeezed really tightly. It was almost like her strength was at 1000.
While she was squeezing me, she kept mumbling phrases such as “Don’t go!” and “Please stop!”. At first they were quite murmuring, but they picked up in intensity after the first hour to the point that I was sure the entire crew could hear her! Yes, I was up the entire hour… In my defense, try sleeping while being strangled and tell me how well it went!
After that first hour, thankfully she let me go. I thought that would be the end of the ‘strangle Kali session’, but it wasn’t. I slept for a couple of hours after that, but I was once again woken up to being strangled.
That time, when I woke up, I was soaked from head to toe. The entirety of my fur was matted down to my body in what I sincerely hoped was tears. Illway still had me wrapped in a hug, but she wasn’t squeezing like she had before. A constant flow of tears were coming from her closed eyes, slowly dying the entire area around us.
I adapted quickly to my wet environment and fell asleep again, but it didn’t last long before I awoke once more. From there on out, the rest of the night was like clockwork. Every time a different hour struck, I would be awoken to either my organs being smashed or my fur being soaked. It was horrible.
By the time Princess Illway woke up and released me, I couldn’t be happier. With my increased dexterity, I ran away from the bed like a shot bullet. As I made a beeline directly towards the door, tears dripped off of my soaked fur. I reached up for the door, but a problem arose. I was too short. I couldn’t reach my paw high enough to hit the handle and open up my prison.
I glanced back and saw that, thankfully, the Princess had rolled onto her stomach and was crying into her pillows. Taking the opportunity to escape presented, I raced to my bag and activated [Shift] once more, returning to my humanoid form. I reached into my bag and put on my original clothes, the ones that I had found on the dead elf a while back. Once dressed, I pulled my soaked hair back out of my face. It seemed like all of the liquid that covered my wolf form had transitioned directly to my hair.
A quick peek over my shoulder showed that the Princess was still weeping in her pillow. I once again booked it to the door. Just as my hand closed around the door handle, Illway spoke up from behind me in a depressed voice, “Are you going to leave me too?”
I turned back and saw her sitting cross legged on the bed while weeping towards me. The tips of her dagger-like ears were quivering and she had a face full of sorrow. It was at that moment that I came to one of the only moral dilemmas I had ever faced. Did I take the soaking and try to comfort the princess? Or should I escape the slow waterboarding while I still could? Talk about being stuck in between a meat grinder and a hydra.
Unfortunately for me, my lupine instincts wanted me to go over and help her. I couldn’t say why exactly, but it seemed to have to do something with loyalty and possessiveness? It was an odd feeling to have for sure.
Coming to a decision, I turned and walked back to the bed of doom, “No Princess Illway, I was just getting some fresh air. I won’t leave you.” I jumped up next to her and tried to comfort her. It was a little difficult with the size difference between us. Princess Illway made due by grabbing my tail and snuggling it. It hurt slightly being yanked on by the tail, but an intensely pleasurable feeling overcame that as she rubbed it against herself. Oddly, it seemed like my tail carried over the pleasurable sensation of being pet that my wolf form had. I couldn’t help but wonder if my ears were the same way…
She stopped rubbing my tail, causing disappointment to rise up in me. I looked back over at her and saw that she had fallen asleep once more. A sigh of relief left me as my torment ended. I got up from my spot on the bed and started to walk back to the door of the room unsteadily. As I did, I wringed out my hair, tail, and ears, leaving behind a massive pool of pure tears on the floorboards.
When I reached the door, a new hell was released upon me: seasickness. The ship must have hit a wave which caused the whole boat to shake. The shaking in turn caused me to fall flat on my tail which hurt extremely badly. As my tail compressed underneath me, the sensation of bile rising started to fill my throat. With barely hidden tears from the pain in my tail, I raced down the hallway of the boat, unsteadily since I was feeling extremely nauseous, and up the set of the stairs. I passed by a couple of startled sailors on my way, but I paid them no mind as I went.
My feet carried out of the stairwell and to one of the ship's railings, just barely making it before I puked all over the edge of the ship. Once I finally felt relieved, my other senses seemed to catch up with me. The salty tang of the ocean brine filled my nose, making my eyes water from something other than the pain in my tail.
As I glanced out over the brightly sparkling ocean, I could see the excessively weaponized escort ships brimming with people as the sun started to rise in the east. Each one was awashed with the sounds of creaking wood and shouted orders. Underlying all of that was the sound of the crew members singing sea shanties as they worked, keeping themselves organized with one another. Oddly enough, the ship I was on was way quieter than the others.
I turned around to see half the crew staring at me in shock. More accurately, they were staring at my tail. I could hear whispers such as “She has a tail! A freaking tail!”, “I’ve never seen a humanoid with a tail”, and other whispers such as those. The staring seemed to be infectious as the other crew seemed to appear from nowhere and stare at me like I was some kind of zoo animal. Or a specimen. As that thought entered my head, an angry snarl started to fill up my throat.
Sadly, before it got too audible, my nausea struck again and bile rose up past the snarl. I turned back towards the big blue ocean and puked over the side once more, feeling the burning sensation as it left me.
As I was puking my guts out, I heard the captain shouting from behind me, “What is all of this? Get back to work lads! So what if she had a tail, she is our guest and one of Princess Illway’s saviours! Our very seasick guest at that! Someone fetch me a pail of water and a stool!” There was a slight pause, but I couldn’t turn to see what was going on in my condition “What are you doing lads?! I said someone, not everyone! Has the Kraken stolen your brains you fools! Quartermaster Israle, you go grab the pail and stool. Everyone else, back to work!”
I would’ve liked to turn around and see what was going on, but a resurgence of my awful nausea mixed with a newly growing sense of vertigo to lead me back towards the railing of the ship. I continued for a solid minute and a half, surprising myself at how much acid my stomach held.
As I was leaning over the railing, I felt a large hand pat me on the back. The sudden touch startled me and I felt both my tail and ears go straight up. I heard the familiar sound of Captain Raven’s voice from behind me, “Sorry lass, seasickness is common amongst people new to boats. I don’t know if this has any effect, but seasickness is especially common amongst wolves and dogs. You should’ve seen it when the Queen tried to get a pack of dire wolves aboard… Anyways, I should’ve warned ya that you might get sick last night, but I was a little in shock over your eh… appearance.”
Finally down hurling my everything over the edge of the boat, I turned around to face the Captain and the rest of the ship. He was standing with a stool and a bucket of water set down next to him. Behind him, most of the crew were no longer grouped up around me, but I could definitely see more than a few peeks towards me from them.
The Captain noticed my gaze towards his crew and rubbed his neck sheepishly as he spoke, “Sorry lass, nothing I can do about all of them. Rest assured, they will keep working hard, but you are the first bipedal sapient being that they have ever seen with a tail.”
“It’s fine Captain Raven. I expected something like this and would’ve liked to keep my appearance more secretive, but I forgot all about that when seasickness hit me like a jackhammer.” I really had expected this. When I got to the galaxy, my tail and ears wouldn’t be such a huge deal since there were a near infinite amount of different creatures up there, but here on a terrestrial planet? I was like a panda in a zoo. Since pandas only came from one planet, they were extremely rare to see and would always draw attention.
The Captain grinned broadly towards me, “Thanks for your understanding lass. Oh!” He motioned to the bucket and stool. “Since seasickness is typically fairly hard on landlubbers such as yourself, you should stay on the deck for at least a couple of hours. You can hang out on the stool up here, and the bucket is so you can wash your mouth out. I know from one too many bottles how bad it is to get stuck with the taste of stomach acid for too long.”
A smile stretched my lips slightly as I bent over and grabbed the bucket. After I had washed my mouth out, I said, “Thanks Captain. I appreciate it.”
“Anytime for someone who saved part of my family,” Oh yeah, he was the Princess’s uncle, right? Didn’t that make him a prince? “Also, in better news, we should be hitting intercontinental waters any minute now, which marks safety from any navy sent after us.” He started to turn back towards the helm of the ship, “Well, I’ll be back at the helm. If you need anything, ask around for Alfon the cook or Israle the Quartermaster.”
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“Thank you.”
As the Captain left, I briefly thought about the pros of being on a boat surrounded by allies versus being on land surrounded by potential enemies. On one paw, I was safe but had to deal with seasickness. On the other, I would be unsafe, but wouldn’t get sick by just existing. That line of thought was cut short as I bent back over the railing.
Once I had settled down, I cleaned my mouth out again and sat down heavily on the stool, which was actually super comfortable since I didn’t have to worry about my tail getting caught on the seatback. I pulled my pack onto my lap and rested my head on it. A clinking sound rang out from the pack, reminding me of my plundered booty from the judge’s safe.
Right before I could pull it out, a notification from the Records rang inside of my head.
[XP Gained]
[Leveled up!(3>8) Received 20 attribute points, 5 Charisma]
[Title Obtained: Rescuer]
I was extremely confused for a minute at my jump in levels before I pulled up the advanced breakdown of the XP notification.
[Awarded for:
-Played an important part in the rescue of an important figure.
-Successful escape with said figure.]
Okay, that made sense. From what Raven said, we just hit true safety from retaliation, so it made sense that I just received experience points now. Basically, experience was rewarded by the Records for any action that resulted in the growth of a person’s soul, whether through slaying foes, actions of intense labor, or through the finishing of actions that required creativity.
The foe slaying was fairly obvious in how it worked. The intense labor could be anything from playing winning in a sport, getting away with a rescue, or even from something such as crossing an entire planet on foot with no help. The last could be anywhere from making a painting, to cooking, or even singing a song.
Basically, any large action that a person made could reward XP to a person. For the creativity and labor, the amount of XP received was directly related to the effort or skill required. The killing of foes, however, was different. When someone killed a creature or person, they received a portion of experience that was being held by the being. That was why most power levelers resorted to killing foes to level quickly, which was also the way I planned to level quickly.
The title was obviously from rescuing the Princess, hence the name. Titles were awarded through three ways: by the system for accomplishing big things that would have an effect on a large group of people, by multiple people calling you one name, or by someone powerful calling you a specific name repeatedly.
Most titles didn’t really have any power of ability attached to them and were just treated as accomplishments or as proof of doing something, but very rarely there would be one that had a bonus with it. Those titles were usually extraordinarily rare and hard to achieve. The most common way to gain a title with a bonus was to do something that affected an entire planet.
[Kali Vexia- Wolfkin - Level: 8(2 till class pick and evolution)
Titles:
[Rescuer]
Strength- 20
Intelligence- 12
Dexterity- 20 (+45)
Endurance- 20
Charisma- 25
( () = gear boosts)
Unique:
[Gambler]
Racial:
[Luna], [Shift]
Charisma:
[Animal Handling 1], [Overload 1], [Fleet Foot], [Toughen Up 1]
Other:
[Falsification 1]
Time- 2 years]
I ended up putting ten of my points into endurance, six into strength, one into intelligence, and three into dexterity. My main goal when it came to my stats was to get everything to at least twenty before I fully specialized into one of them.
Along with three of my stats hitting twenty, I received three skills from passing a threshold. None of them were new since I had them all in my past life too.
[Overload] would allow me to use ten percent more of my strength for a few seconds, but I would have muscle fatigue and tire quicker afterwards. If I leveled it up enough, the boost in strength and the duration would jump up. Unfortunately, the drawbacks would also jump up, which made the skill a sort of last resort.
[Fleet Foot] was nothing like it sounded. Instead, it passively allowed a person’s eyes and brain to comprehend the speeds they could travel at. It was an extraordinarily strong skill, but it couldn’t be level up like the others.
[Toughen Up] passively made my skin way more resilient without affecting the feeling or look of it. The skill was nice to have and made a big impact at higher levels, but at level one it just made me a bit more slash, impact, and piercing resistant.
Getting over my sudden distraction by the XP gains, I returned my thoughts to the loot I received… and was distracted again upon receiving yet another notification.
[[Gambler] is ready to be used.]
I impatiently activated the ability. With a small flash, a tiny green thing appeared in my hand. It was a piece of grass. A singular piece of grass. What was I supposed to do with that?!
I found a solution and tossed it over the side of the ship, never to be seen again. With nothing left to distract me, I reached into my bag and pulled out a small crystal. Careful not to let anybody see, I observed it solemnly. The crystal was a perfect ball. Inside it seemed to be a tiny star, but it was entrapped by a black hole that seemed like it was trying to swallow the star. It looked fairly beautiful, which made sense because the ball l was one of the rarest and most expensive items in the galaxy.
The crystal ball was called a Trilesil. Part of the reason it was so rare was because only one existed per planet every millenium. It grew in a unique rainbow flower that was near impossible to find since there was only one of them. On top of that, the flower was extremely prone to dying, which made it all the more impossible to find.
The main reason for its price wasn’t just due to its rarity. The main reason was that the trilesil would give three powerful skills to a person. If it was found, the Trilesil was typically consumed instantly, usually after a war broke out over it.
I had no idea how or why the judge had it, but he was a damned idiot for not using it as soon as he could. The only reason I could think of why he didn’t was because he didn’t know what it was.
The reason I didn’t use it instantly was because of the after effects of the crystal. After its usage, the crystal would paralyze the user for at least an hour, but could be anywhere up to a week. On top of that, the crystal had an outright 10% chance to straight up kill someone instantly no matter who they were, which was intimidating to say the least. I had fought with myself over whether I wanted to take the chance last night, but I had decided that I would wait until I wasn’t so tired.
Without a second thought about the precious item in my hands, I walked over to the railing with the Trilesil. I just about tripped and sent it flying off into the water due to my nausea, which would’ve been terrible, but I managed just barely to catch myself. To make sure that nobody saw what I was doing, I pretended to puke again as I greedily swallowed the Trilesil.
I could feel its effects instantly. Basically, the Trilesil would give a person three skills; one would be what they needed, another would be random, and yet another would be something that they desired. The skills could be any non evolution skill, but the user had to be careful. There were a few limitations found through trial and error. One such limitation was that if they thought about a specific skill too hard, there was a chance that they straight up wouldn’t receive anything.
While not thinking about any skill in particular, I let my desire for an information gathering skill fill me. After a few moments and a burning sensation in my stomach unrelated to my seasickness, I received three notifications from the Records.
[Trilesil-Needed: Abnormal Status Resistance]
[Trilesil-Random: Shadow Realm]
[Trilesil-Wanted: Dead Eye’s Sight]
With giddy excitement, I expanded the skills to show me what they did since I had never heard of any of them before..
[Skill: Abnormal Status Resistance: Resist any abnormal statuses]
Well that was informative… not. How did that help me and why did I need it? What counted as an abnormal status? Actually, now that I had thought about it, my seasickness was gone…
[Skill: Abnormal Status Resistance: Seasickness has been nullified]
An enraged and depressed emotion overcame me at the realization that I just received a useless skill just because of seasickness. If that wasn’t a cruel joke, then I didn’t know what was. Pushing past my depressed rage from the Records screwing me over, I looked at my other two skills.
[Skill: Shadow Realm: Shift user in/out of the Shadow Realm]
That description would have helped me, but I had no idea what the Shadow Realm even was. Was it dangerous to go there? How did it work? I would have to figure it out after we had hit land. The last thing I wanted to do was use some kind of teleportation ability aboard a moving vehicle. From stories about teleportation abilities I had heard, it could put me inside of the ship or hovering over the ocean when I returned.
[Skill: Dead Eye’s Sight: Allows users to see the top four abilities used by a person and a title. Additionally, the user can see the class of a person, their level, and their name. Immune to skills that hide information such as [Falsification]]
That actually wasn’t bad at all. In fact, it would be extremely helpful since I could see what someone specialized in. Sure it wasn’t exactly what I wanted, but it would do what I wanted. On top of all of that, the skill had immunity to skills designed to hide information, which was extremely powerful. This skill would be extraordinarily helpful.
After I checked out my skills, I started to walk to the stool the captain had brought out. As I did, I felt my body slowing down, almost as if it was entering into hibernation or slowly being frozen. Just as I sat down, my body froze entirely. No matter what I did, none of my limbs would respond. I could still feel everything, but I couldn’t move anything. It was an odd sensation. As I prepared for the long haul, I received a notification.
[Skill: Abnormal Status Resistance: [Trilesil’s Poison] has had its effectiveness cut by 90%(three days - 90% = 7.2 hours)]
Well that was a relief. Not only was I not hit as hard as I could’ve been by the Trilesil, but I also found that [Abnormal Status Resistance] wasn’t as useless as it first seemed to be. I wonder what else it could apply to? Once again, I couldn’t help but ask myself what counted as an abnormal status.
Since I had nothing but time as I waited for my bodily control to come back, I decided now was the best time to take a trip down memory lane. As the metaphorical timer started to tick down slowly, my mind wandered into my memories as I tried to recall whatever I could about past events...