Chapter 113: Lost in the Sea
To a fish born in the deep waters, those waters look endless.
Their lifecycle begins when their parents, seemingly unknown beings, meet and mate after uniting through various processes.
All the aquatic creatures have different ways of choosing their mates.
The great blue of the Serulins host a singing competition. It is a historic event that happens only once in a hundred years or so.
They sing, produce various melodies, and they have actual songs of their own.
The females are the judges in that competition. Those who are attracted by their songs join them.
Sometimes there are more than one of them who join with a male as well, and they remain together for the rest of their lives.
They are some of the rare aquatic creatures that mate for life.
On the other hand, most of the species that live in larger groups have a unique social structure where they are all polygamous.
Mating is decided by the mood and the spur of moment. The scaled dolphins, in particular, have a unique social structure where all the adults are a big free family.
In deeper waters, creatures do not mate to have a family but to simply expand their lineage.
The lesser creatures spend only a day with their partners, and for some, the same is true with their children as well.
As it is on the surface, the strong is the only one that gets to live. So, the creatures who lay eggs in batches lose the ones who hatch later... even those who are found by the predators when they are away.
Things are different in the deeper waters.
Be it the stronger creatures or the weaker ones, they have their own weapons and weaknesses.
The fishes that live in large groups are food for the predators and those who hunt these creatures are predators for the bigger, stronger creatures.
Life in the water starts at the most basic level, as lesser-celled creatures who can only perform simpler tasks.
The ones, especially, who sustain the food chain in the waters are called Menktons: the smallest multicellular organisms that feed off of the complex single cell organisms and break down their energy structures to make a large amount of environmental Mana.
There are abundant of them in the waters and so, they start the chain.
’There are so many fishes that eat them. Even those giant ones.’
They supply the life energy to a majority of the aquatic creatures one way or another.
The direct energy transfer happens when the fishes eat them directly, and the indirect energy transfer happens when the fishes who have eaten them are eaten by other predators.
’This is so fascinating...’
The ocean doesn’t just have fishes.
There are octopus, there are turtles, there are aquatic felines in there who have gills and tails, there are fish people that observe them from afar, there are also creatures who had been trying to get to the root of the gray fog that had been wandering around a certain part of these endless waters for the past few days.
Life in the water was very happening. And observing it all had been quite fun for Felix, the one sitting in the center of this fog.
But, it has been two days already. And, her master, who seemed completely healed now, had not woken up yet.
’What’s taking you so long...’
She was doing her best to maintain her fog eyes.
She would search the area for threats, lift the fog when it was safe, look for the nearby places to find any land, and by using the flow of water created by manipulating the fishes around the boat, she was able to move without doing anything herself.
It was a tedious process, but after doing it for an entire day, she got the hang of it.
The fishes, in fact, were much simpler to deal with than humans.
You show them food and they follow the image of the food. If there are bigger predators out there, you show them illusions of fishes in other places.
Inside the fog, there was no predator that could touch them. But, she knew she could not keep the illusion there all this time.
After almost getting killed by a predator Three-finned Gray shark yesterday, she knew her domain was not enough.
Thus, she put what she had learned by watching the fishes and the creatures of water into practice.
’The formation has been helpful.’
With the Menktons as the primary units, she made a passive domain that kept the small creatures in a certain formation when her fog was down.
Then, she would use the smaller fishes to create a big barrier between the boat and the deeper water predators.
Using them, she would lure in the lower-class apex predators like the gray sharks, and using them, she kept the rest of the creatures in a loop until she recovered her strength.
She had gotten stronger over the last few months thanks to the choker she got from the treasury, but she was not yet strong enough to passively maintain her fog just yet.
She was trying to learn the trick, but there was more to this than just stamina and energy. She was not understanding something about her powers, something that would push her beyond the wall.
But, that was just how things were with the unique beasts like her. The relentless chase of advancement made them stand out even among the top apex predators.
"Meow..."
Sadly, even as someone who had all the smarts to keep doing what she was doing all this time, her unconscious master was more important than any of the treasures she had seen underwater.
She was waiting for him to wake up. He had saved her back then and if it wasn’t for her acting all reckless, he might have been fine.
’Why do you risk your life for us?’
This wasn’t even the first time he did that.
He had been throwing his life away from the first day they met.
First it was for a tiny mole and now it was for the countless people that he had nothing to do with.
They could have survived just fine if they just left the seahorses after the ship was freed. But, he did not do that.
He did his best to save at least one of them.
He did not succeed, he was going to cry about that for a long time, but he tried his best. And as proud as she was to have a master like him, she just wanted to lock him up somewhere so that he at least doesn’t throw his life away.
’What will I do without...’
Her deep blue eyes had tears on them.
They were watching the unconscious boy with bluer hair than these deep waters.
They were angry and frustrated and happy at the same time. Along with those emotions, to note, they had a question in them.
"..."
A question that was pretty fundamental.
A question that, for now, they did not want the answer of.
The first thing she wanted was for him to wake up so that they can at least find a way back.
Both Nyx and Art were left with Lexie and Rainin and she knew for certain those guys would not be able to handle her two troublesome partners.
As time passed, they must be flipping the mainland upside down to find them.
She knew the two must be doing all kinds of things so, she needed to do her best as well.
She was the only one present with their master... She needed to make things count where they mattered the most.