Goblin Dependency

Sarisa can hardly remember her mother’s appearance.

After she went to sea, she once heard an old sailor with gray hair say in a tavern that memories are like a fishing net trailing behind a ship, entangled at the bottom with only the fiercest and plumpest fish, along with seaweed and driftwood not even worth as much as garbage, while the countless ordinary days slip away like water through the net, leaving not a single drop.

At first, she didn’t take it seriously when she heard it; now as she thinks about it, it seems indeed so.

Perhaps because her mother passed away when she was still very young, Sarisa doesn’t remember any quarrels or other conflicts with her.

Everything about her mother, in her memory, is warm, beautiful, and happy.

But on the other hand, exactly because she was too young then, although she could remember events, her mind broke the memories into fragmented pieces over time.

Sarisa remembers the single bed placed in the corner of the room, old and simple, making creaking sounds even just from sitting on it; she also remembers the warm embrace of her mother and the faint lullabies that floated into her ears while she slept.

But as for the patterns on the quilt and the specific feelings of lying there, they are as blurred as the wrinkles on her mother’s face in her memory.

Growing up, she once heard someone mention that her mother seemed to come from a family of wealthy merchants who had good business in the Southern Islands.

She also has thought more than once, in another world, would her mother have not ended up at sea, living under the family’s protection as a leisurely and free wealthy lady, so she might also...

Heh, if that were true, perhaps she wouldn’t have come into this world.

After all, considering her background, if she hadn’t been forcibly taken, how could she have been with a vicious pirate leader, and even give birth to her.

Reality is always more straightforward than the stories told by minstrels.

"Algae Scale" Dodd targeted her mother’s family fortune; as a pirate, he didn’t even need extra means.

Gather men, land on the island, kill, intimidate, then deliver part of the profits to the Governor Mansion, and all that happened before would disappear like foam in the sea.

Leaving only her mother, who fell from a noble lady to a prisoner worse than a commoner, and herself who shouldn’t have been born into this world.

Sarisa’s mother jumped into the sea from a high cliff beside the shore one night when Sarisa was nine.

When the body was retrieved the next day, it was said that even the skin had turned pale.

Following her wishes left on the table in the room the night before, kind neighbors buried her by the sea.

Sarisa has long forgotten what kind of mood she had at that time, or how she reacted while looking at her mother’s grave.

And it was just the third day after her mother died that she met her father for the first time since she could remember.

Apparently, this pirate known as "Algae Scale" on the sea wouldn’t care about some small interlude in his sailing career. To him, her mother might be no different from the prostitutes in the brothels, and he might have already forgotten about such a woman.

Accordingly, Dodd didn’t have much thought for Sarisa, who was born as an accident, nor would he consider her as any sort of "heir" or "family."

Quite possibly, when Sarisa was born, upon hearing the news, he might have just said "Oh," acknowledging it;

When Sarisa’s mother died, only then did his subordinate pirates report the situation to him, remembering somehow that there was a child.

Thus, Sarisa did not receive any favours because of this connection.

To some extent, she was even hostilely viewed by many civilians on the island because of her identity as "Algae Scale" Dodd’s daughter, who vented their hatred for her father onto her.

Fortunately, she managed to keep her life.

Perhaps it was also due to this unbearable nightmarish experience in her childhood that Sarisa developed a resilience and ability far beyond her peers.

Taking every opportunity to improve herself as much as possible.

And finally, on her twenty-fifth birthday, under the cover of night, she secretly took a small fishing boat from under the cliff where her mother had plunged into the sea, left the island, and vowed never to return.

As for what happened next, it’s just as she told Xia Nan and others.

Becoming an adventurer, wandering the sea, joining the Black Tide Hunter Ship Group...

And just as Sarisa concluded from her observations previously, "Algae Scale" Dodd might know of someone like her, but couldn’t care less about her living or dying.

Even if she disappeared mysteriously, not once in all these years did he send anyone out to look for her.

There’s no doubt that even if one day news of Sarisa’s death reached him, or even was accidentally killed by him during a plundering, this cold-blooded pirate wouldn’t have the slightest emotional fluctuation.

And when it comes to her father, Sarisa’s attitude has changed greatly over time.

Initially, during her immature childhood, it was mixed with fear and confusion driven by deep sympathy for her mother;

As a teenager, it transformed into thorough hatred, viewing him as someone she had to surpass and avenge in this life;

Today, the existence of "Algae Scale" Dodd, for Sarisa, has long become some sort of abstract conceptual presence.