Author word hereeeeeeee:

This chapter and the next 3 will be slightly darker… Okie honesty is pretty awfully dark and traumatizing for the young audience or sensible people… as an author your health matters readers so only read at your risk or if you are prepared and don’t hesitate to stop if it is too much…. Tbh I think my English is a trauma in itself to read xD, enjoooy

 

 

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------Aquarel Pov-----

‘You both told them about the upcoming war!!!?’ I cried out in front of my 2 kneeling daughters

‘What is wrong with the both of you, they are too young, they don’t need to worry about such a thing!!’ Saying I was upset was a euphemism, Anna was as angry as I was, and their sisters also were, they all gave them a light smack as they couldn’t think of anything to say. We all understood the reason they did it. But it was no excuse to reveal something so heavy to them, they were dealing with enough already.

 

Anna sighed heavily,

‘We’re angry yes, but we all also understand so stop kneeling Lestyx, Mary’ I sighed when they did so still looking down

I then looked at Aurora and the others

‘I don’t think it would be a good idea to bring Lily and Ruby with you to the archipelago, there has been news of human pirates working with slave trader and their army in other places that were targeted, like one of the villages near the border of Alestral, the Fairy Forest, some fairies were also told to be missing….  Some of them are preparing arms even worse, the fairy forest seems to be more active toward intruders, some people were seriously injured by its outburst of grief’ I said seriously.

Leĩea and Aurora gasped,

‘They attacked and succeeded to capture the fairies?!!’

‘You are joking right?’

I shake my head, as the commander of the guard that was smoking beside us looked at all of us, ‘For the newcomers in the family I forgot to say my name, I am Alexia, the step-sister of Anna, in other words, your step-aunt, or aunt we don’t really care about the step in this family, I’m as much her sister as u all are to Mary and Lestyx.

Sadly, what Aquarel said is right’, I sighed heavily, ‘fairys have been captured and as for you all, you must know a captured fairy has a very low chance of survival or being found as humans use them for their dust and their natural magical property. They also captured elf children and other weaker targets…...

 

---Lily Pov---

My door was slightly open and luckily let me hear Alexia and Aquarel words, I might be weak…. But I had a plan to save the captured people…... Letting myself be captured…. And save them from the inside…. I could still evolve myself…. If needed and already possessed healing and fire magic, I knew how to use them to a basic level… healing wasn’t as hard as I have medical and part of modern knowledge, fire was something I could just let grow out of control and burning oil could kill someone alive, I…... I knew that much, I just hoped Ruby would be ready…. It was a stupid and extremely risky plan. But it was a fact some of the kids had been captured and more would follow…. I’m an exotic animal…. An exotic beast and a monster…. Whether we want it or not we will make use of this curse to save them and prevent future losses.

 

I gently nudged the door close and started to focus on training Ruby fire magic, I nudged her awake and soon enough red scale covered my left side.

I heard a mental yawn,

‘’You can use my magic too u know it will just be slightly weaker, sis, I’m tired and after what we both learned I’m thinking on my side too right now and resting because we will need it if u really want to put your plan into action we are linked be it body soul and thought to a degree I know how u feel and so do you towards me, now I go to bed we won’t always be awake at the same time luckily healing magic is based about knowledge which we both possess but for fire … u will need the training to learn to defend yourself when I’m out and I will need to learn to heal when you’re out. Goodnight sis love u’’

 

And as soon as she came, she went gone back to rest. I sighed internally

There were 2 things I could do, use the oil as a flamethrower, oh right oil can also be used to bypass humidity and even light water on fire. And maybe use my venom to boil it and create a gaseous form of it, fire is extremely volatile but it’s also useful in a ton of ways first thought was to use the flamethrower combination and increase the temperature till I’m able to melt sand. That should be a good control and power training they’d prefer me to stay home, and I will but first I need to train myself if my stat is linked to my body as we first discovered with my drawing, then practicing magic will help me gain more status in it. Let’s begin shall we.

 

Or so I thought, but it is hard to try to do something out of the blue, like how do I use fire magic, I get [healing touch] but the reason I get it is only because I cheated using the magic learning system, so it engraved in my soul. While the fiery knowledge is in Ruby’s soul. Trying manifest, it might be harder than I thought, at first let’s begin with mastering the oil gland, oil can be used for cooking, it can also be used for a torch and more lasting campfire, oil is essential, and I know that much.

 

It's part of my body so if I just focus on what I want I should be able to……. Soon enough an oily liquid entered my mouth and mixed with my saliva…. Success, alright we got part one because of my body instinct doing the work for me…. It's not as good as manual control but, hopefully the more we will use it the more we gain control of it.

 

Next is the fire magic…., I don’t possess the Ruby shortcut, so I will need to find another way…… another way…. way… way … way

 

After what felt like an hour, but must only have been some minutes. I felt a form of warm surrounding me, I looked to my side to see my black dot-shaped scale started to glow white all over my body and that glow slowly spread to my white scales.

 

I might have some memory issues, but I knew bioluminescence was normally from the soft-bodied body part or translucid organisms for the light to pass out of them.

But scales shouldn’t allow that type of feat whatever the material they made off it’s not natural but magical…. Wait magical that’s it. I looked at my status page immediately after summoning it and well enough my mana stat seemed to have slowly dipped down while my body started to glow.

 

Mana: 89/120 (+24 an hour)

 

 

From a scientific point of view, it meant that bioluminescence is magical in nature and instead of a chemical reaction it uses mana. And the bigger the intensity the bigger the drain.

 

So maybe if I close my eye and try to feel my body in its entirety then slowly increase the bioluminescence drain/output I will notice what mana is inside my body or at least the sensation related to it.

 

Then maybe I could try pouring that sensation in my throat and hopefully expulse it.

 

Yeah, that seemed like a good idea. I gently closed my eye and concentrated on making my mind blank other than focusing on my body and its inner workings. When I felt calm enough, I wished my body would glow at its weakest light intensity and slowly go upward. It responded…. And sure enough, I felt the same small warm coming from my side as it warmed up by the light and the sand, but I also felt something cold sipping into my scale from deep within me. I followed the cold embrace and soon enough felt a hard rock mixed of white and red, I could only guess I followed my mana towards where it is stored within me, a ball of it mixed in chaotical harmony.

 

[Mana Sense] has been unlocked for discovering and visualizing the complex essence that is mana. +2 Control

 

Well, I wasn’t expecting to earn a skill but it was good to learn the system could also reward u with skills to a certain extent, but I guess any living being could learn skills depending on their work, their ability or morphology and their mastery of the said skill.

I then forced with all my mind and heart the cold sensation of mana toward my throat, but as soon as I tried to force the flow from my scale to my throat, I felt pain lacerating at my head and my side, but I continued, as a tear pulled from my eyes, I kept them close in concentration. When I felt it in my throat the pain multiplicated 10-fold, I slowly felt it move inside my larynx as it burned through its resistance and when it was at my mouth, I instinctively opened it to let the pain out, to be free of it. I kept my eyes closed from the pain and the strain. What I didn’t expect is the delicate sound of sand burning softly as it melt at high heat in an instant, while I suddenly felt a wave of heat and sand hit me face-first soon after the warm blast left my lips. I waited and waited and after the heat had slowly gone down, I opened my left eye hesitantly. And glanced at the still red-hot little pool of melted glass cooling in front of me.

 

……...well, it wasn’t fire breathing…... and the pain wasn’t worth it, I couldn’t feel my left side after forcefully using my bioluminescence as a weapon, I slowly looked toward it, and saw blackened scale and flesh, slowly dripping my crimson blood, it seems its powerful, but the unusual usage of one anatomy by brute force seems to have caused a massive backlash, I slowly used healing touch on myself using my tail as a hand substitute.

While I’m at it maybe, I should try focusing on what the healing attuned mana does to my body as it goes to work. I slowly closed my eyes and activated my new reward from this training… [Mana Sense] letting me see my own mana at work and its source. It seemed to concentrate in my tail stabilise into the spell form before sipping inside my body repairing most of the superficial damage and bleeding sadly…. My mana wasn’t enough to heal myself fully at the time and I soon blacked out from the pain and exhaustion.

 

---Nare Pov----

We were sitting in the living room planning our future operation toward the mermaid archipelago.

 

Slavers and pirates were going to be around and cause us a lot of trouble, especially if we wanted to rescue the people, they took from us. The issue though was that they were cunning and lacked any heart, true scum, they could and would use hostages as shields and wouldn’t care about killing them if it meant they would survive.

 

‘We cannot just run in; it would put the hostage in a difficult position’

Aurora said slamming her fist on the table straining her skin enough to draw blood, the iron smell… not really disagreeable as a carnivorous species it was a smell I am accustomed to. She was like all of us clearly angry at their disadvantage and probably also cursing her powerlessness.

 

Aquarel nodded, before slowly muttering to herself. ‘They’re not a lot of solutions, as the island is too far away and swimming carrying someone else isn’t easy or a wise idea in case we get intercepted by some of the pirates, Luckily the town possesses its own fleet of battleships mostly handled by mermaids, merman’s or half-merkins it’s not amazing compared to the army but for a self-funded militia, it is hopefully sufficient to help against the pirates, also us merkin will be in our element surrounded by water, we can slightly control it to our whim naturally. Nothing incredible but our species does have a natural affinity with water magic. Even if the whole fleet goes out there is enough merkin mages here to defend the port and shore.

 

Alexia our alpha in the family, nodded her head, ‘indeed some of the crafter guilds are also working on installing ballista on the port to help its protection in the future.

We could be the next targets by the pirates and slavers…. Maybe they’re already lurking inside the city, I already asked all guards to double their vigilance and double their patrol, and I also raised their pay for the increase in workload.’ We all nodded in understanding but suddenly something caught my nose attention I sniffed twice and my eye opened wide as I dashed toward the bedroom area.

It was a stench I would recognize from anywhere…. Marianne followed immediately behind me covered in her magical fire, for the same reason. ‘HUMAN’ I Shouted and continued to run to where the smell was emanating from… we both immediately opened the door of Lily and Ruby’s room and found it trashed around, fresh blood on the sand as some were dispersed around …. But what caught my attention was the window that was hanging open teasingly…. LILY…. RUBY... NOOOOO!!!! HOW DID I NOT SMELL IT IN TIME, HOW DID I FAIL SUCH A TASK AS PROTECTING THEM NOOO

When everyone else saw the room… and the lack of our sister…. We all rushed outside in groups while Aurora, Aquarel and Alexia made their way toward the Adventurer guild beside the guard barrack….

Those animals were better not to have hurt our precious sisters, or they were going to pay the price with more than their life….!!!!!