POV: Vernisha

I told Brenda, “You are a kind person. He probably liked you because of that. I am going to say something annoying, but I think he wouldn’t have wanted you to endanger your life to save his corpse. He most likely would want you to live.”

For a moment, she offered no response. Her gaze was fixed on the ocean waters, which shimmered under the moon’s gentle glow.

She then shook her head. “You… were right. That was annoying to hear. I… am selfish, you know that?”

Her teary eyes were now on me.

“I don’t think so… Well, I haven’t seen your selfishness, at least,” I replied.

Focusing was getting really hard… 

She smiled faintly, “Ha… come on now. Don’t be silly.”

I guess she had a point. She faked her death and left her life behind, including her mother. But her reasoning seemed justified…

She continued, “I don’t really care if he wouldn’t have wanted me to give him a proper burial. I feel I should have. But… all this whining and complaining must be incredibly annoying. Weak people are super annoying, but being weak and complaining a lot? That’s just a recipe for misery.” She let out a soft, self-deprecating chuckle.

I raised my knees close to my chest as I replied, “That’s just human nature.”

 “But we aren’t humans,” she retorted. 

Slowly, she raised her palm towards me; her gaze fixated on the back of her hand where her usual white master seal was. 

That immediately reminded me of that dream I had with the purple and black thrones. Those that sat on them all had black spider tattoos… or seals, rather.

Darseans… cultists.

And there was that weird feeling I got when I saw that purple shooting star.

Brenda continued, knocking me off my thoughts. “We are Vlandos. We are both feared and respected by humans. The ratio of it depends on which society, obviously… Sure, we start weak, but we are supposed to become strong. It shouldn’t be in my nature to not only be physically pathetic, but mentally. It’s funny, I am still complaining.”

“Brenda… I think you are too cruel to yourself. Just because you can’t help me in fights doesn’t mean you are pathetic. You used those ships' cannons! And the Qi gun to put a hole in that woman! And despite your level, you managed to survive against her monster… But I get what you are saying. Once we get somewhere safe-ish to stay at, I will try my best to make you strong.”

Immediately, her eyes widened. “You are serious?”

“100%.”

She smiled and then looked at the sinking ship. “I like that. Well… after my broken wrist heals up, of course. I don’t suppose you have any F-rank healing elixirs on you?”

It is…?

I shook my head. “Sorry, I don’t. How did you break it?”

She gestured towards the Qi gun. “This bastard has incredibly powerful recoil… The heat from it also scorched my shoulder since I made the mistake of using the stock how it was meant to be used. It’s such a shitty design. I did wonder why the living hell were the QI batteries in the fucking stock of all places…”

Oh right… you are supposed to put the stock on your shoulders for general better stability, and better transfer of recoil.

I asked her, “I assume you used other versions of the QI guns?”

“Of course, my mother used to love the QI rifles Q2. The stock is a damn stock and the Qi batteries, wait let me show you.”

With her left hand, she carefully positioned the gun on her lap and gestured towards the front of the barrels. “It’s supposed to have rectangular cartridges on both sides which stores the QI batteries. Obviously with ventilation for them too. Do you want to know something interesting? They tried to make a handgun, but it kept failing. My dad showed me one of the prototypes once…”

She continued talking, but I think I was nearing my limit with the mental strain, so I just kinda blocked everything out.

I felt really bad since it seemed talking about guns was some kind of passion of hers. I guess it was just because she had a lot of knowledge of them.

Even if I couldn’t stay focused, I made sure she felt like I was listening. 

“I think that’s cool,” I said suddenly.

She lifted her eyes from the gun to look at me. “What is?”

“You. I think it’s cool how much you know and care.”

She smiled. “Yeah… Talking about stuff, like the history or technicalities really does take my mind off stuff. Or, I try my best to make them. It’s like the depressing thoughts get drowned out, a little bit. But the longer I talk about something I am interested in, the thoughts sometimes get completely drowned out. Then I think about the fact the thoughts are gone, then they come louder.”

“Yeah… I can relate to that,” I said.

Then finally, my monsters had arrived. Icekang left a whole ice trail behind him, as he walked on frozen water.

Limdark however, just kinda swarmed.

I made them all [return].

Brenda then asked, “By the way, I don’t think I know much about you, really. Like childhood, and so on.”

I grinned as I dragged my finger across my throat. “You want to know how many times people tried to kill me?”

“No… I was kinda referring to the nice stuff. Heartwarming stuff.”

Oh… 

“Sorry, but sure. Let’s see… Goldbon, Ferzan, or Katie, which you want to know about first? Before you ask, I will give you a little information on them since they are just strangers to you—“

She grinned. “I know of them. Goldbon, the third child of the Hero of the Terrafall Kingdom. Ferzan, the titan slayer who has the ‘Master adventurer’ rank, and Katie, a genius monster researcher who discovered that monsters’ blood can kill or create cancer cells in humans depending on how much heat or cold is applied to the blood.”

I crossed my arms as I raised an eyebrow. “Yet you didn’t know of me? I call bullshit.”

“I didn’t know of your name… I knew of your existence, somewhat.”

“Nice, I am still mega popular. Feels good… But I am guessing I am not really known in Holvious? Even your friend didn’t freak out when he saw me, although my hair was dyed.”

“There are stories about Eren’s son having a child that’s a Darsean cultist, but most people thought it was absolute bullshit since it just didn’t sound realistic at all.”

That was fair. Because it was so normal to me, I never really thought about how insane my situation was.

Like 1/1000000000000000.

I puffed my chest with pride. “Yeah, Goldbon, the greatest father in the universe is so damn cool.”

“Eh? I want you to tell me about Katie first. Then Ferzan and Goldbon.”

“Let’s see… Katie hated her name because it sounded ‘childish.’ But when her mom was dying she started to show appreciation for it. She wasn’t normally violent, but whenever someone made fun of her name, she would do some unhinged shit, since she saw it as them making fun of her dying or dead mother.”

I smiled a bit, remembering when we got into a fight because I called her name stupid. Being chased around by a crowbar wasn’t really fun.

When I found out why it offended her so badly, I apologized. Katie was a good person.

I continued talking, “While Ferzan mainly trained me almost 24/7, to the point I felt like dying, which I greatly appreciated, Katie always tried to make me feel normal. She was the one who gave me my first mask and glove so that we could sneak into a festival when I was 14. Ha… I remember when I stole a non-alcoholic beer from someone and then pretended to be drunk. Katie tried to do the same thing, but she took one with alcohol and ended up getting drunk and falling into a gutter. Oh, and she really liked studying and learning. She always wanted to give me lectures about the world, history, monster zones, Qi, monsters' desires and biology, humans, Vlandos, currencies, and whatnot. Of course, I don’t really remember all the details, but I did recall enough. If it wasn’t for her, I would have probably been dead.”

Although… the fact she told me that monster's shit kinda made me wonder what other bullshit she told me.

Actually! Why was I believing Brenda over a monster researcher?! But… she wasn’t a researcher yet when she told me that, and Ferzan often told me bullshit so that I would do dumb stuff.

Like, when I was young and liked a boy, he told me that I should tell him, “I will kill your sisters if you don’t date me.”

In Ferzan’s words: “Trust me, he would fall in love with you”

Fucking bastard…

Brenda smiled. “That’s cool. I always wanted siblings to hang around with. But, early in my life, I realized, I just wanted someone I could tell anything… Nack was that person.”

Her fist tightened as the boat stopped moving forward since it landed on the shore of the random island.

I touched her shoulder, but I didn’t think of the proper way to respond. Hm…

She then stood up and turned towards the shore, said, “Let’s create a fire… It’s really cold.”

“Yeah, I agree.”

She got off the boat and jumped into the water. The water splashed onto her, wetting her pants.

I followed suit.

As soon as I got down, I sent out Limdark to quickly consume Janet’s corpse. I couldn’t let Brenda see it.

Even if Janet didn’t kill Nack, she was linked to the person responsible for it.

Brenda turned in that direction. With apathy, she said, “Security placement already? Nice.”

“Yup,” I said with my hands on my waist. “I will go look for branches to make a fire. You just stay there.”

“No way. I love looking for branches and flammable stuff to make fire. I did it a lot with… my father, mother and, well, Nack. It always felt fun.”

“But your broken wrist.” 

She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

I nodded, and we moved from the shore, kicking the brown sand on our way. There were a couple of trees with a lot of prickles on them. 

Each one was about 7 inches long. These suckers must hurt like hell; well for the likes of mere mortals(I say this as a joke, kinda).

Below the tree were broken thick branches, some ranging from my finger width to twice the size of my thigh.

Good enough.

Brenda grabbed a big branch and grunted as she dragged it.

I suggested, “I can take that one.”

“Nah… It’s not a big deal.”

I eyed her, then the massive branch which was double her length and her half of her width.

“It’s quite literally a big deal.”

She released it. “Yeah… being able to use one hand sucks absolutely.”

I took the branch and threw it near the shore, but not where the water could reach, and I just kept doing that until we had about 70 pieces of wood.

Barely a sweat. There was still the effect of that berserk drug that I used on Biryan affecting me in some form, but it was only in the head and I was using healing on my mind, so other than that, I was in an okay-ish condition.

“You are pretty strong. What’s the max you can lift?” Brenda asked.

I shrugged. “I am not sure. I am growing a lot in strength on a daily because of those suicidal attackers, so I can’t exactly say. But maybe 3 tons?”

“That’s insane!”

“Hm, I guess so,” I said as I took the glass-cased firestone from my inventory.

We moved towards the pile of branches and I took the firestone out from the case and pressed it on a branch for 5 seconds, which was enough to set the branch on fire, which caught everything else on fire slowly.

Brenda asked me, “I have been meaning to ask, do you… do you not like using your healing powers on people?”

As I took a seat near the fire, which brightened the surrounding area, I answered, “Uhh. If you are asking that because I haven’t offered to heal your wrist, then that’s not exactly the case. My healing powers are simply fatal to humans. Well, to those that aren’t monsters.”

Brenda took a seat behind me, so she could get some of the heat, but not all the intense heat.

She then asked, “I thought maybe you had a death touch and a healing one. I saw the guide trying to avoid touching your hand even when it wasn’t glowing red and had just associated it with a bad thing. But I saw you had the red aura on yourself or monsters to heal damage, so I ended up thinking that was just the color of your Qi, and the death and healing touch couldn’t be differentiated.”

Oh. That was a fair thing to think.

She then added, “After all. It’s kinda weird to think of a healing power as… a deadly one. But, I guess that was a dumb thing to think…”

“Not really. Just like how Darsean cultists use monster skills, you definitely thought I just had a healing skill. And as far as I am aware, monster skills don’t harm whatsoever. It’s only healing elixirs that may harm you.”

That was why they were categorized anyway.

“Yeah…”

I raised my arm to the sky and made the red healing aura envelope it. “Ionizing radiation. Think of my healing powers like that. Unlike healing elixirs, which can kill you because it's so potent that it destroys the liver and kidney, my healing aura is basically an anti-human aura. No amount of safe dosing exists. Once you get a tiny bit of it in your body, it would look for cells to repair, but it would destroy them before it can. I am quite the monster, huh.”

“It’s… a ridiculous power, haha. It’s crazy overpowered, that’s what.”

She stood up, smiling and waving her hand up and down. “Wow there mister, if I even graze you, you will die! And this death touch can heal me too! But I wonder, do you think that touch would work against the strongest adventurers?”

“Of course. It doesn’t harm monsters, even level 1 monsters, because of their different biology. Like… let’s compare it to a fish and a human. Some fishes can survive deep in the pressures of the ocean where a normal human would be turned into flesh mesh, not because fish bodies are stronger, but because they are built differently, literally. Unique anatomical structures; their bodies are relatively streamlined and their swim bladders are filled with gas to help them maintain buoyancy. There are other biological reasons, but you get what I am saying, right?”

“Yeah… Katie stuffed your mind with a lot of knowledge.”

What she said wasn’t particularly funny, but it made me smile and nearly laugh. “Yeah, she sure did.”

I dragged my finger in the sand. “You want to know a cool thing?”

“Uhhh. Sure?”

“You want to know what happens to trees when I try to ‘heal’ them?”

“Um… they die?”

“Yeah, hahahaha. Sorry. I just wanted to make it sound super mysterious. Like, ‘no… they evolve into monsters!’” I grinned.

“Bruh…”

We sat in silence. After a while, I raised my knees to my chest and hugged them. I wasn’t really cold; doing that just felt… I am not sure.

One thing was for certain, I was hungry.

Brenda rested against my back. Even if she wasn’t saying anything, I knew she was still thinking about Nack.

“You know… you lie a bit.”

Huh?

I asked, “What do you mean?”

“Remember back in the monster forest and you made Biryan use that screech skill?”

“Mhm? What about it?”

“You said you were going to tell me why you did it. You lied about that.”

… I thought it was going to be about something serious. I am guessing she is just trying to distract herself.

“You should know. We needed ear plugs so that we wouldn't have had our eardrums ruptured, and It had to focus most of its Qi for it, making it almost useless afterward.”

“Yeah… I know, I was just thinking of ways to jumpstart the conversation.”

“Unnecessary. That reminds me, I told you a bit about Katie. Do you want to hear more stories about her or Ferzan?”

“Hm… Sure. Tell me the cool stuff.”

I tapped my chin as I thought about the ‘cool stuff.’ 

“Let’s see… Me and Katie once tried to make a cake for Goldbon to surprise him. When we were making it, we added too much baking powder to it, which made it taste horrible. Despite that, he smiled as he ate it, claiming it was the best cake he ever tasted. That kinda pissed me off since I had made a way better chocolate one when I was 15. It was so damn good that I was struggling to not eat it all. Honestly, being in a wealthy family was really cool simply because I could experiment a lot with food. I burnt cakes, pastries, and bread a lot. But it was always fun.”

“I suppose I can relate to that. Not with siblings, but with my mom.”

“You liked cooking too?”

“Not exactly, but kinda. I liked creating stuff. Being able to blend different flavors to get something else from it was always fun to see.”

“Funny, that’s the same thing for me. Well, other than the fact I like eating delicious food, of course.”

I then asked her, “Have you ever sniffed slime eggs?”

“No… Wait, is that the one where you heat it and it releases fumes that give you a high?”

I smiled deeply and turned back towards her. “Exactly. Katie and I once filled Ferzan's entire room with it because I was getting sick of his constant and ruthless training. For a couple of days, he would randomly pull down his pants and try to either pee or take a shit. It was glorious.”

“Haha. You are cruel.”

“Meh, he deserved it. But, again, if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be able to fight as well as I can. But damn I hated fighting from morning to night and over and over and over. He always said, ‘You need to be able to protect yourself in any way possible.’ Golbon was iffy about it, but he liked it a lot more than what Katie did. He was always anxious about me being in public where an assassin could come up out of nowhere and kill me. When Ferzan became strong, he was somewhat okay with me, Katie, and Ferzan going out, but with a lot of precaution. An insane amount.”

Brenda took a while to respond. “That reminds me of my father. People think of him as a pirate. At first, he was like that. He is the reason why the Seastar family is so popular. But, he soon just became a dog of the Queen of Holvious, Nartela. A privateer of sorts. He never told me why he did missions for her and told his fleet it was for the money… Now I think about it, I suspect he did it to keep his family and fleet safe. I mean, we lived in Holvious without disturbance. Multiple country leaders, wealthy people, and powerful adventurers had brought it up to the queen, demanding she do something about him, but nothing of the like ever happened. The citizens liked him a lot. To them, they could live out their fantasy. To show the middle finger to other countries that shit-talk them or have tried to fuck our nation over. Whenever we weren’t in the oil city, he was always with me or Mother or had one of his most trusted men checking on us. But… he killed damn kids.”

“I guess he valued the lives of his loved ones greater than anything else in the world?”

I didn’t say it, but I thought to myself: If I were given the choice to kill every single person in Terrafall to save my family, I would gladly take it.

The elderly, the kids, the babies, all of them. Well, with very few exceptions. So, I could honestly relate to her father.

Then Brenda said, “By the way, you always mention his kids, but never his wife. Did you not like her or—“

Immediately, my fist clenched tight and I said, “She was an amazing person.”

My eyes got wet as I tried to prevent myself from crying in any shape or form. “She was at first pretty cruel, but after time, she became nice to me… But she must have thought that I really hated her, even if she hid it.”

I stared at my hands. “But I didn’t.”

“I assume that she is dead?”

I hesitated to answer, but I slowly nodded. “Cancer.”

“Sorry to hear about that.”

I bit down on my thumb. “Y-yeah…”

***

I was nearly falling asleep, but I was getting way too hungry. So I nudged Brenda with my elbow, waking her up.

She asked, “What’s it…?”

“I am going to catch some fish. I am starving. I assume the same thing for you?”

“Oh…” she yawned and then stood up. However, she accidentally used her broken wrist, which caused her to scream.

I caught her by the stomach before she could fall.

She grunted and then stood up, taking in a deep breath. “Light work, no reaction.”

… Huh?

“What’s that?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Not sure, it just sounded cool. Anyway, are you going to use a spear to catch the fish or just move underwater?”

Hm. Eh, whatever. It was just my first time hearing that in forever. 

I responded as I raised my arms to the side to caress my barely impressive biceps. “The answer is obvious, I will move underwater. After all, I have the peak omega physique right here.”

She rolled her eyes. “Well then… go!”

I looked at her and shook my head. “Nah, I will take my time.”

I wanted to, but this hunger made me run to the sea, kicking up sand in the process. I threw my damaged armor and clothes off me as I dashed into the water. 

I obviously still had my undergarments on. Less clothes to get wet, I guess.

Now to take advantage of my stealth hunter perk…

At first, my eyes were closed, but I slowly opened them, not feeling any saltwater burns. The moonlight wasn’t the best, but super senses like mine made things decent-ish.

There was just one issue. 

As I turned around in the water, looking from up down, side to side, I saw no fish near.

There were some very far away… Oh, that’s right. Because fishes associate Qi with monsters, they must perceive me as a dangerous/monster.

Didn’t a couple of fish bounce into me when I was trying to go after Brenda? No way my Qi levels were so low that they didn’t see me as a threat, or it was probably just really stupid fish, and now the smarter ones are staying away.

OR! This theory is going to sound insane… What if it’s because of that dumbass jump into the water I did?

Whatever. It mattered very little. I got into a swimming position and quickly swarmed to a huge fish, which was about half my size.

It tried to swim away, quickly, moving its tail side to side intensely.

Unfortunately, stealth hunter required me to ‘keep low,’ but now I thought about it, that was such a lame perk for me to pick.

My fighting or assault style revolved around being a tank and doing damage.

Stealth, really…?

Regardless, I had caught up to the damn fish which made a lot of maneuvers, taking sharp turns in all kinds of directions.

When I grabbed its tail, I quickly swung my hand upwards, sending the fish flying to the shore.

Hm… 

I swarmed up and looked at the dark sea before taking in a deep breath. The water running down my hair tried to get into my eyes a couple of times.

Yeah, I think I wanted more… Though, I was wondering, what if I hunted some land animals on that island, wherever they are hiding?

It sounded fun, but I had to worry about my stomach here. Instead of roughly diving into the waters, I calmly sink into it.

The fishes in the distance eyes were locked on me, but after half a minute, their eyes drifted away, and it seemed they panicked a bit.

I suppose not moving at all aided in me blending into my environment. ‘Keeping low’ just as I figured was metaphorical.

Then in a split second, I took a small Qi crystal, no bigger than a fingernail. I threw it at the biggest one. Before it knew what pierced its entire body, it was dead.

I swarmed over and took its corpse and swarmed back to the surface. 

I raised from the water, head first and slowly just for dramatic effect. With my eyes above the water, I looked around, imagining myself as a mermaid.

Then slowly I stood up, but with a 60-70 pound fish in my hand.

Brenda, who was already removing the first fish’s gut, said, “Nice reveal.”

“Thank you, my dear fan #2213.” 

Walking on the shore, the water dripped down my body and damn, this place was cold. It wasn’t enough to give me goosebumps, though.

She asked me, “You know how to clean a fish?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty easy. Courtesy--”

“Ferzan,” she finished it for me.

“... I see. I give him too much praise.”

I then pulled a knife from my inventory and removed all of its scales, making a shallow incision from its head to tail. Then I pulled its guts off and threw it into the waters. Afterward, I washed it in the sea.

It bled a considerable amount. I even wondered if it would have attracted a three-eyed shark for a while.

Next… roast. Even if the fire was dying down, it was still pretty bright.

Oh, Brenda had finished cleaning her fish.

Now, it was time to fashion some skewers. I returned to the tree adorned with an abundance of prickles and severed two small branches. With my knife, I whittled them to a point.

I tossed one to Brenda, and with my newly sharpened stick, I impaled the fish. Settling near the fire, I positioned the fish over the flames, allowing it to roast.

Obviously, Brenda did the same.

She then said, “Question.”

“I think you should just ask your question.”

“Kay. Why are you still half-naked? How isn’t the cold killing you?”

I looked down. Oh right… I was still in my undergarments. 

I moved the stick to my mouth and held it in place. Then I rested my elbows on my thighs, folded my fingers, and with a deep tone, I said, “The cold makes me stronger. It awakens my inner wolf… my mega powerful deep spirit. My Alpha—“

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Damn.”

She then laughed a little.

“Aha! So you did find it funny!” I cracked a grin.

“Yeah, because you sounded like an idiot.”

“I think that was the point, but what do I know?”

After the fish were done being roasted and turned dried and dark, we took it out of the flame and ate.

Well, I did. The flames didn’t bother my tongue too much. It didn’t really taste nice… since it was so fucking fresh!

But what choice was there? We had no damn lemons to get rid of the freshness. Brenda, on the other hand, was enjoying it a bit.

“Fuck it’s hot!” She spat out a piece of meat on her thigh. 

That was the fifth time in 10 minutes she did so.

Nonetheless, we ate till our stomachs were filled. Then, in the distance, we saw light, artificial light.

Not just one, but multiple.

I immediately wanted to send out Biryan, but that would be pushing it too much, so I looked at Brenda who understood what the look meant.

She sent out her monster, Birmall, who flew high in the air before looking in the direction of the lights.

Brenda's eyes widened. “Those are Vanquishers, sea ones. Sea Vanquishers. Someone must have reported the sinking ship, or they saw it on their routine checking.”

I stood up and immediately donned a new shirt and the same pants. I discarded the shirt I had on before I went into the sea in the fire and hid the armor in my inventory.

The shirt I had on before had knife tears, so I got rid of it.

I asked Brenda. “They would help us, right?”

“Yeah.”

I nodded. I was about to move forward, but it seemed one of them spotted our fire and was already moving in our direction.

My heart was beating hard and staying perfectly still was getting hard. I wasn’t trying to be stealthy, I was just anxious.

Not the fear of danger, but the fact… we might actually be going to Holvious.

I pulled a hair strain and looked at the dark hair. I fixed it into a hair bun and then I slowly touched the right side of my face.

I can’t afford anyone to easily recognize me…

With the [partial release] of Biryan’s talons, I clawed the side of my face from eyebrow down to chin.

It hurts…

Blood trickled down, but then my face glowed red, but only for a second. Brenda looked at me in shock.

“Why did you do that?”

I looked at her, my hand still covering my face. The Vanquisher who was also raising a massive turtle monster got off and approached us. 

“Who are you all and what are you all doing here?” He asked.

Think about all the bad memories…

Tears ran down my face, as I responded, heaving and crying, “We w-were hostages on the pirate ship th-hat you all spotted. A fight occurred on it and we barely s-survived…”

His tone softened. “Oh… shit.”

He looked at Brenda’s wrist, who was shocked, and looked at me with an unexplainable expression.

He then looked at my face, the hand still covering the right side.

He asked, “Just to be safe, I know you probably were harmed there, but can you please remove your hand? ”

I removed my hand from my face, making it hover for a couple of seconds before dropping it.

He nodded. “That’s a massive scar. We will bring you to a hospital as soon as possible.”

With a bloodstained scared face, I smiled. “Thank you.”