Moments later, with the numerous carcasses drifting alongside me like silent witnesses of my slaughter, I emerged from the shadowy gorge.
The oppressive darkness I had left behind faded into the open, dim-blue expanse of the surrounding waters, and there was a group of merfolk. All of them stared at me with wide, astonished eyes, their expressions a strange mix of awe, disbelief, and perhaps... a trace of unease.
I noticed immediately from their tails, the distinctive yellow hue shimmering faintly that they were Yellow Tailed merfolk.
Without wasting time, I gestured toward the floating remains behind me. "Get those before they rise too close to the surface," I said in a tone that was more of a statement than a suggestion.
"I was the one who killed them, so you don’t need to worry about anyone stealing the credit or claiming they were the ones who brought them down."
For a few moments, no one moved. They simply looked at each other, as though silently discussing something with their eyes alone. There was tension there palpable, almost heavy but I didn’t care enough to linger on it.
Turning my attention away, I began to swim past them.
From the corner of my vision, I had already spotted Denus among them, and what I saw concerned me. He looked injured.
While I made my way toward him, the group of merfolk behind finally decided to follow my earlier instructions.
They began gathering the carcasses, producing large, woven nets from somewhere and using them to bind as many as possible into a single cluster.
The sight made a faint smirk tug at my lips. "A fish using a net... quite the world this is," I thought with faint amusement.
When I reached Denus, I immediately saw the problem. He was clutching his right arm, the muscles in his jaw tense, his eyes slightly narrowed from the lingering pain.
Running from the top of his shoulder all the way to the base of his palm was a clean, straight cut. It wasn’t jagged or torn, it looked almost surgical in precision.
Thin, yes... but deep enough that in any normal circumstance, it should have been leaking blood into the water. Yet, strangely, there wasn’t a single drop.
Perplexed, I tilted my head slightly and asked, "I might sound like a heartless bastard for asking this... but why aren’t you bleeding? I mean, genuinely curious here."
Denus actually let out a short chuckle and shook his head. "No, no. You’re not a bad guy for asking that. This is... well, strange even by merfolk standards. But it’s not too strange."
My brows knitted slightly. "Meaning?" I asked, gesturing for him to elaborate.
He shifted his grip on his arm and explained, "See this wound? It’s extremely thin. If I use the bare minimum of my blessing, I can seal it almost entirely. Even for us Yellow Tailed merfolk, something is easy."
That word. Blessing. It caught my attention immediately.
I narrowed my eyes slightly. "Blessing? You mean... something tied to your abilities?"
Denus nodded without hesitation. "Yes. All merfolk are blessed by the seas themselves. That blessing allows us to call upon its might though only in a limited capacity. Some of the strongest among us, experts who have trained for decades, can summon tsunamis so powerful they could drag entire coastal cities into the depths. But they don’t... because flooding land and destroying lives means competing for food with far too many other species. And no one wants that."
So... in essence, they had water affinity. Just under a different name. Blessing. And yet, unlike me, they had no system guiding them. Still, somehow, they could grow stronger. Which meant... I could too.
A low chuckle escaped me. "Interesting... then tell me, Denus, how exactly do you increase your strength? Or... how do you train yourselves to grow stronger?"
He shrugged, as if repeating a truth as old as the sea itself. "Since The Age of Creation, there has only ever been one path to true strength: becoming one with where you came from."
I repeated the phrase slowly, tasting the weight of it. "Becoming one... with where you came from?"
My tone held both astonishment and curiosity.
Denus met my gaze and nodded firmly. "Yes. It means becoming one with your deity... pleasing them, gaining their favor. Once you have their approval, they grant you permission to wield more of their power. And with that permission... you grow stronger."
I let my eyes narrow, my thoughts racing. If I stripped away the deity part and replaced it with my own elements aka affinities
To grow stronger, I would have to please my element. Not just wield it like a tool, but gain its approval. Earn its trust. Convince it to give me more of itself.
But there was something else that kept gnawing at the back of my mind—the phrase "Becoming one with where you came from." It wasn’t just mysterious; it was infuriatingly vague.
A sentence like that could be interpreted in a dozen ways, and each interpretation could lead someone down a completely different path. That "pleasing" part Denus mentioned might not even be the real meaning. It could easily be a misinterpretation that had simply been passed down through the ages.
For instance, one possible meaning could be: "Becoming one with creation itself—with life, with existence. Merging your being with the fabric of reality, assimilating yourself into the very heartbeat of the cosmos."
That would imply an almost divine union, a surrender to everything and nothing at the same time.
Another interpretation could be far more focused: "Becoming one with your element. Immerse yourself so completely in your affinity that you no longer wield it—it becomes you, and you become it. You are not a wielder of fire, you are fire. Not a manipulator of water, but water incarnate."
That kind of unity would mean abandoning the separation between self and power entirely, becoming a living embodiment of it.
And yet... there was one part of the phrase that bothered me more than anything else—"Where you came from." That fragment didn’t just feel vague; it felt deliberately cryptic.
Where exactly did someone "come from"? Was it simply referring to creation itself? Or something more intimate and personal? Could it be one’s homeworld? Their soul? Their bloodline?
Or perhaps it meant something even deeper—the Void, the space between existence, the raw energy that underpins reality, mana, ether... or something I didn’t even have a name for.
The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like the kind of phrase that could either hold the ultimate truth or be nothing more than a poetic distraction.
Finally, I turned my head toward Denus, narrowing my eyes slightly. "Hey, Denus. Tell me straight—this ’Becoming one with where you came from’ thing... is it truly from the so-called ages of creation, or is it just something your merfolk made up along the way to sound profound?"
Denus’s expression shifted immediately. His casual demeanor vanished, replaced by a seriousness I hadn’t seen from him before. His brows drew together, and there was a weight in his eyes.
"This phrase is sacred. It’s not some bedtime tale. It has been carved into the Ancestral Codex for as long as our kind has existed. We have seen it written there with our own eyes. This... is the Way—the Way of Strength. Whether you choose to believe it or not... that is your concern, not mine."
I studied his face for a moment, reading the absolute certainty etched into his features. Whether the phrase held the truth or not, Denus believed in it without hesitation. That was worth noting.
"Alright..." I said finally, my tone even. "Thanks for telling me this." I gestured toward the drifting bodies nearby. "Take those carcasses as a reward. Divide them among your people. Consider it... a token for your trouble."