Viers trod the path he once walked, a bitter memory kept appearing in his head. Step by step he approaches the vicinity of the village where the goblins attacked. Viers didn’t enter and opted to observe from afar. The broken houses and fences had been repaired, he saw some villagers going on about their lives from a distance. The village was small, not many people living in it to begin with; now, it seemed sparser of human presence.

People endure, no matter how hard life is… that or they die.

Viers heavily sighed, hoping to exhale the unpleasant feeling inside his chest. Alas, it was to no avail. The face of a certain someone, the conversations and friendly moments he had with him, kept hanging above his head. He wasn’t that close with Terry, even calling him a friend was stretching it. A somewhat close acquaintance at best, but he never wanted him to die. What happened here was a tragedy that he regretted.

Viers didn’t forget that Terry’s last words contained his resentment towards himself. However, should he ended up having to choose again, Viers would still make the same choice. He didn’t want that, therefore he trained and grew in power every day. The current him could resolve the battle better than him in the past. That fact alone, gave him some solace.

Oh you got to hold on, hold on

You got to hold on

Take my hand, I'm standing right here

You gotta hold on

Viers hummed a song sang by Tom Waits, the song’s melody only exist in his memory but it fittingly accompanied him on his journey. A breeze touched his face, the sounds of trees swaying followed the movement of the air. Then Viers kept on walking like an unfeeling dead. He had a mission, and wallowing in melancholy won’t do him any good. Viers forlornly making footprints on the ground. His gait was a bit hunched as if he was wearing a heavy cloak made of lament.

***

He reached the lake when the sun almost set. Viers didn’t feel tired and he traveled light, only carrying the bare minimum he needed. Alone and without companions, a stark contrast with his previous visit to this famous lake. The water sparkled with orange lights reflecting the sun’s passing. There were signs of other people visiting, he saw encampments on a clearing and a middle-aged man leisurely holding his fishing rod not too far from Viers’ position.

The fat boy carried his baggage and went away from them. He sought a desolate place to hide his belongings then he planned to dive into the lake without delay. Viers found a suitable place soon enough, he stripped then changed into his non-human form. A red-scaled Tomalica appeared.

The normal Tomalica still only had one pectoral fin because of the injury he had in the past. The fish swam around the shallow waters for a while, he treated it as a warm-up before swimming. After all preparations were in place, he dived to the hidden cave.

Exploration, exploration, I hope there’s treasure there. Something that can serve as a power-up.

Tomalica-Viers began the underwater exploration with high spirits, his head was full of hope and anticipation of riches, power, and lucky encounter.

Time never stopped. One and a half hours later, Viers was sour and irritated.

Where the fuck is it! I’m LOST! Where’s the mini-map? Where’s the waypoint? Where’s the invisible beam in the sky to show the marked place? Damn it!

Viers couldn’t find the hidden cave. Even though he made the effort to memorize the place before he left in the past, he still lost his direction as he swam with exasperation; to himself, to the lake, to the world that didn’t give him a system mini-map.

Perhaps there’s an Arte for that? Arte that can make a beacon or mark that only I can sense? Seems useful, I’ll look into it in the future.

Viers grumbled in his head as he learned from his mistakes. But the idea won’t help him now, his only course was to continue seeking the hard to find the cave. He didn't completely lose his way and had the gist of the area of where to search. Still, he didn’t easily find the place where he massacred the baby fishes. He didn’t encounter momma fish during his time exploring either and he found it odd.

Where’s momma fish? What happened to her? Did the loss of her children was too great for her to bear so she decided to start a new life in a new lake? Meh, possible. Who can say it’s impossible in a magical fantasy world. Hm? HMM!? Is that what I think it is? Yesssss!

Finally, Viers found the small cave entrance where he was brought to by mamma fish to be eaten by her babies. Viers swam inside and the small fish home was as beautiful as he remembered it.

The entrance to this prime real estate was small, humans won’t be able to enter. After passing the entrance part of the cave, the space widened. The muskellunge’s monster lair was lit with bioluminescent moss so Viers could take in the sights of beautiful plants and rocks in the monster lair with pleasing greenish light from the moss.

The welcome reception was as warm as he remembered. Rows of sharp teeth from a jaw bigger than his fish head rapidly closing in on him. The dark mouth behind that sharp teeth was fully intending to swallow Viers’ life.

Water Barrier! Hello there, madam fish. So nice to meet you again. Water Slash!

Viers tanked the attack and launched a counterattack as soon as possible. The muskellunge was bisected like it was made of tofu.

Huh… that was easy. Only one hit? I thought it would be a boss fight, but I’m not gonna complain. Saving Victa is always important. Thought Viers while watching the two halves of the monster’s body slowly fell on the lake floor.

This is level 1, baby… level 1’s power. This should be the same fish from before. Fare thee well, may you find peace in death. Namu Amida Butsu… now, I must fulfill my sacred duty to complete the circle of life. Give me your core please.

Every time Viers took a life was done with purpose and reason no matter if it was monster or human. The purpose was certainly not justified or right but he didn’t care about that. The thing was, Viers abhorred waste and senseless destruction; killing monsters and animals for shits and giggles was not on his agenda.

Killing life forms in this world doesn’t give me experience points so I have a simple code for dealing with monsters. Don’t kill what you don’t mean to eat. That or self-defense... or self-interest. Just... don't kill without reason.

The Tomalica-Viers started to nibble on his kill. He didn’t possess teeth nor tongue so the act of eating was weird for him. He couldn’t taste anything and the mouth of a goldfish was not designed to eat meat in the first place. Viers ate without minding the food, like a robot.

Hm, in monster form I never got hungry before. In human form, I could get life-force from eating but what would happen if I eat in monster form? Requires more study… well, this meat is too much and a low level monster like this won’t give me much benefit anyway. I know I shouldn’t waste food but, circumstances... I’ll just take a few nibbles of the fish meat and the monster core.

Handless, the prospect of searching the monster core inside the fish’s body was harder than it supposed to be. In the end, Viers used water manipulation to take the red marble out. He looked at it for a while, deciding on what should he do with it… then he put it in his mouth.

This will be my first time eating a monster core using monster form. I heard monster could evolve by eating other monster’s core. If I really could too, my future prospect is immeasurably dazzling! I could be my own Poke and Digi monsters, gahahaha!

The core was like a jawbreaker candy. As soon as he held it in his mouth, he could feel the monster core started to melt and some kind of power was flowing to him. Hoh, so that’s what happened. Cool, no need for half an hour waiting for the jawbreaker to melt.

Viers swam upwards to the air pocket, he looked around, scouting for dangers and anomalies. Only the dark, dry cave giving an air of mystery in front of him. The mysterious path above the water gave a tempting invitation and a fear of the unknown.

Alright Viers, don’t get cold feet now. You know why you’re here.

Viers returned downward to the monster’s lair. Inside the monster lair were the shiny white stones he couldn’t bring out in the past. He found eight of those stones. Viers used H2O manipulation to grab the stones and brought them to the air pocket then tossed them to dry land. By the time he was done, the monster core already digested by him.

I feel something inside me… a few more cores then I could evolve. Nice!

Viers also went out from the water, the space was big enough for a human so he returned to his human form, naked.

This gonna be a thing? Flailing my junk after a transformation? Damn it! How embarrassing and degrading. No inventory ability nor item so I couldn’t bring a change of clothes, and it’s not like I could bring my clothes with me in fish form… sigh.

Thankfully, nobody was looking at his naked body so the embarrassment lessened somewhat. Wearing his birthday suit, Viers examined the white stones.

I feel Mana inside them, dense water Mana. This must be the unique material I heard about. Since I’m a water user, I could absorb it like Mana-crystals. This can also be brought to a blacksmith, crafter, or the like to make items with magical properties…

Viers absorbed the Mana from one stone, the Mana inside was equivalent to a five Mana-crystals. He left the rest alone for now. He needed time to digest the Mana and he couldn’t bring the stones with him because he was butt naked. Viers took a deep breath then went deeper to the cave.

The path inside was mostly a straight line. After some distance from the place he entered, he walked in the darkness. Wary of attack from the dark, Viers raised his hearing to the limit. It was complete silence all around him, not even the sound of an insect. Not long after that, he saw a faint light right in front of him.

Slowly he approached the light, he saw the source of said light after sufficiently walked closer. It was a gem glowing with seven-colored light on an ornate stone pedestal. The pedestal was a work of art but most of Viers’s attention was captured by the shining gem.

“Ooh, beautiful,” Viers muttered. He looked around and realized he had reached a dead-end, no other path existed around him.

This is it? The only thing worthy of note is the gem. Wow, this reeks of trap from a mile away.

After some time thinking of his next action, he decided to take some risk.

Alright Viers, grab the gem then bolt away because most likely the whole cave will fall on you à la Professor Indy Jones. If my hand was trapped or stuck, I’ll cut it off using Water Slash then ran away.

Unwilling to go back empty-handed, Viers steeled his heart to braved the risk. Carefully, he made the motion to grab the gem. When he touched the gem with his finger, it shone with bright light.

After a moment of momentary blindness, Viers saw the gem emitting an image above it like a projector. The image was the visage of a woman, the image was transparent like a hologram projector.

The woman had deep brown straight hair reaching down her back. She showed a lot of skin because her outfit was like a bedlah. She wore a golden tiara and a pair of golden earrings. She also had black cloths covering both of her arms. Besides the gloves look-alike; from the upper arms to her middle finger, attached on each end was a piece of pink-purple fabric. She was lying sideways, resting her head on her hands. It was as if the woman was sleeping. Her sleeping face was young like teenagers.

Very… Arabian… and…

Viers turned his gaze to her legs, except she had no legs. From below the navel, her body was covered with dark brown scales. Her scales had patterns akin to rattlesnakes. The woman had the form of something he often saw in fantasy stories, she was a lamia.

Dumbstruck, he only observed in the beginning. Unsure of what he should be doing. However, seeing she had no sign of waking up, Viers decided to make the first move.

“Hello?” Viers softly spoke, not wanting to invite the ire of the sleeping beauty.

“…Ummm… ten more minutes,” mumbled the female lamia. Her eyelashes showed movement.

“Hellooo, it’s already morning. Rise and shine.”