“Who dost thou think thou art?!”

As might have been expected by this point, the first to react to the mermaid’s words was Charlotte, stepping in front of me.

“T’ simply address His Highness w’thout a shred o’ r’spect, and then have the gall t’ ask f’r help, thou wench—”

“Enough, Charlotte,” I said, placing a hand on her shoulder.

“Eh? B… But, Your Highness…”

“I said enough.”

“C-c’rtainly!”

She made a pose and stood down, taking place half a pace behind me. Satisfied, I turned back to the mermaid, who was now looking at Charlotte in fright.

A child. Aye, she was a child.

“You were saying?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“A-ah, yes!”

She tore her gaze away from Charlotte and looked back to me, and once more, desperation entered her eyes.

“Pl-please, help us! You’re strong, right?! I’ll give you anything I have, so! So!”

“Calm down, calm down. Should you not introduce yourself first?”

“Ah… Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry! Please, could you find it in your heart to-”

“Aaah, enough with the forced formality. You are not used to it, I can tell, and it is stifling and annoying. Just speak as you normally would.”

“Yessir!”

I questioned if she really understood what I had told her… Or perhaps she was just that kind of person. I tried my best not to let the sigh in my heart show through to reality.

“Where do I… Ah, well, my name’s Mica! I’m the daughter of the chief.”

“In other words, something like a princess?”

“Sure, that works!”

The mermaid princess, apparently called Mica, placed her webbed hand behind her head and laughed, a slight blush on her face. Her outfit did not particularly indicate a high rank—I did not know much about mermaids, but perhaps they did not like to decorate themselves, or perhaps it was simply Mica’s fancies.

“Then, I suppose I shall state my name as well. Astaroth. Envoy of Entropy and Prince of Darkness, and he who rules monsterkind.” I folded my hands behind my back, though I tried my best to display a kind smile.

“I knew it! The dark one’s envoy… Ahh, I was right to call out to you!” Her face flushed red as she clutched her hands together in front of her chest, almost like a maiden in…

No. No way.

“Hold. I shall be stopping you there a moment… ‘The dark one’? You refer to Entropy, nay?”

“Yes! She is Lady Undine’s superior goddess, after all!”

I froze a moment at the girl’s unexpected words.

In other words, the mermaids were…

“I see, I see… Aye, it makes sense. I was not disparaging you.” I shook my head, closing my eyes a moment. “Hmm… So then, what help would you ask of us?”

“Right… Uhm, how do I put this…”

She stammered and hesitated, looking for the right words. Perhaps it was a nervous tic? She played with her white hair as it danced in the water, but eventually, she managed to formulate her sentence.

“There’s an intruder. She’s pretending to be someone important, but she’s really obviously fake… But she’s also more powerful than any of us, so we’re just pretending to be fooled for now…”

“I see… So you would like us to drive this intruder out, then.”

“Yes! Actually, if you could, we’d appreciate it if you got rid of her completely… and saved the person she’s pretending to be, too!”

“Your wishlist keeps growing.”

Her response to my snarky comment was a cute noise of dismay.

“Well, it all depends on what you have to offer us in return, I suppose.” I turned a questioning gaze her way, and decided that it would soon be time to end this conversation, because I could already hear a group of idiots goof off behind me.

“Ah… Uhm, I’d have to negotiate with Father, but as for me, I’d be willing to do anything! I might be able to ask Lady Undine for a favour in your stead, or such, or, or…!”

“Ahh, yes, yes, I get it, I get it, so get out of my face-”

“I’d even be willing to give you my hand in marriage!”

“I refuse.”

“Ehh?!”

“In the first place, I am taken, so-”

“Then, a concubine is fine!”

“No. Absolutely not.”

Our conversation, at this point, had once again attracted the attention of my entourage…

In particular, I was receiving several looks of pity.

“Do not just stand there, you lot, get her off me!”

“Ah, t’ think His Highness would get done in by the likes o’ a rav’nous M’rmaid…”

“I’ll miss ya, Master.”

“Charlotte! Lilith! I will dock your pay!”

Charlotte appeared unbothered, but Lilith froze up for a moment-

“I’m sorry, Master! It was a joke! It was just a joke!” Lilith said, looking on the verge of breaking down in tears as she clasped onto my arm.

My hand still planted firmly on Mica’s face so as to prevent her from swimming any closer, one thought was at the forefront of my mind.

Ahh… Sometimes I do wish I had just gone down the path of destroying the world.

In a way, it would have been much easier than dealing with this nonsense.

“So? Who is being mimicked?”

It would certainly have been possible for me to find the settlement on my own, but it was far easier to simply have Mica guide us.

“I can’t say… She’d find out. She might be incompetent, but she’s got that much power, at least.”

In other words, a verbal curse, or some form of jinx… Was the opponent a master of words, perhaps? In that case, that might have made this trickier than I had anticipated.

On the way, we passed what appeared to be several seaweed plantations and fish farms. Fish was all well and good, but I was not particularly keen on the idea of eating seaweed, so I was rather glad I had asked Saniel to store an abundance of food in her [Storage]. Of course, mine was far from empty, too. Now all that was left was to hope our sea-blessing would extend to the food.

“Ah, but don’t worry, Milord!” Mica said, “I’m sure you’ll be able to identify the faker immediately! She… Uh… Stands out.”

She had taken to calling me ‘Milord’, which was… passable.

“ ‘Stands out’, huh… Well, I shall believe you for now.”

“Please just believe me!”

“One who unconditionally believes someone they met not a few hours ago is a fool or a child.”

There was something… beautifully serene about walking the bottom of the ocean like this, every step kicking up sand. The light filtering through the water, distorted as it reached us, illuminated a path forward, reflected every little wave and ripple on the surface in the form of shadows, playfully dancing around in front of us.

… The presence of a rowdy mermaid princess was not particularly helping the serenity of the scene, so I decided to try and tune her out.

As I had suspected, not listening to the incessant, though cute, whining of the girl made the scene that much more beautiful.

Had I always been that good at tuning people out? I decided not to question it. I would experiment later—for now, I had scenery to enjoy.

“M’lord, over there, is that…?”

Charlotte, tugging on my sleeve, pulled me out of my thoughts. I followed her pointing finger, and found-

“A Scylla…”

An unusual species of monster. In essence, a mermaid, but with octopus parts instead of fish parts.

Mica, following our gazes, also spotted the Scylla. She gave a wave, and the Scylla gave a wave back.

“I suppose it figures that you would be on good terms with aquatic demons, but it is still surprising to see…”

“Eh?” Mica said, stopping and turning to face me. “Do surface-dwellers not get along with monsters?”

“Many of them do not. Drakonids are easy to irritate, elves are xenophobic, the dwarves are holed away and competing with… Mine spirits, or whatever, for space, and humans…”

“Even humans? They’re supposed to be the race who received the most of the dark one’s blessing, though…”

“They have been taken, you see. And I intend to take them back.”

“Ah… Is that why you’re collecting fragments of the gods?”

I froze in my tracks, but soon realised that the proof of what I was doing was right on my face. Literally. It seemed Mica was perhaps more observant than I had initially given her credit for.

“Aye.”

“Ah, but then, what about those two?”

Mica pointed to the beast-children, who were still staring curiously at the Scylla from afar.

“What about them?”

“What race are they? They’re not monsters, but…”

“Beast-people. Never seen one?”

“Beast… Never! The four elemental races and humans are the five races of humanity, aren’t they? Are they animals?”

“Nay, beast-people are the sixth race. Humans with the features of animals.”

“Huh… Ah, there it is!”

She pointed forward, so I directed my gaze in that direction. And it was quite a beautiful sight.

Although it could certainly be called a settlement, it was really more like a large temple. A row of pillars on either side with a roof on top, the structure reminded me of ancient Greece, in a way, though it was far larger than those temples.

Only now did I realise that, on the way here, we had passed several building-like objects, and I had occasionally felt stares from the inside—it seemed we had already been in the capital for a good while, without my notice. Indeed, paying closer attention, occasionally, I spotted a mermaid or two, peeking at us from behind a pillar or such.

“Mica.”

“Yes, Milord?! What is it? Have you decided, seeing the temple, that after all, you do want to live here and-”

“Shut it. Not a chance.”

“Awwwwh…”

“Could you explain why the mermaids, other than you, are so…”

“Ah, that? It’s probably just shyness, isn’t it? We don’t usually interact with surface-dwellers. Plus, there’s the whole situation…”

“Aah… Well, I suppose that makes sense.”

Notably, the closer we got to the temple, the closer the observing mermaids got to us. A pair of mermaids in front of the main entrance tried to block us passage with their tridents—good weapons for catching wild fish, or such?—but they let us pass the moment they spotted Mica.

The temple was equally beautiful on the inside as on the outside—although, given most of the intended visitors did not particularly need to walk, there was no carpet or any such thing, just a floor, made of the same sort of stone as the rest. Presumably, the stone itself was white, but it looked bluish, this far down in the ocean.

Interestingly, between the pillars stood statues. Normally, I would have expected statues of gods—but the statues here were of a wide variety of creatures. There were a number of mermaids, but also…

A woman with a gentle expression, outstretched arms as if to embrace someone, and eight thick tentacles in place of legs—a Scylla.

A girl of small stature with fingerless appendages, a large, round-ish cap on her head and two almost ear-like protrusions from it—a jellyfish-type monster called a Jelly Bunny, as I recalled.

A gaunt man, with almost leaf-like protrusions from his limbs and a slightly elongated face—likely some kind of seahorse-type monster.

Most striking of all, however, was the statue all the way in the back. A giant, scaled serpent, coiled in on itself into a spiral-shaped pile, its reptilian eyes exuding intelligence—

“A Blue Dragon… Mica, these statues are…?”

“Ah! Are you curious? They’re the great people who helped found and maintain our nation. Given how big the issue is this time, I’m sure you could get a statue made, too, if you manage to solve it.”

Well, it would not necessarily be unpleasant to have a statue… But there were more important matters at hand, for the time being.

Such as that person, who I spotted only when I looked down from the dragon statue. Sitting on the throne, skin spotless like water, blue hair waving like the sea…

Unlike the mermaids, she had legs, she lacked their distinctive fins on the sides of their heads, their webbed fingers and, most importantly—

On her forehead sat a blue crest.

Indeed, staring at us with her otherworldly blue eyes was Undine, producing the chime of a warped bell with her every little movement.