Originally the plan was to have the PID build the dwelling, but that’s when Sera realised she had forgotten two things.

First was that the recipe couldn’t be built by the PID and secondly, the tool she needed to build the medium-sized dwelling was missing.

“I didn’t lose it.” Sera looked towards the pile of mismanaged items she had thrown onto the floor. “It’s just in that pile… somewhere.”

Looking at the almost intimidating pile, which had grown in size due to Sera dumping the seagrass she had collected as well on top of it, her mouth glazed into a line.

This wasn’t going to be fun.

Despite her arms and legs aching from carrying what felt like 50KG of pure rock from the dungeon to the makeshift cave, Sera was still moving.

Even Iva was surprised from its small seagrass nest it had made in the corner of the room, Sera stole an envious glance at the fish one too many times during the search.

But she had found it, and with it came a discovery.

We are all just filters.

We filter out food into waste, mana into spells and materials into recipes.

Sera had that thought when staring at the PID ‘consume’ the large amount of materials she had set out, it was an… interesting way to refine the materials as she used them.

When Sera had found the builder tool it was engrossed in a layer of slime from somewhere, as well as rocks and sand mixed between it, when Sera hesitantly pressed the button, her face was already imagining having to rebuild it.

Therefore, when it did expand three times the size, something she stared at in wonder again Sera couldn’t help getting excited. “Thank GOD it works.”

Having to build another tool felt like it would kill her, especially when the waters were getting dangerously colder by the day and when the only good food she had gotten was from the stringy dragon meat.

When the materials next to her seemed to be ⅓ of the way processed, her head was still shaking at the thought of not bringing more of the rare meat and forgetting to scan the dragon.

Despite it, she raised the tool and promptly forgot about her concerns when the screen popped up.

Builder Tool Interface

Rooms:

Small dwelling, non-upgradable due to size limitations, able to be moved easily. Medium dwelling, upgradable, able to be moved. Large dwelling, upgradable however resources required will be tripled, unable to be moved.

Interior:

PID Moun-

Before letting the screen finish loading, Sera pressed the medium dwelling, there was a time and a place to ogle the furniture and gadgets, right now she wanted a place to sleep in.

Builder Tool Interface

Medium Dwelling

[Construct]

Pressing the button, Sera could see the many mechanisms on the builder tool began to form different tools and on the back of it, what looked like a bag with an opening popped out.

Scaring the life out of Sera and causing Iva to jump out and squeak menacingly at the inanimate object.

After calming herself and her friend down, Sera found out that it used the bag to suck the materials in as it formed them in place on the other side. “Wait, should I be building this in a cave?”

The second haul felt like a current of fresh water.

To Iva of course, for Sera on the other hand she considered swapping to the small room twice before condemning herself to the fate of moving everything outside the cave.

When it was eventually done even though Sera couldn’t sweat her body felt like it was burning, her skin felt like it was opening up and when she looked at her hand it seemed that the skin was more stretched than usual.

But she could finally start buil-

Builder Tool Interface

The Dwelling Module can be used on this room.

[Integrate during construction]

Completion time, 3H 33M

[Don’t integrate]

Completion time, 2H 30M

Oh. God. No.

The don’t integrate button looked so alluring.

She could do so much with an extra hour.

She could sleep.

She could eat.

She could finally rest in a warm home without getting attacked.

Sera had to close her eyes.

Sera had to press the don’t integrate button, upgrades didn’t matter that much, right?

Sera had to get it over with, it had been so long already, wasn’t a rest allowed?

Sera had to finish it, properly.

She hadn’t cut any corners and even when her body cried out to her mind, she couldn’t bring herself to not do the extra mile.

That’s why when the next message came up, Sera knew she had made the right decision, even if it would make her life a lot harder in the future.

PID Interface

Congratulation on integrating the dwelling module!

The dwelling module is also capable of repairing the PID enough to repair a new subsystem.

User ID and location has been broadcasted to other devices.

It was silent, but the waters were different.

A purple throne sat in the middle of an eerily large room, it was formed from the strange rock found when the Depth family had left the Aquo kingdom, that was when they discovered they weren’t the only ones running.

The palace was quiet, but there was a tension in the air, everyone could feel it, including her.

It began to build weeks ago, slowly meticulously it infected those around her until she knew they would act within days, hours and finally minutes.

Her hair was short and hair purple, the genes of royalty were obvious to any seafarer, her form was shapely, unlike her mother Narkissa’s clothes always hung off her.

As she set off towards the throne room, Narkissa lazily moved her hand into an oval as she passed a normal looking guard and continued with an air of ignorance.

All the guards wore the purple scales that hid their bodies in the dark and led attackers into a false sense of security before their death.

They marched despite being able to swim, all except for the queen who had broken the tradition years ago, but it was expected for their ‘lazy’ queen.

The floors were magnetised through specialised tech that had been secured and widely used in the Depth kingdom for centuries, only recently had Aquo found the design out.

Every bit of the castle was made for both security and speed.

The hallways were all purposefully waterlogged from beneath the castle, this served as both a way to speed up transportation in the castle and slow intruders.

Of course, they could be changed and scheduled ahead of time but the last time it happened her mother had been assassinated which meant they were now heavily guarded.

Or they were meant to be.

A surge of water blasted them all into the throne room.

Narkissa went flying the furthest, with her body rag dolled all the way to the throne.

Her guards, which tried to take the brunt of the force, succeeded, but not before another surge of water came pushing through with the arrival of a new band of people.

No, warriors.

The second the new arrivals came through, they expertly landed and closed the chamber doors, their faces were hidden with golden helmets and their scales were a stark red.

Their feet stuck to the ground as soon as the water current stopped and outside the room if one listened they could distinctly hear the water changed directions.

But no one living had time to listen to the water.

Rust had stunk up the throne room.

The eight attackers had acted too swiftly and calmly for this to be anything but planned.

Immediately, the barely conscious guards begun to retaliate.

Harpoons from both sides were thrown and found their marks, but there were too many.

The four guards defending the queen had all fallen except for the last who had swapped to his scimitar looking sword.

The leader easily batted the sword away and cut through the neriead in one swoop, his blade gliding through the water in an all too experienced fashion.

“Queen of the Depths.” Leading the two remaining assassins, the leader of the assassins slowly made his way up the steps.

Finally, being able to move again, Narkissa saw her death quickly approach her. “Darwin?! But why? How? The last of the insurrection was killed off!” Her tone unusually high.

She pushed off the ground and shivered in front of them, her royal aura gone, she slowly backed away to the throne.

“No, the men you killed were just-” One of the assassins beheaded the defeated guard as he walked past his corpse.

“-figureheads.”

Her body shook as she saw her former bodyguard beheaded.

Moving like a terrified mouse, she began to hide behind the throne. “With this, the rebellion will finally end, are you scared, my queen?”

Each step echoed throughout the chamber despite being underwater, the weight put behind each step made his intentions obvious, it was to intimidate.

“The new kingdom won’t have any dealings with the Aquo kingdom, we’ll completely cut them out. The new order will rise, Narkissa.” Two sets of footsteps followed her closer to the throne, the last assassin had turned towards the entrance.

“With or without you.”

His footsteps stopped as he stared down at the almost small throne and could see her figure hiding behind it, still shivering.

He brandished his scimitar and went in for the kill.

The scent of rust heightened as he barely saw the dagger fly towards him.

Cutting into his skin, he snarled.

Racing forward, he grabbed onto the throne and stabbed into the still shivering-

“-What?” A falling cloak was all that was left.

He could hear a groan die off as he pivoted around. “DAR-”

-But he was too late.

The guard behind him was limp with his body slowly falling downwards, his neck having a large red cut etched through it.

The blood was hidden from the kill-her target wasn’t him!

The one facing the entrance gave a wet gurgle as he went down, his last words barely heard. “-win. Kill her…”

His body tensed with his teeth grit as he stared at the so-called lazy queen.

“So that’s what you’ve been hiding.” The bloody dagger in her hand, she emotionlessly looked at the assassin.

“All these years you’ve been hiding these skills!” He gestured, his anger turned slowly to excitement. “If you live longer than a minute, I’ll consider you suitable to be my concubine.”

Sword in hand, he slowly walked over to the queen, who under the layers of clothing wasn’t at all as shapely as he expected, instead her arms were toned and her legs held scars.

Again his footsteps echoed, but this time they exuded pressure, he was serious.

But so was she, she brandished a twin dagger and ripped it’s twin from the guards neck. “Darwin.” Her voice came as he was less than a meter away.

He brandished his smile at her attempt to delay. “Waiting won’t get you anywhere, Narkissa.”

He pointed his sword at the “There’s only one way this is going to end-”

In one clean strike, the sword went through the flesh like gutting a fish.

“-Wh-” He coughed out blood as two heavy thumps hit the floor behind him.

The rust, his footsteps and finally his monologue, it was too predictable.

The familiar red scales and golden mask walked past him and towards Narkissa. “Yes. I suppose there was only one way it was going to end…”

She moved past the assassin with the fake, gnash on his neck. “What did you say earlier, something about this being the end of the rebellion?”

As she moved past him, her words were barely heard. “You were right.”

Giving the same lazy oval gesture with her hand, she opened her hand and with it a new scent of rust exploded behind her. The throne in front of her was bathed in many scents, but dyed by none.

“Open the chamber doors, Roland, he should be here by now.” With the helmet off, Roland didn’t bother changing his scale mail as he opened the chamber.

Any chance to intimidate the chancellor was a chance well taken.

As his hand went to the handle, a knock came, his gills still stretched to their limit ripped open the doors.

Standing there was a well-dressed man, the scales decorating his body were arranged in a pattern that seemed to calm and disarm those around him.

But the second the door had opened, the gills by his neck and his noise squeezed at the smell of rusty iron.

“Another success my queen, which is to be expected of course.” Despite his small stature, he snapped his fingers loudly as a squad of guards came in and began taking out the bodies.

Roland followed them out after taking another look at the small neriead.

“Neither of us have time for praise Kirk. Tell me why you’re here personally instead of sending your assistant?” Narkissa spoke naturally, her cloak once again hiding her body.

But Kirk waited for the last of the guards to leave before he began, despite how Narkissa looked, after spilling blood any neriead needed a moment to collect themselves.

After they had left and an all too quiet moment had passed, Kirk resumed.

“The Artefact has detected a new user.” Kirk idly waved his hand in front of his face, which did nothing to dissipate the smell of blood, but still he continued.

“Oh? In a new area, or is it another lost artefact?” Narkissa spoke slowly, despite her experience the gills on her neck were still stretched widely, trying to absorb as much oxygen from the water as possible.

“Neither.” Kirk spoke in a low tone. “It’s next to The Temple, and it’s nothing we’ve seen before.”

Before her thoughts were on taking the traitors gold and using it to fund a new project or just buff up kingdom’s vault but now-

“-Next to the temple? If you’re saying it’s nothing we’ve seen before, do you mean it's not a weapon, a constructor or a database?”

“My queen, the artefact that came online it’s-it’s all of them, together in one. Not only that but with it being found so close to The Temple after Loretta’s arrangements…”

Her face grimaced as the emotions that were so easily managed came to light, the battle with Darwin was a cold sea breeze compared to this problem.

“... Are the mercenaries or the smugglers still nearby?” Her tone began to grow as a new competitor showed up, just as she had taken care of everything-everyone else.

“One of the smugglers should be close, not only that but with the new expedition coming, they will reach their first-”

She didn’t shout.

She never needed to.

The pressure in the room quadrupled as Kirk fell to his knee’s, his head forced down as he felt her bloodline stare freeze him and make him shrink into himself.

He could hear blades being brought out and Kirk knew he should’ve waited longer, hiding anything from the queen would result in immediate death but delaying it-

The sound of two blades being sheathed rang like small bells through the throne room. “Kirk?”

“Y-yes my queen?” His voice faltered as the pressure evaporated, like salt water evaporating the salt stayed as did the threat in her tone.

“Find out who the new user is." She slid a small glowing slate out from the inside of the throne.

"If we can’t be first, we must be better.”