Klein stared at her.
His gaze fell upon Aphros.
She maintained a dazed, innocent expression.
Something was lodged deep in her throat, something she couldn't spit out no matter how hard she tried.
The scrutiny suddenly dissipated.
“Is that so?”
Klein’s tone was flat.
There was no further questioning, no pressure.
He stood up and patted his knees.
“Fine, I have nothing else to ask.”
Aphros looked at him blankly.
The question about Ophelia just now, the question about being “different”—he had brushed them all aside.
“Now, it’s time for you to play your part freely.”
Klein put on a gentle smile.
“Practice walking. First, use the pool wall for support to stand up. Don’t rush; take it slow. It doesn’t matter if you fall; it won’t hurt in the water.”
Aphros grabbed the edge of the pool and pushed herself up.
Her legs were still shaking, and the angle at which her knees bent was completely wrong. She had never used these joints before; the signaling pathways between her brain and muscles had not been fully established.
But she did stand up.
The water reached her waist, and her new skin appeared a translucent, pale white under the sunlight.
She looked down at her toes pressing against the stone slabs at the bottom of the pool.
It was cold, rough, and real.
Her eyes grew warm.
“Once you can walk,” Klein continued, “you can start thinking about your future.”
Aphros looked up.
“If you want to stay here, I can help you find Nelisa to arrange an identity. The Silver Scale Chamber of Commerce has significant influence in this area; it won’t be hard to get you a legal identity. You can live here as an ordinary person.”
He paused.
“Or, you can come with us. Back to the inland.”
The topic shifted too quickly.
Aphros was still immersed in the impact of “standing,” and suddenly she was dragged into the level of “life planning.”
She froze for several seconds.
The feeling of dread from being throttled by the throat was rapidly fading.
The details were blurring and disintegrating at an incredible speed.
She remembered wanting to say something just now.
What was it?
Something about her head...
She couldn't remember.
Since she couldn't remember, it probably wasn't anything important. She just needed to answer the question in front of her.
“I am not close to Nelisa.”
Aphros spoke; her voice wasn't loud, but it was decisive.
“And I do not like her.”
Klein raised an eyebrow.
Aphros turned her body toward Klein, the pool water rippling in circles with her movement.
“I want to follow you and Ophelia. Leave this place.”
Klein wasn't surprised by this answer.
From the beginning, Aphros had shown a clear closeness and dependence on Ophelia, and trust toward him.
Klein nodded.
“Fine. Then you’ll come with us.”
He didn't explain further.
“I have other things to handle,” Klein said, already walking toward the courtyard entrance. “There’s no rush to learn to walk; practice at your own pace.”
“Mm.”
Aphros gave a soft response, watching his back as he walked away.
The pool water quietly surrounded her waist.
The sunlight hit the surface of the water, shattering into a field of golden glimmers.
She looked down, staring at her own reflection.
A familiar face, a pair of strange legs, and those few translucent white scales at her chest.
It was very quiet.
There was no sound in her head.
She tentatively took her first step.
Her right foot lifted, tracing an arc in the water, and then descended.
The sole of her foot slapped against the stone slab with a muffled thud.
Her left foot followed, her knee buckling slightly; she stumbled and quickly grabbed the pool wall.
She didn't fall.
Aphros let out a long breath, a small curve appearing at the corner of her mouth.
...
Ophelia was still keeping Diancie company.
Klein wasn't in a hurry to find her, heading straight toward the alchemical workshop.
When Aphros had uttered the word “no,” the logical chain he had constructed snapped.
That wasn't the answer he was looking for.
Asking her directly wasn't working; he had to try another way.
However, the questioning just now had allowed Klein to catch something else.
It was like discovering a speck of ink in clear water.
So much so that he now had a reckless idea.
An experiment that, once started, would have no turning back.
Creak—
He pushed open the heavy wooden door of the alchemical workshop.
A unique scent, a mixture of metal, mana crystals, and various reagents, wafted toward him.
The sea folk in the tank was staring through the transparent wall at the complex and precise alchemical equipment in the workshop.
Shimmering pipes, metal arms covered in runes, and glass vessels containing liquids of various colors.
Hearing the door open, she turned her head.
The hostility and vigilance from their first meeting were gone from her eyes.
She even seemed to be in the mood to reach out and wave.
It seemed this way of greeting was applicable to them as well.
The corner of Klein’s mouth twitched slightly.
This sea folk was becoming more and more strange.
Strange wasn't quite the word; rather, she had become inexplicably “familiar.”
Through the inscription stone translator placed by the tank, she translated her voice into the Common Tongue that Klein could understand.
“Did you find the answer you wanted?”
Clear words in the Common Tongue appeared on the inscription stone.
“Not yet.” Klein walked to the water tank. “But soon.”
He paused, his gaze falling on the sea folk.
“...I still need your help.”
The voice from the inscription stone confused the sea folk.
“My help?”
Klein didn't speak, merely nodding to her.
He turned and walked toward the center of the workshop.
There lay the heart of the entire workshop—a massive alchemical array composed of multiple concentric rings.
Several dark inscription stones and a set of unnamed tools appeared out of thin air, landing at Klein’s feet.
Watching this, the slight sense of relaxed familiarity in the sea folk’s heart vanished instantly.
He said he needed her help.
But this setup didn't look like he was seeking help at all.
Klein didn't look at her again. He squatted down, his fingers lightly tapping several nodes of the massive array as if confirming something.
In the next second, he picked up a sharp etching needle and, without any hesitation, carved directly into the edge of the array.
A piercing scraping sound erupted in the silent workshop, sparks flying from the hard stone floor.
His hand was terrifyingly steady. As the tip of the needle moved, brand-new, complex runes were forcibly branded into the array.
Old lines were cut, and new ones spread like venomous snakes, entangling and biting into the original array before eerily merging into one.
The sea folk in the tank suddenly felt something strange.
It wasn't an illusion.
Every sound in the workshop had vanished.
The sound of the wind in the courtyard, the chirping of insects, even the sound of her own movement in the water—everything was gone.
The entire world felt as if it had been seized by an invisible giant hand, falling into total silence.
A heavy pressure squeezed from all sides, and even the water in the tank seemed to become viscous.
This place had become a cage isolated from the world.
Klein stood up, brushed the dust off his hands, turned around, and looked at her in the tank again.
On the inscription stone translator, the sea folk’s uneasy thoughts appeared: “What... exactly are you doing?”
Klein’s face remained expressionless.
“An experiment.”
Klein was reinforcing the workshop’s shielding functions.
Aiming at high-dimensional observation.
What he was about to do next must not be perceived by any entity.
Especially the “will of the deep sea.”
Half an hour later, the modification of the array was complete.
Klein stood up.
The workshop was now like an airtight iron box, temporarily “deleted” from the conceptual level.
He walked to the laboratory bench.
He activated a highly complex information compilation device.
The core of the device was a transparent cube suspended in a force field.
Following Klein’s operations, rows of data streams flashed like waterfalls across the inner walls of the cube.
The sea folk pressed her face against the tank wall, watching.
Klein took a small crystal bottle from his robe.
It contained a blue liquid.
It was a blood sample extracted from the sea folk herself.
He dropped a drop of this blood into the device’s sample slot.
Hum—
The device let out a soft sound.
That drop of blood was instantly decomposed into the purest information particles.
Complete gene sequences, magic structures, and even fragments of soul information were all projected into the central suspended cube in the form of data streams.
It was a complex string of code, full of the rhythm of life.
The sea folk watched that information.
That was her very essence.
Klein didn't perform any analysis or recording.
He extended a finger and called up another data stream.
It was the information from Aphros.
A backup of biological information fragments Klein had taken while examining her body earlier.
He dragged both data streams into the same compilation framework.
His fingers moved rapidly, each touch precisely landing on a key data node.
Information particles collided violently, tore apart, and reorganized within the suspended cube.
Visible blue-white arcs of light were emitted.
The data streams within the suspended cube grew denser, the frequency of collisions higher and higher.
Under Klein’s control, the two originally incompatible pieces of information began to exhibit a subtle resonance.
The resonance points gradually overlapped.
A brand-new information stream that had never existed before began to take shape at the center of the cube.
It was small and blurred, but it became clearer with every passing second.
Thud.
A muffled sound came from the direction of the water tank.
Klein glanced sideways.
A crack had appeared on the tank wall.
The water inside was expanding.
The sea folk was curled tightly at the very bottom of the tank.
Her tail was tense, her scales stood on end, and her entire body was shaking violently.
Her body was in spasms.
The scales, fins, and muscles had all escaped their owner’s control, straining toward the suspended cube.
Klein’s judgment was confirmed.
The information stream he had synthesized contained something extremely close to the original concept of the “will of the deep sea.”
At the same time—
Crack.
In the corner of the workshop ceiling, an inscription stone covered in shielding runes exploded.
Then a second one.
A third.
Klein snapped his head up.
The array was still running, but the chain of shielding runes surrounding the workshop was overloading and burning out one segment after another.
The protection layers he had spent half an hour meticulously reinforcing were as fragile as paper before a certain indiscriminate probing force from a higher dimension.
That information stream itself was answering to something.
Even if it was just a fragmented piece, it was enough to stir an instinctive reaction from something sleeping deep in the ocean.
Klein didn't hesitate.
In an instant, the information stream forming within the suspended cube was forcibly dismantled into basic, meaningless data fragments.
The blue-white arcs of light died out immediately.
The sense of oppression vanished.
All humming, vibration, and pressure hit zero at the same moment.
Silence returned to the workshop.
Only the scorched remains of a few inscription stones on the ceiling were still shedding powder.
A lingering burnt smell hung in the air.
Klein slowly withdrew his hand.
There was a slight burning sensation on his fingertips.
The skin on his fingertips was slightly red.
That was the energy backlash from forcibly interrupting the alchemical reaction.
He flexed his fingers a few times and turned toward the water tank.
The sea folk was still curled at the bottom.
The shaking had stopped, but she maintained that curled-up defensive posture, tightly clutching her own fish tail.
Klein walked over, squatted down, and tapped the tank wall.
The inscription stone translator was still sitting by the tank; he spoke toward it.
“Come out and talk.”
There was no response from the bottom of the tank.
Klein tapped it twice more.
The sea folk’s tail fin twitched.
After four or five seconds, she extremely slowly uncurled her body and floated up a bit.
She stopped halfway.
Both hands were still shielding her chest, and her blue eyes were clouded with unshed tears.
Klein waited for a moment, and after confirming she wouldn't shrink back again, he spoke.
“Tell me.”
The corresponding frequency of the sea folk language appeared on the inscription stone.
“What did you feel just now?”
The sea folk’s mouth opened, then closed.
Her gaze darted away, not daring to look directly at Klein.
Silence lasted for a long time.
Finally, a new line of text appeared on the inscription stone.
It was intermittent, the word order chaotic.
“Sea... the sea...”
Her body began to shake again.
Her scales stood up slightly once more.
“How did you... do that?”
The text paused for a moment, then a small addition followed.
“That thing... You... create... the sea?”
Klein simply nodded.
Yes, that was exactly what he had done.
He looked at the shivering sea folk in the tank.
He glanced up at the scorched inscription stones on the ceiling.
The gains from this experiment were far greater than expected.
He was already able to use information mimicry to simulate the will of the deep sea.
And this mimicry would directly attract the will of the deep sea.
The only pity was that his attainment in protection magic was still somewhat lacking.
He had thought his reinforced array could hold out for at least a few minutes.
As it turned out, it didn't even last ten seconds.
Three inscription stones were completely ruined, and the array chain had nearly collapsed entirely.
He couldn't touch this line of research again.
At least, not here.
Klein withdrew his gaze and looked down at the sea folk.
She was still staring at him with that terrified expression.
Klein stood up.
“Thanks.”
He said it casually.
The inscription stone translated the word.
The sea folk froze.
She opened her mouth, wanting to say something.
But in the end, she couldn't ask anything.
Klein had already turned to leave.
When he reached the door, he stopped.
He didn't look back, merely standing sideways as he spoke to the air in the workshop.
“That is the answer I got.”
The door was pushed open.
The sunlight from outside poured in, casting a warm glow on his back.
The door closed.
Silence fell over the workshop once more.
The sea folk floated alone in the center of the tank, staring blankly at the closed wooden door.
After a long time, she slowly sank to the bottom, burying her face in her arms.
The breath of the sea that the man carried, belonging to his “partner,” was so faint it almost didn't exist compared to that information stream just now.
But what radiated from him personally...
Was more terrifying than the sea.
The crack on the tank wall extended another inch in silence.
Rate on N.U.
