The story continued, accompanied by the queen's voice.
The merfolk had once been a prosperous race. Then, three hundred years ago, the balance between the races shifted. Humans, who had always ranked below the merfolk—below every other race, to be precise—suddenly acquired magic far beyond anything the world had known.
The balance shattered. Humans attacked and invaded other races at will. Even then, the strength the merfolk had accumulated was enough to hold their own.
But long after the war began, the merfolk realized that no new life had been born among them for more than a decade. As though cursed, they had lost the ability to bring children into the world.
Panic swept through their people. They could no longer resist.
Under the humans' assault, the once-thriving merfolk city collapsed into ruins. The former queen used her own body to shield her daughter from an attack and issued her final command.
Yu Xinglan's expression darkened as he watched the images slowly fade.
“We had no choice but to retreat into the deep sea, to this darkness where sunlight never reaches.”
The pink-tailed mermaid gave a bitter smile and looked straight at Yu Xinglan. Her voice trembled slightly.
“Then a god granted us a blessing. They told us there was still hope for our people.”
She had barely finished speaking.
Ding. A clear chime sounded, and a window appeared on his screen.
[Quest: The Fate of the Merfolk]
Quest description: Destined one, earn the queen's trust.
The queen composed herself, returning to her calm demeanor, and changed the subject.
“You may rest here for a while, or explore the royal city as you please.”
After she left, Yu Xinglan opened his inventory. The ornaments the merfolk had given him were listed as cosmetics. They had no special effects but could not be destroyed. He switched screens to inspect his new quest.
There were no further details beyond the text from the initial pop-up, and that single sentence might as well have told him nothing.
Yu Xinglan was in no hurry. For now, improving his combat power mattered more. It would be a lie to say the journey to the royal city had been safe. Without his careful observation, he would probably already have ended up on something's dinner plate.
Between finding a suitable weapon and learning magic, he chose the latter. He had absolute confidence in his fighting skills, but with only five points of Strength, he could not be sure those skills would do him any good.
In the worst case, he might not even be able to lift a weapon.
So he closed the quest panel and set out to find somewhere he could learn magic.
He first made a circuit of the castle. Attendants stood at every door, none of them surprised to see him.
Following their directions, Yu Xinglan soon reached the library.
Rows of dark gray shelves filled the room, apparently made from some kind of stone. Most of the books had no labels. He pulled one out at random.
A Guide to Coordinating Jewelry
He put it back and took a few more from another shelf.
Exquisite Tail Care
How to Be a Popular Merperson
Yu Xinglan stared at the assortment of books in his hands. “...?”
He pushed them back onto the shelf and, refusing to believe his luck, pulled out several more. Every last one was a book about merfolk life.
Finally, after searching several shelves, he found a book of magic tucked into an inconspicuous corner.
Its cover was yellowed and so badly worn that the title was illegible. The contents, however, were useful.
Yu Xinglan turned to a section that was still mostly intact. It did not describe a particular spell, only the process of casting.
[Sense the mana within your body. Guide it outward and condense it into a single point to give it tangible form.]
He closed his eyes and tried to feel the flow of mana inside him. Unsurprisingly, he felt nothing.
He tried the other magic in the book. Every attempt ended in failure.
After leaving the castle, all he could do was try Plan B: find a weapon. Whether or not the merfolk city had a weapons shop, he could always trade with another player as a last resort. Unfortunately, he had not acquired a single coin since entering the game.
He wondered whether he could sell the jeweled ornaments the merfolk had given him for gold.
Without realizing it, Yu Xinglan swam farther and farther from the city center, gradually reaching its outermost edge. Just as he was about to turn back, a tremendous noise made him look behind him.
“Bro, help!”
A merman shot out of nowhere and hurled himself toward him, shouting. Yu Xinglan dodged sideways, and the stranger promptly hid behind him.
Before Yu Xinglan could speak, a two-meter-long fish charged toward them from a distance. Enormous barbed spines covered its body, and it smashed through swaths of coral along the way.
As it came closer, he could make out a line of small white text above it.
[Spinefish, Level 5]
The two of them scrambled out of its path. Yu Xinglan steadied himself and scooped a palm-sized stone off the seabed.
Hard scales covered the spinefish from head to tail. A stone would barely hurt it. Still, in a game that emphasized freedom and realism, killing it was not impossible.
When it came close, he seized the chance to slam the stone into its eye.
There were no scales protecting the eye. Blood seeped from the wound, flooding the pupil and staining it vivid red.
It worked! A section vanished from the spinefish's health bar. If he kept attacking its eyes, bringing it down to zero was only a matter of time.
The injured spinefish thrashed and rolled wildly, trying to throw him off.
Yu Xinglan clung tightly to a spine on its body. The impact slammed his back against the seabed, costing him five HP. Even so, he did not stop attacking.
Before long, the spinefish's health bar emptied, and it collapsed to one side.
He tapped Loot. The corpse crumbled into dust and vanished, and two pieces of fish meat and three spinefish spines appeared in his inventory.
The experience from killing the level-five spinefish was enough to raise him two levels in a row. Leveling up restored his nearly empty health bar to full.
The small cuts the stone's sharp edges had left on his palm vanished with the level gains too.
He tossed the stone away and grabbed the person attempting to sneak off.
Caught in the act, the merman immediately surrendered. “Bro, bro, bro! Let's talk this out.”
The blue-haired merman pressed his palms together and held them high above his head. After finishing the story sequence, he had discovered that killing little fish yielded experience, so he had decided to grind a few levels nearby. Then he had accidentally fallen into a hidden cave.
The spinefish guarding its depths had attacked as soon as it saw him. He had barely managed to escape, but the damned fish would not stop chasing him. As luck would have it, another merman had been nearby.
Who knew this guy could fight so well? If he had known, he would have run while the fight was still going.
With an awkward smile, he sent Yu Xinglan a friend request. While fleeing through the cave earlier, he had swum into a dead end. An orange triangular gem and a skill book had rested on a stone platform there. Learning the skill in the book would let him determine the value of any item. He had no intention of handing over something that good.
Once the friend request was accepted, he offered the triangular gem to Yu Xinglan in a trade, looking as though it physically pained him.
“Boss, grabbing this thing is what made the spinefish chase me! Since you're the one who killed it, you can have it!”
Yu Xinglan raised an eyebrow. He had not even said anything yet.
He accepted the friend request. His friends list changed to 1/99, with a user named [GonnaGetRich] shown as online.
There was only a thirty-percent chance of dropping inventory items on death. The other player could easily have hidden the gem; even if Yu Xinglan killed him, it might not drop. Offering it now clearly meant he had obtained something better and did not want it exposed.
Yu Xinglan did not call him on it. He simply confirmed the trade.
The moment [GonnaGetRich] saw that the trade had gone through, he swam away as fast as he could.