The ocean was really beautiful from this height.
I had been flying for about twenty minutes, and I kept getting distracted by the view. It was not very efficient, but the southern sea looked different from above. The deeper parts were dark green-blue, while the shallow water was a bright aquamarine. White waves moved across the surface, and fishing boats looked like small seeds scattered over a table.
It was the kind of view that made me understand why people in my old world paid so much money to sit inside a metal tube and look out of a window for thirty seconds before clouds covered everything.
I was not inside a metal tube.
I was wearing a southern summer dress, flying three hundred meters above the sea, and looking at the view for free.
Nice.
This was the first genuinely nice thing that had happened in four days.
The island cluster Selene had pointed me toward was visible on the Map UI. The gold quest markers were about fifteen kilometers south-southwest.
That distance had not looked very far on the map.
It was much farther when I had to cross it through the air with reduced power.
That was the other problem.
I had left the Tezca estate at full speed, which was genuinely fast. It was the speed I had developed during the mausoleum arc, but I had not used it much in normal situations because it tended to make people nervous.
I had already cleared the harbor and the outer bay. I was about six kilometers over the open sea when a wall of notifications appeared.
Not one or two.
A lot of them.
[NOTICE: You are entering the operational range of a Unique Quest designation.]
[NOTICE: For the duration of 「Woe is the Tyrant, Who Terrorizes the Ocean」, divine interference has been suspended.]
[NOTE: This includes all deities currently registered to your account, regardless of affiliation or contract status.]
[NOTICE: Your familiar 「Trynda, Divine Beast of Light」 has been temporarily restricted from accompanying you for the duration of the Unique Quest. Your familiar will remain at your last known position.]
[NOTICE: Due to the unique quest's anti-divine architecture, your active Divinity level has been reduced.]
[Current Divinity Classification: S+ (Restricted)]
[NOTICE: Related physical augmentation parameters have been adjusted proportionally.]
[Translation: You are going a bit slower now.]
I read the last notice twice.
"'You are going a bit slower now,'" I said to the open sea. "A bit slower?"
Someone had written that as a system note. It was being used for a notification about divine power being suppressed over an unknown area of the sea.
Trynda had gone quiet behind me.
I looked back and saw them sitting on the water with their wings spread. They were about two kilometers behind me and getting smaller.
"Trynda," I thought.
[Trynda says they are fine. They will wait here.]
I'll come back.
[Trynda says they know.]
That answer sounded upset.
It was probably my fault.
[Trynda has ended this communication.]
I turned back toward the islands.
The speed reduction was annoying, but it was not a serious problem. I was still faster than a boat and faster than anything the Moglo fleet could track.
I was just no longer moving at a ridiculous speed.
The divine restriction also made sense. The idols were anti-divine structures, so they would naturally interfere with divine power in their area.
Right.
I was entering the quest with restricted divinity, no familiar, and reduced speed.
Great.
This was going to be a growth experience.
I continued flying.
The first island changed from a green mark on the horizon into actual land. It had a rocky coast and thick vegetation, and it looked like the kind of small island that appeared at the edge of maps without having a name.
The air around it smelled different from the open sea.
Older.
Heavier.
I approached the island and ran into the wall.
It was not a physical wall, and I could not see anything in front of me. There was simply a point where moving forward became impossible.
It felt less like hitting something and more like the air itself had decided that I was not allowed to go there.
I pushed against it.
Nothing happened.
There was no resistance. I simply could not move forward, like trying to push water out of the shape of a container.
I pushed harder.
Nothing.
I gathered my strength and tried again.
Nothing.
I used every physical enhancement available to me at S+ divinity and focused everything in front of me.
The barrier did not move.
It was doing nothing.
The Map UI showed the gold quest marker on the other side, perhaps three kilometers past the barrier.
Okay.
I could not enter directly.
I descended toward the coast.
The sound reached me before I landed.
It was not exactly the sound of a battle. It was the sound of many small things moving quickly through plants and shallow water at the same time.
It sounded like a group running toward something instead of away from it.
I landed on a rocky cliff above the beach and looked down.
The Moglo had reached the waterline.
There were around forty or fifty of them spread across the beach in the skirmish formation I had started to recognize. They carried spears, wore masks, and communicated through drumbeats.
They were pushing something toward the water.
Or trying to.
The other group was pushing back.
The aquatic creatures looked like a complete mess at first. There were fish-like creatures with legs, jellyfish-like creatures that were somehow fighting, and at least two shapes I could not identify.
They might have been large pieces of seaweed.
They might have been creatures with too many trailing parts.
All of them were making loud sounds. The sounds were not quite language, but they had a structure to them. There were calls, responses, and repeated sounds.
They were coordinating even through the chaos.
At the center of the group was a small figure about knee-height. It was giving orders as if its size had nothing to do with its authority.
The water spirit was blue.
Not blue like a person with a blue tint.
It was a bright blue, with the glow of a deep-sea creature made smaller and much cuter. It had fins where its ears should have been and eyes that took up almost half its face.
It probably lived in dark water.
That explained the eyes.
Its tiny hands moved in clear signals, and the creatures behind it followed those signals.
The spirit pointed right, and the formation moved right.
It made a quick gesture, and something large moved forward from the rear.
It pointed with both hands, and two creatures attacked the same Moglo from opposite sides.
Oh.
They were actually good at this.
The Moglos were being pushed back.
They were disciplined enough not to panic, and the drumbeats kept them organized, but their line was moving toward the forest instead of toward the water.
That was the wrong direction.
I watched for another thirty seconds.
The water spirit's group had a numbers problem. There were about fifty Moglos, and the aquatic creatures had fewer than that.
Their flanks were becoming thin, and the water spirit was making faster gestures to cover the openings.
Right.
I jumped from the cliff.
Taking thirty Moglos out of the fight changed the situation.
I entered from behind, where they had not expected me. Their drumbeats became frantic, then panicked.
The aquatic creatures attacked from the front and sides while the Moglos tried to understand what was happening behind them.
Once the main problem was dealt with, the rest of the battle began to solve itself.
The Moglos broke.
They did not run immediately. They tried to hold their formation first, and I had to respect that.
They were disciplined.
But when the rear of a formation could not understand what was removing its soldiers, the front had to decide whether to continue attacking or protect the back.
They chose to protect it.
The drumbeats changed to a retreat signal.
They entered the forest in good order.
The beach became quiet.
The aquatic creatures began celebrating.
The large creatures with too many fins made sounds that sounded like cheering. The jellyfish creatures moved up and down, and the fish-things with legs appeared to be hugging each other.
Then the water spirit turned around.
It ran across the beach toward me with its arms spread wide.
"You helped! You helped, you helped, you helped!"
Its voice was the most adorable thing I had heard in either of my lives.
It was very high and very fast, like someone with too many feelings and not enough room for them.
The spirit stopped about a foot away and looked up at me with enormous eyes.
"Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!"
"You're welcome," I said.
"We've been trying to hold that position for two days—"
The spirit suddenly stopped and stared at me.
Its eyes became even wider.
"…You understood me," it said slowly.
The language was not quite a language. It had structure, but I did not recognize the words.
"Yes," I said.
"You understood me."
"Yes."
"But you're—" It tilted its head and made a gesture that seemed to mean land creature. "You're not—"
"No," I said. "I'm not."
I crouched down so we were closer to the same height.
"I can't explain it properly. My name is Josephine. What's your name?"
The water spirit stared at me for a moment, then looked back at the creatures behind it before looking at me again.
"…Kuu," it said, as if testing whether it was safe to say. "My name is Kuu."
"Kuu," I repeated. "Can you tell me what is happening on these islands?"
Kuu's expression changed.
The celebration faded, and something more serious appeared.
"You already know some things," Kuu said.
"A little. Mo Ko Tu'Aa. The idols. The ritual."
Kuu stared at me.
"How do you—"
They stopped, then tried again.
"Land creatures usually know nothing."
"I found a book," I said.
That was technically the truth.
Kuu sat down on the beach and folded their legs under them. They were clearly comfortable near water.
The aquatic creatures settled behind them in a loose circle and watched us.
"Then I will tell you what the book did not tell you," Kuu said.
The story was this.
The ocean had once been ruled by a being named Rhea.
Not managed.
Not governed.
Ruled.
Rhea had lived in the sea longer than most things had names. She was not one of the gods I knew. She was something older and more specific.
She was not the god of the ocean in an abstract sense.
She was the ocean's own ruler, born from it in the same way that a river came from rain.
Under Rhea, the sea had been different. Things lived in it and moved through it. The balance was complicated and sometimes violent, but it worked.
Then Mo Ko Tu'Aa came from the deep.
Not from the bottom of the ocean.
From outside.
From the spaces between things, the way some beings came from places that were not really places.
It wanted the ocean.
It did not want to rule the sea as Rhea had ruled it. It wanted to own the sea and change it according to its own pride.
It won.
Rhea was killed, or something close enough that the difference no longer mattered.
The ocean changed.
The Moglo and Mogloko were followers of Mo Ko Tu'Aa. They had lived on the coastal islands before Mo Ko Tu'Aa appeared, but they eventually accepted its worship.
The idols were their way of worshipping.
They were also more than that.
They were anchors and parts of a ritual that had been building for a long time. If the ritual finished, Mo Ko Tu'Aa would be released from wherever the surviving ocean beings had sealed it.
"Rhea's allies sealed it," Kuu said. "Not completely. Most of them died doing it. The seal holds Mo Ko Tu'Aa's body, but its influence still comes through."
"The Moglo worship feeds it?"
Kuu nodded.
"The idols collect the worship and send it to the seal. Every idol that completes its ritual weakens the seal."
"How close is the ritual?"
Kuu's fin-like ears flattened.
"Close. The fleet attacked the southern shores because the ritual requires the sacrifice of coastal populations. Anyone who dies near the sea while a Moglo idol is active adds power to it."
Kuu paused.
"It does not matter if the dead are followers. Any death is enough."
I thought about that.
The fleet attacking Marisport.
The Moglos at the wall.
It was not only an attack.
It was a harvest.
"The idols," I said. "You have tried to destroy them."
"Many times."
Kuu's voice became flat. They had clearly been dealing with this for a long time.
"They cannot be broken like normal things. Each one does something that makes fighting near it wrong. I cannot explain it properly."
They looked at me.
"You will understand when you face one."
"I can handle difficult fights."
Kuu looked at me.
They did not answer immediately.
That was an answer.
"Land creatures who came here before said the same thing," Kuu said.
"I'm not a normal land creature."
"I believe you," Kuu said. They sounded sympathetic. "I still think you should be careful."
I stood up.
"Thank you, Kuu. I understand the situation now, so I'll take it from here."
Kuu looked at me with an expression that clearly said they had a bad feeling about this and knew I would not change my mind.
"The first idol is northwest of here, on Knuckle Rock Island," Kuu said. "You will see the green glow when you get close."
"Green glow. Got it."
I turned toward the forest.
This would be fine.
I had handled worse things.
I would say this about the Green Idol.
It looked extremely cool.
Green light pulsed from the ground through the stone idol like a visible heartbeat. The island had taken on the same color. The plants seemed to glow from below, and the shadows were striped with green.
The Moglo guarding it moved in perfect synchronization with the pulse.
Their drumbeats followed the same rhythm, and their attacks were timed to it.
Very cool.
Genuinely very cool.
I entered with confidence.
I used Ashkart's footwork, full spatial awareness, and every movement I had learned after being killed in that corridor enough times to stop thinking about where my feet were.
Then the idol's ability activated.
My dodge happened early.
The input was correct, and the timing had been correct. My body performed the same movement it had performed thousands of times.
But the dodge started before the spear arrived.
That meant I reached the end of the movement just as the spear arrived, and it struck my shoulder.
It did not hurt because my physical stats were still S+, but it was not where I wanted to be.
I adjusted my timing.
My next attack came late.
I had repeated that combination hundreds of thousands of times in Ashkart's corridor: first strike, short pause, follow-up, two-beat interval.
The first strike landed. The pause passed. I threw the follow-up.
It arrived after the opening had closed.
The Moglo had already moved.
I stood inside the idol's range and blinked.
What?
I tried again.
The decision was correct. The input was correct. My body performed exactly what I told it to do.
Everything was simply arriving at the wrong time.
There was a pattern to it.
A pulse.
Whenever I thought I had found the new rhythm, the idol changed it.
It was not random. It was designed to destroy patterns.
The more I tried to understand its timing, the more it changed to match and break my timing.
I had spent an unreasonable amount of time making my movements precise.
The Green Idol specifically attacked that precision.
I was hit three times by Moglo spears that I had dodged correctly and still somehow remained in front of.
The idol's wind magic hit me twice, even though I had moved at the correct time.
I destroyed zero percent of the idol.
So I left.
The aquatic creatures had set up a temporary camp on the beach outside the barrier. It was organized and more prepared than I expected.
The creatures with trailing fins formed a defensive line. The jellyfish gathered near what appeared to be a water source, and the fish-things with legs were sorting supplies.
Kuu was sitting on a flat rock and looking out at the sea.
They heard me approach and turned around.
I sat down beside them.
There was a short silence.
"So," Kuu said carefully.
"The green thing," I said.
"Yes?"
"What was that supposed to be?"
Kuu's fin-like ears lowered in what I was beginning to recognize as the aquatic version of a wince.
"I said I could not explain it in words."
"It found my rhythm," I said. "It found my rhythm specifically. The more I adjusted, the more it adjusted to me."
I pressed my fingers against my temples.
"I have spent an unreasonable amount of time building the exact thing it destroys."
"Yes," Kuu said. "That is what it does."
"To everyone?"
"The better the fighter, the worse it is."
Kuu looked at me.
"I tried to warn you."
"You did. I was very confident then."
"I noticed."
I looked at the ocean.
The Map UI still showed the quest markers, the idol locations, and the fleet positions. It also showed the timer I had started when I left Marisport.
It was based on my estimate of how long the wall would last, so it was not exact.
It was also not comforting.
The fleet was still at Marisport. Every hour I spent on the island was another hour the wall held because of my enchantments instead of anything else.
Enchantments had limits.
I probably had one day before the weaker sections began failing.
So I had about twenty-four hours before the people behind me ran out of wall.
I could not destroy the idol with brute force because it had been made to turn my strength against me.
I also could not call for divine help because the quest had suspended divine interference.
Alone, restricted, and on a deadline.
Great.
I looked at Kuu.
Kuu looked back at me.
Their enormous eyes had the same expression again. It was not quite sympathy and not quite "I told you so," but it was definitely both.
"The creatures here," I said. "How many are there in total?"
"On this island? Forty-three."
Kuu looked toward the camp.
"There are more on the other islands, but not many."
"Can they fight near the idol without the timing problem?"
Kuu tilted their head.
"We are not—"
They made a gesture.
"We do not fight according to rhythms like land creatures. We move with the water. The idol breaks patterns, but we do not have the same patterns to break."
I thought about that.
Ashkart's style depended on rhythm.
It depended on timing and patterns.
The Green Idol found patterns and destroyed them.
So pattern was the weakness.
Not the solution.
I needed something that did not depend on one fixed pattern.
Or I needed to create so many patterns at the same time that the idol could not break all of them.
I looked toward the camp.
Forty-three creatures that moved with the water instead of following one fixed rhythm.
Kuu was watching me.
"I have a question."
"Yes?"
"If I coordinated with your group and we attacked together, would the idol have to split its disruption between several different movements?"
Kuu stared at me.
"I don't know," Kuu said slowly. "We have never tried."
"Why not?"
"Because we did not have anyone who could—"
Kuu stopped and tried again.
"We did not have a land creature who could coordinate with us. Someone who understood what we said."
"Right."
We looked at each other.
"I need time to plan," I said. "I also need you to teach me how your group moves. Not fixed patterns. I want to understand how you make decisions together."
Kuu's fin-like ears rose.
"You want to fight like water."
"I want to fight like something the idol was not made to handle."
I paused.
"That is probably the same thing."
Kuu was quiet for a moment.
Then I understood why the aquatic creatures followed them.
Kuu stood on the rock, turned toward the camp, and made a clear gesture with both hands. They called out in the language that was almost language.
The answer came immediately.
Several voices responded, loud and enthusiastic.
Kuu turned back to me.
"They want to help," Kuu said. Their expression was uncertain but sincere, like someone who had been dealing with a difficult problem alone for a long time and had just been offered help they had not expected.
"All of us do."
Right.
Okay, then.
"Show me how you move," I said.