In some places, wild beasts were simply stronger than certain monsters.
It was perfectly straightforward, really.
A great mountain bear could dispatch a handful of Goblins without the slightest effort. That much was obvious to anyone.
In ancient times, in many remote corners of the world, customs had flourished around the worship of such local "deities" — this included even the Far East, the homeland of Haruhime and her people, where legends of the "fox god" had been passed down through countless generations.
In those distant days, Demi-humans themselves had been regarded as messengers of the gods, or even their direct descendants.
On the continent, thanks to the spread of adventurers and their way of life, such beliefs had almost entirely vanished. But out at sea, things might be different.
And of course, beyond that, there were also places that revered powerful monsters as "deities" in their own right.
Because among monsters, hierarchy was absolute.
Where a powerful monster held its territory, weaker creatures simply dared not tread. And so there were nations that depended on that very fact for their survival — venerating such monsters as gods, going so far as to conduct bloody rites and offer up their own people.
Stories like these.
Not only had Lefiya heard many of them — Isagi and Haruhime had their share too.
And so, without anyone quite meaning for it to happen, a storytelling circle had formed.
The three of them traded tales back and forth, chatting on and on until the sun had sunk low and a sky full of stars and a crescent moon emerged across the vault of the heavens — casting their light across the deep, still, pitch-black sea until it shimmered and gleamed.
They shared a simple dinner.
Isagi returned to his cabin and gazed out at the distant edge of the sea. A faint, inexplicable radiance seemed to linger there, at the very rim of the horizon.
The world was unusually quiet.
Leftiya and Haruhime had both already gone to bed.
Perhaps it was the lingering warmth of the evening, or perhaps simply the weight of the day — either way, Isagi drifted off somewhere between one thought and the next.
Until—
Deep in the night.
At some point, the stars had grown thin and scattered. The moon had retreated behind a curtain of layered clouds.
A light rain began to fall over the sea.
Fine, soundless curtains of rain descended without a murmur, leaving faint, thin traces across the small round porthole of his cabin.
Isagi heard something stir.
Inside his very room. Probably Lefiya.
He didn't think much of it — he just wanted to keep sleeping. But soon, beyond the faint and distinctly clean floral scent that always clung to the Elf girl—
He caught another smell.
Something damp. Something that drifted up from deep within the sea.
"Guu-guu-guu—"
A strange sound reached him at the same moment.
Isagi opened his eyes.
And there, in the hazy dim light — right at the edge of his bed — he found a pair of large round eyes staring straight at him.
...?
They were Lefiya's eyes.
Only — between his gaze and the girl's, there was a thin, faintly translucent veil of something. Silvery, with just the faintest blush of cherry-pink. Like a kind of... fabric?
What the—?!
It took him several seconds to fully claw his way back from the realm of sleep into reality.
Only then did Isagi notice: Lefiya was cradling something soft and squishy between her hands.
"A jellyfish!"
It certainly looked like one.
A near-transparent body, a fluffy and yielding bell, and a cascade of slender, trailing tentacles stretching out beneath it.
Isagi was still trying to puzzle it out.
What on earth was Lefiya doing in his room in the middle of the night, holding a thing like that?
And then.
He witnessed something that made him doubt his own eyes.
The jellyfish in the Elf girl's hands spoke.
"Hungry hungry—"
The voice was unmistakably clear — soft, round, and childlike. The voice of a tiny little girl.
...Huh?!
Since when do jellyfish talk?!
Isagi blinked, rapidly. His first thought was: Is this thing a Xenos? — but it didn't look remotely humanoid.
Or maybe... had it become a spirit creature?
A yokai.
It was a word Isagi was not at all unfamiliar with.
Like the very things he and Lefiya and Haruhime had been discussing just that afternoon — the "beasts" and "monsters" that people in remote regions had worshipped as deities.
In ages long past, people had also called such beings yokai — and that, too, was a tradition of the Far East.
Isagi was more than familiar with the concept.
In the world of the [Land of Reeds], there had been the Divine Serpent, the Guardian Ape, and even monkeys wielding long blades who had become spirits in their own right.
The great fish known as the Noble.
The headless wraith and Rin, who had become vengeful spirits after death.
And beyond all that—
The world of [Retracing the Westward Journey] went without saying. That place had been crawling with yokai of every conceivable variety.
And so, as Isagi sat there by the warm amber glow of the Magic Stone lantern in his cabin—
Looking at the little pink jellyfish sitting in a wooden bucket full of seawater, blowing bubbles while singing a cheerfully off-key little tune—
His very first thought was: Could this be my own Divine Power at work again?
And indeed it was.
Because Isagi quickly realized that the store of Divine Power he had been accumulating over this stretch of time had, once again, been spent.
"Oh, she's adorable!"
"She really is! What does she eat?"
"I'm not sure — I just gave her a little fish..."
"Meat! Meat!"
The tiny creature suddenly piped up with that, which made both Lefiya and Haruhime jump.
"She can understand us!"
"She's so clever!"
"We should give her a name — what would suit her, I wonder..."
"Mnh!"
Isagi, for his part, felt the first stirrings of a headache.
According to Lefiya, she had gotten up in the middle of the night thinking to go up on deck for some fresh air.
And then she noticed it — tiny, faint pink specks of light drifting across the surface of the sea.
And then.
The little creature had gone whoosh! — shooting straight up out of the water, sailing right through the air, and landing directly in front of Lefiya. As though delivered there by some miracle from the heavens.
Hearing that, Isagi became all the more certain.
Oh no.
This one came straight for me.
The thought that flashed through his mind next was: Don't tell me I actually awakened some little creature of the sea and turned her into a spirit yokai...?!
With that weighing on him.
In the end, it was Haruhime who gave the small jellyfish her name — one with a distinctly Far Eastern flavor, and a beautiful one at that.
[Saika].
"Eat slowly now — there's plenty more."
"Mm!"
"Goodness, she really is the most adorable thing, isn't she!"
For the next several days, Lefiya and Haruhime were almost entirely fixated on the little jellyfish.
The two girls were astounded to discover that Saika seemed to have a particular fondness for monsters — those aquatic creatures that periodically attacked the ship in swarms. Once they and the girls had put them down and tossed the remains into her bucket—
Saika would set to work with those slender, delicate tentacles of hers, picking through every last scrap — until not a single piece remained.
Leaving only tiny Magic Stones glittering at the bottom of the wooden bucket.
Strange, indeed.
This confirmed something for Isagi: Saika was definitely not a monster, nor a Xenos, nor anything like the things they had encountered before — such as the Viola vine growth connected to the Corrupted Spirit.
Because those ate Magic Stones, drawing their power from them as a vital source.
From everything he had observed, Saika ate monsters — not Magic Stones.
She was, however, quite interested in the [Exquisite Pills] he kept on hand — which fit perfectly with the lore of [Retracing the Westward Journey].
Isagi hadn't started feeding them to her yet. After all, he still hadn't figured out anything concrete about what she was.
He kept thinking: Surely she won't be able to take a humanoid form one day — that would be far too strange...
Actually.
...By the setting's own logic, that should be completely, perfectly normal.
Hmm.
With that thought quietly turning in the back of his mind, the days slipped by before he quite noticed — and then, from far in the distance, a silhouette came into view that felt somehow familiar.
A stretch of fine, lingering rain over the past several days had blunted the blazing summer heat, at least a little.
Beneath a canopy of dull gray cloud and mist.
The vast "body" of the [Academic District] rose up from the waterline — and at a glance, it looked for all the world like an island floating in the middle of the sea.
Tall structures rose thickly above it, and encircling it all, shimmering, gauze-like propulsion arrays drifted slowly in the wind like living things, iridescent as a mirage.
The cargo ship they had boarded was no small vessel.
And yet — the closer they drew, the more one felt, with visceral clarity, just how terrifyingly small it was by comparison.
The [Academic District] had arrived.
All that remained was to load the Adamantite onto the ship and head home.
The journey here had been free of any particular trouble.
Apart from picking up one small jellyfish named Saika, there really wasn't much worth noting — and it would be wonderful if the return trip proved just as smooth.
For the moment, at least, it seemed as though there shouldn't be anything to worry about.
The light rain had gradually tapered off and died away. The surface of the sea appeared calm and placid.
But beneath the water — as something immense and enormous began to stir — schools of fish scattered wildly in every direction, fleeing in panic.
Something of unimaginable, colossal scale — whether it had been following them all this way, or had been drawn here by something else entirely — had at last, from the very deepest floor of the ocean, opened its eyes.
____
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