Chapter 1062 — A Small Mistake

"Anomalous water elementals?" Metzen started, then exchanged a glance with Noretta; the two nodded in unspoken agreement, reaching a consensus without a word.

Under the present circumstances, the safety of the camp's surroundings clearly took precedence over any private matter.

...

A short while later, Noretta and Metzen arrived at the camp sector near the beach.

Some simple shelters had been built here from materials gathered out of the ruins, and the broad ground inside and outside the camp had been cleared reasonably clean and level. On the open ground at the southeast corner of the camp, several dragons in human form stood to one side, and Metzen, who had just landed and likewise taken human form, saw at a glance the small water elementals darting in swift circles across the clearing.

The clearing bore runes of a rough and rugged style—rune matrices the dragons had constructed directly with their talons and the power of speech. These arrays had limited effect, but they were enough to confine weak small water elementals—three pale blue water elementals barely十几 centimeters tall, like inverted water droplets, were racing round and round within the barrier formed by the runes, emitting thin, shrill cries as they ran, though the cries were hard to make out.

Water elementals this small... and they still had the capacity for language?

Metzen had truly never seen such a thing. So far as she knew, the lower elemental creatures had almost no intelligence and could not produce speech, moving only like blind, dull low animals, and any elemental creature capable of speech had at least a body to match—so what was the story with these chattering little "droplets" before her?

Driven by curiosity, she could not help stepping two paces forward and bending down to bring her ear close to one of the water elementals; after listening intently for a long while, she finally made out the content of its thin, blurred cries. The weak little creature had been shouting the same sentence over and over: "Jing dai zhe yi ge zuo, jing dai zhe yi ge zuo..."

Noretta heard it too, and a baffled expression came over her face. "'Jing dai zhe yi ge zuo'... what does that mean?"

"No idea. I don't understand elemental creatures' social customs either—I've only dealt with them when I was collecting debts," Metzen said with a shrug. "And besides, that a water elemental this small has language ability at all is strange enough..."

Every dragon on the scene was baffled, and what Metzen said was exactly what they were puzzling over, when at that moment another dragon came flying in from the direction of the coast and, before even drawing close, called out loudly: "Captain! We've caught some strange 'fish' in the coastal waters, and... and a..."

"And a what?" Metzen, displeased by the other's hesitant manner, could not help frowning, and then without waiting for an answer she pulled Noretta along beside her. "Never mind. Let's go take a look."

Too many strange things had happened on this beach once ravaged by divine power; it was only natural for dragons out in the field to encounter phenomena they could not understand. As the one in charge here, Metzen felt it was better to handle matters in person when they came up.

With that thought, it did not take her long to reach an open patch of ground outside the camp, and from far off she saw several of her kin still in dragon form gathered along the rubble-strewn shore. She recognized them as the dragons on fishing duty that day, and among them... she could vaguely make out figures that ought not to appear on the soil of Tarond.

Metzen drew closer, and the dragons around her parted to let her through; the encircled figures came into her view, and at first glance she saw about ten tall, wary half-human beings with unmistakable deep-sea traits—yellow-brown eyes and fine scales covering their bodies, skin of deep blue or cyan glistening with moisture, the lower half a thick sea serpent's body (or perhaps a strange fish tail), the upper half close to human, with webbing visible between their fingers.

These strange half-human beings held metal tridents and wore equipment she could not identify—the dragons of Tarond did not know these creatures, for as a race they had come into being in the deep sea only recently, yet Metzen recognized them.

These were naga, naga who ought to dwell in the distant deep sea and had only recently established contact with the north of the Loren continent—she had chanced upon a small amount of material about this race while out on field duty for the Cecil Empire.

So these were the so-called "strange fish"?

Metzen's eyes went wide, and just as she was puzzling over why naga should be seen here, the next instant she spotted another figure among the naga clustered around it: a black-haired siren.

In that instant she understood why the dragon had suddenly faltered: ordinary dragons did not know the naga, but the siren they did know. Though this race was exceedingly mysterious, communicating with almost no power beyond the deep sea, and the dragons themselves were barred by all manner of former "taboos" from dealing with these "visitors from beyond the stars" who possessed starships, this was, after all, a race with a long history on this planet—at least, material about them had once been easy enough to find in the old Omega Network.

So... the fishing party had just "caught" a group of naga, and a siren?

The expression on Metzen's face turned strange in an instant; the corner of her mouth twitched once, and only then did she walk with somewhat stiff steps toward the uninvited guests, while the siren, shielded by the naga, noticed the stir around her and turned to look this way.

Only then did Metzen notice that something seemed to be coiled in the siren's curled tail. Looking closer, she made out that the tip of that long tail was wrapped around a water elemental thrashing with all its might.

The unknown siren smiled at Metzen, its long tail curling and shifting as it brought the captured water elemental up to its lips—and only then did Metzen realize that the creature had not merely been caught, but had a drinking straw stuck into it...

The next second, the siren clamped down on the straw and sucked hard. The water elemental instantly let out an angry, shrill screech: "You always pick on just one to slurp! Always just one to slurp!"

Metzen: "......?"

In the somewhat awkward silence, one of the naga finally broke it. He turned to the black-haired siren beside him. "Lady Cassandra, aren't we supposed to be near the Eternal Storm? How did we... end up in a place like this?"

"I am thinking," said the black-haired siren called Cassandra, flinging away the water elemental—now drained to barely a dozen centimeters tall—and gazing thoughtfully at the bewildered dragons around them. "This place..."

The water elemental dumped on the ground wobbled in place twice, then bolted into the distance while shrieking furiously: "Always just one to slurp, always just one to slurp!!"

"Actually, I didn't really pick just one..." Cassandra shook her head. "Never mind, that's not important. What matters is that I do believe we swam past..."