The next few hours passed in a blur and were filled with all manner of discoveries. I continued to receive valuable explanations provided to me by the strange note my house had given me and in doing so learned all manner of important things.
Firstly I actually learned more of the powers that I possessed, but still not all of them. Even before "becoming" an Ackatrayelu I had abilities that I hadn't used such as healing, an ability called "Diagnostic vision" and the ability to talk to plants, the power to command and empower both plants and animals, as well as other powers.
Upon becoming or rather impersonating the Ackatrayelu I gained a far more diverse set of powers to complement and expand my existing abilities.
As what amounted to an infant Ackatrayelu I had a number of truly fun-sounding powers. The most basic of my new abilities including things like photokinesis and pyrokinesis, but I also had other, stranger abilities such as "Pyroportation", which I knew at a glance was "fire teleportation", as well as its light-based counterpart, and immunity to fire and light-based attacks and auric abilities.
The knowledge that in time I'd gain more powers was awe-inspiring, as it meant that an adult, fully-grown, and matured Ackatrayelu must be unbelievably powerful. I enjoyed the knowledge that in time I'd become more powerful and gain greater influence over light itself.
I didn't just learn about myself from the note. Upon returning home I tried to go to sleep but when I was in my bed I quickly realized that I wasn't tired at all. In fact, I felt more energized than I ever had. I instead allowed myself to meditate on my bed instead of sleeping, and before I knew it hours had passed and the sun was just peeking out from over the horizon. It seemed that I didn't need sleep, which if true would be incredibly handy.
Upon realizing that a new day was beginning I would begin to make another important discovery. I went down to the bottom floor of my property to grab some food, effectively teleporting there with the immense speed at which I moved when no one was looking, only to find that I wasn't hungry either. It appeared that either by being the reincarnated hero of the Verdad empire or by being the Ackatrayelu I had become some sort of truly immortal being.
These passive abilities could make life far more convenient for me as they allowed me to do things without mundane, mortal distractions. Not needing sleep, food, or water would allow me all the time in the world to do far more important things than sustain my body. This meant that I could focus and make full use of every single second of every single day.
Once I had made those discoveries my day was able to begin in full. And as it did I began to hear the world awaken around me.
During the night even with my enhanced hearing, things had been somewhat quiet. That gradually came to an end with the beginning of today. I slowly began to hear the earliest awakening animals and humans awaken from their slumber, and as the sun hit me through a window I began to hear plants "speaking" for the first time as well.
"How strange..." I remarked as I "heard" strands of grass begin to "whisper" to each other outside of my home. I knew that I could do more than just hear animals and plants now, which I intended to take full advantage of in the future.
I wasn't able to just hear the grass though. I could clearly hear all manner of supposedly "secret" conversations going on as well, and more than a few of them involved me which brought a smile to my face.
"Aside from the emperor himself, who is of course already married, the hero is THE single most important person you could marry. If you can marry him..." One distant, masculine voice whispered, almost conspiratorially.
"Yes, yes, yes, I KNOW. If I marry him... Our household skyrockets in importance, becoming the second most important noble house in the entire empire." Another young, feminine voice whispered back.
"Don't get snippy with me. By sending you today, on the first full day he'll be here, there's a chance we're sending you before anyone else has had a chance to prep their daughters." The masculine voice snapped back. There was a level of wisdom in his words, which made me chuckle. That said, other "nobles" in the area were equally as ambitious and were even now preparing their daughters to send to meet me.
My immense hearing was also strong enough to allow me to hear conversations happening as far as Nadri's village without any difficulty at all. I had actually heard Nadri return to her home and had felt the awe she inspired with her story of the Ackatrayelu saving her.
Some of her people had been skeptical, but their skepticism had faded away when some of the men who had been with her revealed the severed head of the dragon I had defeated. Their belief in me surged and empowered me even further, which delighted me to no end. This way of accruing power was no joke and for someone as innately theatrical as myself, it was an easy set of rules to take advantage of.
At the moment Nadri was having an intense discussion with her father. Unsurprisingly the topic of the conversation was her harrowing tale of the treatment she endured at the hands of the Toreans and my daring rescue.
While she was doing that, and while numerous noble daughters were busying themselves preparing to come to me, I myself was flying in the air above my home. I quietly gazed out at the lands beside my home, which were currently either unused or were where various markers had been placed by the Verdadian military to signal that they were the sights of various future developments such as fields for farming or buildings.
I studied the world around me. I knew now that I was an immensely powerful being. I had fought against a creature out of myth, a dragon, and won singlehandedly. I knew that if I became overconfident I'd run the risk of experiencing disaster but I also knew that to pretend I was weaker than I was, was itself foolish.
"My power is no joke..." I uttered, even as my immense senses continued to adjust and expand and allowed me to discover all manner of things about my surroundings. It was while I was studying the area outside of my home that I heard an especially interesting voice. One that came from within the sea behind my home.
I had been staring at a sign indicating that eventually, a house was to be built where the sign was placed when I heard a deep, melodious voice begin to think aloud. The voice came from behind me, in the ocean itself, but its words were fascinating.
"They have rejoiced... Some of them are out on the water again. What a strange choice they have made... I must warn my people." The voice, a beautiful, deep voice, uttered. It even referred to the fact that a handful of fishermen were out on the water on tiny fishing boats.
I had quickly learned that animals sounded different from humans, and yet that voice was clearly neither non-human animal nor human. It belonged to some strange third group of creatures.
My first inclination was to suspect that it was an underwater plant. Perhaps seaweed. However I heard the creature begin to move, and immediately realized that it wasn't a plant. I turned to face the ocean and began to search for the origin of the voice. Discovering it didn't take long since the actual creature who had been speaking was unlike anything I had ever seen before.
I peered into the ocean, relying on my truly immensely powerful vision to peer into the murky depths of the ocean just a few dozen meters away from the shoreline. My eyes scanned the water's murky depths, and as the water deepened more and more creatures began to become visible. But when I spotted the creature I knew immediately that it was what I was looking for.
The voice belonged to a mermaid. She was swimming in an area of the ocean just far enough to be at the very edge of the continental shelf and was making her way to the continental slope. When she had first spoken she had been thinking out loud and as I watched her I realized that she must have been spying on my people from a relatively deep part of the continental slope to allow her to be unseen by fishermen while still being able to watch them.
She was a surprisingly beautiful creature and was dressed like a warrior, wearing armor made from the scales of several different sorts of fish and wielding a spear made of fish bones. She had long, blonde hair and as I studied her I quietly wondered if she was a product of evolution or some sort of truly magical being who was created in defiance of natural laws.
It only took me a second to theorize that mermaids in this world, or at least ones like her, could only be the product of magical, divine, or otherwise supernatural intervention that halted natural processes. She was a human-like mermaid, and though I was no biologist I knew enough about evolution to know that a "realistic" mermaid would not be humanlike in appearance.
She had a human's upper body and the lower body of a massive koi fish. I studied her for a few moments before moving to the area above her. The split second I teleported I found myself in the empty air above the ocean, and directly beneath me was the strange mermaid.
When I teleported to where she was, my senses immediately adjusted and I began to clearly hear others like her. I heard their voices and noted that each of them had a powerful, elegant, attractive voice in their own distinct ways. A not small part of me wondered if they were capable of using their voices like sirens from my homeworld's mythology could; to lure people to their doom. That said I hadn't come here merely to observe. I had come here to act.
I reached out with my mind and grabbed the mermaid's spear from her. She couldn't resist the telekinesis as her grip on her spear had been casual and loose.
The weapon was pulled from her grip and began to move freely through the water, dashing through the water in my direction. The mermaid hissed in shock and anger, the sound surprisingly snake-like and twisted her body to follow the spear. She began to dash towards it, movingly impressively fast but not fast enough.
The spear shot out of the water, and I rose a hand to aim and activated a power that I knew could stop the mermaid. A split second after the spear shot out of the water the mermaid remained hyper-focused on it and I activated "photokinesis" in one of the neater potential ways I could use that immensely handy power: light solidification.
At this shallow depth, there was still a healthy amount of light in the ocean's waters. I reached out with my mind and manipulated, in the form of solidifying, that light to create a wall in front of the mermaid. She slammed into it, due to not knowing that it was there, and as she forcibly came to a stop she noticed me for the first time.
Our eyes made contact even as her spear reached my hands. I grabbed the thing with ease and stared at her curiously. As I did I took a second to mentally visualize a line connecting our two minds which worked almost immediately and allowed me to begin to hear her confused thoughts.
"What is... he? He looks human but he's floating in the air, and I have to assume that he made the... barrier that stopped me." She thought to herself, not panicking but definitely unsure of what I was and what was to come.
"Mermaid... I heard you earlier. Why do you wish to 'warn your people'? What will you warn them of, exactly?" I asked, through our mental connection. Her eyes widened when she heard my words reverberate throughout her mind.
"He can... No, You can hear my thoughts?" She asked, in her mind. I chuckled and nodded at her.
"What a frightening ability... And what if I don't tell you what you wish to know?" The mermaid remarked and then asked, in her mind. There was an edge of uncertainty in her mental voice, an audible manifestation of her doubt and hesitation. I chuckled and manipulated the light in the water around her again, this time creating a cage of light.
"I have no hostility towards you or your kind. That is why I haven't attacked. So far I have merely gotten your attention but if you look around you, you'll find that I am capable of attacking in a number of ways." I mentally uttered, while momentarily manipulating light to give the walls a faint glow and allow them to be visually identified.
The mermaid saw the wall she collided with glow, and then turned her head back towards the ocean's depths and noticed that there was a wall behind her as well. She immediately realized what I was up too, and sighed in annoyance. I chuckled at her expense and waited for her to speak. She turned back to face me and immediately began to speak.
"I am not an enemy of your people. I am merely a scout. It is my duty to discover and report on what your kind is doing. Well... You yourself may not be human, but I suppose you can interpret 'your kind' to mean surface-dwellers rather than humans. The human fishermen I was spying on hadn't come back to fish in many 'days'. Their reappearance will be significant news to my people, and to the god of this area." The mermaid told me, again in her mind. She mentally uttered the word "days" like it was alien to her.
I studied her for a moment, before sighing and unmaking the walls I had surrounded her with. When they vanished she noticed them disappear and visibly relaxed.
"I see that you are opting to believe me?" She asked, still in her mind. I released her spear, and it dropped through the air quickly, before replying to her.
"If you are telling the truth then you have nothing to fear from me or my people. I have not come here to make an enemy of you or your kind. Can you consider this merely an awkward first meeting?" I asked, speaking into her mind curiously.
She retrieved her spear the second it reached the ocean and began to gaze at me. I stared back at her, openly and boldly. A few moments passed in a tense silence as we studied each other and sized each other up.
"I... can do that. Neither of us came here seeking to do the other harm, and I'd rather not discover what else you can do." The mermaid remarked, after a few moments, fear audible in her voice.
I chuckled and nodded at her. I kept my eyes locked on hers for another three seconds before instantly entering my "hyper-speed-mode" and leaving the sky above the ocean to return home. It was time to go ahead and truly begin the day.
I was looking forward to seeing what sorts of chaos and surprises today brought me.