After leaving the space between the worlds, Soren's new body was starting to assimilate from some white particles. The moment the sillouhette was completed, the skin of the body started to appear from the light. White skin color similar to Soren's previous body, short, gray hair and the tail has hunders of gray scales. Once the skin didn't have any light parts anymore, Soren's gray eyes opened up and the first sight that greeted him was some sort of coral forest. Pinkish corals that were as high as 12 feet and looked pretty similar to trees without leaves. The ground was mostly sand with some pebbles and rocks and a couple of the coral trees showed roots sticking out of the sand. Soren felt pretty excited the moment he saw the beautiful coral forest, but the moment he tried to run saw that his bottom half had changed to the tail of a fish.
"Woah... What in the actual sea is going on? When did i grow this out?"
Soren felt pretty suprised when he saw his gray fish tail and started examining it. He learned that his tail was around 2,5 feet long and had hundreds of small scales. The moment he pulled one of his scales he left a loud noise.
"AHHH!!! Bad idea! Bad idea!" After rubbing for a bit the area where he took the scale, he felt that his neck was a bit off and moment he touched he screamed:
"Gills! I. Have. Gills. Woah. This is wicked. Haha, this is so cool. I get to be a merman, having underwater adventures. I can't wait to see what kind of underwater life exists."
Soren could barely hold himself from pretty much doing an awkward fish dance, so after having that little fit of excitement, he started practicing swimmin with his tail for a little while. He felt it was pretty weird at first, having you feet conjoined into a big fish tail half his height, but after a while he got the hang of it and started swimming quite fast and after practicing turning for a bit he starts practicing vertical swimming until he has decent control of his body. The entire process took around 3 hours, but for Soren it didn't feel it was long.
After completing his swimming session, he gets a notification. [You have learned swimming]. The moment he saw the blue panel with those four words, he realised that this world probably had some sort of system, similar to some of the videogames that he had seen and played. After that he started saying some words to try and activate it.
"System. ... Menu. ... Info. ... Status."
The moment he said that, a blue panel appeared in front of him with the current information.
Name: Soren
Race: Merman (Base)
LV: 01
HP: 72
MP: 30
STR: 11
VIT: 12
AGL: 16 (+1)
INT: 15
WIS: 10
RFL: 13
LCK: 9
Skills (Active): ---
Skills (Passive): Swimming, Universal Translation, Blessing of the Seas (Minor)
The moment he saw he status, he felt like looked pretty weak. After all he had just reincarnated so of course the world wouldn't make him overpowered, also the fact he was level 1 didn't exactly help to lift his mood but the things that piqued his curiosity were his passive skills.
[Swimming: The ability to swim underwater. AGL+1]
[Universal Translation: The reincarnator's exclusive skill in surving in a new world, the ability to speak every language in the world. A gift from the agents of life and death.]
The moment he read that last part, he remembered the mysterious woman Pandora, he wondered what she was for a bit, but the realised that she was an agent of life and death. Of course he didn't bother thinking about it anymore since it was pointless for now. After putting his thoughts aside, he checked his last passive.
[Blessing of the seas (Minor): Due to your love and care of the seas from your previous life, the gods of your previous world gifted you with a bit of protection, the friendly sea creatures won't feel intimidated by your presence. Increases water affinity.]
That last phrase made Soren feel a bit confused. What did water affinity mean? Unfortunately, nothing concrete came to his mind for now so he discarded that for now but he still felt that the ability to not scare friendly creatures would definitely come in handy. Another thing that confused him as well was the "Base" on his race but when he tried checking it, nothing showed up so he gave up on trying to find anything about it.
After checking his status, he thought that maybe he had an inventory ability, so he started saying loud:
"Inventory. ... Item box. ... Backpack. ..."
But after a little while, nothing came up. Soren felt dejected since he didn't have an inventory-like ability so didn't any items to start with. After that little embarassing session, his next thought was to find some sort of settlement, since being in the middle of the wild wasn't the best idea. The problem for him was that he didn't have any clue about his location so the only the could do was to pick a random direction until something happens. Before doing so, he decided to pick up a coral stick, long enough that could be used as a weapon, since being unarmed was the one thing he didn't want to be, but the stick wasn't any better. The moment he picked the stick, it showed it's status.
[Coral stick: (DMG+2) What did you expect from a stick?]
He felt mocked from this system, so for now he started swimming towards a random direction. For a little while, Soren didn't encounter anything which felt pretty weird, since he was expecting at least a school of fish to have passed by or at least a crab of some sorts.
After swimming for a bit, he found a clearing which had a small castle in the middle of it. He wondered why this castle was in the middle of nowhere. There wasn't anything else around the castle as well. No houses, no building, no signs of anything else as well. He felt slightly unsettled at the fact that is castle was the only building with nothing else around. Of course though, he knew he wouldn't find anything else around for a little while, so he decided to explore the castle.
The first thing he noticed was that the walls were pretty cracked and had some holes as well, so he expected to not find anything alive for now. After entering the castle, the first thing to greet him were the hallways with torn carpets and full of debris, as well as some torn down paintings. He wondered how these painting could be kept underwater without being ruined, but he moved on. Some of the doors were completely broken so Soren couldn't open them, but the ones that could be opened just showed rooms full of debris with nothing worth of notice. After a little while, he reaches a big room which had a lot of tables and chairs, although most of them were broken, some were in decent condition but were chained down for some reason. He saw another door on the other side and upon reaching it, he sees another empty room with a few cabinets but nothing else. After checking one of the cabinets, Soren finds an unopened can whose label is worn off so he checks it out with the system.
[Canned Fijouri, a can full of Fijouri fruit, capable of lasting over 3817 years. Condition: Fresh]
"Fijouri fruit? What is that system?"
[Fijouri fruit. A sweet and sour fruit, commonly grows in dense forests or cultivated on dry land. A man's delicasy.]
"That's a weird fruit. Maybe the equivilant of lemons or oranges?"
After examining the other cabinets, Soren finds another 3 cans of Fijouri fruit but nothing else. He was about to continue his exploration when suddently.
*growl*
In that instant he felt quite hungry, probably due to the fact that he has been swimming a lot and he didn't find anything to eat for quite a while, so he decided to open one of the cans. The inside of the can had red square pieces, covered in a thick reddish fluid that didn't float. Since he didn't have any forks or spoons with him and anything else on the castle would be completely unusable, he put his hand in, picked up a couple of pieces and put them in his mouth. The moment he put them in his mouth, he felt a sour taste, kind of like a lemon but after a bit, it turned pretty sweet and he could enjoy it. After puttin another couple of pieces in his mouth, he felt the fruit wasn't as sour and it still had it's sweetness and after a while finished his can.
"That was my first meal in another world and for a meal, i would give a 7.8/10."
He felt pretty satisfied with the can of fruit so he thought to eat another one, but decided against it, since he didn't want to eat it all immidiately and decided to continue exploring the rest of castle.