Athelei was given a job that he found both refreshing and quite helpful for his plans.
His tasks were centred around the use of his Tier I Skill, Shop, and that was it. All he had to do was buy items using the Skill whenever possible.
Being a four-year-old child meant that a lot of the adults did not trust him much with anything else. No one knew of his status as a Blessed save for a few suspicions, and thus he was being treated as a smart child and nothing more.
Moreover, Athelei wanted them to have that perception of him. He allowed himself to be more playful and unrestrained. Whenever a question crossed his mind, he would ask. If something interested him, he would poke at it.
"A basket of oranges..." Athelei was scrolling through the Information Network when he decided to have a look at Shop's catalogue and saw one of the things he was asked to look out for.
With practised precision, he grabbed the requested amount of eight coppers and threw it into the Cosmic Interface. The coins phased into the orange screen that floated in the air and Athelei watched as the prompt for the item he wanted then changed into [Sold].
He then reached into the orange screen, causing it to blur and ripple. After a certain depth, Athelei felt his hand touch something solid. He pulled, and slowly, a basket of oranges truly appeared out of the screen.
The oranges in the basket began to float the moment they left the orange screen, forcing Athelei to draw a Water Control pattern. While he was drawing, another orange screen popped into existence,
[]-[]-[]-[]-[]-[]
Another unique product has been purchased. Shop has reacted.
[]-[]-[]-[]-[]-[]
Athelei nodded as he closed the screen. He had been receiving this message a few times over the days he had been working. A few more purchases and perhaps some sales and he might just level up the Skill.
'It has been peaceful...' Athelei thought to himself as he glanced outside the house he was given.
The city of Atlantis was still quite ghostly with the lack of residents, but in this neighbourhood at least, a person or three could be seen walking or swimming. But their faces were not much better than before.
In fact, Athelei felt like they looked worse.
Whenever he roamed around at night, he would hear sobs sounding out from within different houses. People were still grieving, and they were being crushed by the loneliness now that things had settled down.
Many adults had bags under their eyes from their lack of sleep despite the beautifying energies.
As for the children, a few who were lucky enough to survive were adopted into the Lotus Palace.
Athelei wanted a house for himself for the sake of the new experience, and after a day or two living with the other kids, he was actually given one to move into. A member of the Lotus family guided him there personally, even.
Now, the most lively of the populace were the Adventurers, as expected. The ability to weather whatever came upon them was a trait they had to develop to stay in the business. And there were some Adventurers who were not from Avina in the first place, and thus, to them, this was just another adventure.
A few Adventurers had actually tried venturing outside the walls of Avina, and they realised how crushing the water pressure was. Just a short few moments of being outside granted them water-filled lungs and a painful squeeze.
One had to remember that inside Atlantis, they were breathing water. Magic water that they had yet to understand. Nothing inside Atlantis was hostile... but outside the city's walls, where the light of the sun barely reached, things were different.
A leviathan beast had once moved close to Atlantis giving a lot of people quite a fright, but Ulthasiair who had somehow been domesticated by the Seed of Atlantis, was luckily there to fight it off. Upon seeing the battle, a lot of Adventurers decided not to have too many thoughts of venturing outside.
Not yet, at least.
As for the mundane of the humans' daily lives, it was rather magical. Whenever they placed or handled food with the utensils already provided by the city, it would stay dry and act like normal food. They also did not have to shower nor scrub the dirt off their bodies because the city's energy did that for them. Even sleeping was interesting, as they could float and rest anywhere they wanted. Beds became optional, but many of the humans insisted on resting between the sheets.
When it came to entertainment though... there wasn't much.
Some mysterious board games were stored inside many of the houses' shelves. They looked cool, but without the rules written on paper, the humans had no idea how to actually play them. And in the first place, they were not really in the mood to play. Likewise the weird instruments that were laying around.
The only thing keeping them active was their jobs.
Outside Atlantis and on the continent, however, things were completely different.
Athelei was monitoring the outside world using the Information Network. The area where the Undead Remnants roamed had been dubbed the Grey Plains. Talks of how Illyas was sending their knights and fighters towards the southwest was also occurring en masse. It turned out that after Avina was destroyed and Atlantis broke away from the continent, a large, easy to use entrance into the subterranean kingdoms appeared.
The Holy Nation of Illyas wanted to occupy this area as they seem to have figured out what the country of Illum wanted. Since they could not defend the many hidden entrances scattered across the southwest of their territory, they were going to monopolise the safest and largest entrance so far available.
With such an outpost, they were hoping to beat all their competitors to the treasures that had been reported to lie beneath the earth.
'New, unknown technology and more weird objects,' Athelei recalled what he read and was tempted to fly all the way there right then and there. He wanted to observe both those unknown technologies as well as the humans' reactions to said technologies.
Would they be destroyed by their own curiosities?
Or would those discoveries allow them to thrive?
Those were the questions of his temptations... But the Tidal Tome in his hands had been having some weird changes recently.
It was like a radar, giving him signals on where something might be.
Athelei had already scoured the city and through it, he was able to conclude that the Tidal Tome was not leading him to any one part of Atlantis. It wanted him to leave the underwater city's protective walls and delve into the darkness.
'Could it be another sealed God's Altar?' Athelei pondered as he delivered the basket of oranges to the palace.
Tonight was the night he was going to venture out with his still-present Nightwalker abilities.
Speaking of abilities, Athelei had used the past few days to experiment and test his new Endbringer talents. It turns out that he could not transform himself into a grey fog indefinitely. It required more [Mana] the longer he was a grey fog. If he had no way to replenish his reserves faster than he spent his energy, then he would be forced back into physical form while suffering from mental exhaustion at the same time.
He made a few tests and measured that his current raw limit was three hours straight of being a grey fog. It wasn't like his Nightwalker fog-body that kept functioning as long as he was asleep.
As for his wings and tails, those required much less [Mana] than transforming fully, and thus, it was like any normal appendage. Moving your body took energy, and his wings and tails were a part of his body. Thus, the energy expenditure.
As for the powers of his second pair of wings... Athelei still had no idea. He could feel it listen to his commands, but whatever effects it had was either minimal or he was simply incapable of sensing it.
Even Inspect was surprisingly ineffective. Most of its results were unnamed, or something of the like. Yet Athelei just felt even more intrigued when he saw those types of results.
'This likely means that every living being in the stars above have never ever recorded the things I am exhibiting...No proper observer has properly witnessed and named the changes I had gone through.'
To Athelei, this meant that he had more opportunities to name things. And he was becoming fond of the feeling of being able to name his discoveries. Sooner or later, he might just be addicted to it like all the other things he liked to do.
"Here's a basket of oranges!" Athelei skipped into a room where the Lotus family members seemed to be busying themselves with a variety of jobs.
"Oh, Orien!" A voice called out, "Perfect timing. Brother Kang, can you take the oranges off of the kid's hands? Also, give him that list I told you about."
Athelei watched as a man in his thirties hurried over with a few pieces of parchment in his hands. The man, who was probably Brother Kang, walked before him and bent down to grab the basket he held.
"I'll be taking this, and you'll be taking these," Brother Kang said as he reached out his hands.
Athelei offered up the fruit in his arms and then felt the weight of a few pieces of wet parchment right after.
"This..." Athelei gave an inquisitive look at the voice who had called out to him earlier. When he looked up, he saw a face much younger than Brother Kang with the same white hair but cut short in a buzz cut.
It was Lotus Song, whom Athelei had grown familiar with since the creation of Atlantis. Lotus Song was a rather efficient man who was capable of keeping track of everything he was assigned to. His use of his purple Nebula Gem was of a respectable level, and it seemed like he even had the Tier I Skill, Focus.
"These are items we cannot find here inside Atlantis as of the moment." Lotus Song pointed at a few lines written on the parchment, "And there is a likelihood that we would require them in the coming weeks. I want to prepare for the moment we need them, and thus I need you to make an article on the Information Network regarding this."
"Ah," Athelei nodded, "I will let the sellers come to me then? How about the prices?"
"As for the prices..." Lotus Song manipulated the parchments in Athelei's arms and showed another list of items, but this time with corresponding values in coins, "These should be the usual prices in late Avina, so it can serve as a good guide. And, if you look at this other column, we actually have products we can sell. A lot of starwhale pearls have been found inside Atlantis' buildings, so we are hoping to use those to gain a bit of coin."
"Oooh!" Athelei was excited to be supplied with items to sell. "Do we have any mutant starwhale pearls to sell too?"
Lotus Song tapped on his chin when he heard the question, "We have mutant starwhale pearls, but we don't plan on selling them."
"Is it because of its rarity?" Athelei asked with a tilt of his head.
"That's one part of it, but get this," Lotus Song rapped at his own skull as he pulled out the relevant memories, "Mutant starwhales are also called silver starwhales, and thus their pearls are aptly called Silver Pearls. Now, what's interesting is that in the past, those Silver Pearls weren't as big as the ones Avina had harvested during the beast tide. Normal starwhale pearls and even Silver Pearls were always used for jewellery and accessories... but it seems like after reaching a certain size, these Silver Pearls become weird."
"Are there some weird energies inside the Silver Pearls?" Athelei tried his hand at guessing.
"It's the exact opposite, actually. The large Silver Pearls feel hollow and empty, and it's clear whenever we knock on them or when a Dictator senses its contents... But when we tried actually breaking into those large Silver Pearls, they were just like any starwhale pearl with a solid centre. We are interested in what this means and if we can use it as a material, and so, we won't be selling them."
"I see," Athelei nodded, and glanced at the lists he was given.
Lotus Song then ruffled Athelei's hair as he said, "Now hurry along and finish what I asked of you before sundown. When you're finished, you can ask Brother Kang for some snacks we have finally made using the weird ovens in Atlantis."