Athelei spent the rest of the day sitting in front of a screen, typing things down and monitoring any piece of information that popped into existence. The pouch of coins supplied to him had significantly lightened for he had gone on a shopping spree. A room full of assorted items, from seeds, fruits, slabs of meat, and even living livestock would now greet anyone who knocked on his door.
"Uwaaa~" Athelei yawned as the Atlantis' artificial sun came down and he staggered out of his room. His status indicated that he had lost half of his [Energy] points just from work.
Walking through the palace, Athelei saw a few similar Lotus clan members all retreating to their rooms from a hectic day. They all carried a small plate of cookies whose scents wafted through the magical waters and into Athelei's nostrils.
'They finally learned how to operate a cooking appliance of Atlantis,' Athelei inwardly laughed as he recalled how awkward their faces had been when they were presented in front of said appliances. They had no idea how to operate those things.
They could've fiddled with the appliances at random to forcibly extract information, but the slow route had been taken. The Lotus family wanted to make sure they understood as much as could before actually utilising the tools born with Atlantis. Breaking what may just be lost treasures was clearly not on their to-do lists.
"If we take care of our things, they will take care of us." Lotus Xue had advised her relatives and underlings with a pleasant smile.
When Athelei went into the kitchen he had been given the directions to, he was slightly stunned by the sight that was shown before him.
'Brother Kang is... cooking and baking while floating upside down.' Athelei took one more look at the state of the kitchen and decided on doing the same thing.
"...Brother Kang, do you have any more of those cookies?"
"Hm?" Lotus Kang took notice of Athelei's small figure when the latter joined him on the domed ceiling. "Oh, Orien... A new batch will be available in about three minutes, as indicated by the clock on that oven. You may take them out yourself, just be careful of the heat. Use one of your water patterns if you have to."
"Okay~" Athelei replied nonchalantly and spent those three minutes using Inspect on various items in the kitchen.
Most of the items were powered by Mystic Energy, or [Mana] as asserted by the Cosmic Interface. Whether it was heating, the special isolation of the food from the waters, or even the timers, all of them were powered by Mystic Energy.
It was just that, when Athelei released a bit of grey fog to poke around, he spotted a mechanical system making use of that Mystic Energy.
'I see... These cogs and wheels work with the Mystic Patterns... How creative!' Athelei praised the ingenuity of these appliances as he decided on dismantling the ones he had in his own house. His Examine-Inspect combination would bring him many answers despite the technical terms that kept surfacing.
Moreover, those terms had yet to exist in the Illyasian tongue, and thus Athelei was quite thankful it still transmitted its ideas when put through his mother tongue of abstract illustration-writing.
When three minutes passed, Athelei used another Water Control pattern to take the newly baked cookies out of the oven. He took a few and brought them home.
Rest would finally be gifted to his weary body.
As for his consciousness, well, same old, same old.
Taking the Tidal Tome together with him, Athelei snuck out of Atlantis as a grey fog. Water Control was a very mundane spell, at least in battle. When doing mundane things though, it was perfect.
Athelei did not have to take on a more visible physical form. Although a floating book would cause a few suspicions when seen, all he had to do was not let anyone see it. He was a thin grey fog, after all. Collecting information would be easy, making the subsequent sneaking around even easier.
When Athelei made it outside the walls of Atlantis as he followed the signals that the Tidal Tome kept blasting out, absolute darkness descended upon him.
Any floating object that had lights now were predators. Ones with eldritch images, gaping maws, and spine-tingling tentacles. Every beast here was one that inflicted fear into a human's heart with their drastically opposing aesthetic senses.
Hummmmm...
Athelei felt the Tidal Tome's reactions become slightly stronger the moment he stepped out of Atlantis. The aquamarine glow born from the gem on its old covers grew more vibrant. It glowed like the dusty remains of a dead star here in the dark depths.
A game of Hot & Cold quickly ensued between Athelei and the Tidal Tome as he swam through the depths with two long whale tails. Sleeping beasts that floated ominously like mountains in the sea were his obstacles as he swam around. Giant sea urchins, with their spines piercing out a dozen metres, had skewered Athelei a few times, making him thankful for his fog-body.
Those spines grew as thin and as sharp as his Needle of Motionlessness. In fact, if Athelei could figure out the complex Mystic Pattern sequences forged into his knife, he wanted to make another similar blade with these urchin's spines. The unnerving feeling of suddenly finding oneself pierced by a spine with a dozen metres worth of length was difficult to describe. And add to that, there were hundreds of these encompassing the urchin itself.
Place a regular human beside these things, and they might just die due to their own nerves.
After a few more silent and unnerving encounters, Athelei finally made it before... you guessed it.
A wooden shack.
It was not a God's Altar or Sea Master's Pedestal that he had initially expected... but instead, it was a surprisingly legitimate wooden shack. One with generic oaken boards weathered by heavy rains and strong winds. A bit of rotting plagued those boards, tainting it with areas of darker colours, and a few holes could be seen where termites had once infested it.
That's what it looked like, but it was deep underwater, where eldritch beasts roamed aplenty.
'How, what, and why even?' Athelei loved the feeling of being surprised like this as he questioned the existence of the wooden shack. The Tidal Tome was violently reacting now, even going so far as to release a few pulses of the [Mana] that Athelei had supplied it with over the past few days.
It compelled Athelei to continue forward. He even had the courtesy to knock on the door, but without hearing any reply, he went on inside.
And inside the shack was a mess.
Wooden items were all floating around. From bowls to spoons, and even the tables and chairs. They were all suspended in midair... or mid-water, and were only shifting around because Athelei had disturbed their isolated environment.
Even the cabinet doors had been broken off of their shelves and had joined the fray, shortly followed by the objects that were likely once stored behind them.
Athelei was greatly intrigued, but that was when the Tidal Tome suddenly shone in a bright blue light. It encompassed the entire room and leaked out of the gaps in the wooden boards.
Blindness would've been Athelei's fate inside this prolonged flash of light, but his fog-body's sensory ability had been blessed by his Endbringer evolution.
He illogically cut off his senses to sense more. The world turned grey around him, allowing him to bear witness to a transparent gem's manifestation out of thin air.
'A similar gem...' Athelei's greyed senses zeroed in on the cover of the Tidal Tome, and he saw the transparent, glass-like gem drift over.
Click!
The gem fitted itself into what Athelei had initially assumed to be simple wear and tear damage. It slid in like a puzzle piece, giving rise to that single, satisfying sound.
This sound seemed to have reeled in the blinding blue light back into the gem that caused it and silenced said gem's low vibrations. There were no more energy ripples as well, allowing peace to swiftly descend.
Athelei dispersed into a grey fog and discovered nothing else of note. Only common items populated the entire shack, and they were now all falling apart at a visible rate. Degradation and rotting swiftly began to consume the shack, and Athelei swam out of the building to get a better view.
It took about fifteen minutes for the shack to become nothing but dust.
But before all that had fully happened, Athelei—as expected of him—had executed a little Inspect. It was what had caused him to linger around the shack, watching as it returned to nature.
[]-[]-[]-[]-[]-[]
Sea Master's Birthplace
- "I need to give my child a home."
[]-[]-[]-[]-[]-[]
It was a simple screen for a suitably simple existence, but to Athelei, it meant that his little side-quest was progressing.
'The Sea Master... a proud name with a weird and humble beginning...'