Chereads / The Story of Rhodan / Chapter 146 - Meeting from the Sea

Chapter 146 - Meeting from the Sea

Amy admits that she doesn't have extensive knowledge of mermaids because she doesn't deem them important enough to know. They are one of the few sapient species among the monster race that have a neutral relationship with humanity. There aren't a lot of mer settlements around Grand Continent territory but outside of it, there are plenty of them. She learned from Blake that merfolk settle in warm waters with an alpha female to lead them and male are submissive to females. They can also change their sex female and the beta would take over if the alpha dies just like a clownfish. In a disadvantageous situation, if they sense magic right now in the middle of the night when they are sleeping, then the mer people would sense competition and attack their ship. Also, on an unrelated note, Alpha mermaids in this world are really strong in the story. In fact, Amy has no confidence in beating them at all. At peak strength, they can create storms or cause tsunamis. 

Mermen are fascinated with humans more than humans are fascinated with mermaids because of how biologically different they are from them.

Amy grabbed weapons from her Hollylock set and look around as everyone armed themselves.

Because Mermen are all biologically born and appear male, natural born females are basically a myth. In fact, they are so rare a breed to them that they wouldn't dare to kill them. Even though some of them naturally transition their sex to female, that doesn't change their gender identity, preference nor their appearance, so they don't have sexual dimorphism to tell them apart. They don't have the same sexual function of a typical female either. They lay eggs and the male fertilizes them or something like that, so sexuality doesn't factor in their reproduction at all. 

So, to put it simply, they are interested in women, not men. There are accounts of wild mermen attacking ships but in all of them, they usually take/spare the women and kill the men.

Similar to that tidbit of information of fairies that Amy researched, they have an interest in humans but in reverse. Fairies are interested in men while mermaids are interested in women. Among the islands, it isn't a surprise that there are interspecies relationships between human women and mermaids, so it is not a heavily discussed topic.

"Look, Amaryllis!" Kate said and stared at her. "They all suddenly changed."

Curious, she decides to peek at them. They look exactly like she imagined them, slender and beautiful albeit slightly vain. For some reason, whenever she imagined a mermaid, she can recall the stereotypical image of a mermaid in her original world; female, slender, beautiful and have shells for bras. Not so much here since technically female mermaids don't exist.

They look entirely human up the surface, but she knows that they are hiding a fish tail under the water. Lisa is transfixed at their beauty while Amy is more interested at her reaction than at the mermen. When she transmigrated into this world, she is resistant to flawless beauty because she saw too much of it. Her taste in men, when it came to appearance, is someone like Ryota, hardened and hardworking. As soon as she looked overboard, she could see that their aggressive behavior changed upon noticing her. Many eyes stared in her direction upon seeing a new face. There are a few dozen just swimming over from the other side just to get a closer look. Perhaps it is because of paranoia, but she hates the way they are looking at her. As someone who has read the manga and watched the show, she is not wrong when she says that she knows what they are thinking.

Manny came over to their side to look and they all stared at him like he's vermin. 

Ouch.

"Let's get out of here. Power up the ship! We have to lose them." Blake yelled.

Amy looked away and got to her station so that they could move and Lisa, who kept looking down at them, yelped in surprise.

"Wow Amy, they must really like you. They already look depressed when you left."

Amy rolls her eyes in response as they finally got the ship moving. The good news is that they won't attack the ship, bad news is that she might have to sleep with one eye open. Resorting to trickery is a factor that she needs to watch for when it comes to these mermen.

What a world.

"So pretty," Lisa said, her eyes looked glazed as if she was in a trance.

"No!" Amy pulled her away from the deck, "Don't be seduced."

The ship went by faster but damn, they are fast swimmers. Some of them took the hint and retreat back but there are a few persistent ones. Females are a rare species, but an attractive female that fits their standards is even more rare. Lisa's seasickness reemerged and is suffering far worse than anyone else now.

Amy continues to power the ship at full power and speed, so she is not in a position to move back to the scrying orb and talk to Theseus again. She was just about to tell him the truth too.

With a groan, she sat on the power circle. Hopefully, nothing goes wrong.

*

"Hello?" Theseus says and taps the orb to get it to work, "Hello?"

The orb just suddenly shut down while he was talking to Amaryllis. Oh, great! Just when she was about to say something important.

He stared at the glass-like orb in his hands. After not seeing her for months, he feels compelled to talk longer than he should even though he says he's gonna be quick.

But he knows one information, she doesn't believe that Selim is the one who would target Leon. She is admittedly pretty vague in her explanation, but he cannot blame her if it is because he is a friend, but she didn't deny his involvement.

"How exactly does she know all of this?" he murmured. He then left the room to go find Rufus. Hopefully, his match ended by now.

*

Amy continued to stay awake while guarding the door to their room. Lisa calmed down and is now asleep. It turns that only Kate, Manny and Amy were immune to their effects. Professor Wyatt was a pain to tie up, but it had to be done. She sat and looked into any thoughts of any knowledge of mermen, but it is limited including Alabaster and Boris's knowledge. She took some items and transform them into sound cancelling headphones for everyone to use. Blake says that their songs are seductive to humans, luring humans that could hear them. It only works on people who had their hearts broken by love. Clearly, she is fine. The song that is supposedly beautiful just sounds like groans and moans to her. The mermaid song is meant to lure people, but the spell immediately breaks when the victim is in danger. The mermen are moaning right now, bemoaning the fact that everyone has gone asleep. The ship is not soundproof so there are no countermeasures to block it other than just closing their ears.