It was just a normal day
Like any other day in this sunless city, bright blue lights hung on lampposts shining their luminescent lights onto the stone laid ground all the while figures stood at street corners.
Several artistically crafted statues stood on the sides of the streets, posing as if the midst of battle, the majority of which having been tipped over by an angry mob into a nearby housing unit.
Just another normal day in the ancient city in the sea.
Just another tilted day of an annoying 20° in the sea.
Just another day.
Tristan lasered yet another skeleton fishes head.
'A very imaginative name I know'
Lightly dissing the person who called the fish a skeleton fish for the sake of imagination since its flesh and organs were literally clear enough to the point that its bones were visible.
Tristan quickly swam towards the nearby lone skeletal fish before charring its insides and outsides with a gentle water defying flame from Firefly, cooking its insides and outsides to the point that it was now completely cooked.
And no need to worry about scales as for the sake of keeping its clear body for the sake of survival, the skeleton fishes didn't develop any scales at this size.
The problem was the fact that its still developing.
Grimacing at the thought he would have to eat this damnable meal once again, Tristan took a bite of the cooked, mushy and disgustingly textured flesh.
But it wasn't that Tristan didn't know why it was so mushy and disgustingly textured as if someone had taken bread and dipped it into water to make a porridge like substance without any of the porridge and only the chunky semi fluid bits.
On second thought, the semi fluid bits might just be clear blood and that was why it tasted so disgusting.
Food for thought, literally.
'Damn this tastes bad'
Cursing slightly as he ate the horrible tasting fish, he let out a sigh as he already knew why it was so bad.
The fish was called a skeleton fish for lack of better thought, an incredibly, but it was also at the same time apt for the fish as it was straight to the point albeit a bit bland.
With clear scales, flesh and organs that could withstand heavy pressures, it's scales were as soft as its flesh while it's organs were even more so as the only thing visible on it is the bones.
This was good for the fish itself as due to its clear body, any potential predators could mistake it as a corpse, something that they shouldn't bother eating while it's prey that mostly consisted of sediment and bone feeding insects and parasites would come towards it.
Of course since there was prey, there were predators such as the bone shark which fed on both skeletons and actual fishes leaving nothing behind, leading to the skeleton fishes which were a mixture of both to be a favorite of theirs.
But!
Although this bit of food was incredibly appetising to fishes, Tristan wasn't a fish...
Maybe.
Well his taste buds weren't like a fishes.
And since it had been... Roughly five days since he had been trapped in this city, and in all those five days, it was an incredible struggle to even fulfil his desires for good food.
Picking out the small clear bones from hit teeth and stuffing them roughly into the leather bag strapped to the holster on his waist where Firefly rested, he also made sure to pick out the much larger and more visible bones of the skeleton fish, tossing the head away while keeping the sharp bones in a similar leather bag.
Although this one was filled to the brim with bones, the other was in the same circumstance, you just couldn't see it thanks to the bones translucency and the darkness.
Immediately pulling up the tattered stone grey cloak around his head, fashioned out of what little remained of several blankets.
The bonuses of learning weaving techniques was that it allowed him to weave actual clothes in the way it actually was done.
Hell, apparently it was an actual way to learn weaving, stitching, sewing and many more other techniques in this world.
This led to a very developed fashion world although it was incredibly skewed towards a certain taste in some countries.
Like there was this one country that just loved to have incredibly loose clothes that were more pajama than actual clothes.
Pure magic cotton and ether flannel apparently.
Tristan slapped his face as he snapped back to the reality that was far away from the fashion circle and immediately lay on the ground, letting the long grey cloak rest on top of his body like a covering.
And not a moment any sooner as a glowing blue and black blur rapidly moved along the rooftops before stopping at the position he was previously at.
Glancing at the being that had suddenly appeared at the position where he had just lasered off the head of a skeleton fish, he let out a quiet sigh.
'20 seconds, the cursed thing is getting faster and faster.'
Staring at the figure, Tristan observed it in all of it's... glory?
Scaled blue armor fashioned in such a manner that it was reminiscent of traditional samurai's, scales formed a complex interconnected network with each other underneath the thicker plates of insectoid shell like chainmail.
But unlike well kept and taken care of armor that had squires making sure that it was well maintained and wasn't rusted in the slightest, this armor had taken a hard left hook from time from the looks of it.
Since it was made out of biological materials such as insect carapaces and fish scales that had been treated specially, most of the armor was intact albeit large pieces of coral had taken a liking to the specially treated scales and carapaces, making it seem as if a coral monster had appeared.
But in the places that were already damaged, large black scars decorating the wounded area, rot festered in the wound as the armor pieces degraded around the area, causing the coral to merge with the flesh underneath.
By now it was more coral than man-fish-thing.
Hell, it was actually more dead than alive if the coral was counted as a part of its partially unmoving body as two eyeless pits located on the face stared blankly at the previous position he was in.
Body slowly sinking as the weight of its body dragged it downwards, Tristan let out a sigh once again as it soon reached the point where the light of the lamps could reach the rest of its previously unlit body.
It was a zombie, a magic one at that as it thrived on something else rather than the flesh of living beings although that did help with its undying survival.
Dead flesh and torn skin all there is to hold the dead corpse together, a slack jaw clacked against its upper jaw as the undead being returned to the statue that he had previously found it in.
'Aiya, why are magic zombies so much more terrifying than regular zombies.'
Murmuring to himself, Tristan made note in his mind the position of the magic zombie while slowly crawling away.
That was until the magic zombie's head suddenly snapped towards him causing Tristan to tense.
'Oh lordie my heart.'
Feeling as if someone had started using his heart as a punching bag, Tristan silently stared at the undead being.
|Tristan...|
'Yeah?'
|It's sensed you, put your arm on now!|
'FUU---'
Jolting as the rest of the undying warrior's body snapped towards him, it quickly went through a series of movements.
First it stiffly lifted its arm, the free right arm of course, legs splaying in the water in a manner akin to a javelin throwing stance.
And seeing this, instead of mentally mocking the undying zombie for holding nothing in its hands while also having no surface to push off of, Tristan felt a chill crawl down his spine.
Because, as he would soon recall, this world had a magic called weaves for mages.
And for knights there were stitches that were akin to weaves.
Corrupted orange ice blue light leaking out of its body in thick unwieldy threads that seemed as if they were constipated, the zombie knight's feet glowed orange as ice froze underneath its feet.
And in its hands, the water swirled along the orange threads that forcefully wrangled it together, forming a trident.
But as it was doing this, Tristan quickly placed his left arm that still had the binding tar around it onto the back of his neck
Black tar quickly wrapping itself onto the broken triangle and spreading like a virus all the way to the back of his spine, Tristan thanked the crazed lord for making this strange thing.
Because if it didn't feed on the surrounding mana, forming a natural insulator to regenerate and repair the body while also simultaneously masking his magic scent, Tristan didn't know how he would've escaped the horde lingering at the broken walls.
|Go to your right!|
'Got it!'
Kicking, Tristan hurriedly leapt to the right as the large body threw the trident at his previous position, large body swiftly following the arc of the Trident that seemed to have been launched straight from the barrel of a railgun, causing the building to give up on itself, crumbling into a dusty mix of coral and stones.
Peeking over the side as the magic zombie paused in confusion upon losing the scent, he let out an audible sigh of relief, not worried that it could hear him.
Partially because the senses of the zombies in this world degenerate extremely quickly leading to them being unreactive to... well basically everything but the thing that they lived on.
Mana threads.
Because just like zombies in fiction, magical reality and a theoretical reality, to move their undying yet decaying bodies, they needed fuel.
Fuel that they got by murdering people for their brain matter, flesh, magic threads, bones etcetera etcetera.
And to make sure that the magic zombies in this world could detect the energy required to sustain themselves, they developed an almost unfair sixth sense that directed them to the nearest living source of mana.
Which when used on the purest form of mana woven together with the help of the God eyes, Tristan was rendered helpless by the almost insane fervor that they went to trying to eat him alive.
It was to the point that they tore each other apart, allowing Tristan to sneak away unscathed...
Well maybe outside of his left arm that somehow got even more damaged in the encounter as he was hit with the most unlikely projectile of a helmet wearing crab.
He honestly had no idea how the critter came down with him and currently had no idea where it had went after that.
But, for the time being as he watched the magic zombie slowly walk back outside to bathe in the soft light emitted by magic lampposts, turning back into the statue that he had first seen it in
Staring at the unmoving statue while making sure to not make large movements that would alert what remained of its decayed senses, Tristan slowly swam away while glancing at the leather bags at his waist.
Feeling its weight, Era poked into his mind.
|You should be able to do it now, do you want to?|
'Hell yeah I do.'
|Then find a safe place then, we're going to be spending a loooong time.|
'Already on it,'
+++
You are now aware of your breathing, your not welcome.
Fun has no expiration date
Tree that was dealing with religious matters yesterday and an existential crisis