She had to ask herself if maybe she was the one who had something wrong with her. Yeah, maybe it was her? Miranda just couldn’t see any other way for everything to make sense. Because if it wasn’t her, then what the hell was wrong with everyone Jake introduced to her or made friends with?
They had spent over a month in the Grand Mangrove River by now, and things had been mostly fine. Emphasis on mostly. Because the Alabaster Crimsoneye Snake was far more peculiar than Miranda had initially estimated. She had to admit that she was originally afraid of the snake girl and had to constantly be on guard and act confident. Facing a C-grade, especially a mid-tier C-grade, was no easy task for her, but she had to endure it for her comrades.
That was a month ago. After spending a month with the snake?
“No, you can’t just eat one of their arms to teach them a lesson. That is not how humans learn at all,” she said with exasperation as the C-grade snake sat on her knees, attentively listening.
“But big sis, what if they are being really bad? Like, at least eat the hand, right? It grows back, so it isn’t that bad, is it?” the snake girl argued.
“It is still a no,” Miranda said with a sigh. “If you want to be a good ruler, do not use fear as your only tool. That is what idiots do, and you aren’t an idiot.”
“Okay…” the C-grade said as she seemed to reconsider what kind of teaching methods would be good for humans. Ah, but not human adults, mind you. The snake girl seemed to be under the impression that the best way to teach human kids was corporal punishment. Some idiot had mentioned to her that kids sometimes had to touch a hot stove to learn it was hot, so the brilliant snake naturally interpreted that as the best way to teach a kid about heat is to smash their faces onto a stove repeatedly until they were deathly afraid of kitchen appliances.
As for why the snake cared so much about learning “how to human,” as she put it? Because she was clearly obsessed with Jake and proving herself useful to him. Miranda was not even sure how to interpret the snake’s emotions… love? Infatuation? Neither felt right. Obsession was truly the only word she thought fit.
One good thing about this obsession was that she wanted to do all she could to make Miranda happy and her level of respect for the City Lord was through the roof as she seemed to view Miranda as a “senior” in the Jake fan club.
Her respect for Miranda was good, though… because the snake girl had a lot to learn before Miranda would dare unleash her on the wider society. She had done a lot of questionable things, and Miranda would be far more frightened of the C-grade if she didn’t have the demeanor of an unknowing teenager. One area she had really messed up was in her recruitment methods.At first, Miranda had assumed the snakes had maybe helped or rescued people who had been trying to cross the Grand Mangrove River and found themselves in trouble. Nope, it turned out that the snakes were the trouble. They swooped up any humans they came across and forced them back to the center of the mangrove, and had them construct the small settlement that could now be found there.
If this wasn’t bad enough, then the Alabaster Crimsoneye Snake’s method of studying the human body had been to literally study the body. She had initially consumed several women and girls to learn about human physiology, and once she felt more familiar with the form, she forced women to help her refine it. This was partly done by her investigating how the human women’s bodies looked and having them explain things… which included cutting them open with a healer on standby.
It was only after this she began to learn a bit about humans were supposed to act she stopped. No one had ever even mentioned to her what she did was wrong by human standards because who the hell would dare tell a C-grade when she was out of line? Who would dare claim her actions were wrong and that what she did would be morally reprehensible by any reasonable moral standard? Well, that person ended up being Miranda.
Things in the settlement had improved after their arrival, and the mood had relaxed after Miranda had effectively taken charge. She still vividly remembered when a dozen or so humans had seen her tell off the Alabaster snake in public and their looks of utter horror for what was about to happen – because, yes, the snake girl’s usual response to dissent was just to kill whoever disagreed.
People were dumbfounded when they saw that the snake girl just nodded enthusiastically and asked what she was then supposed to do. From that point on, they were all incredibly friendly whenever Miranda was around, and the fact that the snakes no longer killed people who messed up was a huge improvement. The young snake still needed to learn that simply attacking people wasn’t in any way constructive.
Miranda sighed as she saw that the snake girl was a bit down after being told what she was doing wrong for the umpteen time that day. It was probably time to “reward” her.
“We can continue this tomorrow, okay?” Miranda said in a soothing tone to the snake. “Also… I have a surprise for you.”
The snake girl just looked up and tilted her head to the side.
“A surprise from the Chosen,” Miranda clarified.
The eyes of the girl instantly lit up as she jumped to her feet. “What! What is it!?”
Miranda smiled at the nervous and excited girl. “A name.”
Jake and Miranda had agreed that this time around, Miranda would help him decide, and she quickly realized that Jake was obsessed with using the physical appearance or attributes of creatures to name them. It made her question that if Jake ever had a kid, he would name him or her Humany or something else dumb like that… alas, at least Miranda was there this time around to shoot down any downright horrible name ideas. Because Jake had a lot of dumb ideas.
After a bit of time, they narrowed the names down to a few. All of them were still real names, and all of them were even acceptable names for a girl. However, all of them also partly included parts of the Alabaster Crimsoneye Snake’s race name or physical attributes. Miranda personally thought that using parts of the race name for the naming scheme was moronic, as when the beast evolved, the race name could entirely change. So calling the snake Alabastie – an actual suggestion by Jake – the name would just come off as incredibly dumb-looking if she ever evolved.
She really hoped he had been joking, though, as Jake could not seriously just take the first word of a creature’s race name and slap on an “ie” or “y,” right? Yeah, that was too much for even him… even if he had kind of done that with Sylphie. And Mystie… yeah, okay, he had been absolutely serious.
Good thing Miranda was there. Anyway, the final battle of names came down to Scarlett, after her red eyes, and Allie. Allie, because of Alabaster and because it still fit Jake’s obsession with names ending in “ie” or “y”. Both of these were at least real names, and both were short and sweet. Even if the snake ended up changing race, later on, the names would not be questionable.
“A name!?” the snake girl gaped. “Me, named by the Chosen? Really?”
She was almost dancing, and Miranda had to admit she looked rather cute. If she hadn’t seen the girl rip the head off a man without flinching, she would even have gone as far as to call her innocent-looking.
“Yes, but he had two suggestions, so you need to choose yourself,” Miranda made clear. Miranda had to admit she was not actually that comfortable just naming another person herself. She wanted them to at least have some choice over the matter. Not that any of the beasts Jake had named complained about their names no matter how bad they were… Miranda just wasn’t comfortable doing it.
“What are they!?” the snake girl said, practically jumping up and down.
“One of them is Scarlett. It comes from the red color of your eyes, and the color red often symbolizes courage, passion, heat, and force. It is a powerful name. Some also think it a violent name, something that is fitting for your rather fiery personality,” Miranda said, the snake girl listening attentively.
“The second name is Allie. Parts of the name stem from your race and that you are an Alabaster Crimsoneye Snake. The name is considered fair and symbolizes harmony and nobility, and was originally the name of a saint. Moreover, it is often a nickname, so if you wish to have a longer, more formal-sounding name, you can also do that and retain being called Allie by friends and family,” Miranda explained. “If you are not satisfied with any of these naming ideas, do not hesitate to voice it, and we can go back to the drawing board.”
“No! No, I love both of them!” the girl instantly said as she waved her hands back and forth.
“Alright,” Miranda said with a smile. “Just think carefully about it. A name is important and isn’t something one should just choose haphazardly.”
Future Scarlett/Allie fell into deep thought as she seemed to think very deeply about what name she wanted. Doing something that Jake should maybe do once in his damn life as he had a tendency to just jump straight into a dumb decision.
Heck, for all she knew, he was probably doing something reckless and stupid at that very moment.
Fooled. Bamboozled. Entrapped. Completely and utterly let behind the light and taken advantage of. That is the fate that befell Jake after he argued with the Cosmic Genesis Worm. He had fallen for the dumbest thing ever: the good old “then prove it” argument.
Prove that he was not afraid of water.
Jake was not afraid, and even if he knew he was being baited into it, he had gone along with Sandy’s taunts. It wouldn’t be that bad to just dive down under the water for a little bit and maybe fight a few D-grades or something, right? He just had to avoid any C-grades. Heck, he could even practice stealth a little and sneak his way down there and find whatever it was he was looking for!
He had so much belief in himself… so how the hell had he ended up in his current situation?
Jake constantly shot arcane blasts behind himself to catapult forward faster as the large shark chased him angrily. He had to continually break through barriers as the water itself tried to stop him and slow him down long enough to be devoured by the monstrous beast. A beast that was naturally a C-grade.
[Razorstream Shark – lvl ???]
As for where the hell Sandy was? Well, Sandy was busy eating an entire fucking coral reef that the shark protected and seemed to use to create some natural formation. Jake had gone there after being told by Sandy it looked like a great spot to find valuable things, and since he wasn’t a chicken, he could totally go there and get some herbs, right? There were indeed good herbs there, no way around it, but there was also an angry shark. A shark Jake had made even angrier after he stole some kelp.
Spinning around in the water, Jake took out his bow and charged an Arcane Powershot. The water fought against him as always, but he managed to overpower the natural environment and launch an arrow nevertheless.
It flew forward and hit the side of the twenty-meter-long shark, ripping off a piece of flesh and making it even angrier. Jake rapidly shot again before stepping down with One Step, teleporting to the side just before the maws of the shark snapped shut.
The arrow he had shot had no velocity at all, as Jake had released it with no power. Yet just before the shark shut its mouth around the singular arrow, it suddenly split into ten, with those ten further splitting into ten each for a hundred total.
Its mouth snapped shut just as all the arrows exploded at once, ruffling the large beast a little as Jake even saw the arcane energy flash up through its gills. Once more, he had done more to annoy it than actually damage it.
Charging again, the shark seemed to be getting a bit serious. The water around it warped as several teeth-shaped projectiles were summoned and shot towards him. Jake avoided and shot another arrow, but the waters around the shark moved as a powerful current began revolving around the beast.
Jake’s arrows were thrown off-course with the shark charging again. Having no time to release another ranged attack, Jake decided to face it in melee combat. From within his Soulspace, he felt Sim-Jake’s attention as his simulacrum observed attentively.
One would think that a shark had few close-combat options besides simply trying to bite its target to death, and one would be correct if it was a normal shark. But this one was an early-tier C-grade with a healthy repertoire of magic.
The sphere of water around the shark began warping as teeth-like objects appeared within it, and Jake’s eyes opened wide as he focused. The shark barreled forward, and Jake entered the sphere as he swayed. Several attacks flew by him, but as the current only flowed one way, they all came from the same direction, giving him a chance to dodge. He dodged and used his katars to slightly veer some teeth away from him as soon enough, the shark was upon him.
Rather than try to bite him, it tackled with its snout that now had even more damn teeth growing out of it. Jake met it head-on as he punched forward with his full power. A mix of dark and arcane energy revolved around the katar as Jake used Descending Dark Arcane Fang for the first time in quite a while. The shark had no doubt willingly decided to trade the blow as Jake’s hand too was hit by several razor-sharp teeth, but rather than cut through his gloves and puncture his hand, the gloves remained undamaged as Jake had already poured mana into the legendary item to strengthen it.
Their clash sent a wave of pain through Jake’s arm as he was shot backward due to the sheer level of size and momentum the charging shark had, with the bones in his arm hurting, a few cracks having formed here and there. Not that the beast came out of it unharmed. It now had a deep wound in its snout that penetrated nearly three meters into its head as he had extended the blade with Descending Dark Arcane Fang. Sadly, he had failed to hit the brain.
He felt the faint approval of sim-Jake, but also some criticism in his failure to hit the brain and how he hadn’t properly transferred the impact through the rest of his body to lessen the strain on his arm. Jake took it in as he decided that if he was going to be forced into underwater combat, he should at least make something out of it.
None of them knew how long sim-Jake had left, but to Jake’s surprise, he felt like his simulacrum had gotten back more personality recently after he had regressed to be nothing but a nearly mindless machine improving Shadow Vault.
I guess sim-Jake never got to do any underwater combat… better get his take on this afterward. No, not afterward. Right now.
Jake smirked as the annoyed shark charged once more, a pulse of dense water affinity washing over him. A few thin cuts appeared on his body as he felt a concept of sharpness within the water itself, only making him smile more.
What human hadn’t dreamt of fighting a shark?
Probably most humans.
The thing is, Jake wasn’t most humans. Never had been.
He dove forward as human met shark, the two clashing as the water filled with blood and a happy worm ate an entire coral reef in the background.