Sword of Dawnbreaker - Chapter 208

Chapter 208: The Sea Demons’ Knowledge

With Amber’s reminder, Gawain also became curious. He looked towards Betty at the side. “You didn’t get Tiel to come for dinner?”

Betty blinked. “I did, but Miss Tiel said she wanted to sleep a while more…”

“Given her almost hibernation-like style of work and rest, if she sleeps a while longer, it might just be tomorrow’s dinner time already.” The corner of Gawain’s mouth twitched involuntarily. He’d originally wanted to make use of this rare free time to look for this sea demon from the outside world to get an understanding of the “outside world” but didn’t expect her to be sleeping for the entire day up till now. “Go get her again. If she still doesn’t come, I’ll go personally ——to prevent her from sleeping to death.”

“Oh.” Betty stood up, preparing to go get Miss Sea Demon for dinner, but she heard that sea demon’s languid voice coming from the entrance of the dining hall once she stood up. “I’m here, I’m here… Yawn… I just slept a while longer. Would I really sleep to my death…?”

“Sleeping almost twenty hours a day, anyone would worry about you sleeping to death, alright? Is the work and style of you sea demons like this?” Gawain casually asked as he turned to look in the direction of the dining room’s entrance. He happened to catch Miss Sea Demon unsteadily push open the door and “walk” in. —— He saw at one glance that Tiel’s lower body wasn’t in human form, but a long snake tail. Clearly, to this deep water creature, this snake-tail limb was much more useful than humankind’s legs.

But Gawain’s expression became a startled and stiff one in the next moment: he saw Tiel use the snake tail to move her body into the dining room, but it wasn’t slithering like a snake and entering gracefully. Instead, she entered in jerks, the middle of the tail lifting high up then jerking forward with force…

Although Tiel had already lived here for a few days, she rarely left her room. Secondly, she’d either walked on legs or jumped on her fishtail the previous few times; this was Gawain’s first time seeing her move as a sea snake. How should he put it…? It looked foolish to some extent…

“What’s wrong?” Tiel noticed Gawain’s expression and immediately stood with arms akimbo. “Does my tail not look nice?”

“Turns out you sea demons… move like this on land?” Rebecca also let out a sound of surprise. It seemed that Gawain wasn’t the only one who was startled. She even used her hands to imitate the motion of a snake slithering. “Don’t you walk like this?”

Tiel turned and glanced at her own tail, swaying the tip of it. “Ah, all the other sea demons move like the way you said. But there happened to be a sea caterpillar beside me the first time I conjured my tail when I was young. I learned the wrong thing then —— and never rectified it throughout my life…”

“…You’d better get used to walking with legs as much as possible. After all, everyone uses legs in humankind’s world. You can’t go out this way.”

He was too embarrassed to voice his unspoken words: it was mainly because the sight of such a beautiful snake jerking forward was really too stupid, literally to the extent where they could lift and throw her into the temple to receive eternal worship. There were already enough ultimate disgraces of the various races and occupations in the territory. With one more embarrassing article, he was very worried about the average level of reputation of the entire Cecil territory…

Meanwhile, Tiel couldn’t think of such underlying factors. She felt that Gawain made a lot of sense, but she’d thought of an even more brilliant solution. “Tell you what, break my legs in public next time. Henceforth, when I leave the house, I’ll have people carry me, or I’ll simply not go out at all…”

“Do you need to go that far just to not walk uprightly!” Gawain stared agape at this sea demon. “You sea demons are all like this?”

“We’re not.” Tiel crawled to the table with great effort, pushed away the chair, then smoothly coiled her tail into a heap, and wrapped the tip of her tail around a fork to fiddle with the dish before her. “It’s just that I’m lazier than the others… Oh, there’s quite a wide variety of food on land. It’s another kind again?”

“I hope this food can suit your taste,” Heidi said with a smile —— though her smile had been distorted by that little bit when she saw Tiel’s use of her tail. “Actually, our food here is already considered simple. This territory is in the midst of development. Many things…”

“Doesn’t matter.” Tiel swayed her tail. “I can’t tell. Sea demons have essentially no sense of taste.”

“You people have no sense of taste?” Gawain asked in surprise. “Then when you eat usually… just directly swallowing the food would do?”

To humankind, the absence of a sense of taste was clearly a great regret. This meant that one of the greatest enjoyments in life — delicious food — was henceforth kept away from their life. However, the sea demon Tiel was evidently unbothered by this. She used the fork to poke the braised potato before her and then stuffed it into her mouth to chew and swallow it. “Although we have no sense of taste, we can feel textures that are relatively finer. Besides, sea demons in essence are closer to a kind of elemental being. We are the polymers of water elements. ‘To feed’ is not a necessary condition for survival, but more like a kind of… recreational activity. In fact, many sea demons usually don’t eat. At the most, they would take a few bites to test the hardness when they catch unknown fishes and prawns in the sea…”

“How interesting.” Gawain acted like he was extremely interested in the daily life of sea demons (in fact, he really was quite interested). “Then how do your people usually live in the sea? Do you also build cities and need to go to work?”

“Cities? Our city can give you land people a great scare!” Tiel darted a look at Gawain, as if this was a really absurd question. “Our city is even bigger than your biggest city, even more advanced and even sturdier. Our city could fly, back in those days!”

“A city that could fly?” Heidi’s eyes were instantly wide. She asked with curiosity that was hard to hide. “Is it like the elves’ Sacred Stars Temple, a magic floating city? Ah hold on, do you know about the elves’ Sacred Stars Temple?”

“I’ve never seen it before, but some of my sisters have. It floats above the straits on the southern side of this continent, the Sacred Stars Temple. It has a floating core that heaven knows which era it was passed down from and a broadcast system that cannot be switched off. Those long-eared creatures known as silver elves seem to be extremely proud of their floating city. Some sisters of mine had gone up to take a look out of curiosity before, wanting to learn their technique of breaking away from gravity, but ended up realizing that the bunch of long-ear creatures actually only knew how to use it. They had no idea how to build it or repair it. The so-called floating core was ten to one something that they stole from some unknown place… Tsk, tsk.”

Tiel used a rather contemptuous tone to evaluate the floating city that the Silver Empire was proudest of. And these remarks that she casually made caused waves of emotions to surge in Gawain’s heart.

Tiel’s tone didn’t seem to be fake; the personality that she’d revealed the past few days didn’t seem like the kind to be very good at lying either (of course, Gawain couldn’t be sure that he could see through a person within a few days, and it was even the moral character of another species. He could only form a judgment using the information that he’d observed at present). Then, from her few comments, Gawain could conclude that the sea demons possessed extremely advanced technology —— otherwise, it was impossible that they would have such opinions about the Silver Empire, the place where magical technology was the most advanced in the whole continent!

Now he could also confirm that a small number of sea demons had indeed visited land before and even visited the elves’ kingdom. They carried out observations and appraisals and gained further insight into the Sacred Stars Temple’s technological prowess, and they did so… originally to learn the elves’ anti-gravity technology?

Had a problem occurred with the sea demons’ own anti-gravity technology?

Tiel seemed to have mentioned earlier that the sea demons’ city could fly “back in those days”. In other words, was it damaged now? It could no longer fly?

A loss of technology had happened with them too?

The sea demons’ observation and assessment of the elves were to be disappointed in them. They realized that the elves’ anti-gravity technology was even inferior to theirs. The current generation of silver elves was wholly incapable of recreating another Sacred Stars Temple…

Gawain still had some understanding of the silver elves. After all, the former Gawain Cecil was one of humankind’s greatest pioneering heroes; he had communicated with every race and force on the continent. In his inherited memories, Gawain indeed knew that the silver elves referred to their Sacred Stars Temple as the “lost ancestral property”. There were many technologies in their aerial sacred land that even they themselves weren’t too clear about…

A break in technology probably occurred for the silver elves too.

He feared that technological breaks existed for all the species in this world.

Perhaps it was because of the Dark Wave…

At this thought, he decided to beat around the bush and inquire about the sea demons’ understanding of the Dark Wave and technological break. “By the way, do you know that a huge calamity happened on land seven hundred years ago?”

“A calamity seven hundred years ago?” Tiel thought for a moment. “Ah, I roughly know a little. I heard those sisters who love roaming about mention it before. Something here seemed to have exploded seven hundred years ago. Then the human society was turned upside down.”

“We refer to it as the ‘Dark Wave’,” Heidi nodded and said solemnly. “That was a calamity on this land. Many people…”

Tiel suddenly cut off Heidi. “Wait a moment, what do you people call that?”

“Dark Wave, or magical tide.” Heidi was puzzled, but she still explained, “It is where the magic in nature suddenly loses its order, and chaotic magic energy corrodes the real world on a large scale, forming all sorts of fatal environments and destroying the stable structure of the physical world, resulting in monsters and lethal environments spreading everywhere…”

“Na’Salu’Fala.” Tiel suddenly murmured a term. This term clearly wasn’t in human language; it was emitted using a certain unique acoustic mechanism of sea demons. It carried an unusual seemingly resonant-like tone and pleasant rhythm. It even stirred some magical power resonance, causing an unreal sound of waves to briefly ring out in the dining hall.

Amber batted her eyes in confusion. “Ah? What does it mean?”

“Dark Wave, the ‘Dark Wave’ in our language.” Tiel shrugged. “Your explanation of the ‘Dark Wave’ sounds quite like it. It seems that you people had indeed experienced some kind of similar phenomenon, but to be honest… according to our observations, what a minor Dark Wave that was! It can’t even be considered a gentle breeze and ripple, alright?”

Heidi, Rebecca and the others were all slightly stunned, as if not quite understanding what Tiel meant. Yet Gawain felt a loud click in his mind: all that he knew and was thinking about was much more than any person present.

And Tiel’s voice continued to sound pensively, “The real Dark Wave… is something that could remold the entire world.”