Chapter 1025: To Walk Where Others Cower.
‘Okay, and the kaijin riding along in inside of Zhen Hai and Zhen Feeng respectively are…raozrstella and Screamira! Congrats you two.’
[Thank you, producer.]
[Director…are you sure I’ll be able to properly control this one? His build is significantly…heavier than my own lithe frame.]
[If you wanna give up your slot so I can go inside, you’re more than welcome to,] Hurricroak teased.
[Dream on, froggy.]
‘Well, with that out of the way…official assignments. Spring Brawler, Hurricroak, Frosttusk. I want you three to guard the ship and be the first to intercept any invaders. Also, make sure that the main clan elites don’t get bodied.’
[Understood.]
[Yes…sir…]
[Ain’t no thang, maestro.]
[Nepherage, Blazejudicator, Razorstella and Screamira. You four will be riding shotgun in my head, and the heads of Zhen Feng and Zhen Hai.]
[Of course, milord.]
[As you wish, Executor.]
[Yes, director.]
[It will be my honor, producer.]
‘Now then, with all this in mind…you three, get in the gun. This next part is gonna get weird.’
…Couple minutes later…
“Alright, grit your teeth.”
“Is this really necessary? I mean, O know those puppets of yours can just jump inside me and-”
KRAKOOM!
“AH! YOU BASTARD!”
“Oh, quit whining you baby.”
After choosing which “puppets” to get possessed by, Zhen Liu, Zhen Feng and Zhen Hai had to mentally prepare themselves not only for the sudden influx of information that was about to shoved into their brains, but for thr methodology in which they were going to receive said information.
Namely, Zhen Liu had to shoot them in the face with the [Possesstol].
The last time he used it on them, it was without their notice and had to essentially snipe them from a distance. Now, he had the luxury of shooting them in the face in front of their faces.
Of course, as a show of good faith, he made sure to blast himself in the face first with Nepherage as the payload.
[Milord, you know you didn’t have to…do that…]
‘Meh, I wanted to see what it was like at least once. Besides, I kind of wanted to try doing that ever since P*rsona 3.’
[Ah…]
After that Zhen Liu proceeded to shoot Screamira into Zhen Hai’s face.
“Is it weird that I get a rush whenever you do that?”
“Not exploring that right now.”
And lastly, he blasted Zhen Feng in the face.
The rotund young master of the Zhen Clan tried to bargain, so Zhen Liu simply blasted him in the face without caring for the consequences.
It probably didn’t help that he had a face that looked like (:3) when he shot him either.
Regardless, now that everyone had a full crash course on proper diplomacy, (and a not-so subtle power boost), the Zhen Clan scions were ready to be part of the delegation.
“Wait…I think we forgot something important though.”
“Really?”
“What?”
“We still have no idea what we’re supposed to be wearing.”
“Oh yeah…”
[Oh this entire thing is going to go great…]
…Couple of minutes and a wardrobe montage later…
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“Well, this is a painfully nostalgic feeling,” Zhen Liu commented as he saw several people, who in his eyes looked like humanoid water elementals(slime people), suddenly hole up in their houses at the sight of him and the rest of his group. “Although, this is the first time I’ve seen it come from this many Aetherii…”
Shortly after the Zhen Clan scions determined that it was probably a good idea to wear formal Roaring Tide attire, given their location, they were quickly whisked away by Zhen Xun Tian, her son and the guardian of Undertow, Tortallion to the actual entrance of Undertow.
Prior to entering, Tortallion had warned them that the people of Undertow were going to be a little…xenophobic at their appearance…but that they wouldn’t do anything drastic due to his presence there.
As for the explanation for their xenophobia, well, perhaps it was best heard from the turtle himself.
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In the long, long history of Roaring Tide and the Pearl Scale Empire, slavery, caste systems and every other means to stratify the populace into manageable chunks have long been considered the norm. For the most part, the distribution of mortals across these systems were…relatively equal.
Bloodlines were all over place, with those of particularly powerful bloodlines being mainly nobility, and humans being, well, humans.
However, amongst these castes, a shockingly large majority of the Aquarii Aetherii were in the slave section of society.
Due to their reliance on needing to live in areas rich with Aquarii aether to exercise their full might, it was painfully easy for slavers to take advantage of this fact and enslave entire city’s worth of Aquarii.
Combined with the fact that all of them looked better than average and had the ability to turn into living natural disasters thanks to the Aetherii’s [Overdrive] ability, having Aquarii slaves was both a luxury and the norm.
For a little over half a millenia, it was widely considered that the Aquarii, alongside certain types of Bloodliners and certain groups of humans, were the “default slave race”. This was especially the case when the Floating Khan and the Pearl Scale Emperor teamed up. However, that changed when the Storm Queen came blowing in.
When she established Undertow as being a safe haven for the enslaved, many of them didn’t know what to do…at first.
Over time, and thanks to the wide variety of skills these slaves were forced to learn, they slowly developed their own sense of culture, identity and general sense of what meant to be “free”. However, there was this lingering dread in their hearts that this moment of freedom was nothing more than a fleeting dream and that at any moment, their former masters would come down like a cursed rain and poison everything that they had built.
This dread should’ve decayed over time, especially when at its peak, it was guarded by twelve fierce kaijin warriors and the most dangerous woman in the entirety of Roaring Tide’s waterways. Unfortunately, that dread didn’t decay but strengthened tenfold when the Storm Queen met her end, alongside ten of her twelve knights.
Xenophobia and isolationism became the policy for the next century or so, until the population began to collectively forget about the pain and trauma of their darkest day. Well…just the pain at least.
As a result of this change in sentiment though, the Undertow Council established the Mercenary Union, a group of Undertow residents who were brave enough and powerful enough to go on covert operations on the surface in order to bring back knowledge and resources.
This in turn, led to more and more Undertow residents to believe that they should reunite with the people of Roaring Tide, or at least, make their presence.
But alas, they were the minority.
Which is why, at this moment in time at least, the Zhen Clan delegation got a rather frosty reception. They were either outright ignored, thrown looks of fear or disgust or somewhere in-between.
Unsurprisingly, Zhen Xun Tian, Zhen Xun Po and even Zhen Liu weren’t really affected by these gazes. The former two were old warriors that had both been loved and hated by all manner of people, while the latter young master was not only bullied once upon a time but was also from a certain blue planet where people were once judged by something as asinine as skin color.
As for Zhen Feng and Zhen Hai though…they were sort of used to it, but didn’t like the quality of the gazes.
Back when the Wolfe Family were around, and when the young masters were young toddlers, the Zhen Clan and other Roaring Tide immigrants would normally get dirty looks for being foreigners. This sentiment eventually died down, due to the Zhen Clan’s intervention and development, until Stone Claw became one of the more hospitable frontier towns. But the memories of those days lingered.
Seeing the scornful gazes of the Undertow residents was…unsettling.
“Are they eyeing us up because they’re afraid of us or because they think they can take us?”
“Probably both.”
Evidently, they weren’t the only ones noticing this hate.
…
[The sheer amount of hostility radiating off of these civilians is… nauseating to say the least. It reminds me of the prison I was born in,] Screamira commented.
[Born?,] Razorstella questioned.
[I consider my time as a zako as being the human equivalent of that state before being conceived.]
[That…doesn’t sound right, but I’m not sure why….]
[Oi, girls. Heads up. We’re at the old woman’s castle.]
