So I’m a Fish, So What?

“Alright, you two. We’ve finally made it to our first stop. Welcome to the Word of God Headquarters!” Linking my fingers behind my back, I cheerfully informed my travel buddies while marching backwards.

“....Yaaaaay.....” Neo tried her best to cheer in response but her expression was as dull as you’d expect it to be.

Well, at least she made the effort to raise both hands in a cute cheering gesture.

Now that’s an improvement if I’ve ever seen one!

As long as I raise her to be the ideal kuudere, everything will be fine!

Unlike a certain someone who’s been clutching her sword for dear life while her eyes darted around in all directions veeery suspiciously for a while now.

Taking a quick glance at the approaching city gate, I narrowed my eyes at her warningly.

“Alexia.” I enunciated calmly.

“H-Huh?” She stared back at me with momentary confusion before responding. “Oh– Great!! We made it!” She exclaimed in an exaggerated way, tightening her clutch around the sword until the blood escaped her knuckles.

“There’s really no reason for you to be that nervous, y’know? I could easily turn this place into a dead wasteland in a few hours, so we’re totally safe here.” I nonchalantly reassured her.

But that didn’t seem to alleviate her worries at all.

In fact, it appears to have had the exact opposite effect considering her reaction was to pursue her lips in silence.

I didn’t pay her much attention though.

There are no lies in my words, so there’s no need to give our current situation more thought than it requires.

We continued walking in silence for a few minutes before Alexia finally spoke up.

“...Is our visit to this place really warranted, Master?” She asked through our soul connection. “A-After hearing about Neo-sama’s… past situation from you, I can’t help but find our visit to this city unnecessary.” She rushed to clarify, struggling to maintain her fake calm.

“You’re worried about that, huh?” I mused with a quirked eyebrow. “‘Tis fine. ‘Tis fine. Neo might be incredibly smart for her age, but her emotional circuits were fried after that fateful day. I wanna take this chance to let her get over this hurdle before her emotions are back to normal.” I paused. “Though I don’t deny having other reasons for choosing this place as one of our stops as well.” I added.

“I-I see, Master… I will definitely protect Neo-sama to my utmost ability.” Alexia declared through our connection while letting out an inaudible sigh in reality.

Honestly, I don’t know if I should feel angry that my little servant had the audacity to test my intentions with words as if I’m some immature child.

You see, although Alexia worded it in a way that shows concern for Neo, she’s actually more concerned about the humans living in this city.

In her eyes, I’m probably something along the lines of a psychopathic murder monster hiding in a child’s skin.

In her defense, I admit I didn’t really hold back on the killings on the road– especially against the frequent raids of pathetic bandits and robbers.

Rather, I actually went out of my way to make the deaths of those who dared to target me and Neo as gruesome as I possibly could.

Who knows when and where a monster would go berserk and invite hell upon this entire city and its innocent denizens, right? Or that’s what I believe she’s thinking anyways.

Well, her thoughts aren’t wrong per se, buuut…. the fact that she cares for the rubbish that hurt Neo despite me owning her very soul is vexing.

Maybe the gap between our priorities, values, and thought processes is much larger than I thought…?

That might be it.

I mean, there’s not much difference between a human, an animal, and a monster in my eyes.

I wouldn’t go out of my way to hurt them, but if I’m provoked or have a reason to do so, then I’d off them without blinking an eye.

No long-term torture or mental torment though, that stuff is for pure sickos– a short, gruesome death is more than enough to satisfy my hidden sadistic tendencies.

“Chill out. This is just a peaceful, temporary stop– unless someone’s luck is bad enough to provoke us, of course. Now for my other reason: I’m looking for someone in this city. The sooner I find them, the sooner we leave.” I revealed with a mysterious expression.

“Someone…? Excuse me, but do you have any connections to the Word of God religion, Master?” Alexia inquired with a genuinely puzzled expression.

“I don’t–” I paused, remembering the heart wrenching scene of Neo’s scar-ridden body. “Well, not pleasant ones anyways.”

Perhaps sensing my sudden anger, Alexia thoughtfully kept her silence until I came back to my senses.

“Neo will be staying with me while you search for the target.” I announced, pointing at her.

“Ermm…B-But I don’t seem to have any information about who I’m searching for, Master.” Alexia stammered.

“Oh, ‘Tis but a trifle! Just leave this matter to the great Violet-sama!” I boasted theatrically. “Your target is a newborn girl with emerald green eyes and ashen white hair. As for her precise location, I only know that she’s definitely in this city and not in any restricted areas.”

“Newborn. Female. Green eyes. Ashen white hair… That does reduce the search scope by a lot.” Alexia muttered. “When do I start, Master?” 

“Now.” I chuckled.

Hearing my answer, Alexia wasted no time in bowing and running off to look for her target.

Truthfully, there’s no need for her to go on this lengthy quest except for my selfish whims.

Did I ever mention the fact that my Space Awareness was upgraded to Space Sense the moment I acquired the Outer title, by the way?

The range of my sphere has more than doubled and I can now use all of my senses inside of it instead of just vision.

To say that finding my target in a small medieval city is easy would be an understatement.

Truth be told, I’ve already found the target using my abilities long before we reached the city.

Nevertheless, I took this rare chance to test Alexia’s worth– especially after all those labyrinth runs we went through in Gerya.

It has been nearly a month since we left that town.

And considering I left just a week after I regained control of my body, it has officially been more than 9 months since I was reincarnated into this world.

In other words, the human reincarnations are already alive and kicking right now!

Why am I sure about that? That’s because I sensed it the moment Filimos’s Student Roster skill rudely latched onto me.

The moment that happened, I immediately reversed the connection, changed my information, and stole all the information she had inside– which was a pitiful amount, to be honest.

My actions were so swift and abrupt that there’s no way she could’ve even realized the existence of the system before I was done.

The early bird does gets the worm, huh? Me and Kumoko had a huge head start in this new life.

Now let me quickly describe the changes I made to my entry in Filimos’s Student Roster.

For my birthplace, I left it as it is.

It wasn’t like anything particularly noteworthy was written there in the first place.

I mean, it literally marked my birth place as ‘The Ocean’ just as I expected!

If Filimos is actually able to reach the deep sea ravine I hatched in through such a vague description, I would be rather freaking impressed!

As for my present status, I didn’t give it much thought and just wrote Alive.

A woman’s gotta have her own little secret, y’know? Fufufu~

For real though, I didn’t write anything negative in it nor remove my name from the list for a well-founded reason.

I don’t want any of my friends to fall into needless grief if they’re informed of my supposed death in the future.

Filimos is shown to be the kind of person to run her mouth about unneeded information while hiding the important bits in the anime, so there’s a very high chance she’d tell Katia that I ‘died’ when and if they meet.

Leaving the word Alive should be enough to cover that aspect.

Finally, there was the time and cause of death.

For this, I went ahead and copied the most commonly present cause of death for the students– some weird system shenanigans that D probably put in for her entertainment.

After doing all that, I reinforced the connection between me and Filimos with my own soul contract in case I get disconnected from the system when I become a god someday in the future.

Unfortunately, I was unable to learn about everyone’s reincarnation skills through FIlimos’s Student Roster.

This means I only know the reincarnation skills of Katia, Feirune, Schlain, Sophia, and Kumko for now.

Kusama’s skill has something to do with anime ninja stuff, and Kyouya’s skill is potentially related to swordsmanship…?

Hugo’s, Yuri’s, Tagawa’s, and Kushitani’s skill effects are unknown for the moment– as are those of the reincarnations held in the elf village.

My information is by all means lacking for someone who’s watched a freaking anime detailing the future events of this world, but it’s enough for me.

I only need to appraise any reincarnation once and I’d conveniently get to know their entire skill set and best future development path.

This is why I went out of my way to visit the Word of God headquarters.

According to the information I got from Filimos, three reincarnations were born in the Holy Kingdom of Alleius.

Two right here in this very city, and one in a rural village a few ten kilometers away from here

Yuika Hasabe– known as Yuri Ullen in the future, Shinobu Kusama– future name unknown, and Kenichi Ogiwara– future name also unknown.

Yuri is still living with her parents, but it probably won’t be long before she’s relocated to an orphanage.

She certainly drew the short straw when it comes to post-reincarnation parents, and that's coming from the fish that might’ve eaten her own parents some time during her adventures.

Born to an alcoholic, jobless father and an irresponsible, self-absorbed mother who are busy fighting all day long.

Adding insult to injury, her birth seems to be what you’d call an oopsie daisy in modern terms.

Her being abandoned is more of an inevitable result rather than a bad stroke of luck.

Now hear me out for a minute here.

She’s definitely pitiful alright, but there’s really not much reason for me to help her.

Although her life will be hell mode in the early stages, she will eventually become a Saint Candidate with lofty status amongst the human race.

However, I have actually thought this through and decided to offer some assistance.

I’ll be checking on her from time to time and try to defuse her bottled up negative emotions through good dreams.

Is it out of sympathy? Nope.

I just think passing up a chance of planting an undercover agent in the biggest religion in this world would be very regrettable.

It’s not like I’m gonna hurt her anyways, so it’s a win-win situation for both of us.

I get to play my undercover spy game, and she gets help retaining her sanity.

Then there’s that guy Kusama.

Frankly, the chances of that guy going mad due to fear or loneliness are close to nil.

His personality is way too easy-going and carefree for that to happen.

To top it off, he was actually born to a family that seems to have close ties with the Word of God church, meaning he’s destined for a great childhood.

Dude’s the literal definition of a winner in life.

I don’t see why he’d wanna work for me, and he’s way too unreliable for my tastes, so I removed him from the list of spy candidates.

Basically, my purpose of visiting this city was already achieved long before I actually arrived.

Not gonna lie though, I’m really greedy for their reincarnation skills– especially Kusama’s.

His Ninja skill actually includes cloning abilities, which I really need.

My first time traveling on land let me realize just how freaking huge this planet is.

Even if its inhabitable land is less than half of the total surface area of this planet’s land masses, it still took us a whole goddamn month to travel from Gerya to the Word of God headquarters.

And that’s despite the distance between them being relatively short and us rushing all the way here at full speed except for night breaks!

It would take freaking years for us to reach our final destination at this rate!

So it’d be great if I could send a clone there in advance to record the spatial coordinates for teleportation while we leisurely make our way there.

It’d be even better if I could summon multiple clones and have them record the spatial coordinates of every single accessible inch of land on the two inhabited continents.

Then it’d only be a matter of time before I can teleport anywhere at any time if I ever need to!

Yuri’s Dreaming Maiden skill might not seem that great when compared to Kusama’s, but it’s actually a ridiculously broken skill.

Opening a mini-dungeon in a subspace based on your dreams.

Just think about the implications of that!

Not only can she open an inhabitable subspace as a mortal, but she can literally create both animate and inanimate entities inside as long as she spends enough magic!

If she could actively control what she creates, this skill would be the third most broken one in the W system database with only Dungeon Creation and my Sage ranking above it.

Copying that one is a must, no matter how much time it takes!

Which means having prolonged close contact with those two suddenly became a top priority all of sudden.

That in turn led to me deciding on this visit from out of nowhere– much to Alexia’s resistance.

I still can’t believe how D goes around giving away such ludicrous skills at practically no cost at all!

Just how strong is she actually? And how much stronger could Goddess Alkreya be?

Will I ever be able to reach their heights…?

You know what, you don’t need to answer that question.

‘Cause the answer is obvious.

Not only will I reach their heights, but I will definitely surpass them in the future!!

I did promise D a solid smack for all the troubles she’s forced me through, and I’m not the kind girl that reneges on her promises!

Oh, how I look forward to that day!

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