The appearance of the gorgon merely marked the beginning. Before long, another group of non-sea beasts entered everyone's field of vision.
They were a group of exquisitely beautiful merfolk with black skin, golden eyes, and milky-white fish tails.
"Those are the Prussian Merfolk of Phantom Sea Shoal!" someone recognized the newcomers.
Although merfolk were also humanoids, and low-level merfolk, like gorgons, would devour humans, that was merely due to their lack of intelligence. The noble and royal merfolk possessed far greater restraint. Not only did they not feed on humans, they even maintained good relations with many human nations, and trade between them had never ceased.
For precisely that reason, compared to other humanoids, humans were relatively close to the merfolk. It could be seen even from their manner of address: humans had never referred to merfolk as "it," the pronoun used for nonhumans, but instead used the human pronouns "he" and "she."
Though many humans still looked down on merfolk, even they had to admit that, compared to other bizarrely shaped humanoid creatures, merfolk were the closest to humans in terms of bloodline.
Now that even merfolk could not resist the allure of the mysterious fruit, would humans be next?
There were no longer few wizards entertaining such thoughts.
But this was, after all, only speculation. The mysterious power had also obscured the wizards' sense of danger, so the wizards present still clung to a gambler's hope. Aside from those wizards known for "playing it safe," who retreated slightly, the rest remained where they were.
"My lord, should we advise them to leave?" Seeing the unmoving tide of wizards behind them, Angel spoke to the Inspector.
More than anything, Angel was using those words to probe the Inspector's attitude.
Within the Wizarding World, a small number of wizards held