Monica

Tears slid from the swollen, ugly corners of Monica's eyes, drifting away into the sea.

Whenever The Cursed became emotional, tears would flow from their eyes. This was unlike any other race in the sea.

"Big Sister Ash, are you leaving too?"

Ash smiled and brushed the corner of her eye with her twisted arm.

"Don't cry, Monica. Your tears taste too bitter."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry... Is there really no other way, Big Sister Ash?"

"This is the fate of us Cursed." Ash gently hugged Monica. "We failed to protect our homeland, and the gods punished us, making us endure this tearing pain every moment of every day. Monica, don't be afraid. The prophecy also said that once we have atoned for our sins, we will find our Promised Land. There, we can cast off these ugly forms, escape enslavement, and..."

"The Promised Land?" Monica shook her head. "No one knows what the Promised Land looks like. No one knows where it is. How are we supposed to find something we know nothing about? Just by its name?"

"And the gods—do gods even exist? Those so-called prophecies are nothing but stories passed from mouth to mouth. All I see is a group of slaves barely clinging to life!"

Monica shouted.

Ash froze. Only after a long while did she murmur, "Yes. Right now, we're nothing but slaves."

Yes. The Cursed were nothing more than slaves now.

There had once been a group of Naga here, and they had been the Naga's slaves. Later, the Fishmen drove off the Naga, and they became the Fishmen's slaves.

They looked revolting, their bodies bloated and frail. Their only commendable talent, spellcasting, had to be used to sustain Flesh Magic—keeping their bodies barely intact so they would not burst apart and die, while forcing them to endure the agony of being torn apart from head to toe every moment.

More tragically, even with Flesh Magic, they could only live to fifteen.

At fifteen, their magical abilities would transform and become stronger.

But... during that period, they could not cast spells. Flesh Magic would be interrupted, and their bodies would explode like balloons.

Thus, on the eve of their fifteenth year, The Cursed would usually leave the ocean, look upon the sky once, and slowly wait beneath the stars for death to descend.

For some reason, though they were a race of the Deep Sea, they had always been drawn to the sky. Quietly admiring the stars beneath the night sky was their favorite thing, but such beauty could only be seen once in a lifetime.

Ash looked tenderly at the sobbing Monica, her thoughts gradually drifting away.

She did not know whether the history passed down by word of mouth was true. Those events were too distant, and some of them even contradicted one another.

Legend said they had once possessed a vast nation, their renown resounding across the boundless waters of the Seven Oceans.

They had been the world's favored children from birth, their bodies incomparably powerful, their magic capable of tearing apart the seas.

Ash lowered her head and looked at her arm. The swollen flesh resembled a corpse soaked for too long. From the day she was born, there had been only torment, endless enslavement, and a future without the slightest hope.

Perhaps legends were only legends.

"Big Sister Ash, the last Symbiotic Partner among our people has died. The Flash-Scale Clan refuses to assign any more Fishmen to sign Symbiotic Pacts." Monica's words pulled Ash's thoughts back to the present.

The Symbiotic Pact was the last thing they, the ones called The Cursed, could rely on. Flesh Magic alone could not keep them alive; that was when they needed the Symbiotic Pact.

The Symbiotic Pact allowed both sides to share life force and also granted certain unique abilities. It had originally been a mutually beneficial arrangement.

But after the race was cursed, it gained a flaw: The Cursed now needed life force at every moment, and the two parties could not be too far apart.

It had been manageable when they were enslaved by the Naga. The Naga needed their sensory abilities, and individual Naga possessed strong life force, so they did not fear the pact slowly draining it away.

But the Fishmen were different. A group of Fishmen might be strong, but a single Fishman was weak and could easily have its life force drained dry by the Symbiotic Pact.

Moreover, Fishmen were already skilled at sensing and had no need for what the pact provided. The Symbiotic Pact was even more useless to the Flash-Scale Clan.

So the number of pact holders dwindled, until today, when the last Symbiotic Partner had died.

Feeling the pain within her becoming harder and harder to suppress, Ash raised her head and looked expressionlessly toward the surface.

Did her people, The Cursed, truly still have a future?

Things were getting worse, and there were fewer and fewer of her people.

Everything was sinking, with no turning back.

But none of that had anything to do with her anymore. Today, she would die—die at the surface, die beneath the stars.

Ash smiled as she bid Monica farewell, then slowly floated toward the surface amid heart-rending cries.

The distant Fishmen watched coldly. They knew that without Symbiotic Pacts, these ugly monsters would only die slow deaths.

As Monica watched Ash's figure grow farther and farther away, she felt as though a part of herself had been taken away with her. She was still many years from adulthood, yet she had already endured too many farewells.

Her people gathered around her, gently patting her body with their swollen arms. Beneath their ugly faces lay clumsy comfort.

The Cursed had suffered too much. They had learned to endure, but never to become numb.

Monica tried hard to close her eyes. Tears were the most useless thing in the sea.

Monica opened her eyes. Before her were her fair fingers, her slender tail, and her long hair.

So beautiful...

She was no longer that ugly monster.

And all of this—

She looked at the "Two-Legged Fish" not far away.

That was Theus, Big Sister Ash's pact holder.

It all felt like a dream. She had only just parted from Ash in life and death, yet not long afterward, Ash returned to the tribe. Not only had she survived, she had brought new news.

She said it was not a curse at all. So long as they descended into the Deep Sea, The Cursed could return to their original forms.

The Deep Sea... Monica thought of the Abyssal Trench, a forbidden land of life from which no one had ever returned.

But unexpectedly, many of her people agreed without hesitation.

Perhaps they simply no longer wanted to be slaves.

Without Symbiotic Pacts, The Cursed had no future—but they also had no more shackles.

Symbiotic Partners could not be too far from one another, so The Cursed could only be enslaved. But now, the flames of vengeance roared in every tribesman's eyes.

They were living beings too. They possessed wisdom too. They had feelings too.

Now, let everything burn.

Along the way, the blood of The Cursed stained red the sea route leading to the Abyssal Trench. Familiar figures fell before Monica's eyes one after another.

Monica wanted to say something, but when she opened her mouth, she found it bitter inside.

When she raised her head, she suddenly realized that everything had already passed.

Theus, her sister's Symbiotic Partner, was saying something to the tribe. Monica listened blankly.

She did not understand what this human was saying. Knowledge, water pressure, freedom—she did not understand. They only sounded like complicated words.

She looked at Ash. The scales on Ash's body were a lovely pale gray, while her silver-white hair carried a faint bluish metallic sheen—the aura of surging magic.

Ash held a harpoon aloft and was speaking loudly. Her eyes were filled with determination and fearlessness, mixed with something else.

Only much later did Monica realize that might have been hope.

She turned to look at Theus. It was this human who had brought hope.

At that moment, he was solemnly declaring that he was not a god.

It didn't matter, Monica thought.

She no longer needed gods.