“Don’t mind me asking this all of a sudden, but I just had a thought…” Edrick spoke as the shadow began to draw closer, moving slowly, incredibly so, like it was not swimming, but dragging itself through the lush vegetation under the water “...Were there ever some sort of battles in this area? Like, with some Blasse-Fusses?”

“Huh?” Yin raised an eyebrow. This was an odd moment to ask for some historical knowledge.

“I don’t know… But the country had some conflicts with the Blasse-Fusse clans and the Seeder-Herr… Wait”

A humanoid figure dragged itself out of the water, visibly struggling to even raise its head. One could spot gills, which looked as though they were gasping for air, lining the side of the individual’s neck. They sported two fin-like protuberances where the ears would be on a human.

This figure bore reddish scales all over its body, save for a few patches that exposed bare, white flesh. They had legs and arms like a human. It had no tail, but a dorsal fin stood on the upper back. Both feet and hands were webbed, and its entire body was devoid of hair.

Its face looked an awful lot like that of a human, but lacked a nose and had impressively thin lips accompanying a small mouth, as well as small eyes that melded nicely with the rest of its face, making it seem as though they had no eyes at all.

“How did you guess that? And what is a Seeder-Herr doing here?” Yin, not showing an ounce of compassion for the being--Which was technically a human like her but differing in species--Moved forward with the intent to split the man’s skull on the spot.

Edrick was not gifted with foresight, and he had no idea that a partially aquatic human species had even been around this place. But he just couldn’t help but be reminded of his random encounter with the Blasse-Fusse when he saw that shadow nearing the surface, and noticed that it was vaguely human-shaped. Honestly, the timing was odd. Was there something about him that just attracted these other species of humans or something?

“Are we not going to interrogate him a little bit?” he casually asked, not actually making any actions to stop her from killing the Seeder-Herr if she wanted to.

“I don’t know what this guy is doing here, but considering his state, I’ll just assume that he used one of those hibernation techniques to put himself in deep sleep. I don’t think that’s a common thing amongst their kind, so this guy is probably pretty strong…” she explained as she walked cautiously toward the beached humanoid.

Seeder-Herrs were not fully aquatic, so this guy was not suffocating from being out of the water. Still, he certainly looked plenty weakened at the moment. Now that Edrick thought about it, hadn’t the Blasse-Fusse also mentioned something about having been in slumber or something like that? Whatever had happened here in the past had led to some of those humans choosing to hide and put themselves to sleep in some sort of stagnant state.

The pale human had been a complete lunatic and quite full of energy when Anoteros ran into him. On the other hand, this fish-like human appeared completely spent and barely responsive. Whether he was also a madman was hard to tell right now.

As Yin approached the Seeder-Herr, she remained careful. From what she knew about those guys, they relied heavily on being in the water to do anything. This was why, despite their ability to remain out of the water for long periods and even walk, they used flying ships that were glorified aquariums. At least, they had used those in the past. Much like the Blasse-Fusse, that particular human clan had been forced into retreat and now only occupied a handful of hidden lakes.

Thinking about it, if this one hadn’t just arrived recently, and truly was rather ancient, his poor state made perfect sense. Choosing that lake to basically seal himself in was a terrible idea, as it was surely not at all adapted to his needs. Just because two bodies of water were called the same thing, it did not mean that their water composition would match. So it was likely that this guy had done the equivalent of putting a saltwater fish into freshwater... But with himself.

She had been worried that he was faking it and waiting for an occasion to strike at them, but upon closer inspection, that man’s body was truly in a terrible state. Scales were falling off, and the white flesh actually appeared to have yellowed. That guy would probably die even if she didn’t do anything.

So Yin just kicked the man further from the lake. No reaction apart from a weak groan escaped him. It seemed like, despite having his eyes wide open, that he was not actually seeing much of what was around him.

“Hello, do you speak Nimeri? I don’t really have a good grasp of Merish-”

“I think those guys actually speak Seederian. They use their own variation of Merish” Yin said.

She slightly smiled at him.

“You aren’t the only one Hui goes on about tongues with”

Then, they both attempted to check if the man would actually respond, but he seemed to be about on the same level of attention as a sleep-deprived person who is also absolutely stoned out of their minds.

“I was sort of hoping to get him to spit out some ancient secrets of his people” admitted Anoteros.

The tomboy just shrugged.

“That would have been nice to hear, but this guy is essentially a breathing corpse at this point. He’ll never survive a trip back to the city, and if we tried to give him something to heal, I am certain his body couldn’t even process it without killing itself in the process” Yin sounded a bit pessimistic, but she was correct. She and Edrick had just gotten to witness some guy crawl out of his grave to die elsewhere, supposedly having been disturbed enough by their presence to wake up.

“I suppose he must have sensed your bloodline and instinctively reacted, probably thinking that if he could get one, he would be able to recover. But that’s just a guess, though…”

“Makes sense to me” Edrick knelt, grabbed the man’s head, and snapped his neck.

As Anoteros was about to shove the dead body into a bag under the pretence that the corpse might be worth something, although he really was just thinking about adding it to his later menus- The lake once again stirred, and some sort of growl came from it.

From the lake, not one, not two, nor five, but six tentacles covered in suckers, which looked the same as those from an octopus. Indeed, what emerged looked in all manners like an octopus, with an orange-red body, large eyes, and a big, bulbous head.

But with only six arms for some reason, so a sort of hexapus, or hexopus?

In any case, that thing was huge and was swinging its tentacles wildly at them. It seemed like the now dead fellow on the ground had had a pet of sorts…