Lansi discovered that he had made a colossal mistake.
He had packed absolutely everything into that massive suitcase and let the seagulls drag it away into the sky. So, what was he supposed to do right now?
As a result of his own oversight, an empty-handed Lansi spiraled into a state of silent, brooding misery. He was deep in self-reflection.
After living as a human on land for a few days, navigating the open ocean with absolutely no personal belongings suddenly felt incredibly bizarre. He found himself desperately wishing he could at least get his hands on a basic set of clothes to wear.
Winsor didn't care in the slightest. After all, when he and Lansi had first lived together in the deep sea, they had possessed nothing at all. If Lansi's deeply ingrained human mindset hadn't insisted on it, Winsor never would have entertained the notion that they needed luggage in the first place.
"Well, go on and say your goodbyes to them," Winsor said helplessly, gently prompting him aloud.
Lansi finally snapped out of his trance. He glanced toward Quirrel, suddenly remembering that they still needed to bid the giant creature farewell.
`[Teacher, you only just came back. Why are you leaving again?]`
Quirrel's tone was deeply resentful. His massive body flushed a pale, agitated green, visually broadcasting his immense dissatisfaction with Lansi's departure.
Lansi froze for a moment, feeling a pang of profound guilt.
`[It's been so long, yet I've only managed to learn a tiny fraction of your language,]` Quirrel grumbled, gesturing subtly with the very tip of one of his massive tentacles to emphasize just how little he had progressed.
The sheer resentment radiating from him was palpable. Originally, Quirrel had joyfully assumed that Lansi was back for good. Who could have anticipated that the moment Lansi returned, he and Winsor would plunge into an awkward, exhausting emotional standoff?
Because Lansi had retreated above the surface—a territory where Quirrel dared not venture—their language lessons had completely ground to a halt. And now, just when Lansi and Winsor had finally resolved their misunderstanding and returned to the deep, the only thing awaiting Quirrel was Lansi's sudden decision to pack up, follow Winsor, and actively head straight back to the human world.
Quirrel felt thoroughly heartbroken.
`[Hey, tell you what—the next time I come back, I'll bring you a wonderful gift. How does that sound?]` Lansi offered, left with no choice but to placate the creature with a promise, much like one would appease a brooding child.
`[Really?]`
Only then did Quirrel perk up. His entire body began to flash with vibrant, pulsing colors like a neon light display, looking extraordinarily excited.
`[Yes, I keep my word.]` Lansi gestured emphatically toward the heavens and the earth, looking ready to swear a binding oath on his life.
Once Quirrel was thoroughly satisfied, the local hermit crab crawled forward to express his own grievances. However, after snapping his two heavy pincers together in an aggressive clack, he surprisingly voiced his approval of Lansi's decision:
`[Wolves travel thousands of miles to gorge on meat; dogs travel thousands of miles to eat crap! Dammit, boy, I support you! Go out there and explore the world. How can a real man just stay cooped up in a messy little corner like this?]`
Lansi shut his mouth tightly, choosing absolute silence. He deliberately chose not to ask whether, in the grand estimation of the hermit crab, he was currently classified as the "wolf" or the "dog."
After exchanging final greetings with the two sea monsters, Lansi and Winsor glided side by side into the deeper currents of Sunset Bay.
"You seem a bit tense," Winsor noted quietly.
"Yeah," Lansi murmured. He swayed his white fish tail, continuing forward under Winsor's steady guidance. Looking out across the vast, boundless expanse of the surrounding ocean trenches, he let out a bitter, wry smile. "After all, the last time I was captured, it was right near this sea area."
The fateful day Lansi had been ensnared by human nets had occurred right on the fringes of Sunset Bay. Back then, he had been consumed by sheer terror and agonizing struggle. Though he had lost consciousness for a significant portion of the ordeal, Lansi knew with absolute certainty that his instinctual, frantic thrashing must have painted a thoroughly bloody, horrific scene.
Perhaps it was merely a psychological phantom, but the moment he swam into these familiar waters, Lansi fancied he could still catch the faint, metallic scent of blood at the tip of his nose.
Hearing Lansi's admission, Winsor fell silent. For a long moment, he simply didn't know how to comfort him.
"I am here," Winsor finally murmured after a long pause.
Lansi blinked. The vulnerable, discouraged expression vanished from his face, replaced by a warm, genuine smile directed at the dark merman. In any case, with Winsor swimming right beside him this time, Lansi truly didn't feel all that frightened.
"Why are you acting so clumsy today?" Lansi teased, shaking his head with a touch of playful mockery. "Since when do you comfort me in such a plain, basic way? What happened to all your smooth rhetoric?"
What had happened to the silver-tongued little prince from their previous romance-novel banter?
Winsor cast a thoroughly bewildered glance at Lansi, completely failing to catch the teasing subtext behind the question. He answered with absolute gravity, "Everything I say to you comes directly from my heart."
The sheer, earnest weight of the sentence instantly choked the breath right out of Lansi.
In the very next second, a rapid montage of Winsor's past "love confessions" flashed vividly through Lansi's mind. The moment he examined those memories a little too closely, a furious, crimson blush erupted across his face.
"Damn it" Lansi thought, his heart hammering wildly. "How does he manage to be this effortlessly smooth?"
Those words... had Winsor calculated them specifically to tease him, or had they simply spilled out naturally?
If they had truly come out naturally, then that meant...
The more Lansi overthought it, the more a furious crimson blush scorched his cheeks.
Watching Lansi flounder in his own thoughts, completely tangled up in his own bashfulness, Winsor merely arched an eyebrow. Although he didn't have the slightest inkling of what was actually playing out inside Lansi's magical brain circuits—something Winsor had never truly managed to comprehend—he was profoundly satisfied with Lansi's current state.
He gently took Lansi by the hand and continued swimming forward through the current.
*Click-click-chirp—*
After the two mermen had traveled a considerable distance, they unexpectedly crossed paths with a large pod of killer whales. Lansi stopped and stared at the massive family of orcas gliding gracefully through the water right in front of them.
This was a true, generational killer whale matriarchy. The formidable adult females swam at the helm as the undisputed patriarchs of the family, while the vulnerable, newborn calves were kept safely guarded in the very center of the formation as the pod moved in perfect synchronization.
The entire pod was traveling in an orderly, beautiful line, migrating steadily toward the south.
`[Wait, is that... Lansi?]`
One of the younger killer whales possessed remarkably sharp eyes. It instantly broke rank from the main formation, tail fluke thrashing with excitement as it bolted directly toward him.
`[What are you doing all the way out here?]`
The moment that single calf discovered the merman, the rest of the killer whales noticed the two distinct figures floating in the open sea.
*Two merfolk! Wow!*
In an instant, every single energetic calf in the entire pod completely ignored the stern warnings of the adult whales. They broke formation in a wild scramble, rushing headlong toward Lansi.
The entire migration line had no choice but to grind to a sudden halt. The adult orcas hung back in the deeper water, watching their rogue calves slip away with expressions that looked hilariously identical to human parents helplessly watching their toddlers dart off to pet a stray cat by the side of the road.
*Chirp! Click-click-chirp!*
The high-pitched, excited squeals of the baby killer whales echoed continuously through the water. A dozen orcs, ranging wildly in size, jostled and shoved against one another as they tried to squeeze as close to Lansi as possible—with a few sneaky adult whales even trying to fish in troubled waters by casually sliding into the crowd.
`[Back off! What if you crowd forward and crush Lansi?!]`
The moment the initial young killer whale saw its brothers and sisters violently elbowing their way to the front, it completely lost its temper. It was one thing to be denied the chance to hoard Lansi all to itself, but it was an entirely different matter if Lansi actually got hurt in the stampede.
Relying heavily on its status as the only mutated, exceptionally strong killer whale in the clan, the young calf simply began physically thrashing any relative who dared to push past it.
For a few minutes, absolute chaos erupted within the pod.
Yet, the adult killer whales waiting on the perimeter didn't show the slightest intention of stepping in to restore order. Instead, they watched lovingly as Lansi was engulfed in a swirling pot of absolute pandemonium, occasionally exchanging soft, conversational clicks and whistles. Perhaps in the grand estimation of the adult orcas, this chaotic "interaction" served as excellent team-building exercise for the youth, and the grown-ups had no business interfering.
The young mutant killer whale was indeed a force to be reckoned with. Seeing that verbal persuasion was entirely useless, it simply used raw muscle to aggressively discipline the rest of the calves alongside its closest allies.
Under the swift application of absolute force, the rowdy pod finally settled down into a disciplined state.
Over a dozen massive killer whales lined up in a perfect, three-hundred-and-sixty-degree circle, surrounding the two mermen without a single blind spot, staring at them with wide, unblinking eyes.
The two mermen: "..."
The young killer whale calf would have desperately loved to lean in and get a comforting pat from Lansi. However, terrified that the other whales would immediately use it as an excuse to break formation and copy him, it reluctantly held itself back, staying firmly in line with its siblings.
`[Lansi, why did you leave Sunset Bay?]` the young killer whale asked curiously.
Lansi paused, considering his words carefully. He was deeply afraid of triggering an aggressive, traumatized overreaction from the young calf—after all, the local sea monsters harbored a profound hatred for humans, and this specific little whale had nearly died after being stranded and captured by humans last time.
Attempting to keep things as vague as possible, Lansi replied, `[We are migrating.]`
`[Oh, oh, I see!]` The young killer whale nodded its massive head in a daze. `[That makes sense. Our family is currently migrating, too.]`
Its words finally provided an explanation for why such an enormous pod had congregated in these waters.
`[We are heading down into the deep south,]` the young calf informed Lansi, its tone turning slightly anxious. `[Why are you swimming toward the north? It's really bad up there right now.]`
Lansi froze mid-water. `[What do you mean? What's happening?]`
The north was the exact direction of the Human Alliance.
`[The word among the pods is that there is foul, black water spewing out near an island in the far north,]` the young killer whale relayed, passing along the grim intelligence its family had gathered from the currents. `[Every single fish that comes into contact with that black water dies instantly.]`
It looked back toward its matriarch before turning back to Lansi. `[Our family is terrified that the black water will eventually drift down into our hunting grounds, so we decided to travel far south this year to avoid it.]`
A small island in the north? Spewing black water?
Lansi's brow furrowed tightly as he permanently filed the ominous piece of information away in his mind.
Before he could ponder it further, the young killer whale shifted its heavy gaze toward the dark, imposing figure swimming silently at Lansi's side.
`[Lansi... is this your mate?]`
The young killer whale turned its full attention toward Winsor, looking incredibly pleased.
`[Hello there! What's your name?]`
In the simple estimation of the young orca, the two mermen made an exceptionally striking pair. One was pure white and the other was pitch black; when swimming closely together, they perfectly matched the monochromatic color scheme of the killer whale clan. It was visually beautiful.
Winsor stared down at the sprawling calf in front of him, his lips pressed into a tense, thoroughly displeased line.
Lansi let out a soft chuckle. Beneath the surface of the water, he silently reached out and gave Winsor's waist a sharp, warning pinch.
Winsor's mouth twitched. Gritting his teeth against the pinch, he reluctantly forced out a reply: `[My name is Winsor.]`
`[Oh, wow, wow!]` The young killer whale was practically vibrating with joy. `[Lansi, Lansi, since there are two of you this time, can you separate for just a moment and let us all get a good huff of you?]`
The calf knew that once they embarked on this massive migration, there was no telling how many years would pass before they ever crossed paths with Lansi again. It desperately wanted to satisfy its longing before they parted ways.
The only glaring flaw in its plan was that Winsor was not nearly as easygoing as Lansi, nor did he possess any fond, nostalgic memories of this particular pod.
"Huff?" Winsor couldn't help but repeat the bizarre human word aloud, casting a deeply suspicious, questioning glance at Lansi.
Only now did he realize that Lansi and these killer whales had an established history, and their relationship seemed entirely too intimate for his liking.
If it had just been one or two rogue calves, Lansi might have indulged them. But facing an entire, eager circle of over a dozen massive marine predators, he genuinely feared his scales would be rubbed completely raw by their heavy snouts.
Lansi firmly tried to decline: `[Absolutely not.]`
`[Oh, come on, don't be like that, Lansi!]` Seeing that his initial plea failed, the young killer whale immediately began throwing a shameless tantrum. Completely forgetting the sheer number of its siblings crowding behind it, the calf lunged forward, determined to get a solid rub against Lansi before leaving. `[Just a quick touch! Besides, you have a mate now anyway—just leave him busy doing something else~~]`
The young calf was acting exactly like an aggressive, over-affectionate cat, throwing its massive weight forward.
Seeing their leader break rank, the remaining killer whales instantly followed suit, eagerly pressing inward. In a matter of seconds, the sheer, crushing mass of the pod began forcing Lansi and Winsor lower and lower, nearly pinning them directly against the seafloor—
Suddenly, Winsor moved.
An invisible, suffocating aura of absolute cosmic coercion erupted violently into the surrounding sea.
Winsor slowly raised his head, his gaze sweeping across the encroaching killer whales like shards of ice as he issued a single, freezing command: `[Scram.]`
The killer whales didn't comprehend the complex nature of his divinity, but they understood the primal, absolute promise of death.
In that horrific split second, the black-tailed merman in their eyes ceased to be a beautiful, exotic creature like Lansi. Instead, an unfathomably colossal, twisted shadow seemed to unfurl directly behind him, stretching out into the abyss. It was vast, pitch-black, and dripping with ancient, concentrated malice.
The mere act of locking eyes with him felt as though their very souls had been violently dragged into a frozen river in the dead of winter. A deep, bone-chilling terror paralyzed their instincts, screaming at them that absolute annihilation was a single breath away.
The entire pod went entirely rigid before scattering in a frantic, panicked frenzy.
The terrified calves screamed, fleeing back to the protective flanks of their mothers while wailing in high-pitched, traumatized clicks. The adult killer whales were equally horrified; the leading matriarch shrieked out a series of rapid, commanding whistles, instantly organizing her panicked ranks, and spearheaded a breathless retreat away from the area.
Winsor tracked the fleeing shapes until the entire pod had vanished completely over the horizon before he slowly, deliberately reined in his terrifying killing intent.
This was the first time Winsor had ever unleashed his raw, unadulterated brutality directly in front of Lansi.
Bracing himself, Winsor lowered his head, his gaze colliding directly with Lansi's.
Lansi had been staring up at him the entire time.
An anxious silence fell over Winsor before he asked quietly, "Are you scared of me?"
Lansi nodded honestly. `[Yes.]`
Of course he had been terrified. Being the closest entity to Winsor when that apocalyptic wave of malice detonated, his heart had nearly leaped right out of his chest from the sheer, instinctual panic.
Winsor narrowed his eyes, attempting to maintain his dominant, terrifying persona as he threatened, "If you ever dare to leave me... I will swallow you whole, just like that."
"You wouldn't dare!" Lansi snapped, his voice rising in sudden, fiery indignation. "If you ever did something like that, you wouldn't be worthy of my love at all! Tell me, Winsor—are you worthy of my love or not?!"
Winsor's entire train of thought derailed. He had been entirely serious about his terrifying, godlike threat, but Lansi's fierce counterattack left him completely dumbfounded.
After a few seconds of frantic mental scrambling, Winsor's imposing shoulders slumped. He nodded slowly, answering in a thoroughly aggrieved, chastised tone, "Of course... of course I am worthy of your love."
"Then do you ever dare to threaten me like that again?" Lansi asked smoothly, effortlessly seizing absolute control of the conversation as he turned back around and continued swimming toward the north.
Winsor flicked his dark tail fluke irritably, completely defeated. He could only mutter a quiet admission: "I won't do it again."
Though he still hadn't fully mastered the intricate psychological mechanics of how humans fell in love, Winsor was beginning to suspect a fundamental truth: he was completely, utterly wrapped around this little fish's finger.
*Sigh.*
Winsor began to ponder a profound philosophical paradox—did the fact that a cosmic entity could be so effortlessly subdued by a fragile little fish mean that, in reality, seemingly weak creatures possessed a terrifyingly unique power of their own?
While Winsor was deep in his existential crisis, Lansi had absolutely no intention of offering any further enlightenment.
"I just can't stop wondering what exactly happened within the Alliance," Lansi murmured, flicking his pristine white tail fluke as he pondered the situation.
*Oh, right... there was also that small island in the far north the killer whales mentioned.*
Was it possible that the toxic, black water spewing into the ocean was simply another industrial pollutant being recklessly discharged into the sea by humans? But considering the current state of the world, did humanity truly still possess the audacity to pull a stunt like that right outside the Alliance's borders?
Were they actively courting death?
"Don't worry too much. Carl and Rose are both still alive," Winsor said, stepping into Lansi's path to offer a quiet word of comfort. "I have already spoken with them."
"Really?" Lansi's eyes instantly lit up with hope. "What did they say?"
"They don't fully comprehend what's happening either. Carl merely has an intuitive, gut feeling that something deeply sinister has taken root within the Alliance," Winsor explained.
Although Carl usually came across as careless and chronically high-strung, surviving a literal trip to the brink of death had altered something within him. Ever since he had been pulled from that pile of corpses, his raw instinct for sensing impending danger had become unnaturally, flawlessly accurate.
If Carl felt there was an underlying issue, then something was undoubtedly rotting within the Alliance.
Winsor continued, "After you handed me the communication device, I thought it over for a long time. Ultimately, I chose to use it to transmit a specific, coded reply back to Carl."
The moment the communicator pinged with that encrypted code, Carl reacted as though he had been guarding the device twenty-four hours a day, firing an immediate response back to Winsor. He had been utterly ecstatic. If Winsor hadn't firmly ordered him to cease transmission, the dark merman likely would have been bombarded with a relentless, never-ending barrage of text messages from the frantic soldier for the rest of their journey.
"However, relying on this method of communication is highly dangerous," Winsor noted grimly. "We will wait until we officially make landfall before we attempt to establish physical contact with Carl and the others."
Having briefly experienced life as an aristocratic human gentleman on land, Winsor was acutely aware of how easily digital signals could be intercepted and traced by hostile factions.
Therefore, until their webbed hands safely touched the shore, Winsor had absolutely no intention of powering up the communication device ever again.