Chapter 208: The Sea Witch’s Knowledge

Amber’s reminder piqued Gawain’s curiosity. He glanced at Betty beside him. “Did you call Tyr to come eat?”

Betty blinked. “I did, but Miss Tyr said she wanted to sleep a little longer…”

“With her near-hibernation schedule, ‘a little longer’ might mean she won’t show up until tomorrow’s mealtime,” Gawain said, a twitch at the corner of his mouth. He had planned to use this rare free time to talk with the sea witch from the outside world and learn about the “outside,” but it seemed she’d been asleep all day until now. “Go call her again. If she still doesn’t come, I’ll go get her myself—don’t want her sleeping herself into oblivion.”

“Oh.” Betty stood up, ready to fetch the sea witch for dinner. But just as she rose, a lazy voice drifted from the dining room doorway: “I’m coming, I’m coming… yawn… I just slept a bit longer. Sleeping myself into oblivion? No way…”

“Sleeping almost twenty hours a day, anyone would worry you’d sleep yourself into oblivion. Is that how sea witches’ schedules work?” Gawain said casually, turning toward the dining room door. There, he saw Miss Tyr staggering in, pushing the door open. His eyes immediately caught sight of her lower body—not human legs, but a long, serpentine tail. Clearly, for this deep-water creature, a sea snake’s tail was far more practical than human legs.

But the next moment, Gawain’s expression froze in shock. Tyr wasn’t gliding in gracefully like a snake; instead, she was moving in awkward little arches—her tail’s middle section rising high, then thrusting forward with effort, one arch at a time.

Though Tyr had been staying here for a few days, she rarely left her room. The few times she had appeared before, she either walked on legs or hopped using her fish tail. This was the first time Gawain had seen her move in full sea snake form. How to put it… it looked kind of ridiculous.

“What’s wrong?” Tyr noticed his expression and immediately put her hands on her hips. “Is my tail ugly?”

“Is this how you sea witches move on land?” Rebecca exclaimed in surprise. She wasn’t the only one caught off guard. She even mimicked a snake’s slithering motion with her hands. “Isn’t it supposed to be like this?”

Tyr glanced at her tail tip and wiggled it. “Ah, other sea witches move like you said, but when I first grew my tail as a kid, there happened to be a sea caterpillar nearby. I copied it wrong—and never fixed it since.”

Gawain: “…You should try to get used to walking on legs. After all, everyone on land uses legs. You can’t go out like that.”

Unspoken was his real reason: watching a beautiful snake-woman awkwardly arching her tail forward looked so silly it was almost embarrassing enough to be enshrined in a temple of shame. The territory already had enough embarrassments among its races and professions; adding this would only drag down the average dignity of all Cecil’s people.

Tyr didn’t realize the deeper reasons. She thought Gawain made a good point but had a better solution: “How about next time you just break my legs in public? Then I can be carried everywhere, or just not go out at all.”

“Is it really worth it just to avoid walking upright?” Gawain stared at the sea witch in disbelief. “Are all sea witches like this?”

“Not all,” Tyr said with effort as she climbed to the dining table, pushed a chair aside, then neatly coiled her tail into a lump and used the tip to pick up a fork and poke at her plate. “I’m just lazy… Oh, you have quite a variety of land food. Changed it up again?”

“Hopefully these land foods suit your taste,” Hetty smiled—though her smile twisted slightly when she saw how Tyr used her tail. “Actually, our food here is pretty simple. This territory is still developing, so many things are…”

“Doesn’t matter,” Tyr waved her tail. “I can’t taste it anyway. Sea witches basically have no sense of taste.”

“No sense of taste?” Gawain asked, surprised. “So when you eat, you just swallow it?”

For humans, lacking taste was a huge loss—one of life’s greatest pleasures, food, would be gone. But Tyr didn’t seem to mind. She poked at the stewed potatoes, popped some in her mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “Though we can’t taste, we can sense subtle textures. Also, sea witches are essentially elemental beings—water elementals. Eating isn’t necessary for survival; it’s more like… entertainment. In fact, many sea witches don’t eat regularly. At most, when we catch unfamiliar fish or shrimp in the sea, we bite a few times to test hardness…”

“How fascinating,” Gawain said, clearly intrigued by the sea witch’s daily life (and indeed, he was). “So how do you live in the sea? Do you build cities? Do you have jobs?”

“Cities? Our cities would shock you land-dwellers!” Tyr glanced at Gawain as if the question was laughable. “Our cities are bigger, more advanced, and sturdier than your largest cities. Back in the day, our cities could even fly!”

“Flying cities?” Hetty’s eyes widened with curiosity. “Like the Elves’ Starfall Sanctum? A magical floating city? Wait, do you know the Elves’ Starfall Sanctum?”

“I haven’t seen it, but some of my sisters have. It floats over the straits south of your continent. The Starfall Sanctum has a floating core from who-knows-what era, and a broadcast system that never shuts off. Those long-eared Silver Elves seem proud of their floating city. Some sisters went up out of curiosity to learn their anti-gravity tech, but found those long ears only know how to use it—they can’t build or repair it. The floating core was probably stolen from somewhere else… tsk tsk.”

Tyr’s disdainful tone toward the Silver Empire’s pride—the floating city—stirred waves in Gawain’s mind.

Her tone didn’t sound fake. Her personality over the past few days didn’t suggest she was a liar (though Gawain knew he couldn’t fully judge a foreign race’s character in just days). From her words, Gawain deduced that sea witches possessed extremely advanced technology—otherwise, they wouldn’t speak so dismissively of the Silver Empire’s most advanced magical tech!

It was also clear that a few sea witches had visited the land, even the Elven realm, observing and evaluating the Starfall Sanctum’s technology. Their goal had been to learn the Elves’ anti-gravity techniques.

Had the sea witches’ own anti-gravity tech failed?

Tyr had said their cities “used to” fly, implying they no longer did. Had they suffered a technological break?

And their evaluation of the Elves was disappointing—they found the Elves’ anti-gravity tech inferior to their own. The current Silver Elves couldn’t even build a new Starfall Sanctum.

Gawain knew a bit about the Silver Elves. As one of humanity’s greatest pioneers, he had interacted with many races. In his inherited memories, the Silver Elves called the Starfall Sanctum a “lost ancestral legacy,” filled with technologies even they barely understood.

The Silver Elves had also suffered a technological break.

It seemed every race in this world had experienced a technological break.

Perhaps because of the magical cataclysm…

Thinking this, Gawain decided to subtly ask the sea witch about the cataclysm and technological breaks. “By the way, do you know about a great disaster that happened on land seven hundred years ago?”

“A disaster seven hundred years ago?” Tyr thought for a moment. “Ah, I know a little. Some of my wandering sisters mentioned it. About seven hundred years ago, something exploded over there, and human society was turned upside down.”

“We call it the ‘Magic Tide,’” Hetty nodded seriously. “It was a catastrophe for this continent. Many people…”

Tyr suddenly interrupted, “Wait, what do you call it?”

“Magic Tide, or Magical Tides,” Hetty explained, puzzled but patient. “It’s when the natural flow of magical energy loses order, chaotic magic floods the world, creating deadly environments and destabilizing the physical world, causing monsters and lethal hazards to spread…”

“Na’Salu’Fala.” Tyr suddenly uttered a word—not human language. It came through a special vocal mechanism unique to sea witches, with a strange, resonant, melodious tone. It even triggered a faint magical echo, filling the dining room with the sound of ethereal waves.

Amber blinked in confusion. “Huh? What does that mean?”

“Magic Tide, in our language,” Tyr shrugged. “Your explanation sounds pretty close. Looks like you really did experience something similar. But honestly… from what we’ve seen, your so-called Magic Tide was barely a breeze.”

Hetty and Rebecca looked puzzled, not quite understanding Tyr’s meaning. But Gawain felt a click in his mind—he knew far more than anyone else present.

Tyr’s voice continued softly: “The true Magic Tide… reshapes the entire world.”

(Network unstable, early update~~~)

(End of chapter)