South District, Samuel’s home.
Kicking off the slightly stifling blanket draped over him, Celt opened his eyes and let out a yawn. Light streamed in through the window that hadn’t been closed, showing the sun nearing its zenith. Having slept from yesterday afternoon all the way to nearly noon the next day, his heavily drained spirit had finally recovered.
He stirred in bed a couple of times, then rolled onto his side, propping himself up on his elbows, and summoned his own Travel Guide. Using the energy within him, he wrote a few words on it, leaving a message for Samuel to build some cleaning robots when he got back. Sure, the house was spotless now, but it’d need tidying up in the future.
Besides, the whole house only had the master bedroom that was livable. Today, it was just him home alone, and once Samuel came back, they’d have to fix up the guest room too. He couldn’t be bothered to do it himself, and he figured Samuel would feel the same. Though he didn’t have high standards for living quality and could sleep in an unorganized room just fine, he certainly wouldn’t mind being more comfortable if the option was there.
As for why he didn’t just do it himself, the reason was simple. The part of him that had been split off hadn’t inherited the Toymaker’s abilities at all. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t make anything too special. Professional stuff had to be left to the professionals.
Done with that, he leaned back against the headboard, his unfocused gaze drifting to the flower stand not far away. “Speaking of which,” Celt muttered to himself, casually tossing the book aside, “I still don’t know what to call that energy inside me, do I?” “Tch, an uneducated bumpkin who never went to school is inconvenient in every way.” He’d been using this tool for so long and didn’t even know its name. When he actually had to use it, he could only call it “that energy,” “some kind of energy,” or “the energy inside me.” Using it for ages without knowing its name made him feel a bit like a scumbag.
“Oh, what a sinful man I am.”
He patted his stomach but didn’t feel hungry. He thought back—after ending the communication with Samuel yesterday, he’d gone straight to sleep, skipping dinner. And now, it seemed he’d missed breakfast the next day too. That made it nearly twenty hours without eating. Still, he didn’t feel that hungry. Thirst was more noticeable. Licking his lips with his tongue, Celt let his thoughts drift back to that energy inside him. It was annoying not having a name for the power he wielded, so he decided to give it one himself.
Raising his left hand in front of his eyes, he spread his fingers and wiggled them. His knuckles let out faint pops. He lifted his other hand, also bringing it up, and clasped them together. “Crack.”
Celt gently bent his left pinky, pulling it back toward the back of his hand. Back in the day, when he was still “Wu Lang,” he’d loved cracking his fingers like that. It didn’t hurt; instead, it made a satisfyingly relieving sound. The only pity was that this little stress-relief game could only be played once in a while—once it cracked, it wouldn’t make a sound again for a short time.
One by one, Celt cracked all ten fingers, feeling an unusual lightness in his hands.
“Pollution…” He recalled Priest Ethen’s assessment of his abilities. “My ability’s pretty eldritch-y, honestly. Maybe I’ll just call it Spirituality. I’m a big fan of tentacle monsters, so why not pay homage to Cthulhu?”
From the side came the sound of the Travel Guide turning pages. Celt didn’t move, just slightly tilted his head, squinting over, and saw text appearing on it. Ink-black letters were emerging from nothing, going from faint to bold. “Indeed, the official definition for this is also Spirituality.”
Seeing that line, Celt raised an eyebrow, a little surprised. “Aren’t you a copy? You’re actually alive?” Celt said.
“Just one account logging into two devices,” the Travel Guide replied. “Though, the Spirituality here probably comes from the perception and study of the [Law], an extension of things like ‘inspiration’ and ‘flash of insight.’”
Celt chuckled. “I don’t care where it comes from; as long as I understand it, that’s fine,” he said to the Travel Guide, his tone casual. “Speaking of tentacle monsters…” Celt mused. He vaguely remembered Samuel buying a Nether-Floating Jellyfish. “Did we get that jellyfish?” Celt asked the Travel Guide.
“Got it,” the Travel Guide answered. “After leaving the market yesterday, it was thrown into the book and never taken out.”
“Never taken out…” Celt suddenly sat up. “Damn, it didn’t suffocate to death, did it?”
“It’s not dead,” the Travel Guide replied breezily. “The book still lets air through.”
“Oh, okay then. I didn’t know your storage space had air circulation—feels pretty high-end.” Celt didn’t lie back down; instead, he leaned against the headboard. Maybe he could use it like a Kamui dimension.
Leaning back, he picked up the Travel Guide and set it on his lap. “But I think she’s about to starve to death,” the Travel Guide answered. “She hadn’t eaten for two days when she got caught in the black market, and now she’s been locked up for another day. Hmm… she’ll probably die of thirst before starvation.”
“She?” Celt noticed the pronoun.
“She’s pretty smart, plus she’s female, so I’ve been using ‘she’ for her,” the Travel Guide explained.
“Oh… okay then.” Celt shrugged. “Mainly because I always thought jellyfish were hermaphrodites.” “666, and futa.”
“So why would a jellyfish die of thirst?” Celt asked instead.
The Travel Guide answered, “Because there’s no water in the tank. She hasn’t had a drink all day.”
“Ah, is that so?” Celt rubbed his face. “So the tank has no water?”
“Well, Nether-Floating Jellyfish aren’t really aquatic creatures. They can fly,” the Travel Guide replied.
“So that’s how it is. That’s new to me,” Celt said.
Celt blinked, looking at this string of explanations. Dehydrated, plus starved, locked in a dark storage space for a whole day and night… With that treatment, forget a jellyfish—any creature would be wilted.
As he spoke, he swung his legs off the bed, slipped on his slippers, grabbed the Travel Guide casually, pushed open the bedroom door, and headed downstairs along the staircase, carrying it into the living room on the first floor. “Time to give her some water, then.” Celt spread the Travel Guide flat on his left hand, letting it flip automatically to the page where the jellyfish was stored.
The book flipped on its own, stopping at an illustration of a jellyfish. [Item Description: Nether-Floating Jellyfish: Carefree creature, lives in groups, timid but highly toxic. Semi-transparent, human head-sized, capable of floating. Needs to feed on souls; can extract trace amounts of soul from the blood of living beings. Even though it’s a jellyfish, it’s actually a terrestrial creature.] [So it’s a jellyfish that might actually drown.]
Arriving in the living room on the first floor, Celt tossed the Travel Guide in his hand upward, letting the notebook hover on its own in midair, while he headed to the kitchen to grab a water jug. “Let her out,” Celt said, waving a hand backward without turning around.
Receiving the instruction, the Travel Guide flipped over, pages facing downward. Space twisted slightly, and the tank originally stored in the book appeared on the living room floor.
Celt paid it no mind and walked straight into the kitchen. The kitchen was huge. On top of the basic fixtures, there were several things Celt hadn’t really seen before—some devices that Samuel had installed out of boredom when he first got the place. He scanned around and spotted a white water jug on a metal rack.
He picked it up, weighed it in his hand—empty. The inside was dry and odorless. He opened a nearby faucet that seemed inlaid with gold; water gushed out noisily. He filled it about a quarter, turned off the tap, and carried the jug back to the living room. He didn’t touch anything Samuel had installed, because he had the same memories and knew that touching some things would cause them to explode.
By the time Celt came back with the water jug, the tank was already sitting steadily on the floor. Samuel hadn’t put the cloth covering the tank back in with it. Through the glass casing, Celt could clearly see that semi-transparent jellyfish. It was about the size of an adult human head, a very pale, almost colorless grayish-white, semi-transparent, roughly umbrella-shaped. The edge of its bell wasn’t smooth; it had subtle, irregular undulations, like a solidified, half-melted cloud. From beneath the bell hung long, thin tentacles, currently drooping weakly, almost touching the bottom of the tank.
She was floating in a corner of the tank away from Celt, gently pulsing, contracting and expanding.
“Wow, pretty shy, huh?” Celt opened the lid on top of the tank, noticing a small bowl inside, presumably for water. “Pretty cute.”
When he opened the lid, a faint, pleasant scent wafted out from the tank. That was the natural, light fragrance of the Nether-Floating Jellyfish—and even that alone was somewhat toxic. Not caring whether the jellyfish was poisonous, he reached his hand directly in, aiming the water jug at the small bowl and pouring. The jellyfish didn’t take the chance to attack him; it just stayed quietly in the corner of the tank.
“As for food…” Celt thought for a moment, recalling the description from the Travel Guide. [Can extract trace amounts of soul from the blood of living beings for consumption.] “How much does she need per meal?” Celt asked the Travel Guide.
The Travel Guide searched and gave an answer: “As soul-essence creatures, Nether-Floating Jellyfish don’t eat much. The soul of one rat shared among a group of over a dozen jellyfish can last them over a month. “But that’s just in normal conditions—when they’re not moving much. “Normally, their activity level is very low. They just float around somewhere, occasionally bumping into each other, and that’s about it. “If they expend a lot of energy, their appetite increases accordingly.”
Celt rubbed his chin. “Uh, are you sure they’re not just too weak to hunt prey, leaving the whole group starving and disoriented?”
The Travel Guide was silent for a moment. “I don’t know. That’s just what the book says.”
“Alright.” Celt nodded.
He looked down and noticed the jellyfish had quietly moved above the water bowl and was slowly descending, settling over it. It really was desperately thirsty—too much so to even be shy anymore.
Celt just crouched there by the tank, one elbow propped on his knee, chin resting on his palm, watching the Nether-Floating Jellyfish drink with great interest. “You know what, those tentacles are pretty cute, actually.”
“No way, are you serious?” the Travel Guide seemed a bit shocked. “When you said you were a Fre Burner earlier, I thought you were joking.”
“I don’t know either,” Celt said, his eyes drooping slightly. “It seems to be the influence of the ‘Angel of Redemption’ Law Rhyme. I feel like… I have some kind of instinctive… hmm… I can’t quite describe it toward most species right now.”
“It’s not maternal instinct, is it?” “That’d be a bit ridiculous.”
Soon enough, the jellyfish had drunk its fill. It left the water bowl and floated in the tank. It didn’t immediately retreat to the corner, but instead hovered in the upper-middle part of the tank. The lid was still open. Even though it could fly, the jellyfish didn’t leave the tank. “Is it still afraid of me?” Celt said.
He extended one hand, palm open, fingers naturally relaxed, and reached into the tank, stopping beside the jellyfish. His hand inched closer bit by bit. After the initial fear, the jellyfish gradually relaxed, its wariness fading.
The Law Rhyme’s transformation of Celt was quite apparent. Both the “Morning Star” and the “Angel of Redemption” gave him a certain natural affinity. But the “Morning Star” leaned more toward guidance, while the “Angel of Redemption” was more about soothing.
Celt used the “Messenger” ability to convey his friendly emotions to her, while simultaneously activating the extraordinary ability of the “Tuner” to lower her guard and increase her favor toward him.
“Feels like my skill set is completely focused on beast taming,” Celt complained. That immediately made him think of Allenay. Besides the Angel of Redemption, most of his Law Marks and Law Rhymes were copied from him, and he also had “Siren,” a Law Rhyme that clearly came with a built-in hypnosis app. Pretty interesting to think about.
The jellyfish in the tank felt the goodwill and slowly relaxed, no longer so afraid. After all, they were social creatures. Separated from its group and caught in a strange place, finally encountering a friendly being, it mustered the courage to approach Celt’s hand.
Celt was patient enough to stay crouched where he was, letting her approach and adapt at her own pace.
“How intelligent are Nether-Floating Jellyfish?” Celt asked the Travel Guide in a low voice.
The Travel Note floated beside him and displayed an answer. “An adult Nether-Floating Jellyfish that hasn’t become a Law Seeker has an intelligence roughly equivalent to an eleven- or twelve-year-old human.”
“What about one that has become a Law Seeker?” Celt pressed.
“That depends on the situation,” the Travel Guide replied. “But at the very least, it wouldn’t be any different from a normal adult human. “If it’s [Ultimate Wisdom], then it would probably be a little smarter than you.”
Celt scratched his face with his free hand. “Hmm… seems… not bad?” “Having another person in the house to bounce ideas off of wouldn’t be so bad either.”