The first order of business was to see how much stronger he was after having consumed a new Pandora. Nathan left the center of the town and went out toward the outskirts, where there was no one around who could potentially get hurt.

  His feet squashed the grass underneath him as he took a step forward. It was nothing but open plains in every direction. In the far distance, he could make out the faint outline of his town’s buildings.

  With a mental command, his status appeared in front of him. As expected, the stats and skills hadn’t changed. However . . .

  Nathan Lee - Lv. 88

  Age: 22

  Race: Human (B-rank)

  Class: Abyssal Fisherman (Diamond)

  Rapidly climbing the ranks, he thought.

  In the past, he noticed that increasing his rank seemed to bring about an additional increase in terms of general, overall strength. So following that logic, he'd probably become even stronger.

  He pulled out his fishing rod and swung it around in a circle, winding it up for additional strength. After a few seconds of winding, he swung forward and it slammed down into the surrounding dirt.

  Sparks flew from the impact—confusing Nathan because he wasn’t sure where those sparks were coming from—and then the ground shattered. The earth split apart as if an earthquake were hitting it.

  The cracks spread all the way up to where Nathan was standing. He took a step back, half worried that he triggered some sort of sinkhole or hit a fault line.

  The cracks stopped spreading and Nathan scratched the back of his head. Well, it was good to know that he’d become this powerful. What about his more water-based abilities?

  He held out his hand and the water in the air resonated, all molding together and forming into a ball of liquid. He manipulated it with ease, twirling it around himself. He then shot his hand forward and the water followed in turn. It flew forward like a bullet and crashed into the dirt ground, shooting massive chunks of earth into the air from the friction.

  So yeah, Nathan wasn’t really feeling too much of a difference.

  He moved over to his fishing rod again and held out his hand to activate [Astral Fishing].

  He tossed his line into the shimmering air . . .

  Then remembered that all it would do was just land on the Sixth Circle due to the fact that he was inside his Soulbound Town.

  Oops, forgot about that, he thought.

  He reeled back in his line and shut the hole in reality created by [Astral Fishing].

  After that, he turned around to head back to town when he suddenly felt an immense pain rush up his spine. He froze and rolled around his shoulders as if trying to force the weight off of them. He took another step. Then another bout of pain hit him, this time spreading from the spine and out toward his limbs.

  Nathan remained ramrod still as he tried to process what was happening.

  This particular, specific burning pain was familiar to him.

  After all, it was the exact same pain he felt earlier when he’d eaten the Pandora 2.0.

  Another wave of pain. This time, water burst out from around him. The liquids scattered and without any kind of clear goal or unity to them.

  His skills activated on their own. Nathan couldn’t recall that ever happening in the past. He waited for another few seconds as the pain slowly receded.

  He took a few steps. And this time, there was no sudden attacks or skill activations.

  Nathan wasn’t entirely sure what to do. Who did he know who he could talk to about this? Probably only Thalassa.

  Next time he saw her, he would make sure to ask. He felt a strange pulling sensation in his gut and jolted backward. He thought he was out of the worst of it. But it seemed that another skill was about to activate on its own?!

  The air shimmered in front of him and . . .

  Out came the scales of a familiar fish.

  Finny looked at him and cackled. “You look like you’ve seen better days!”

  Nathan blinked.

  “Finny? What are you doing here?”

  “You don’t remember? You asked me to arrange a meeting with the head honcho.” Finny swam around in a circle near Nathan’s head. “And luckily for you, he’s agreed to a meeting.”

  Nathan let in a small gasp.

  “Really? That fast?”

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  “I’ve been telling him bits and pieces about you. And he’s been watching your progress with a close eye. Trust me, he’s wanted this meeting just as much as you.”

  Nathan was cheered by this. And also vaguely concerned. Why did he seem to attract so much attention?

  “Where are we going to meet?” Nathan asked.

  “We’re going to meet in the Golden Realm, of course. Only safe place to have a discussion like this. Actually, it’s the only place to have a discussion with you at all.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If he were to come back onto one of the main circles, the system administrator would definitely be alerted, matey. The rest of us can get away with traveling between circles, not him.”

  Nathan rubbed his chin and nodded. “Makes sense. How soon can we have this meeting?”

  “Right now, if you’re up for it.”

  Nathan stopped. He hadn’t been expecting Finny to work so quickly.

  “That would be excellent,” he said.

  “Great to hear, mate!” His grin slipped off his face and he looked a little bit squeamish. “I don’t suppose you have a way to get into the Golden Realm?”

  “You didn’t think to check that first?”

  “In my defense, I figured that the number one survivor of the apocalypse would have a way to get pretty much wherever they wanted.”

  Nathan rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I do.”

  Nathan reached into his inventory and scooped out several handfuls of weird glowing golden water. He dumped it onto the ground unceremoniously, creating a large shimmering puddle.

  Finny looked back and forth between him and the portal. “Where did you get all of this essence water?”

  Essence Water? So that's the official term.

  “Mostly just from bumping into it.”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  Nathan tilted his head. “No? It’s pretty common, actually.”

  Despite the fact that Finny was sufficiently and capable of human expressions, Nathan could see Finny cycle through multiple ranges of emotion, including shock, outrage, confusion, and a bevy of other faces.

  “You with your stupid affinity,” Finny muttered. “Let’s just head in.”

  Nathan shrugged and stepped forward. He slipped into the ground, falling seamlessly into the portal.

  Nathan controlled his rate of descent with an ease that belied several hours of experience. He came to a slow stop and touched down on the “ground”—insofar as there was a ground in a place like this.

  Finny came in from above and spiraled down before coming in front of Nathan.

  “You weren’t even surprised,” Finny said. “You’ve done this several times, haven’t you?”

  “Yeah, and that makes me wonder is why you didn’t arrange this earlier,” Nathan said.

  “Before, you didn’t really have a good reason to be talking to the boss man.” Finny bobbed up and down as if he were making a shrug. “Plus, he was busy. Turns out that after the crabs were taken out, they had enough cells ready to go, disconnected from the main body, that they were still able to give us a lot of trouble. He’s been busy putting out fires all over the place.”

  Finny nodded at him. “But don’t worry. He’s on his way here. Shouldn’t be more than a few minutes.”

  Nathan sat down in the infinite golden void.

  “Tell me more about this guy. What’s he like?”

  “Tell you more about the leader of all fish? Sure.” Finny dropped his voice to a deep and low timbre. “You see, long ago, in an era long since gone—”

  “Please don’t. I really don’t need the mythologizing.”

  “You’re no fun,” Finny grumbled. He let out a sigh and his eyes sharpened. “The boss man never really wanted to be the boss. He’s a lot like you in that way. More the kind of guy who had greatness thrust upon him—is that the saying?”

  Nathan cocked an eyebrow. “Where did you even find out about that quote?”

  “We’ve been smuggling human media between planets. I was watching a TV show recently. I still can’t believe that Stark died like that—”

  Nathan held up a hand. “You know, that brings up another good question. Can you explain how exactly the smuggling stuff works?”

  “You mean you haven’t figured it out yet?”

  Finny looked honestly confused and it took Nathan a few seconds to realize why.

  He slapped his face against his palm. It was kind of obvious, actually.

  “The Golden Realm. It lets you move between different worlds and dimensions.” “You got it, Laddie,” Finny stretched out his fin around himself, gesturing at the surroundings. “Us fish managed to master the spell that allows us to navigate this place. We can avoid the areas with the worst time shenanigans and find our way even in an infinite void like this.”

  Nathan was about to continue the line of conversation when he remembered that he was supposed to be gathering information on the big boss fish.

  “Let’s get back to this guy,” Nathan said. “Can you tell me more about him?" Nathan realized he was being confusing and lowered his head. "Sorry for being so all over the place with the questions, by the way.”

  Finny waved him off. “It’s no problem.” Finny looked up toward the sky. “Like I said, he was kind of unlucky. More a victim of circumstance than what one would consider a real hero. But he stepped up to the task admirably. His ability to navigate through the Golden Realm is unparalleled. Lets him get the jump on our competitors who also have access to this kind of navigation. He’s more than once managed to get in devestating sneak attacks on far more powerful opponents due to his ability to move through here safely.”

  “What about in terms of personality?” Nathan asked. “Is he more stoic? Temperamental?”

  “I’d say stoic. Very little seems to faze him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that fish lose composure.”

  This guy didn’t seem so bad. Nathan was actually kind of starting to look forward to meeting him.

  “He became the number one in our instance of the apocalypse. It was him who made the decision during the sixth circle to—” Finny sighed. “To make a deal with the system.”

  “Why was that? You guys couldn’t beat the other species?”

  “No, we probably would’ve had a chance. But he wasn’t . . . The boss refused to put the blood of two other species on our fins. The boss is just that kind of guy.” Finny shook his head and looked at Nathan with a sharp gaze. “Don’t misunderstand. He’s not soft. He wasn’t doing it out of some kind of pathetic sentimentalism. The reason he did it was because he believed it was the right thing to do, not because he wanted to avoid a hard decision.”

  That was unexpectedly intense. “I’m guessing that this has been a constant source of debate for the fish people?”

  “It has. For the first few years after the deal, boss fish was run ragged putting down crazy folks who wanted to try to challenge the system.” Nathan grimaced. If that were the case, then presumably the boss fish might have a negative view of Nathan for trying to destroy the Mother.

  Nathan frowned. “It just now hits me that I haven’t asked for this guy’s name.”

  Finny let out a small gasp. “You’re right, matey! All this talk, and I never give you his name!”

  Nathan prepared his ears for the travesty against the English language that he was about to hear. It was going to be some kind of stupid fish pun. He didn’t care that it was the translation magic—it was definitely the fish people’s fault for everything.

  “This is a name whispered in the deep bowels of the multiverse. The cleverest smuggler to ever exist—the great, the wise . . .”

  Finny leaned in.

  “Greg.”

  Nathan blinked.

  “Wait, seriously—?”

  The feeling of a presence at the edge of Nathan’s awareness caught his attention. He turned around and faced a large shadow, easily twice the size.

  He looked up toward its large, beady eyes.

  “Hi,” Nathan said.