So I’m a Fish, So What?

The night went by in a literal flash.

Like, one moment the camp was filled with loud hustle and bustle, the next everything went silent except for a few occasional howls of nocturnal animals.

Then the loudness returned in the blink of an eye, as if the peace and quiet was nothing but an illusion.

It appears I was too absorbed in extracting the information from the Half-Demon child’s head that the entire night passed without me even realizing it…

The incredible harvest was definitely worth it though, and it’s not like I’m in a hurry.

Analyzing the language itself was incredibly easy. I’m glad all the efforts I put into learning Earth’s languages were finally rewarded.

I might have fully relied on Sage, or Manager-san as I called her back then, to achieve this extraordinary feat with relative ease, but harvesting the fruits of the seeds I’ve sown with my own hands is really gratifying.

Although I didn’t encounter any difficulties in the process of learning the language, the road after that might’ve been the bumpiest I’ve ever gone through.

If it was a literal road, even driving a tank there would’ve been ridiculously hard.

Let’s not mention how crappy my improvised mind reading ability actually is, this child’s emotions are just too fucking rich!

How can you even bottle up this much emotion without having your heart explode?! This is fucking unscientific! 

Maybe demons are more resistant to mental health issues? Or maybe they’re more resistant to the heretic attribute as a whole?

That doesn’t explain why the emotional capacity of a presumably twelve year old child is this big though.

… Is that the scent of secrets I can smell?! Did I trigger some hidden quest by chance?!

Basically, an enormous cloud of emotions stood in between me and my goal.

You see, the truth is that no one can read minds, not even the gods.

The name of the ability in itself is a big fat lie, or you can say it’s a smokescreen as I like to call it.

As I have previously explained, mortal souls house the consciousness of a being.

Mind reading abilities work by connecting to the target’s soul and reading the waves unconsciously emitted by that consciousness, or as it is commonly called– the subconsciousness.

The more skilled the caster is, the more information they can read and the more specific they can be about the information they can receive.

I myself am only able to receive information passively at my current level of strength. Also, I can’t actually choose what I want to know.

Frankly, there are still too many flaws that need to be addressed before I could truly declare it complete, but it works just fine at its current state.

After all, I just needed to learn her habits, which are all recorded at the outer part of her subconsciousness.

Habits are defined as a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up.

On the surface level, certain actions, words, sounds, or even movements are considered habits.

But if you dive deeper, you’d find that habits are basically what defines a person.

The language you speak is a habit, your common sense is a habit, your physical instincts are all habits, and many many more usually hard to notice bits and pieces of ourselves are habits.

If a habit’s stronger or more pronounced, then it’s most likely closer to the outer part of the soul.

You’re totally fine with performing said habit publicly anyways, so why would you subconsciously hide or protect it? 

For example, you might need to pause and think for a few minutes to remember your common sense, but wording your thoughts into understandable language comes almost as instinctively as breathing.

Continuing that line of thought, emotions are certainly more pronounced than common sense, but less pronounced than language at the same time.

So when I tried to read the Half-Demon child’s subconsciousness, what came first was everything she knew about her spoken language, that’s the easy part.

But while I was analyzing the information I got from her, and without any prior warning, pure thick despair started flooding my soul through the connection.

I had never felt such a high quantity or quality of raw emotions before, and it was actually too late by the time I had noticed it.

Luckily, Sage was promptly on it, isolating all the despair, fear, sorrow, and even suicidal tendencies that came rushing through the connection inside a few layers of Soul Barriers.

And then helper number 2, the Soul Grimoire went ahead and swallowed it all using that little bit of devouring affinity it had obtained after sealing Greed.

Basically, it was a near-death situation and I survived by pure dumb luck… again.

Imma just skip the rest of the explanation and spare my poor heart from exploding.

Luck is definitely a part of strength, but I feel very frustrated when I remember that I survived nearly every near-death situation I faced due to it.

TLDR: my ridiculous luck saved my ass one more time, I successfully learned both the language and this world’s common sense just like I wanted, and I gained a new non-system ability.

Even though I only felt the child’s emotion’s for a split-second, I was still touched by them and an emotional bond of sorts was formed between us.

As a result of that, I also gained the ability to read emotions, although it’s not very accurate.

But that's fine, practice makes perfect, after all.

Now, I feel like I can’t leave the child behind even if I have to, and just the thought of making her sad makes me uncomfortable.

Fortunately, she seems to have lost her name somewhere along the line, likely as a result of some violence induced amnesia, so I can just name her and fix everything.

Don’t you worry, I definitely won’t treat this little angel as a slave… I might even give her my special family name one day and take her in as a relative.

 

By now, the sun has finally risen a solid height from the horizon.

A few rays of sunlight snuck in through the wooden boards and fell on the Half-Demon’s petite body.

It made for a breathtaking scene that even I was briefly mesmerized by.

Most of my attention was on the injuries and dead eyes before, so this is actually the first time I took a moment of my time to truly appreciate her beauty.

Ahhh, only I can describe her as such, by the way. You’re only allowed to call her cute or innocent.

I’m a loli myself, so I'm free to say she’s beautiful, sexy, or whatever and I won’t get into trouble.

As for you? Describing her with any words but the ones I allowed means that you’re just one call away from a jail sentence.

And less than a second away from a cruel death I will personally bestow upon you.

Seemingly feeling the warmth contained in the sunlight, the girl’s weakly stirred and an angelic smile formed on her face.

Ack! I think I took a critical hit to the heart right there.

That’s definitely foul! How can she get away with being this cute?!

“Tch. Freakin’ kids, man…” I mumbled as I shrouded my body in shadows using magic.

I kept staring at the pure goofy smile the little angel’s had on her face for a few minutes before I turned away and a jealous sigh escaped my mouth.

Focusing on my sphere, I begin looking for a suitable spot to teleport to.

Mischief might reduce my presence to unimaginable levels, but it certainly won’t work when I’m the only other thing present in this 2x2 meter box.

Well, unless she has some sort of mental disability I guess, but I’m pretty sure the system fixes all of those at birth.

Otherwise the entire human race of this world would be idiots with how dilapidated their souls are.

So I’d not rather have our relationship get off to a rocky start or get forced to scrap my entire plan and just leave with her.

Not wanting to waste any more time, or perhaps just aiming to leave before I get any more attached to her, I began searching for a suitable spot to teleport to.

 

It didn’t take me much to find a perfect-looking spot.

The ground around there was uneven and muddy, and there were protruding tree branches blocking the way back to the caravan, pretty much everything I needed to perfect my disguise.

I was just about to activate the teleportation spell when a whimper of pain echoed throughout the cage, and I saw the girl’s face scrunching up into a frown in my sphere.

Part of me just wanted to treat it as an illusion or the cry of a wounded animal, then satisfy my heart by thinking that I’ll be fixing that soon anyways.

However, another very prominent part of me just couldn’t bear to see her in this state and was practically begging me to ease the child’s pain.

A few seconds went by as my angelic self and demonic self battled for dominance, but the final result was unsurprisingly a tie.

I’d definitely feel bad if I ignored her suffering, but there’s no fucking way I’d waste my time taking care of her and searching for another caravan that can help me get into the nearest city.

Also, I don’t want to cause trouble with the nobility before I actually gain an identity and a foothold in this world

So I settled for the next best thing I could do.

I yanked off two sizable scales from my body, and began using my body control skills to change their form into one that’s more suitable for my goal.

In the meantime, I also brought up my skill shop and scrolled down until I found a few incredibly useful skills I had previously ignored because of the time issue.

 

{ [Ability Conferment LV 1] acquired. Remaining skill points: 23,531}

{ [Magic Power Conferment LV 1] acquired. Remaining skill points: 23,431}

 

… That skill point cost was surprisingly low.

Hooh? So Conferment skills actually count as creation-type skills?!

That’s freaking awesome! Why the fuck did I only think about getting them now?!

Since I still had a large number of skill points left, I went ahead and maxed out my newly acquired skills along with Magic Conferment, which I already had.

Now not only do I have what’s practically the best magical materials in this world literally growing off my body, but I also have the ability to bestow upon my creations the highest tiers of skills possible.

I just became the best magic tool craftsman in the entire world! Wahahaha!

Well, it might not have been what I was actually aiming for, but it is certainly a welcome bonus.

I should really check my skill point shop more often. I also think I should put more skill and ability experiments on my to-do list.

If I only rely on the anime for knowledge, I’ll definitely miss out on a crap ton of sick ‘tips and tricks’ that could make my life easier and potentially save my ass from dying.

My ridiculous luck won’t always be there to save. 

One day I might get myself into a super glue tier sticky situation where my luck proves useless, so I must be more adept in using the tools I already own.

At least, I don’t wanna do my experiments directly or pause to think about a solution mid-battle. This is real life, the villain won’t wait for my second stage transformation.

Snapping out of my thoughts, I lower my eyes to look at the little gift I created for the half-demon child.

The two violet metallic scales were completely gone, replaced by two rubber bracelets of the same color.

Changing the form of my scales was the hardest part of the process, but I effortlessly did it.

Shapeshifting inanimate parts of my body is just too easy compared to picturing an entire new biological body like I usually do.

Activating Ability Conferment, I bestowed a level 10 Pain Resistance skill on one of bracelets and a Healing Magic spell to the other.

The reason why I didn’t just straight up add Pain Nullification or its Suffering counterpart is because completely cutting off the child’s sense of pain will definitely attract her captors’ attention.

Those fuckers might increase the intensity of their abuse and kill her off by mistake.

If that happens, I’ll probably lose myself in a wrathful rampage and massacre the entire city, screwing up all of my plans in my process.

As for the healing spell I left in the other bracelet, I loaded it with enough magic to activate twenty times and set it so that it would automatically activate if the girl’s HP ever falls below half.

After doing all of that, I enchanted both with an always active Concealment skill, so that no one -not even the girl herself- would notice their presence nor the magic they give off.

This makes it so that only I can see the bracelets, and therefore only I can take them off.

Definitely a job well done if I do say so myself!

I nod in satisfaction as I softly lift each of the girl’s hands and slip the bracelets over her small fists.

Lastly, I used Shapeshifting to shrink them around her skinny wrists

Immediately, her frown eased into a soft smile once again.

Giving myself a mental pat on the back, I activated the teleportation spell, finding myself in an opening surrounded by trees just a moment later.

Not wasting any time, I immediately began adding the final touches to my disguise and finalizing the backstory I’ll be using.

If I’m gonna be acting, then I’ll definitely do my best and give 'em a performance worthy of an Oscar!

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