Mt. Dragonends Chapter 4: The Second Human, Mermaid Race Since the dwarves lived in the mountain, their sphere of activity is limited to underground and on the surface of the mountain……or it was limited.
All creatures had eccentrics amongst them. The two thousand year long rainfall abated, and when the dry earth appeared, an eccentric portion of dwarves started to go out to adventure, but were soon hindered by the ocean.
I knew that the Earth was round and had a number of continents. I also knew that once you go past the ocean that surrounded the large continent I was on, there was another sh.o.r.e beyond it.
Seventy percent of Earth was ocean. If you thought about it over a 4.6 billion year span, with the elevation and depression of land ma.s.ses, there was some fluctuation, but the ratio of land to water ma.s.s was generally maintained. The vast ocean would always isolate land ma.s.ses.
However, the dwarves had neither boats nor wings, and thus were unable to cross the ocean or adventure in the great deep.
Sahela could jump across or run across the ocean surface, and would be able to easily reach the next continent, but because she stuck closely to me and did not try to leave, there was no meaning in that.
The troubled dwarves came to me and earnestly requested. They desired the power to freely be able to go around the ocean.
I answered that request.
There were two reasons for that.
The first was that it was unusual for the dwarves who had a more humble disposition to have any sort of request.
The other was because I was antic.i.p.ating the tales of the adventures they experience during their travels. We"ve run out of topics about the confined area amongst the mountains and underground. There are plenty of new topics in the outside world that we"d never run out.
The reason why the adventuring dwarves were troubled when trying to conquer the ocean was because of their source of energy.
The dwarves are a race of heat and rock. They suck in heat and convert it into energy, and create their bodies by eating rocks. The magma underneath me was collected and maintained as a magma ball, and just by sucking up the heat while leisurely swimming there, the dwarves could satisfy their appet.i.te. A minority of dwarves have migrated to mountains other than my own, but those places invariably have volcanoes with a collection of magma underneath them. There are some dwarves that die on the rare occasion that those volcanoes erupt and they are caught in the pyroclastic flow and buried by it.
In any case, because they were those sorts of beings, the dwarves could not live without a heat source.
For the dwarves who could not live without heat, the cold ocean was an extremely harsh place. Even if they could swim in magma for three days, if they tried to swim in the ocean for three seconds, they would drown. Their bodies made of rock were st.u.r.dy, but in exchange, they were heavy.
Since the dwarves do not breathe (to begin with, presently the Earth"s atmosphere hardly had any oxygen in it), it was possible for them to travel by walking across the bottom of the ocean.
However, no matter how st.u.r.dy the dwarves were, they would not be able to endure the water pressure of the deep sea, and being unable to see through the dark in the depths of the ocean, they would end up getting lost. The cold ocean depths would also make it difficult to secure a heat source, or food, in other words, so there was also the fear of starvation.
To begin with, since they were a race that specialized in mountain living, their apt.i.tude for activity by the ocean was low. I"d have to change their shape and natural disposition from their very base.
I asked the adventurer dwarves what they wanted to be like.
After listening to what they said, it seemed that they wanted to be like what is known as a [fish], they answered. It appears that rather than wanting to cross the ocean to reach another continent, their desire to travel around the vast ocean was greater.
"But-"
One of the female dwarves representing the adventurers, Lorelei, said as her eyes sparkled.
"I"d like hands. Since it would be inconvenient not to have them. Also, our heads as they are now are good. That"s why something like this would be good."
(S-Sure……)
Lorelei made a drawing on a white stone board using a piece of red sandstone and showed it to me. Only the fishes head portion had become that of a human"s, while the area around the gills had human hands growing out conspicuously – it was such a monster.
Iya, it"s too scary!
"Milord, would this be better?"
Sensing my slightly horrified mood, Sahela quietly stepped forward and modified the drawing.
After she finished, the upper half of the drawing was human, while the lower half had become that of a fish"s.
I see?
A mermaid, is it?
That"s great.
"This is good! This is great! Make us like this!"
Lorelei clapped her hands together happily. Dwarves don"t have any hesitation at all about remodelling the human body, huh. Or more specifically, I suppose they didn"t have any hesitation about being modified by my hands.
I promptly used power from the mountain"s crystal to change Lorelei and co. into a new form.
Making them capable of living in the ocean, which could be said to be the exact opposite of the mountain which was my true form and essence, was faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar more difficult than I imagined.
It wasn"t at all like the time I created the dragons or the dwarves. It was like the difference between making a rice ball and making a whole traditional j.a.panese meal. However, if I think about it thoroughly, as long as I continue doing trial and error, it was by no means impossible. While I had a sense of total exhaustion that I had never experienced before, I somehow managed to do it.
The new race and the second human, the mermaid was a human-fish. During the process of transformation, the dwarves" characteristic crimson hair that resembled fire had become a deep blue like the ocean. Their upper half was human, and the lower half was a fish. Their strong tail fin was capable of easily swimming through even the whirling tides.
They did not use heat, but energy from the ocean itself to survive. Therefore, as long as they were in the ocean, they"d be able to move infinitely. In exchange, as soon as they went onto the land, they"d end up weakening in the blink of an eye.
Their night vision was far better than that of a dwarf"s, and they were able to see through the dark ocean depths or muddied waters well. Because their eyesight did not depend on light, but magic, it did not matter if it was a pitch dark place with no light at all.
Again,
Their lifespan was the same as dwarves at 500 years, but they did not possess the ability to breed. The first mermaids consisted of eccentrics amongst the dwarves, and were a mere 99 people. Instead, I made it so that with the consent of both sides, by performing a ceremony where they gave a bit of flesh and blood, they could turn other living beings into mermaids. With this, the dwarves that yearned for the ocean did not have go out of their way to ask me, and could become a mermaid by asking a mermaid.
At the end, as the representative of the mermaid race, I made Lorelei, who demonstrated the greatest leaders.h.i.+p ability amongst the group, eternally young.
Neither my voice nor eyes could reach the faraway ocean. Even if they were freely adventuring, I did not believe that having 99 people wandering around aimlessly, scattered about, was a good idea. A leader was necessary.
Even if you left them alone, the mermaids were enthusiastic enough to spend their entire lifetimes adventuring. Since I wanted to hear the tales of their travels in the ocean world, I"d like them to come back once in a while. If I left Lorelei as their leader, then she"d properly control things with regards to that and send someone to me at fixed intervals. The person herself doesn"t seem to feel badly about that either.
Thus 99 mermaids were set free in the ocean.
After seeing them off, I had already reached the limits of my fatigue, and I was a.s.saulted by a severe sense of sleepiness that could not be stopped with fighting spirit alone. I was more tired than the time I was human and had to chase my dog that had escaped from its pen at full speed.
I fell deeply asleep.
To begin with, there were many instances where I slept sluggishly, so I slept peacefully.
And then, when I woke up from that long sleep, all of Earth had frozen over, and everything had become covered in snow and ice, turning it into a pure white sphere———–