Mountain of the Immortals

A sharp pinch on the back of my knee woke me up. I opened my eyes, realizing my face was planted in wet sand, and when I turned around to look at what was still pinching me, a couple of large birds flew away, apparently surprised to find that I was still alive.

“You little—” My insults were cut short by a coughing fit.

I wasn’t sure how many hours I had drifted unconscious in the sea but the sun was already setting again. Pretty soon after losing the ship, I’d chosen to remove my clothes as they were hindering my movement too much. They were still in my inventory, but the fact of the matter was that I’d been swimming naked and then lying on my back for who knows how many hours under the hot sun. My skin felt like thousand-year-old papyrus as I tried to lift myself up.

Not only was it burning, but it also sent a sharp pain down my whole back whenever I moved my shoulders. The first thing I did was take out my clothes and lay them on a dry rock before taking a dive into the sea to clean the sand off of me.

Hitting the water again helped me clear my head a bit from the haze that the past couple of days had been. When I reemerged from the water, I took a look at the beach and tried to establish where I might be. I had visited most of the big islands on Greek territory twice or even thrice during my leveling-up days, but I’d always arrived by ship into the ports. Never half-dead on an uninhabited beach.

Well there was a first time for everything.

The beach was a long straight line of fine white sand, scattered with some large rocks that looked like they had absolutely no place here. The beach was bordered by a thin strip of tall grass and bushes, which quickly changed to a thick, lush jungle. As a matter of fact, the vegetation looked completely alien to everything I had seen on Greek soil before. It resembled the humid jungles of the far-western lands, further west even than Atlantis.

As much as I didn’t like it, there was a good chance the biome of this place had been magically tampered with. Meeting a powerful spellcaster here could be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, my negotiation skills shined through when dealing with power-hungry creatures such as practitioners of the arcane, and they were my favorite foes since they tended to go down pretty fast. On the other hand, the only equipment that would boost my Magic Defense— my cherished set of jewelry—was still back in my palace on Mount Orthys.

Seeing that the night would soon be upon me and since I had no idea where I was, I figured that I should prepare for the worst. I had control over the weather and didn’t need to look for shelter on the chance that a rainstorm might start up. It was pretty much guaranteed that I would sleepy under a clear, starry sky.

The issue was that I had absolutely no equipment. If this place had monsters, I would need to use my divine powers to smite them. But even those skills had a cooldown, and if there were multiple monsters, I’d be pretty much screwed.

I looked for a sharp stone that I could fit in my hand and then moved into the jungle in search of a strong piece of wood, preferably a long straight branch that I could carve into the likes of a spear. I was sure I wouldn’t be able to create anything that would be stronger than the crudest of basic weapons but that wasn’t the point.

A spear of even the most basic kind was all I needed to be able to trigger my abilities and get my class bonuses while fighting. And I found it in the shape of a branch that looked like it had been snapped from a large tree. Not wanting to stick around and find out what had caused the branch to break off like that, I took it and started working on it with the rock while moving back toward the sea.

Sitting out under the sun and working on creating my first weapon wouldn’t help with my scorched back at all, so instead I decided to stay under the shade of the trees, but on the outskirts of the jungle closest to the water. I thought that this also might be a good opportunity to walk down the beach and see whether I could find any sign of civilization, and most importantly, gather information on the god or gods they worshipped. I wouldn’t want followers of my father to indirectly let him know of my position.

I continued carving my long wooden stick, as I walked along the beach, exploring the island and waiting for my clothes to dry. Eventually I reached a small hill and using the branch as a cane, I managed to get on top of it. It might not have been a spear yet, but it was already proving its usefulness.

The top of the hill gave me a magnificent view of the sun setting in the sea but not much else, as it turned out to be the edge of this part of the island, with the jungle obscuring my view on the other side. However, all this trekking had taken long enough for me to finally be able to carve a proper weapon.

* * *

Name: Makeshift Spear

Type: Spear

Rarity: E Grade

Physical Attack: 1

Magic Attack: 1

Special Ability: -

Attack Speed: Normal

Durability: 11/20

Weight: 160

Description: The crudest form of weapon. The fact that this item is recognized by the Dark Energy as a weapon at all is a testament to its creator’s ingenuity, however weak and brittle it is.

* * *

I didn’t really care that its stats couldn’t possibly be any lower. Only that it qualified as a spear at all and I would be able to use my skills. Having taken care of that and seeing that I wasn’t getting anywhere with exploring this side of the beach, I decided to return to the place, where I’d first woken up since my clothes would probably have dried by now. Walking along the beach in my underwear was only going to be liberating for so long.

Only when I arrived back at the spot, my clothes weren’t where I had left them and neither were my boots. Instead they were floating in the water, even though I was sure there was no way for the sea to reach them where I had placed them. Upon closer inspection, I realized that the pile of garments and leather were moving too fast in the water and pretty soon I understood why.

* * *

Name: Pink Dolphin of Mykonos

Type: Beast

Level: 11

Disposition: Passive

HP: 185/185

Physical Attack: 21

Magic Attack: 11

Speed: 110

Attack Range: Melee

XP: 326

Description: This rare mutation of the common dolphin only exists in the waters surrounding the island of Mykonos. This specific color mutation is the result of a goddess who made the island her residence, and thus her divine influence touched and altered the environment and living creatures of her domain.

* * *

A couple of dolphins had rolled my clothes into a ball and were now playing with them as if they had invented a new game. At least now I had an inkling of where I was and even though I’d visited Mykonos before, I hadn’t met this deity that was worshipped here. One thing was for sure though. If I did anything to hurt some animals that were the result of a unique mutation because of the goddess’s influence, it would be as good as a declaration of war.

Not wanting to be hunted by yet another god, I cursed my luck and ran out into the water to reclaim my clothes. Before I was even knee-deep, I noticed something moving rapidly in the open sea that gave me pause. I might have had a spear now, but my clothes weren’t worth risking my life over if a more powerful monster was approaching.

The dolphins however didn’t seem to be afraid of the foaming waters that were steadily building up nearby. On the contrary, they circled around and even jumped into them, eventually leaving my clothes alone on the tip of the incoming wave.

Pretty soon, I realized that what I was seeing wasn’t a monster at all but rather a gigantic oyster, slowly rising up amid the sea foam. I’d never seen an oyster this big before, let alone one that could move at such speed of its own volition.

Of course, the first thing that came to mind was just how big of a pearl this oyster might contain. I’d never really cared about expensive things just for the sake of showing them off but I was always fascinated by unique trinkets. And a pearl of this size was pretty much guaranteed to be one of a kind.

I only had to establish whether the oyster was sentient or not. Not that it mattered a lot. Just for the manner in which I would obtain it. When the oyster reached the shore and the waters that carried it there subsided, it looked exactly like any other apart from its size.

It wasn’t until it opened by itself that I realized this was very far from being a regular gigantic shellfish. Its halves parted and from within emerged something much more beautiful and precious than a pearl. It was a being as beautiful and pure as life itself.