Chapter 108: Captain of the Raging Tide
"Master Mentor..."
The woman's voice was difficult to hear clearly, because half her face had been cut off, exposing her oral cavity. She only had one eye left, and bore no resemblance to a living person at all. It was a miracle someone like her could survive.
"Oh? Captain Raging Tide, what brings you here?"
Loren recognized the person before him. Her name was Mara. She was a pirate, nicknamed Captain Raging Tide, a madwoman. Merchant ships she robbed never left a single survivor. She harbored extreme hatred for humans.
Because she was a half-breed, a mix of human and merfolk.
Humans and merfolk had no reproductive isolation, but years of living in the deep sea had caused some mutations in the merfolk;
they were no longer truly human.
The ocean had no god overseeing it, so the ocean was also the most insane place in this world.
Because of this, when Mara was born, she was a monster. Human and fish features appeared randomly on her body.
If that was all, it wouldn't have twisted her psyche.
"As expected of you, to remember the name of a small person like me." The current Mara hadn't fully grown into her power yet, having only recently been put on the wanted list. This was also why Loren directly spoke her nickname.
"No need for idle talk. What do you want with me? If it wasn't something important, you wouldn't risk being discovered by the Church to come find me."
Seeing Loren so direct, Mara also stopped wasting words:
"Master Mentor, may I ask if you know about the treasure left by the Dawn Princess... that powerful magic rumored to make one invincible under heaven?"
"Naturally, I know. What, you want it?"
Mentioning this made Loren feel a bit exasperated. Back then, he had also gone through countless hardships, found four guideposts, and finally discovered the treasure at their intersection.
At the time, he thought he was about to obtain the graduation-level magic. Instead, the treasure was just a stone slab with the words "Friendship is magic" inscribed on it.
Back then, Loren was so angry he wanted to find a necromancy spell to dig up the Dawn Princess's corpse and whip it. However, in the end, Loren didn't come away completely empty-handed either. The Tarot card: Strength was also at the treasure site.
"I want to know if that rumor is true. That if one masters the magic left by the Dawn Princess, they truly become invincible under heaven."
"It's true."
After receiving Loren's confirmation, Mara's remaining half-face revealed uncontrollable joy. Her entire body trembled.
Her excitement wasn't without reason. Mara was born in the territory of the merfolk. The merfolk deeply hated humans, and Mara's birth exposed the fact that her mother had fallen in love with a human. The result was that Mara's mother was imprisoned, and Mara herself had all the fish-like parts on her body cut off before being casually tossed into the ocean.
This was also why Mara only had half a face. Not only that, one of her hands was only half there, one leg had already been replaced by a prosthetic, and even half her lung had been cut out. It was a miracle she had survived until now.
Shortly after being discarded, a sea witch found Mara. It was that sea witch who kept Mara alive.
Only later, that sea witch was killed by humans, killed by people from the Church of the God of Vows and Wind.
She hated the merfolk who discarded her, and she hated the humans who killed the sea witch. In the end, she simply hated both races, humans and merfolk alike.
Looking at it this way, Mara was indeed a pitiful person. But that didn't stop Loren from feeling disgusted by her, nor did he feel any burden about tricking Mara right now.
Mara seemed fierce, but she was also a bully who feared the strong. It was the merfolk royal family who abandoned her, but she only dared to kill some isolated merfolk. It was the Church of the God of Vows and Wind who killed the sea witch, but she only dared to attack merchant ships at sea.