Ch.262262. You, Who Is Like a Slave Yet Not Quite a Slave

The merfolk were confused.

The current situation.

And the events that had unfolded in just a few days.

Honestly, it would be strange to accept it all so quickly.

From the merfolk’s perspective, they had been contemplating how to deal with the gradually changing sea, trying to come up with their own solutions. Then suddenly, some unknown guy appears out of nowhere saying, “I’ll help you, so become my slaves,” and without the merfolk doing anything, he solves their problem and returns.

Their reaction is actually normal.

If it were me, I might have said, “What the hell are you talking about, idiot?”

But I didn’t have the patience to wait for them to bridge that gap in understanding reality.

So I made them recognize reality in a simple way.

Refuse to comply and you die.

When faced with such a simple yet definitive reality, whether human or mermaid, they have that “aha” moment of realization.

“Why should I listen to this person? Yes, he helped us, but didn’t he come because he needed something from us? We haven’t faced any real danger yet, so why should I follow someone who offers unsolicited help and then demands we become slaves?”

Persuading someone through such long, complex thoughts is difficult.

“Don’t like it? Then die.”

This is simple and convenient.

“Oh! If I don’t obey, I’ll die. Well, I guess I’ll listen then.”

This way, they can easily change their thinking.

Thanks to this, although the merfolk seemed to harbor some discontent, they were incorporated into the farm as slaves without resistance.

Now that I had wielded the whip, it was time to offer the carrot.

I set up a temporary base in the center of the merfolk city, installed a transportation portal, and invited Kim Sujeong.

“Wooooow!”

After casting a spell on Kim Sujeong that allowed her to breathe underwater, I showed her around the city. She walked through the city, absolutely delighted.

“Amazing! What is this place? Is this the sea you said you were going to?”

“These are our slaves now, so come by occasionally to feed them.”

“Slaves? Huh! What? They’re mermaids, aren’t they? Are they human?”

“They’re half-human.”

“Amaaaazing! They’re so beautiful and handsome! Look at their bodies. Incredible. But do they also not wear clothes?”

“What clothes would you wear underwater?”

“Their breasts are really beautiful and big. Can I touch them?”

Despite the wary looks from the half-humans, Kim Sujeong approached them without hesitation.

By now, she had somewhat adapted to the Rift Dimension, and with her experience with the Naru tribe, she wasn’t particularly fazed.

“Well, it’s not like we’ll see each other often. Will they send us sea resources? There are many seeds needed in the sea too. I wonder if we can get those as well?”

“You can discuss that with them.”

“Okay. Then let me work on building some rapport first? Your psychopath brother probably threatened them a lot. Come here, merfolk! I’m not someone who kills people for disobedience, so don’t worry and come over here!”

Even with Kim Sujeong’s approach, would they trust someone who looks similar to me?

Still, keeping an eye on me, the merfolk approached Kim Sujeong.

She took out food items she had brought from her bundle, and as the merfolk tasted them, their wary expressions suddenly relaxed.

Kim Sujeong winked at me.

I had used one of the SSS+ level ability selection cards I received as a reward for clearing the Corrupted Abyss on Kim Sujeong, who had been waiting for it. I also cleanly used two cards to raise her farming skill to SSS+, so she was currently in a very good mood and eager to show off her abilities.

The dishes she had prepared with care, using hard-to-find ingredients, were delicious enough that any race, whether merfolk or Black Monkey, would find them irresistible.

“Delicious…”

“How can it taste like this…”

“Do humans on land eat like this?”

“So this is the taste of grilled meat…”

Moreover, it was like a cheat key.

Underwater, it’s impossible to light a fire, so they can’t grill meat or cook other foods—they can only eat raw. When would merfolk, born and raised in the sea, ever have tasted cooked food?

Some merfolk might have heard about such things when studying legends of the surface, but that’s all.

After the meal, the merfolk’s gazes toward me and Kim Sujeong had considerably less fear.

Of course, they weren’t completely at ease due to the thought that they could still die if they made a wrong move, but perhaps they judged that the atmosphere wasn’t as hostile as they had initially feared.

Well, that’s not important.

“Alright, now that you’ve eaten, let’s get to work. I’ll tell you what you need to do from now on.”

The merfolk gathered around me hesitantly.

———————–

Resource Transport Portal (SSS+).

A portal obtained from the Ore Mountain Range recipe that allows resources to be transported directly to the warehouse without slaves having to physically move them.

It’s currently being used in the mines; when resources are placed on the portal, they are automatically transferred to the connected location.

I linked the coordinates to the mythical box so that the resources would be organized directly into containers.

I installed this in the Abyss Sea, in the merfolk city.

“It’s simple, right? Just do what you’ve been doing. Send all the useless resources you’ve gathered in your warehouse too. If you need anything, just request it. Once a week, we’ll send you food from the land. Monsters, fish, whatever’s on the list—catch as much as you can and send it. Especially the sea ores—mine them whenever you see them and send them over.”

The merfolk, being an intelligent species capable of communication, listened attentively to my instructions.

“Let’s avoid any conflicts. I really just want to get along well. You’re half-human after all, right? If you just follow orders, you can live well as merfolk employees under our Farming Company. You don’t want the chaos energy to engulf the sea again, do you? You probably don’t even remember when the sea was this clean.”

“…”

“That’s right. That’s right.”

“The sea has become clean again…”

The dense chaos energy didn’t appear overnight.

For me, it’s only been a few months in real time since I came to the Rift Dimension, about a year in Rift time, but these beings have lived here for hundreds or thousands of years.

The chaos energy that gradually colored the sea over the hundreds of years they’ve been alive would have changed the environment slowly, like fine dust. Just as we might suddenly realize one day that we can’t see as many stars in the night sky as before.

“And soon, I’ll completely clean up this still murky sea. So let’s do our jobs well.”

After assigning the tasks, I returned to the farm.

Whether they’ll do the work as desired remains to be seen, but ultimately, the resources from the Abyss Sea can only be entrusted to the merfolk.

After all, they are the race best suited to gather resources from within the sea.

And trying to tame fish, which don’t have comparable intelligence, as slaves would be too roundabout.

Deciding to monitor the situation, I returned home and grabbed the Chaos Stone Purification Cauldron.

“I wonder if this will work.”

Looking at the Abyss Sea, the first thing that came to mind was corrupted resources.

When preparing to enter the Abyss Sea, the first thing I did was upgrade the Chaos Stone Purification Cauldron with corrupted resources, so it was natural for this to be my first thought.

In various biomes like swamps or steam forests, chaos energy had entered and corrupted various resources, and all those corrupted resources went into the cauldron to be purified, providing experience points.

So what about this sea?

The Abyss Sea had been influenced by dense chaos energy for a long time; even from the outside, you could see the reddish-black chaos energy mixed with the emerald waves.

Even though the Corrupted Abyss had been removed, the remaining chaos energy would take a long time to purify, so it wouldn’t disappear immediately.

In other words, the entire sea was filled with corrupted seawater mixed with chaos energy.

What if I put this in the Chaos Stone Purification Cauldron?

Instead of scooping up seawater, what would happen if I just dropped the purification cauldron into the sea?

I don’t know if it will work as I want.

But it’s worth experimenting.

The Abyss Sea.

I returned to that vast beach and rose into the sky.

This endless blue sea.

I drop the purification cauldron into it.

Splash-

It was a very small and faint ripple.

Like a needle falling into a sand desert, it barely caused any change.

Just something falling in? Without even a feeling, the waves brush past the trace and move on.

But what happened afterward was neither simple nor small.

“Oh.”

If nothing happened, I was planning to retrieve the purification cauldron.

If only the seawater that happened to be in its vicinity was being purified, I would have left it to work on its own for some efficiency, but I couldn’t let it fall to an unknown location, so I was planning to take it to the merfolk city.

Rumble rumble-

From where the purification cauldron had fallen, an enormous water spray rose, and like a whirlpool, seawater began to be sucked into the spot where the cauldron had sunk.