All at once, my mind went blank as my brain seemed to freeze. I lost all memory of where I was, where I was from, where I was going, or what I was supposed to do—my body still retained every sense, but lacked a mind.I could hear buffeting winds against my ear, kicking up a scorching tempest that was occasionally a freezing gale, drying up my body one moment and slowly filling with springwater the next. I seemed to gain the enlightenment of every color of the world, and every step of the human existence that ranged from birth to death, before I eventually fell into a rift of that white world as if reborn. Ba-dump, ba-dump!Seawater was brushing past my sides, slowly restoring every bodily function I had as my thoughts slowly returned. I realized that I was still underwater, but was no longer surrounded in darkness as I looked up to a bright light nearby. I promptly spread my arms and swam agilely towards it like a fish, already used to and comfortable with my new body. Just as I

I had just hidden myself when the cabin door opened the next instant, and several people rushed inside. I slithered out of hiding quietly then, and swung my tail at them as quickly as a lightning bolt, catching them by surprise and knocking all of them to the floor. While they struggled to get up, I rushed out of the door as if in flight, vaulting over the deck with my robust tail muscles and into the sea, diving underwater even as I heard my captors hot on my heels.The jolt from Dicken’s scale intensified just then, which told me that he was close. I could even feel the direction and range where he was, and I just needed to get closer to get a precise bearing.I suddenly remembered that merfolk communicated by using soundwaves similar to dolphins. Did that mean I could communicate with Dicken with the same method? Just like how I had subconsciously conversed with the merfolk a while ago, this may be an innate ability in merfolk form.I stopped and looked around, before opening my

Once I realized what was happening, I promptly flailed my hands, struggling to swim upwards. However, my chest was like a cookie under the severe pressure of the depths, and the world seemed to be spinning around me before I could make two strokes—with a hundred meters between me and the sea’s surface, I would suffocate and die even before I could reach it. Even so, I kept flailing my limbs, but my movements were slowing down because the lack of oxygen turned my body to lead, and my consciousness gradually turned murky. I couldn’t help smiling bitterly. It seemed that I couldn’t accomplish the mission Dicken had assigned me now.Be that as it may, a shadow suddenly swooped down at me from above just as I was about to lose my consciousness. My eyes widened to find that it was Dicken—he had turned back, and suddenly the pressure on my chest didn't seem that violent, and a flow of warmth reanimated it.In a split second, a powerful arm warped around my body, caring me upwards rapidly.

I couldn’t resist throwing my arms around his neck, yearning so much to quickly use this opportunity to hug my lover. As my hands reached tentatively to touch his firm spine, he looked up at me but didn’t shake me off like before, continuing to treat my wound, the tip of his tongue carefully licking my chest. The incision he had made just now immediately healed, the pain easing. My eyes, tracking his movement, couldn’t help lingering on his alluring collarbones and robust chest muscles, a bold idea suddenly appearing in my mind…My body had mutated when Dicken mated with me—did that mean I needed to do the same to transfer the token of existence into him? Reality was that I had lost that scale, which could only mean that it had fused with my physical body, and Dicken was inside me. That was why my idea seemed exceedingly logical judging from current circumstances. In other words, I must now seduce Dicken so that he felt the impulse to mate with me.How embarrassing! I had never tho

I was anxiously yelling Dicken’s name even as I chased him down—how furious and miserable I was, but there was nothing I could do! I had no place in Dicken’s heart right now, and it seemed that he was trying to rescue those merfolk which had been caught, and leave the portal still opened for the time being. Nonetheless, my stamina began draining away soon enough from the chase, and my speed quickly turned sluggish. I realized that I had to come up with something to assume human form again, or I would be no different from chum in the ocean, vulnerable to being eaten at any instant. Embarrassingly, however, I had yet to find out the circumstances under which I would mutate, since my body seemed to go beyond my control each time I did as if it had been invaded by a virus. Was some sort of stimulation required? If so, was it physical or psychological? I carefully recalled what had happened when I reverted to human form even as I tried to swim towards the depths, hoping that the suffocati