Strategy for Dealing with Problematic Girls

Before Kokkoro could get a word out, Jhin was already sprinting toward the shore to meet that black-haired mermaid. The distance had looked far, yet he crossed it in barely a dozen strides.

The mermaid seemed startled by his footsteps and nimbly dove into the water, hiding behind a reef to watch the stranger racing toward her.

Jhin crouched down to meet her eyes. Those sky-blue eyes gave her the comforting sense of being back in the sea, so she slowly leaned out from behind the reef and, at last, placed her small hand into his open palm.

"See... I've found what I wanted, haven't I?" He smiled as though declaring victory to someone. Kokkoro was still standing at the foot of the dormitory building, but she could hear those words, and hear them clearly.

"Congratulations, challenger of the riddle." She smiled as she dissolved into foam. "Go back now. You'll receive the reward for solving the Mermaid's Dream."

Letishi, which had been lying prone in its cave, raised its body. In its perception, the blue ring that had suddenly appeared beneath Jhin began to glow, and the familiar aura within it made it curse out loud.

"Oh, birdsong and blooming flowers! Why is it that lunatic mermaid? Isn't she holed up in the Myriad Sea Abyss dreaming that stupid dream day and night?"

Only after that outburst did it realize why the blue ring looked so familiar - it was the mark of entering the Mermaid's Dream trial, and for centuries no one had ever woken from that trial alive.

That damned Volcanic Mist Wraith of the volcano really dropped me in a giant pile of trouble - it actually linked its illusion technique dream straight into the Mermaid's Dream.

Letishi braced itself to haul Jhin's little life back from that crazy hag of a mermaid. The mermaid's power held the ability to alter the trajectory of fate, so even though this human was the rival from its own prophecy, the power's influence might rewrite his destiny and make him fall too soon.

But Jhin's life wasn't claimed by the blue light like the failed challengers before him. Kyaru, still wrapped in his arms, suddenly tilted her head up and bit through his lip. Crimson blood dripped onto the blue ring, making it blaze even more blindingly, and a mighty force poured endlessly into Jhin's body.

"Damn it, what is this insane mermaid trying to do!?" Even Letishi didn't dare carelessly touch that blue power with its mental force. The mermaid's power had bizarre effects - anyone unconnected to its intended target who touched it would, at best, have their sexual orientation flipped, and at worst, come to see everyone as grotesque lumps of alien flesh.

Power that could alter fate was simply that unreasonable.

Jhin drifted back from unconsciousness. He felt like he'd had a dream, but he could no longer recall its contents - only frantically flashing system notifications and a passage of words left behind by someone unknown.

"Use this power to accomplish your goal, stranger from another land."

"Warning: Unknown energy is intruding."

"Warning: The system is converting the energy. Please remain conscious."

"Warning: Energy conversion failed."

"[Mermaid's Sigh]: At the end of the Mermaid's Dream lies a love wrapped in bitterness and rage. The Mermaid Empress has accepted your answer. A mighty force has been bestowed upon you. Time remaining: 412 seconds."

Moving Kyaru off of himself, Jhin felt something called "power" brimming inside his body. With a trace of confusion, his gaze passed through the window toward the distant peak.

He reached out and made a grasping motion at empty air. The peak burst apart with a roar, like a balloon crushed in a fist, and only the earth and rubble raining across the sky remained to prove it had ever existed.

In other words - I did something in that dream and got a powerful buff from some big shot?

Jhin could only rely on the system prompts to piece together a rough read of the situation. The missing dream memory nagged at him, but there were more urgent matters now. He glanced at Kyaru, still unconscious, and after confirming she showed no abnormalities, he walked out of the stone hut.

Ignoring the Red Dragon, whose eyes were nearly bulging out of their sockets, he shouted at the sky: "Letishi! You can hear me, right! I know that gaze watching me was you - come out already!"

My ancestors, are you really this bold? Challenging the Boss to his face??

Jhin's shouts scared off every monster, the Red Dragon included - none of them wanted to die under the wrath of the lord of the Red Dragon Volcano.

"Your guess is correct." A majestic voice, impossible to tell male from female, came down from the sky. Jhin looked up and only then saw a pair of golden vertical pupils gazing down at him from behind the clouds.

Letishi's tone carried a hint of excitement. "I'd assumed that crazy mermaid came to mess things up for me, but I never expected that only with her help could you become the 'Dragonslayer' of fate!"

"I'm not particularly fond of so-called fatalism, but I still owe her thanks for her help. If you're hoping for a blood-boiling battle, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed."

"It doesn't matter. The danger radiating off you is enough to set my blood boiling all over again." Letishi, behind the clouds, still hadn't revealed its true form; its voice rolled across heaven and earth like muffled thunder.

Its sky-blotting form made Jhin realize that without the power granted by the Mermaid Empress, his notion of slaying Letishi would be as absurd as trying to shoot down the sun with a wooden stick.

"Come. Let me see just what could make me fall in the prophecy!"

"As you wish."

Jhin took a step forward - a step that seemed to land on the hearts of every monster in the Red Dragon Volcano, making their heartbeats stutter, then race wildly like unbridled horses.

A blurry sword-shadow gathered in his palm, and the sharp sword intent it radiated split even the dragon's might that was nearly compressing the air into solid.

Just the keen aura off his weapon can cut through my pressure?

Letishi grew even more curious about this move. The scorching blood coursing through its veins left it unable to hold back any longer, so it chose to strike first, a dragon claw tearing space open into a pitch-black rift as it slammed straight down.

The wind pressure plastered Jhin's hair to his forehead and set his clothes snapping and crackling. There was no fear in his eyes, only a matter-of-fact calm, and like a beginner he swung the half-formed sword-shadow in his hand in a crooked, clumsy arc.

Light, space, time, even the very concept of sound were briefly severed. A black sword-scar that ran through heaven and earth tore the clouds open, and the figure Letishi had hidden behind them finally came into Jhin's view.

"Hah~ I never imagined it would be something like this. Dying at your hands does seem reasonable enough." The pitch-black dragon's tone was utterly relaxed, and it laughed with delight. "Humans really are a fascinating species."

"If not for an accident, I'd never have set out to study it."

"Accident or fate, whichever it may be - you truly showed me something worthwhile. This is your reward, take it." As Letishi finished speaking, two orbs of red light flew into Jhin's arms, then carried him and Kyaru away from the spot.

After a thousand years, rain fell over the Red Dragon Volcano, and Letishi vanished from between heaven and earth.

____

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