Baby System: I'm the Beast World's Only Hope!-Chapter 170: Episode : Tell me about the Merpeople.

It actually feels like I am in prison for a crime I didn’t commit.

Should I have treated her like a Queen instead of fighting with her?

So that she could try getting the males attention and I would just stand at the side.

Roxy shook her head fervently.

No, I don’t like a female touching what’s mine.

And besides they wouldn’t let her.

That was the amount of trust Roxy had in her mates, and as she stayed here, the only hope she had was on the system repairing itself.

Time had lost its meaning in the Pearl Garden.

There was no sunrise to paint the sky, no sunset to signal the end of a shift. There was only the crushing blackness outside the water wall and the dim, rhythmic pulsing of the bioluminescent moss inside the cave.

Roxy estimated it had been four days. Maybe five.

She was healing. The seaweed bandages Caspian changed diligently every few "tides" were working miracles. Her fractured rib had settled into a dull ache, and the bruises on her skin were fading from angry purple to a sickly yellow.

Physically, she was mending. Mentally, she was going insane.

She wasn’t built for staying in the water for so long.

Especially when she was not a mermaid, and she was not Ariel that can trade her legs for a tail.

I mean anything is possible right?

She shook her head again!

"I am going to lose my mind," Roxy muttered, pacing the length of the sandy floor. "I am actually going to snap, and my ghost is going to haunt a clam shell forever."

She kicked a priceless ruby the size of a pigeon’s egg across the room. It clattered against a pile of golden goblets.

The cave was a cage. It was comfortable, undeniably. The temperature was regulated by vents. The bed was soft. The food, once she convinced Caspian to bring her items she could cook over her small, carefully rationed fires, was edible.

But it was a cage.

[System Repair: 15%...]

[Status: Buffering...]

The grey, glitchy text floated in the corner of her vision, mocking her. It had been stuck at 15% for twelve hours.

"Useless," Roxy hissed, waving the screen away.

She walked to the water wall. Caspian was out there, somewhere in the dark, "foraging" for her. He treated her like a prized exotic pet, a goldfish he had won at a carnival.

He stared at her for hours, brushed her hair with a comb made of bone, and brought her shiny trinkets.

But he wouldn’t let her leave.

Fucking hell, I have never felt more object than human before.

The water bubbled, signaling the Merman return.

Caspian glided through the membrane, his long, iridescent tail flicking water onto the sand. He held a basket woven from seagrass.

"You are pacing," Caspian noted, his voice vibrating through the air like a cello string. "Is the enclosure too small? I can hollow out more rock."

One thing that made Roxy mind go haywire whenever Caspian came in was how her body or her stomach reacted to his voice.

Like a freaking Adonis.

"Everything is fine, Caspian," Roxy sighed, sitting on a coral stool, lying more to herself than to him. "The problem is that I’m not a sea sponge. I need to go up."

Caspian’s face fell. He placed the basket down, it was filled with more of the glowing blue fruit she liked, and slithered over to her. He coiled his tail around the stool, effectively trapping her.

"Why do you always speak of the Up?" he asked, tilting his head, his silver hair floating around his shoulders. "I have made the nest soft. I have brought you fire-wood. Am I not a good Keeper?"

You are not even fucking meant to keep me! Ahhhh!

Roxy looked at him. He really didn’t get it. He looked like a god, but he thought like a possessive child.

"You’re a great Keeper," Roxy said, trying a different tactic. She softened her voice, leaning forward. "Why don’t I tell you a story, Caspian. You like my voice, right?"

Caspian’s golden-rimmed eyes dilated. "Your voice is... resonant. It makes my gills flutter."

"I have a story about a world where the sky is blue," Roxy whispered, weaving a narrative web. "Where trees grow so tall they touch the clouds. Where Dragons fly and Tigers run. If you take me to the surface... just to the edge... I’ll tell you every story I know."

She offered him a smile, the kind that usually made Zarek stumble and Torian blush.

Caspian stared at her. For a moment, she thought it worked.

Then, he recoiled. A look of genuine fear and disgust crossed his ethereal features.

"No," he hissed.

"Caspian—"

"The surface is dangerous," he stated, his voice dropping an octave. "It is where the water boils. The Sun hates us. Everything hunts us."

He grabbed her hand, his grip tight and cold.

"My kin... the foolish ones... they go Up. They chase the light. And they return as bones, or they do not return at all. They are hunted. Skinned. Eaten by the four legs and the flying beasts."

Oh....

Roxy could somehow understand.

He looked at her fuming, his gills up with agitation at her blatant and horrifying words.

"You are safe here. In my Garden. They cannot touch you. They cannot reach you. I will keep you until your shell turns to dust."

He released her hand, turned, and grabbed his bone spear.

"I must hunt," he announced abruptly, clearly agitated by the mention of the surface. "The Great Maw approaches. I must secure the perimeter."

He shot out of the bubble, disappearing into the blackness faster than usual.

Roxy sat there, rubbing her wrist. She suddenly felt bad for bringing it up, she didn’t know he had a bad experience from the surface.

She stood up. The cave was empty.

Usually, she stayed near the fire or the bed. But Caspian’s agitation had made him sloppy; he hadn’t told her to stay on the soft sand.

Roxy walked to the back of the cave.

The cavern extended deeper than she thought, curving around a bend of sharp obsidian. The bioluminescent moss was dimmer here, casting long, skeletal shadows.

The air smelled different. It didn’t smell like lavender soap or roasting squid. It smelled like copper and rot.

Roxy turned the corner.

She froze.

It wasn’t a storage room. It was a boneyard.

Piled against the back wall were bones. Massive ones. There were ribs the size of canoe hulls, spines as thick as tree trunks, and skulls of fish that looked like they belonged in a prehistoric nightmare.

Roxy stepped closer, her bare feet sinking into the bone dust.

She touched a massive jawbone. It had been snapped in half.

"These aren’t scavenged," Roxy whispered, tracing the jagged breaks. "These were hunted."

She looked at the teeth marks on a vertebrae. They were serrated. Deep.

She had been thinking of Caspian as a lonely, eccentric collector. A Merman who liked shiny things and pretty pets.

She looked at the pile of dead leviathans.

"He’s not a scavenger," she realized, a chill running down her spine that had nothing to do with the temperature. "He’s an Apex Predator. He eats the things that eat things."

[System Restoration: 100%]

[Reboot Complete.]

"Oh, thank God," Roxy breathed, feeling tears prick her eyes. "Hello, beautiful."

[Welcome Back, Host.]

[We apologize for the downtime. The pressure variance caused a hardware crash. Compensation Pack has been added to Inventory.]

[New Feature Unlocked: Marine Biology Database (Abyssal Tier).]

Roxy didn’t care about the compensation pack. She cared about how the fuck she was going to leave this prison..

"System," she whispered urgency. "Scan the environment. Tell me what I’m dealing with."

[Scanning...]

[Subject: Environment - The Pearl Garden.]

[Captor Analysis: Trace Pheromones Detected.]

[Identify Subject: Caspian.]

[Species: Merfolk Sub-species.]

[Rank: SS-Tier (Sea King).

[Description: Unlike surface Merfolk, Trenchers are adapted for extreme pressure and darkness. They are highly territorial, possess immense physical strength, and use bio-sonar for navigation.]

[Temperament: Possessive. Solitary. Curious. Playful]

[Weaknesses:

1. Dehydration (Obviously).

2. Bright, sudden Light (Eyes are adapted for darkness).

3. High-Frequency Sonic Vibrations (Disrupts their sonar/equilibrium).]

Roxy stared at the list. A slow smile spread across her face.

"Light and Sound," she whispered.

She had a lighter. It was small, but in this darkness, it was a hope. And sound?

She checked her inventory. She had tools. She had metal. She could make noise.

"I’m not a pet," Roxy murmured, her confidence rushing back to her. "I’m a mother who would do anything to go back to her children." 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

The water wall rippled.

Roxy scrambled back from the bone pile, running back to the main chamber just as Caspian entered.

He looked pleased with himself. He wasn’t carrying food this time. He was dragging a large, water-logged chest.

He hauled it onto the sand and flipped the lid open with a flick of his webbed claw.

"For the Sea Witch," Caspian purred.

He reached in and pulled out a handful of tangled necklaces, gold chains, pearls, diamonds. Then, he pulled out wet, heavy fabric.

It was a dress. A human dress. Elaborate, silken, and clearly from a wealthy era, though stained by the sea.

He tossed it at her feet. Then another. Then a heavy, gem-encrusted tiara.

"Dress," Caspian commanded gently. "Make yourself shiny."

Roxy looked at the pile.

The clothes weren’t rotted. The jewelry was intact.

"Caspian," Roxy asked, her voice steady, masking the racing of her heart. "Where did you get these?"

"The wooden shells," Caspian shrugged, picking up a diamond necklace and draping it over his own arm to admire the sparkle. "They break on the rocks above. The contents fall. I catch them."

"And the people wearing them?" Roxy asked, pointing to the dress. It had buttons. It had lacing. It wasn’t something you just found floating; it was something that came off a body.

Caspian paused. He looked at her with those alien, golden eyes.

"My people wear these," he said simply.

No shit Sherlock where did your people get these!

He moved toward her, holding the diamond necklace. He reached out to fasten it around her neck, treating her like a mannequin.

Roxy didn’t flinch. She stood her ground. She let him place the cold, heavy gold against her skin.

She needed him close. She needed him talking. She needed to know her enemy before she used her new weapons.

She reached up and touched the necklace, her fingers brushing his cold hand.

"Caspian," she whispered. "Tell me about the Merpeople."