This Life, I Will Be the Protagonist-Chapter 1093 Divine Game My World 38 Tides

If there were a world like this, where at high tide the entire planet became an endless ocean, and at low tide most of the water flowed into the planet’s core, leaving behind land with only a few remaining water sources.

Would such a world be interesting, or simply broken?

For the Landscale race living in Tides, it was interesting enough.

To us Landscale folk, the world we named Tides was a fish. The rise and fall of the tide was the fish breathing, and the beings living on Tides were its scales.

As for why we believed the tides were its breath, the elders offered a reason I could not refute. The timing of sea and land was always precise. Aside from the ten or so days of transition during high tide and low tide, the ocean phase and the land phase of Tides each lasted two hundred days.

Perfectly regular, like breathing.

We were part of the world, living on the surface of its body, breathing alongside it.

And just like that, everything made sense.

Unfortunately, while we could remain active underwater for long periods, we were not marine creatures.

So we were always busy.

Whenever the tide receded, we had to prepare food, repair, reinforce, or even rebuild our ships. When the tide returned, we would jump onto the vessels we had spent two hundred days preparing and begin another two hundred days at sea.

We usually built ships as families. Adult Landscale who had not yet formed families were sent off to build single person boats. It was a sign of growing up.

But no matter how the ships were built, when the tide arrived we would gather them together as much as possible. Like schools of fish rising from the depths, we migrated as a group, clustering together to endure the tide until it withdrew.

Life at sea was not dull.

We sat on deck to fish, paint, blow conch horns, dance to their sound, record stories we had just invented, and wait for the storms to arrive. That was the trial we had to face.

Those two hundred days on the ocean were anything but boring. Every ten days or so, the world seemed to tilt slightly, followed by storms and towering waves.

It often made me feel that our world was not a fish at all, but a rather ill tempered clam.

Whenever the clam breathed like clapping shells, we suffered.

We had to find ways to survive the storms. The worst outcome was having our ships torn apart, forcing us to abandon them.

Landscale who lost their ships could only search for rescue. The feelers on our foreheads helped us detect nearby kin.

I cannot fully explain how it works. Just as eyes see and ears hear, the various tentacles and feelers on our foreheads allow us to sense our own kind nearby.

On the open sea, no Landscale would ever refuse a shipless kin, even if we had once been enemies.

So if you lost your ship during high tide and fell into the sea, the only thing you needed to fear was being swept too far away. That meant swimming and swimming until your feelers suddenly glowed, signaling that other land scales were nearby.

This happened often enough.

Every Landscale had experienced their ship being shattered by a storm. Over time, every Landscale learned perseverance.

Persevere until the storm subsides. Persevere until the feelers glow. Persevere until the tide recedes, and two hundred days of recovery follow.

Perhaps that was the lesson Tides wanted to teach us.

I forced these conclusions into a neat summary and wrote them into the fairy tale book I created. Two hundred days on land was enough for me to copy thousands of copies, and before the tide returned, when the Landscale were at their most generous, I sold them all.

Children enjoyed them. Even adults nodded along and paid with sea shells for a copy.

But very few people discussed the sentimental ideas in my books with me.

Perhaps they felt the lessons were too shallow. Or perhaps there was nothing to debate. A theory accepted by most of the Landscale hardly needed discussion.

Very few people talked to me about it, but not none.

It was a very young child, with the Landscale’s signature black curly hair. The feelers on his head were adorable, a kind of off season mushroom that only slowly grew after the tide receded.

It grew so slowly that it only fully emerged a few days before the tide returned, and was soon submerged by the sea again.

A plant completely out of place in the world, as if it only lived for a few days each year.

He hugged the roll of sea fish skin covered in stories and said to me, "The lesson of Tides is not perseverance. When the tide comes, we drift with it. When it recedes, we rest and recover. That is what Tides wants to teach us."

I sat down and talked with him for a long time. I had to admit that he might have been right.

Much later, he became a remarkable figure.

We all admired him. He was first on the Tides ranking board and commanded the strongest legion in Tides.

But why, why was it that when a storm powerful enough to overturn all of Tides arrived, when all Landscale were resisting with everything they had, that young man, who represented the strongest force of Tides at the time, made such a choice.

He did not fight.

In front of everyone, he threw down his weapon. He did not only give up himself, he ordered his legion to give up as well.

The ridiculous feelers above his head began to glow. No one knew how he did it. On the battlefield, every kin’s feelers and tentacles glowed in unison, and under his control, we all laid down our weapons.

We hated him.

The more we had once admired and respected him, the more we hated him after that day.

This was the shame of Tides. The shame of the Landscale.

Tides should not have ended like this.

Tides

...

Under Kessa’s contemptuous gaze, the players who had been eavesdropping in the corridor quickly dispersed. Still, a few people lingered.

Verdant Whisper Windrush looked at Verdant Mojie, who stood with his head lowered. After hesitating for a few seconds, she spoke.

"You are still thinking about the Tides dock we passed earlier, right? If you want to ask about Tides’s sigh, I could talk to BS Mistblade for you. Maybe she can help contact BS Rita."

"Ask what?" Verdant Mojie stared at his feet. His toes shifted slightly. He thought maybe he should buy a new anklet.

"Ask whether Tides hates you," Verdant Whisper Windrush said cautiously.

"I saved seventy percent of the Landscale," Verdant Mojie replied coldly. "What right does Tides have to hate me? Even if it does, it does not matter. All Landscale hate me. One more Tides makes no difference."

"Have you ever regretted it?" Crab, who had been silently eavesdropping nearby, could not help interrupting. Playing the game for a long time had its benefits. You heard a bit of gossip from every world. "If you had kept fighting for a while, let your people feel that despair themselves, and then surrendered, they would not hate you."

Verdant Mojie replied mercilessly, "That sounds hypocritical. Let more of my people die so I can earn a better reputation."

Crab stared at Verdant Whisper Windrush in shock. "I just got turned into a stepping stone? Like I am some evil overlord and he is a saint? If I remember right, Tides holds the record for fastest surrender."

Verdant Mojie ignored the flustered BS Crab. Barefoot, he walked away. Every few steps he gave a small hop, the anklet on his foot chiming softly.

He did not need to ask whether Tides hated him. He already knew the answer.

Before Tides shattered, all his kin screamed curses at him with their last breath. The first and last time he heard Tides speak, it said only one thing to him.

Well done.