Once they had agreed that Adam would join them as well, no further words were needed.
So the journey began that very afternoon.
Risthon slowly faded into the distance, its stone walls growing faint as they rode away. The constant noise of the city gave way to the more honest sounds of the outside world: the wind rustling through the trees, the crackling of branches, and the distant murmur of water.
Adam walked ahead of the woman nad Claire, who was by his side, without saying a single word.
Behind them, a small group of rcenaries moved forward in silence, watching every shadow as if they expected an attack at any mont.
And, a few steps behind them...
Synes.
She walked calmly, almost carefree, as if this journey ant nothing to her. Her eyes scanned the surroundings with a lazy... yet alert curiosity.
Claire said. Her voice was firm, but there was a hint of restraint in it:
"The Multicolored Lake isn’t far, but it’s not a safe place."
Adam didn’t answer right away. His eyes moved calmly, scanning the terrain.
"Monsters?"
"Yes... and no."
Claire frowned slightly.
"The problem isn’t the lake... It’s what lives in it."
The forest began to change.
The trees grew taller and older. Their trunks were thick, twisted, and covered in dark moss. Sunlight barely managed to filter through the leaves, creating a damp, oppressive atmosphere.
The air turned cold.
And then... they heard it.
Water.
The lake appeared before them like a still mirror. Its surface was a unique and strikingly beautiful color; it seed to contain every hue while, at the sa ti, reflecting the sky with an unnatural clarity, as if it were not water... but sothing else.
Adam looked at the multicolored lake with curiosity; it was one of the most unique and strange places in this area, where many have mysteriously disappeared or been found dead, with parts of their bodies missing.
The water didn’t reflect as it should have... its colors shifted subtly, as if sothing within it were in constant motion.
"That’s the spot."
One of the rcenaries murmured.
His voice was low, almost as if speaking any louder would be a bad idea.
However, no one approached it because there were many stories surrounding the multicolored lake: if you got too close and saw your reflection, you would turn into a demon or change gender.
Absurd stories... but persistent enough to keep people away.
...But Adam knows that all of that is a lie; the reason behind all those stories was sothing entirely different.
And that... was precisely what made it so dangerous.
Then he took a step toward the lake, followed by another, without the slightest hesitation.
"Stop."
Claire’s voice was low but firm.
She didn’t need to raise it to command respect.
Adam turned slightly toward her.
His movent was minimal, just enough to show that he had heard her... but not necessarily that he was going to obey.
"The rainbow fish you ntioned earlier isn’t here; there’s no life in that lake."
His gaze hardened.
"I don’t want any of my people to die just because of sothing that doesn’t exist. Tell what your true intentions are."
The tension among the rcenaries rose imdiately.
Adam smiled slightly as he watched them all draw their weapons, ready to fight him; perhaps they had thought he had brought them to this place to kill them.
"They still don’t believe ; I lured them here to go fishing, or do they think I’m going to kill them with a fishing rod?"
His tone was light, almost mocking, as if the situation didn’t carry the weight it clearly did.
He approached the shore; the water didn’t stir—it was completely still; it seed as if the wind didn’t move it in the slightest, and that very fact made it intriguing.
Too perfect... too still.
Adam crouched down slowly, watching his reflection.
There was no distortion. There was no blurring.
For a second... It wasn’t his face he saw. It was the face of soone wearing an extrely unique suit, with short black hair, ordinary features—unlike his own, which were delicate and elegant—and a pair of glasses.
The image didn’t fit.
He blinked twice, and the reflection vanished, but it felt extrely familiar; yet he had no idea why.
That familiarity... was what was unsettling.
Well... Adam had been feeling it far too often, so he didn’t make much of it.
Or he chose not to.
"..."
Claire noticed.
The slight change in his expression didn’t go unnoticed.
"What did you see?"
Adam stood up calmly, as if nothing had really happened.
"Nothing, I was just a little surprised; I didn’t expect them not to move a muscle."
The answer was simple... too simple.
One of the rcenaries said impatiently.
"So what now, genius?"
Adam didn’t answer right away; instead, he reached into a small piece of cloth, pulled out a black worm, and put it on the hook.
His movents were slow and deliberate, as if he felt no pressure at all.
"To prove to them that I have the Rainbow Fish, I have to catch it... right?"
Claire looked at him in surprise.
She hadn’t expected him to go that far.
"Not exactly... but."
Adam cast it into the water and stood there quietly for a few monts, whistling the beautiful lody he’d heard in the carriage while traveling with the rchants to Bretan.
The contrast was strange: absolute calm... in a place where it shouldn’t have been.
The lake reacted.
For the first ti... the surface trembled, starting with gentle ripples, then deeper ones.
The water, which had previously seed lifeless, began to show signs of life.
The reflection of the sky beca distorted...
As if sothing from below were pushing against reality itself.
And sothing moved beneath: first, it was light that looked more like a flash; then, colors that initially appeared red; then, yellow. The colors kept appearing as if fragnts of a rainbow were swimming in the darkness.
Beautiful... but wrong.
Then the fish appeared; it wasn’t big or monstrous. But it was... beautiful.
Too perfect for that place.
Its body seed to be made of liquid light, shifting color with every movent, reflecting shades that were impossible to define.
A mont of calm... before it shattered.
And then...
It vanished.
"WHAT—?!"
The rcenaries reacted too late.
Far too late.
The water exploded.
Not like a splash... but like a rupture.
A shadow erged from the depths.
Giant.
Deford.
Hungry.
Its presence crushed the atmosphere.
"That..." Clarie whispered.
Adam smiled slightly and, looking her in the face, said:
"That is what lives in the lake and what has spawned the stories all these years."
...
The water rose like a wall of liquid, shattering the false calm that had enveloped it until that mont. The creature erged fully, revealing an elongated body covered in black scales that absorbed light, as if any glow that touched them were devoured without a trace.
Its many eyes opened along the length of its head... and all of them looked at Adam.
"..."
"Step back."
Claire’s voice was imdiate, firm, and tinged with restrained urgency—a command born not of panic, but of a clear understanding of the danger before them.
Adam didn’t move; he stood his ground amid the chaos.
The creature lunged without warning, with a sudden, brutal movent that sliced through the air before anyone could react, crashing into the shore with such devastating force that the ground cracked beneath its feet, sending water, mud, and fragnts of earth flying in every direction.
One of them scread—a shrill cry that was almost imdiately lost amid the chaos—while another was dragged away by one of the creature’s slimy tentacles.
CRACK!
His body vanished beneath the water without giving him a chance to resist, as if he had been swallowed up by sothing that didn’t even have to exert itself to do so.
Leaving behind an abrupt, heavy silence that lasted barely a second, but felt like an eternity.
Then...
"FORM UP!"
"GET AWAY FROM THE WATER!"
Commands rang out, and the rcenaries tried to regroup, raising their weapons and falling back far enough to stay out of the creature’s imdiate reach.
Adam took a step back, but his eyes weren’t on the creature; they were fixed on the lake, on the depths of that unnatural surface that had been constantly shifting ever since it all began.
That’s not it...
The rainbow fish hadn’t disappeared, and that certainty was enough to make her completely ignore the imdiate threat.
"Synes."
The demoness smiled, her relaxed expression standing in stark contrast to the tension in the air.
"Hmm~?"
"Just watch."
"Don’t be cruel, darling..."
But she didn’t move, staying put as if she understood that there was no need to intervene, or perhaps she didn’t care.
Adam raised his hand, cast the fishing rod again with fresh bait, and felt a tug; a smile spread across his lips.
It seed that the monster that had appeared was like so guardian, a superficial layer covering the true phenonon hiding in that lake.
"There it is..."
"What are you doing?"
Claire shouted, her sword already drawn and her voice filled with disbelief and tension.
"That thing is going to kill us all!"
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