“Don’t forget to clean yourself up before heading in today!” Rache’s mother said before slapping lightly against the wooden railings of their modest family home on the outskirts of Costa, a warm welcoming tourist city on the western edge of the Ethereal realm. Her son was doing his morning practice before work again, and it's always cutting way too close to the time for her liking.

Or perhaps...perhaps he was growing up too quickly for her.

“I am trying to focus here!” Rache complained when his mother smiled and shook her head. She had been working as a servant to the main Fisher family who’s the 10th ranked house in the entirety of the Ethereal realm.

Rache, though a Fisher by blood, was never recognized in the main family due to her mother being a servant and her father being a more prominent member running the businesses of the Fisher household within the main house.

Despite the nature of their parent’s relationship, at least his father was decent enough to give his mother a steady job working for the main family in the middle of the city which afforded them a small house in the countryside not too far away.

By working as a fellow Fisher worker in training, Rache was able to train with the instructors within the House of Fisher in his spare time, though he was never one with much potential in combat, not that his mother cared.

“Even if you are not born to be a star in the Ethereal tournament, it doesn’t mean that you can’t be a valuable asset to the Fisher family.” The kind old Wave ability instructor said, glancing down at Rache who’s maintaining the spheres of Wave somewhat shakily around him, “Keep the practice up, and it may benefit you at the most unexpected of times.”

“What’s the point if I am just going to pick rocks or fish for the rest of my life…” Rache said, dispelling the spheres and slumping his shoulders.

His father was responsible for running the Fisher’s hunting and gathering business. Particularly, there are a few rare types of pearls native to the coastlines of Costa city that are hidden away naturally and require a trained eye to spot out, and that’s what Rache was trained to do.

“You will never know what fate has in store for you, young Rache.” The old man said, “Trust me on this, and keep up this daily practice if you will remember anything from me.”

And so Rache did. However, he never admitted that fact to the old man when he was alive.

What was once frustrating about maintaining a constant output of the Wave had now become effortless and rather awarding to perform, and soon he was juggling the few Wave orbs before smoothly recycling it back into his body.

“Just like the currents,” Rache murmured.

The Fisher family preached a more holistic and natural way to use the Wave, and that particular perspective benefited those with higher affinity with the Wave far more than regular kids like Rache as higher affinity enabled greater sensitivity to the tiniest variations in the Wave itself.

That also helped them spot the distinct Wave signature of those mollusks that had well-developed pearls contained within the shells and tucked away in the depths of the ocean.

Wiping away the lines of sweat over his forehead, Rache quickly cleaned him up over the water bucket before changing and running to his workshop by the ocean. During the run, he practiced enhancing his physical characteristics using the Wave. The summer sun of the Ethereal realm at this time of the year could only be compensated by the coolness of the sea, and for once, Rache was glad to be doing what he was meant to do.

“You are late.” His manager said, tossing a Cast-enhanced bucket to him, “The others had already gone off.”

“Yeah yeah…” Rache picked up the bucket with one hand before running towards the endless waves curling towards him upon the beach, “It’s not like being early's going to help me get the best spots regardless…”

Being the illegitimate Fisher, he had already been bullied out from the calmer spots in the ocean for pearl gathering, though he had since treated it as meditation for him, seeing that those kids on rotations would not venture away from the calmer parts anyway.

Unlike them who are simply going through the mandatory courses and services of a kid growing up in the Fisher household, he’s actually here to do the job. His job.

As his body sank down through the ocean and a light layer of Wave covered his entire body, leaving a tiny bubble of air for him to breathe through, he spotted a sinking current before reaching forward, latching onto it and riding it towards the ocean floor dozens of meter under the surface.

At this point, he could still see the sun above, though he was finally liberated from the heat. Here at the bottom of the waters, it was as if he had been transported to a whole new world, a world where there was finally some peace and quiet, where he was finally left alone to do whatever he wanted.

Well, more like whatever he needed to do.

Rache slowed his breathing to conserve the air as his blue hair slowly floated up beside his head in the water. Then, he reached out, both with his hands and with his mind as he listened to the heartbeat of the ocean.

As everything became silent within him and the layer of Wave became compressed down to the thickness of a strand of hair, he was able to harness the richness of Wave within the ocean, vastly increasing their physical, sensory, and Wave usage capabilities.

For Rache, that meant highlighting the contrast of the Wave signatures generated by the pearls against the normal backdrop of the ocean. The whiter and hotter a pearl felt in the Wave, the more magnificent jewelry it ends up being. And beyond the layers of freshly deposited sand and mud, there was indeed something magnificent.

It was a pulsating heat. It felt…more alive than anything he had encountered before. Naturally, Rache was drawn to it. A single piece of this quality would mean he would have covered today's quota in a matter of hours.

SPLAT.

A muffled sound of impact from above immediately caught Rache’s attention, and he spun around in the ocean before glancing up as a cube of rock sank through the water and spiraled right past him. It brought forth a light pressure of water that gently pushed against his arms before more black dots formed from overhead as more rocks appeared.

SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT!

All around him, more things started to rain down from the ocean surface, each creating columns of bubbles and jets of water at the impact. Smaller objects became smashed into smithereens immediately while the larger ones shattered and rippled outward emphatically. All of a sudden, the clear sky above was turned into a wall of white bubbles and black rocks.

What the hell? Rache wondered, trying to look through the other side of the sea surface before finally deciding to swim up at a place with the least bubbles. Then, when he emerged, a large chunk of brown solid slammed into the ocean surface next to him, the water splashing Rache in the face before the fresh smells of soil filled his nostrils.

Tracing the trajectories of the objects, Rache quickly spotted a far larger dark rock that was rapidly accelerating across the sky. It wasn’t necessarily heading straight for him, but…

Rache turned his head while treading water, and his eyes widened when he came to the dooming realization.

His parents still in Costa city, and that piece of rock isn’t stopping for anybody.

Rache sprung up onto the ocean surface, his Wave abilities activating unconsciously as he started sprinting on top of water with every footprint rippled against the small waves and formed a zig-zagging trail.

“Shit shit shit…” Rache cursed, accelerating more and more as he nearly failed to maintain his Wave under his feet. He doesn’t know every crazy thing about what the high human societies are up to, but even he knew that there’s only one thing floating that high in the air and is that close to the coast.

It has to be the Infinite Academy. But why the hell did it decide to crash on the sofa of Costa city?! What’s going on?

A blast of energy from the falling island temporarily lit up the entire sky as its light dwarfed that of even the sun. That visibly slowed down the movement of the island, but it wasn’t enough. Rache could tell, and it further broke apart what remained of the island's integrity as more pieces started breaking off from the bottom of it.

“Mother!” He shouted hopelessly, hastily conjuring his communication Cast and screwing up his inputs. He tried again as his mother’s projections flickered into view, “Mom!”

“Rache? What’s going on?” His mother asked with a hushed voice, “There’s a meeting going on!”

“Screw the meeting! Something is falling on the city!” Rache yelled when countless holographic towers suddenly rose up from all around the outskirts of Fang city before beams of Wave shot up into the air, targetting the individual projectiles and incinerating them, “You have to get out of there!”

“I...don't understand…But just be carefu, okay? They need me right now.” His mother said apologetically before flickering out of view, "I am sure the head of house will take care of this."

As a major piece of debris became blasted apart into thousands of smaller ones, the trio of turrets to the East side of the city concentrated their fire, blasting each piece further apart.

However, one of those spinning rock column slammed into and through the shields of one of the governmental buildings in the Eastern side of Costa city. The impact immediately caused everything around it to also collapse as clouds of smoke rose all throughout the city.

Rache knew exactly what goes on the Eastern side of the Costa city. It’s the commercial district, and it handles the matter of commerce not only with the rest of the Ethereal realm, but also the other kingdoms on the Eastern continent.

Once again, he activated his communication Cast, this time conjuring it with perfection. But there was only silence on the other end.

Everything around him faded to black as Rache became tunnel visioned more and more. The skies above turned dark, and so does the sand under his feet. All he saw was the entrances into the East that’s been carved open by a massive piece of rock that had just landed.

Another debris of mud had just been splattered right on top of him, and wooden splitters of trees rained over him. However, Rache didn’t feel a single thing.

With his feet slamming into the mud and sliding around the corner, Rache arrived at the pile of rocks that his parents used to work at.