The Knight from the Fairytales

Chapter 52: Something's Wrong with This Castle

After witnessing that miraculous scene, the mermaid princesses began following slowly behind the ship.

On the ship at that moment, Beihai was sitting on a chair while another painter was creating a vivid painting based on Beihai's description.

Elsa sat beside Beihai on a special small stool that the craftsman had made on the spot. She picked grapes to eat while watching the painter.

"Just that kind of half-human, half-fish creature, with half human body and half fish body."

"Sir, please rest assured, I am a royal court painter. I've painted the Prince when he was young, and the King during his majestic years—I've done them all."

The painter appeared full of confidence. In this world, although cameras had become widespread, more people still preferred oil paintings, which could be considered an alternative type of camera, though the "photo-taking" time was a bit long.

In this era, it could be said to be a time where a hundred flowers bloomed—magic had its own path, while another kind of technology had already sprouted many beginnings.

Moreover, these painters wouldn't take that long. As soon as Beihai finished speaking, the painter immediately began sketching with his brush on the canvas.

A complete painting emerged in less than half a minute.

And it was painted so vividly, except... why was this creature mermaid body on the left side and human on the right?"Not left and right, but top and bottom."

"Understood."

After replying with a single word, the painter rotated the canvas and quickly produced another completed painting—fish on top, human legs below.

"Don't you think that looks weird? I already said mermaids are also called beautiful mermaids. You should paint a beautiful woman's upper body on top and a fish tail below."

"Got it."

The painter soon handed the first version to Beihai. What was on it looked less like a mermaid and more like a fish head with everything below the neck being human, with a fish tail below like those shrimp soldiers and crab generals.

The painter felt he had grasped the truth.

This was like work plans—changed over and over, revised repeatedly, only to discover the original version was best after all.

"Are you messing with me?"

Hearing Beihai speak like this made the painter instinctively go "Huh?" Had he gotten it wrong again? That shouldn't be...

"I'm talking about a beautiful woman, a beautiful maiden with aesthetics similar to us humans. Is this thing of yours beautiful?"

The painter shook his head following his heart, but also felt somewhat innocent: "The great Sea King looks like this. His skin tone is different from us humans. I just made slight modifications."

Although unclear about the Sea King's greenish or light blue skin tone, even though the upper body was human, there were still some fish characteristics—fish scales on the arms and such.

Humans cannot imagine things they've never seen. Even though Beihai had said so much, when people thought about it—if the Sea King looked like that, could the rest be any better?

Do you understand what good genetic inheritance means? We have to be scientific about this, right?

"What I want is, according to human aesthetics, a very beautiful one with fair skin and lovely appearance. When you paint the lower half, paint a fish tail."

This time it was finally correct—upper body of a beautiful woman, lower body with a fish tail. When this work was completed, even the painter couldn't help but comment.

"Such a peculiar creature I've never seen before. If they wanted to come ashore, probably no one would discover they were mermaids."

Beautiful mermaids, unlike the Sea King who had a roughly human form, looked completely like human maidens.

"That's not necessarily true. For mermaids to come ashore is difficult, just like for us humans to go underwater. Beautiful mermaids are considered harmless, but sometimes their appearance isn't good for us humans—well-intentioned but causing trouble."

Soon the painter stepped down, and someone began recording what Beihai had said, serving as a preliminary resolution of the misunderstanding.

In the following time, the beautiful mermaids did not appear again, and the sea remained calm. The people on the ship completely relaxed.

However, they didn't play music, as this was the Sea King's command they couldn't disobey. Otherwise, on such a large ship, they wouldn't just talk boredly.

If there were music, they would definitely hold a celebratory ball on the sea surface to pass time. This wasn't just something people here often did—plus, who doesn't like holding balls on giant ships?

Beihai and Elsa leaned against the railing watching the sea surface below, but unfortunately didn't see any mermaids, only a few fish tails.

After several days of sailing, Beihai set foot on a new continent.

"The legendary old lady, I'll be able to see her soon."

Arriving at a new place, the urgent task was to buy a horse.

Speaking of horses, it was actually quite interesting. Because Beihai couldn't harm animals—after all, there were Attribute Points to gain—he often released horses halfway through riding.

Why halfway? Under the pretext that if nearby, the horse would be caught by horse traders, ultimately ending up walking on foot again.

A horse was still quite expensive to purchase, equivalent to a modern car. Plus, you had to maintain the horse—like bathing it, feeding it, even breeding it.

But for Beihai, anything that could be solved with money wasn't really a problem. So to avoid these troubles, he would release the horse halfway through riding.

After spending several gold coins, Beihai obtained a sweat-blood steed and soon arrived at the destination.

Upon entering the legendary land, the map on Beihai's body emitted light, seemingly becoming a key to open the gate.

It was a castle, similar to medieval ancient castles, with somewhat grayish colors as if shrouded in shadows. On those pointed roofs, several crows cawed.

The most extreme thing was—damn it—there were lyrebirds next to the crows!

The characteristic of this bird was that its call sounded like a baby's cry.

It could be said that if it weren't still daylight, with the lyrebird's cries, Beihai wouldn't dare walk at night.

Arriving at the castle gate, before Beihai could even call out, the gate automatically opened, followed by a chilling breeze.

Blown by this wind, the birds instinctively began calling because of the intruder. In this underworld-like atmosphere, Elsa gripped Beihai's hand tightly out of fear.

Beihai had no choice but to first squat down to comfort Elsa.

Actually, Beihai was also feeling a bit timid now—this atmosphere was just too bizarre!

Your castle being black was one thing—even though sunlight couldn't penetrate, the castle interior pitch black with wind blowing was tolerable. At most, it was just poorly built with bad lighting placement.

You keeping crows—I have no issue with that. Crows are beneficial birds. But keeping lyrebirds? What's that about?

In this situation, this castle had practically written "UNSAFE" on its face.

Now, besides some adventurers—the kind who accidentally get stranded in the wilderness and need lodging—who else would enter?

Maybe hunters would, after all, hunters are just too formidable.