Chapter 177: Naiad (1/2)
Erin sat nervously in her office with a worried expression on her face. She had been contemplating on what to do since the moment Albert had left the room but even now, she couldn't come up with a viable solution to handing the Behemoth of Greed, Mammon. The addition of the generals of Greed was also a problem as there wasn't anyone besides Albert that could go head to head with them.
Her eyes were currently shut but it was clear she was still able to keep track of the situation outside thanks to her spirit magic and her divination abilities. Her shoes repeatedly tapped on the carpet as she contemplated on either listening to Albert's instructions or joining the fight.
She had already tried contacting Lord Ty several times but it was of no use. She had even tried using divination to find out his location but he was constantly using anti-divination magic on himself so that was hard.
She also had the skill, FutureSight, that allowed her to see parts of a specific future and although the future wasn't a straight line, thus wasn't set in stone. So naturally, what she saw may not come true. However, that didn't matter to her, the fact that what she had seen wasn'tgood was still troubling for her.
She opened her eyes and suddenly stood up, wanting to head out but hesitated and sat back down.
She remembers what Abert had said before he left and knew he was right about her. Her fighting abilities were minimal and although the few attack skills she had were powerful enough for her to go toe to toe with a behemoth, they also drained her life force instead of just mana consumption and she currently wasn't in the best condition to recover from that.
While she was indeed a demigod, and a Nymph should be considered as an immortal being. That was not actually the case. At best she could only be considered pseudo-immortal.
In general, a Nymph was a minor female natural divine spirits or deities but was different from actual goddesses and are generally regarded as personifications of nature. They were typically tied to a specific place or landform, and usually take the appearance of beautiful maidens based on the element of nature's essence that gave birth to their sentence.
While most of them were not necessarily immortal, and just lived much longer than humans and demons. This only applies to most types of nymphs like the Meliae and Dryads, who only lived as long as the trees they were born from and connected to, which was essentially their source. Of course, there were a few exceptions to this rule.
For instance, Dryads, like all nymphs, were supernaturally long-lived and tied to their homes, which was generally a limited area around their trees. They were an integral part of their trees, such that if the tree died, the dryad associated with it died as well.
They were also unable to stray too far from their source as they had to constantly protect it from dangerous enemies like beasts, humans, or demons. In essence, their lives were indeed long, but they could not be considered immortal.
However, Erin was neither a Dryad nor was she a Meliae that were born from plants or trees. She was a Naiad or what was called a freshwater nymph that was born from flowing water—springs, rivers, fountains, lakes. She had been born and originally presided over a lake that had been located in the Azarbed Region which was originally the Cronoff family's region.
Naiads were an incredibly rare type of nymphs as they were actual divine spiritual beings that could obtain physical bodies at will and were technically immortal as they could actually live forever as long as a part of their source remained. They were born from the abundance of nature's essence that was absorbed by a body of fresh water and as such, the water itself was their source and generally could not die out as long as the nymph was present to take care of it or at least, kept part of it safe.
Although their source could be destroyed, the nymph themselves would not die even if they did not keep a part of it. However, they would no longer be completely immortal as their life fore would constantly be drained from them unless they were able to connect themselves to a living being in order to retain the life force they already had and lived the rest of their days as a semi-mortal spiritual being as they could not connect to another body of water without a small part of their source.
Naiads were powerful beings but most of their abilities were generally healing and divination. However, they still needed to protect their source and as such had a few powerful attack magic that required a lot of energy but that energy was gotten from their near-limitless life fore when they were connected to their source. Their magic also required them to be near a body of water to be fully effective.
However, Erin's lake, her source had been destroyed years ago, and as such she was no longer immortal and although her lifeforce was stable now thanks to Abert, she could not refill it and thus, using any powerful attack abilities that required her lifeforce would most likely kill her.
However, she wasn't sure if that was a bad thing though. She had indeed lived an extremely long life by human standards and had mostly spent most of those years on her own just communicating with animals and plants. While she could move away from her source, she had chosen not to as she found those times satisfying and peaceful.
Throughout the period of her life, she had met various beings like demons and demi-humans and her originally cheerful and lighthearted personality had changed after she had befriended quite a few of them and they had all ended up dying before she knew it.
Most would consider her immortality a gift and something amazing but in the end, it had only made her lonely. Her days spent with the animals and plants had never bothered her when they died so she hadn't expected it to be so painful when her friends would die even when it was just as a result of their age.
Those painful emotions made her not want to open up to anyone ever again and thus she remained at her lake for what she thought would be an eternity. However, her secluded life had suddenly come to an end when a certain young boy strayed over to her lake after getting lost in the wild.
He was already quite the refined young man even then and could compose himself even when lost. And even after she had shown him the way just to get him to leave, he still came back every day after that to see her. Claiming no one deserves to be left alone. A sentence she had considered rude at the time and probably still did.
However, if it wasn't for that boy, she was sure the ones that had destroyed her source would've captured her as well and by now, she was sure to be dead.