Pioneer of the Abyss - Book 3 - Chapter 3 (Patreon)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Don't mind this. It's so that free readers can't see half the chapter when the chapter eventually becomes patron only.

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For those of you who are reading this on a website that is not Patreon, please stop. You're reading a pirated version. Instead, if you would be so kind, please click on the table of contents link below and go to my Patreon instead. Or even read it off of Royal Road, which is free.

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Table of Contents

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Click the following link for the 1414 word chapter 3:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UvI0Fowz-6eb62rV46mMOR8S8axfhnfl_zaeHoukcaA/edit?usp=sharing

Or you can read the unformatted version below:

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Aqua

“This way, Miss Azuranth,” one of the people on the ship says after I enter it with my Abyssal Lord. Leading me to some sort of lounge on the ship. And I find it mildly surprising that, even with this new locket on, I don’t get the seat wet.

Huh. Not sure how that works.

I’m covered in a veil of water, but none of it is soaking into the seat.

Just how did they even make this…?

I purse my lips for a moment before just shrugging and enjoying it as I wait a brief amount of time for the ship to rise into space and dock at one of the larger ships outside of the planet. Then I leave the lounge again and walk off the smaller vessel onto the larger one with my hands in the pockets of my hoodie.

And the moment I step onto the hangar of the large ship, I find hundreds of people cheering at the sight of me. All likely staff working on the ship itself, with a lot of them carrying stuff from one place to another or working on the ships located in the hangar.

This is awkward.

I just lightly smile at them before turning my attention to the man I recognize standing at one end of the hangar.

Rhett.

“You’re here,” Rhett says with the faintest smile on his face and his arms crossed. And when I walk up to him, he pats me on the shoulder and adds, “Thank you for surviving, Official Pioneer.”

My smile grows as I answer in kind, “Thank you for helping that cranky old grandmother.”

He chuckles at my words and counters, “She was a handful, but I did as you told me, and she accepted everything.”

I thought she would.

Both of us ignore the people literally taking pictures of me and cheering my name as we walk into the ship, leaving the hangar. Then we walk through the ship to what I’m guessing is his office. Probably.

“How long will you be taking as vacation from entertainment industry jobs?” Rhett asks while glancing at me.

I hum in thought for a moment before answering, “I’ll probably take another week off of those jobs as I figure out what to do from here on.”

There are an annoying amount of things I need to decide on right now.

Where I’ll go now that I can leave the planet, what I’m going to do with the planet, how often I should do entertainment industry jobs now, how often I should livestream, and more.

I don’t know any of it yet.

“You should stream whenever you fight in difficult battles,” Rhett says, seemingly giving me some tips on what to do now. Tips that I won’t reject. “Even if help might not be able to arrive immediately or at all depending on your location, if you’re livestreaming your battle, everyone will know your situation. If you get injured, they’ll know it and no one will rush you to return to your activities. If you die, everyone will know how and some people might help get revenge while others will at least know about your death that might not learn of it otherwise. Like friends and family. And if you’re in a situation where help can be received, some people could come to help you if you need it.”

That makes sense.

“And you get money from streaming,” Rhett adds as if it’s an afterthought, making me let out a short laugh. “There’s no reason not to earn extra money.”

He’s not wrong there.

“You can do entertainment industry jobs however you please from now on,” Rhett continues. “The main reason Pioneers enter the industry is to gain public support and sponsors for items that can help them survive until they become Official Pioneers. There’s no reason to stay regularly active in the industry after you become an Official Pioneer. At most you should make an appearance once in a while to satisfy your fans. But even that can be satisfied simply by livestreaming.”

The two of us arrive at what looks like a very large and fancy office on the ship. At which point we both sit down on the chairs on either side of a table in the office, with some papers on the tables.

But we don’t immediately get to signing as he keeps speaking, “Most Official Pioneers still do entertainment industry jobs, but only as a way to earn extra income for other purposes. So they don’t do them often. There are even some Official Pioneers who step largely out of the public eye and just focus on doing occasional casual livestreams. No longer fighting anymore.”

That sounds boring. The not fighting part, I mean.

The rest of it sounds nice.

I’ve gotten bored of doing so many commercials and the like. And modeling for clothes all the time is almost as exhausting as fighting to the death against deep ocean monsters.

Of course, there are aspects that are fun. Some of the outfits are cool. But most of them are annoying to put on.

There’s no worry about overflooding my image since there are so many different planets across the Alliance, though. Which is nice.

“For Oceana, you can always just leave someone else in charge of developing the planet for you,” Rhett says, moving onto the next subject. “If you want, you can even get your parents to help manage the planet. All you have to do is fund it and give a little direction. Then you can go off and do whatever you want. You can even travel to older ocean planets to continue hunting monsters.”

Huh. That’s not a bad idea.

I can imagine it now. Just taking a ship to another ocean planet and hunting all of the sea monsters on the planets to continue leveling up.

It’ll give me a way to continue growing stronger, let me stay in the ocean, and give me new waters to explore.

And, unlike Oceana, the other ocean planets will already have civilizations on them that are part of the Alliance. So I can use the money I’ve made from my entertainment industry jobs for myself for a change. I also won’t have to worry about the natives learning about the Alliance or anything like that.

“That sounds like a good idea,” I state with a grin spreading across my face at the thought. “I might just do that.”

“I thought so,” Rhett says with a chuckle. Then he grows more serious again as he looks at the contract on the table and says, “Now please read through the contract lying here. If you have any objections, please raise them. This contract was thoroughly looked through by both your parents and their lawyers.”

That makes things a lot easier.

I pick the contract up before reading through it. And, of course, I only understand parts of it because of the whole legal lingo used in it. But from what I understand, it looks pretty good. It’s also very weighted towards me.

“It looks good,” I tell him, making him pull out a pen and hand it to me. So I take the pen and sign the contract.

“That about wraps up this meeting,” Rhett says as he takes the contract I just signed. “You can continue your industry activities whenever you wish. But please don’t take too long to give me your decision about the subject.”

I nod my head in agreement at his words before standing up and heading back to the hangar again with him. All while Rhett himself continues to give me more suggestions for what to do from now on.

When I reach the hangar, I find an even greater number of people in it than the last time I passed through the hangar. Vir at some point seems to find it irritating, though, considering how he literally makes a veil of purplish green gas to block sight of us.

Well, that’s rather amusing. It also goes to show that he has intelligence far greater than regular abyssal servants.

Enough that he apparently gets annoyed at my fans gawking at me. Even though I’m just wearing an everyday casual outfit.

I just smile and shake my head a little at that before stepping into the ship, bidding farewell to Rhett, and heading back down to the ocean planet below.

Time to make some future plans.