Thank You

The message arrived without warning, formatted differently than any quest notification she'd ever received before, no NPC dialogue attached, no lore justification, just a plain, simple prompt.

[QUEST: Confirm the City's Name][Reward: Miscellaneous][Time Limit: 10:00]

Arista stared at it, genuinely startled. "...That's new."

Bram glanced over. "What is?"

"A quest. Directly from: I don't know, the system itself? No NPC attached, no context." She read it again, the timer already counting down. "It wants me to confirm the city's name."

"...Confirm? Not choose?"

"That's what it says." Arista frowned at the prompt. "I didn't build a city, Bram. I found one. Whatever this place was called, it presumably already had a name, long before either of us existed. This isn't asking me to invent something. It's asking whether the record's accurate."

A single line of text sat beneath the prompt, small and easy to miss at first glance: Historical designation on file: THE DROWNED COURT. Confirm?

Arista stared at it, something settling into place, quiet and strange. She'd been calling it exactly that in her own head for months now, ever since the very first moment they'd surfaced from that first, silent discovery, never once suspecting she might have simply, unknowingly, landed on the truth of it.

She typed [Confirm], and the timer vanished.

[City Name Restored: The Drowned Court]

The server-wide announcement went out less than a minute later.

[GLOBAL ANNOUNCEMENT]The ancient city beneath the waves has reclaimed its name: The Drowned Court.

Arista sat with the quiet satisfaction of that for exactly as long as it took for the second, considerably more alarming notification to arrive.

Across the dome, directly opposite the ancient mermaid statue, something new was rising from the stone floor, a fresh, gleaming pedestal, and atop it, slowly emerging into full form, a statue.

Not of her.

Of a strawberry. The fruit, rendered in careful, loving detail, seeds and all, mounted proudly on its own dedicated plinth.

"...Oh no," Arista said, already crossing the dome toward it.

A plaque sat beneath the statue, freshly engraved, and her stomach dropped the moment she read it.

In honor of the demon blacksmith Strawberry, visionary, engineer, friend to all creatures great and small, who dug her way from the deepest hell to the bottom of the sea, and built something worth finding along the way.

"...Absolutely not," she muttered, already reaching for the plaque, half-expecting the system to reject the attempt entirely.

[Ownership Confirmed: Player "Strawberry" — City Restorer][Action Permitted: Remove Plaque]

It came free easily, the system recognizing her authority over it without argument.

Bram, watching the whole exchange with open amusement, crossed his arms. "...You're really taking down your own monument."

"It's not my monument," Arista said, already sketching a replacement in her notebook. "I didn't build this alone. I'm not putting my name on the one thing that represents all of it."

She spent the rest of the afternoon on the new plaque, carefully etching name after name into the metal, Bram, Claire, Colm, Petrov, Nettle, Fen, Gorthruk, the seventy veterans who'd shown up for a "top secret mission" and stayed once they understood what it actually was, the Low-Key guild who'd hauled panel after panel and built diving bells and endured a curious kraken's enthusiastic assistance.

She paused for a long moment before adding one final name, smaller than the rest, tucked near the bottom.

Squishy.

She left her own name off entirely. The strawberry sitting atop the statue was reference enough, everyone would know, without needing it spelled out again.

At the very bottom, beneath every name, she etched two simple words.

NovelPhoenix is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

Thank you.

She mounted the new plaque beneath the strawberry statue herself, stepping back to look at it properly, every person who'd carried a panel, screwed an anchor into the seabed, calculated a pressure tolerance, or simply shown up because the work mattered, finally named together, in the one place that would outlast all of them.

Bram read it over her shoulder, quiet for a long moment.

"...You left yourself out."

"I'm the strawberry," Arista said, simply. "That's enough."

The announcement went out the following week, simple and direct.

[GLOBAL ANNOUNCEMENT]The Drowned Court is now open to the public. Access via the Ski Lift Terminal, located at the continental shoreline.

The forums detonated within minutes.

[Thread: THE DROWNED COURT IS OPEN — GO GO GO]pinned, 78k replies and climbing

"I have been waiting for this since the storm border came down, I am NOT missing this"

"wait there's an actual TRANSIT SYSTEM to get there now?? not just diving??"

"the screenshots people are posting are actually unreal, that statue is enormous"

"is it true there's a giant octopus living there??"

"KRAKEN. It's a KRAKEN. Get it right."

The line at the shoreline terminal stretched impressively within the first hour, players queuing patiently for their turn in the carts, several NPCs from nearby settlements curious enough to make the journey themselves, drawn by rumors that had been quietly spreading since the builders' first walk weeks earlier.

Nettle, naturally, had been ready for this exact moment for considerably longer than anyone else.

A modest cart sat parked directly beside the terminal entrance, festooned with a hastily but enthusiastically assembled display: plush krakens in a dozen sizes, keychains shaped like tiny, ring-patterned tentacles, and, prominently displayed at the very front, a small, hardcover booklet titled Squishy: A Field Guide to the Drowned Court's Most Curious Resident.

"...You already have merch," Arista said, arriving to find the entire operation fully staffed and running smoothly.

"I've had merch ready for two weeks," Nettle said, entirely unrepentant, ringing up another sale. "You think I was going to let an opportunity like this pass by unprepared? I've got plush krakens in six sizes, I've got the keychains, I've got a whole line of glow-in-the-dark pieces inspired by the luminescent lighting in the tunnel."

"...Glow-in-the-dark."

"Very popular already," Nettle said, gesturing at the small but steadily growing crowd already browsing her stock. "People want a piece of the experience to take home. I'm simply providing it."

Arista laughed, watching a cart of tourists depart down the tunnel, the hexagonal lights already visible glowing steadily as it vanished into the passage.

"...How long until the first ones actually make it there?"

"Forty minutes, give or take," Nettle said. "Should start seeing reaction posts within the hour."

She wasn't wrong.

[Thread: JUST GOT TO THE DROWNED COURT AND I'M SPEECHLESS]4.2k replies

"the statue is even bigger in person, holy hell"

"the ruins themselves are somehow the least impressive part, and they're still incredible"

"SQUISHY IS REAL AND HE CAME UP TO THE GLASS AND LOOKED AT ME"

"okay the kraken interaction genuinely made me emotional, he's so gentle"

"anyone else notice there's a whole memorial plaque with dozens of names? no mention of strawberry herself though??"

"she put a fruit statue up instead of herself. absolute legend behavior"

Colm, monitoring the growing flood of screenshots and reactions from his usual observation post, glanced up with quiet satisfaction. "...The current maps are already getting reposted everywhere. People are treating the whole tunnel journey as part of the experience, not just the destination."

"That was rather the idea," Arista said, watching another cart depart, packed full of eager, chattering tourists. "Make the whole approach feel like it's building toward something."

Bram, watching yet another excited cluster of tourists chatter their way toward the tunnel entrance, phones and notebooks already out, shook his head slowly.

"...He's going to have so many admirers now."

"He's earned every single one of them," Arista said, grinning, watching the steady stream of eager new faces disappear one cart at a time into the glowing tunnel. "Let him enjoy it."

She stood there a while longer, watching cart after cart depart, packed full of eager, chattering tourists, the steady, glowing procession disappearing one group at a time into the tunnel, and felt the entire, sprawling project finally, properly become what she'd always hoped it would, not just something she'd built, but something everyone got to actually share.

Bram watched Nettle ring up another sale, the small merchandise cart already doing brisk, steady business barely an hour into opening day.

"...How rich are you, actually?" he asked. "In-game. At this point."

"I'm doing alright," Nettle said, not looking up from the transaction.

Arista, drawn in by the specific, practiced vagueness of that answer, leaned over. "Name a number."

"I'm doing alright."

"That's not a number."

"It's an accurate description," Nettle said, entirely unbothered, ringing up a plush kraken for a delighted, freshly arrived tourist.

"You've had merchandise revenue since the very first Beelz keychain," Arista pressed, genuinely curious now. "Then the entire metro rollout. Then the pioneer race merch. Then Baby Beelz plushies, which you specifically told me were selling out production runs. Now an entire Squishy line, on opening day, at the single biggest tourist destination this server's ever had."

"I'm doing alright," Nettle said again, the exact same tone, the exact same unbothered smile.

Bram crossed his arms. "You're doing this on purpose."

"I genuinely don't know what you mean."

"You could just tell us the number."

"I could," Nettle agreed, finally glancing up, grinning in a way that gave away absolutely nothing useful whatsoever. "But then you'd know the number, and right now, you don't, and I find that considerably funnier."

Arista stared at her for a long moment, half exasperated, half delighted. "...You're never going to tell us, are you."

"I am doing," Nettle said, ringing up yet another sale with cheerful, practiced efficiency, "alright."

Bram sighed, the long, familiar sigh of a man who had learned, over two years, exactly which battles weren't worth continuing. "...Fine. Keep your secrets."

"I intend to," Nettle said, already turning to greet the next customer in line, entirely, infuriatingly pleased with herself.