8 zou island

On our way to the fishman island with our shcool of monsters we pass through many underwater towns and villages with their own cuisines and culture. My cooking skill that used to be barely enough to get by were getting better and better while safyre who was already great at it was exploring newer tasts and combinations.

After swimming for a while we see gigantic pillars of grey so we swim to the surface to check out what it is. We see a ginormous elephant Zou with island on its back. I didn't plan out for this as Zou is constantly moving so it is hard to get here, but since it is already here begging to be explored, who am I to say no.

As we reach its back leg we see it's leg covered in mangrove forest at the surface of the sea and a settlement at is knee, I ask my school of monsters to stay underwater and follow the island. We change into human forms and reach the mangrove and are treated to sight of many amphibious and swamp minks(humanoid animal race in one piece) rummaging the forest and fishing in the swamps.

As we climb up the leg to reach the settlement in the knee, we are greeted by the chief of the settlement, patriarch of the Otter tribe with his vassals, a crab eating Macaque and a Proboscis monkey ( both are species of swamp monkeys). We greet them with gift of some sea stones which surprised them as no one around here gifts something so expensive.

Then I ask them for a deal to shape and forge this sea stone into weapon and Armour for them, which takes them back even more as only thing more expensive than sea stone itself is the cost to get a smith to forge it.

The otter mink chieftain asks what sort of deal I want, in turn, I make up a lie on spot and say" You see, we are descendants of minks, my ancestor was a wolverine mink(evolutionary cousins to otter) , while these two sisters are descendants of an ape mink. If you can get some of your best to meditate with us for a few weeks, we may feel closer to our ancestors".

As I say this, me and elektra produce electric between our fingers. This instantly makes them a lot more welcoming and they treat us as they would their kin. Minks are humanoid in nature so they must be closer to humans in DNA , similar to fishman and merman.

I transform into an otter mink with help of Otter chief in three weeks while the girls take the same amount of time despite less understanding of climbing up the food chain because their subjects were primate minks which are even closer to humans in genetics. After turning into mink both me and elektra feel our control of electricity go up.

Due to her eagle ray and manta ray forms safyre had great affinity for wind( they can fly in the air to escape marine predators.) which she has been exploring every time we came to surface in our travell.

After turning into Proboscis monkey mink, with some electro (plasma) ,a lot of wind (gasses) and ripple (fishman martial art of using tail and limbs to create shockwave and vibration) as heat to stabilize it , she can now manipulate fire.

Which has brought a look of worship in the eyes of minks here. This is because of a legendary Hero of Proboscis monkey tribe (they have colour pattern like that of fire as well) who ate the fire fire fruit to save the settlement from a fishman invasion despite their water manipulation suppressing his fire.

He used the fire not as attacks but to create explosions to agument his body ( like explosions behind elbow during a punch) or as jet to get unparalleled areal mobility. Because he is a hero he has many murals and paintings about his fight with fishman. I lack the wind attribute to truly manipulate fire while Elektra is more focused on learning electro martial arts from locals and sharing her own understanding of using electricity in martial path.

After transformation, the minks are even more friendly and when I ask if there are any wind attributed minks around so that I could learn fire manipulation as well. They say that a tribe of bat minks live under the belly of zou. After talking about it with my companions, I make my way alone to the belly of zou while they perfect their mink forms and explore the new martial arts.

I negotiated with bat minks to let me hang upside down among them to further my meditation and temper my will like the great bat minks, they instantly agree gulping down the praises with glee.

After 2 weeks of perfecting the form and getting used to using my arms as wings (like harpy) I change into otter mink to make my way back to the swamps. I then take my friends to the whale forest on the back of the elephant.

There I study the polyglyphs to help increase my understanding of imprinting (similar to fantasy runes and seals). We are ambushed by a gorilla mink who I quickly incapacitated and take his form in just two hours ( due to already having experiencing climbing up the food chain <CUTFC> with minks and gorilla being a primate.) We leave before he wakes up and leave the island itself

Elektra reveals that she took a large wild white Den Den mushi from the whale forest after her electro reception felt him sending electromagnetic waves. I hug her upon identifying it as the white Den Den mushi , rarest type of these telepathic snails whose transmission can't be blocked or intercepted by black Den Den mushi.

What's even better is that snails are evolutionary cousins to octopuses who belong in the same family of mollusca. On our way to fishman island it takes me till a couple of days before reaching to transform and perfect this Den Den mushi form .

Elektra is also focusing hard to take this form so we can keep in communication even if we are far apart, while I make safyre teach me how to manipulate wind and fire to integrate it with my martial arts.