Scarring a fishy

"Well, well, well. What have we here matey's!?" Daede mentally said with his usual chunibyo style.

Through the eyes of the excellent ship dubbed Rock explorer, there lay a forest-type landing. If his memory served him right, which at this point was atomic-level memory, he had found a maritime forest.

Daede wasn't one to hesitate much longer but he was sad that he would be parting with Rock Explorer since he wasn't going to crash land on land with a fish just to let it die. Especially after all the usefulness, this fated fish of his had.

"Hmmm, we should be a few hours away judging from the distance... I wonder... ah screw it! Rock explorer! Prepare to be branded!" Daede wiggled his mental will as he declared... uhm mentally?

Immediately Rock explorer the poor fish x ship stopped and was immobile under it's hijackers will.

"Let's see now, how can we do this? Maybe if I sharpen the thought?" Daede started mumbling within his own world. However, a shocking scene was about to take place. At least to Daede.

He created a small tentacle in front of his rock. He followed it up with a very simple exercise. He started to see the level of compression he could achieve with his mental energy-based tentacles.

[To his surprise, it went from ethereal to the level of a lightsaber within a few minutes. How? Simple, humans compare with human standards and generally for humans who don't even have the tangible mental energy, this seems ridiculous to achieve in a few minutes but who was Daede? A g... space rock! He had shed his mortal boundaries and had evolved. Yes. Evolved!] - Daede Monologue #253

It wasn't unrealistic to believe he could do such a thing at this point in time. He followed up by stretching the mental tentacle that was equivalent to a lightsaber outside the fish and literally started engraving something on the outside of its skin. At the top where half the ship's body was hanging, a weird scene was produced.

The Fishy's mental connection was severed from the body once again. This prevented any squirming aside from the bodily reaction of getting branded by some human-jelly-rock-powered mental lightsaber.

A few hours and several failures later a shocking scene was revealed.

On the body of the Rock Explorer lay several weird scribbles that look to have been forcefully cut into the skin.

And at this very moment, the scribble with the most detail was just finishing as the final line making up its body was "branded" onto the skin of the poor fishy.

"DONE!" Daede yelled with a cheerful voice as he feels slightly exhausted which was a first since leaving the bottom of the abyss, where his two years of studying had taken place.

"Wait what!?" Daede mumbled as he was keeping a keen eye to record all possible changes after having branded his ship with the rune of water that he had learnt. It was an imitation based on his learning and he had only used mental energy to cut the rune's symbol into the flesh of a living fish. However, even this caused a change.

The fishy skin that was originally dark and scarred like a horror movie villain started rapidly healing as a faint light was produced from the rune of water itself.

It was almost as though it was merging with the fish after having been brought into existence by Daede while healing its body through the elemental energy it was thrumming into the fishy body.

"Interesting" Daede muttered. He went into overdrive and started taking note of every tiny little change the rune of water was bringing onto the fish. After having confirmed the fish wasn't just going to blow up or do some inexplicable thing, he put on his science pants and started recording real-time data for the rune of water.

Self-healing became evident but it was unknown if it was related to being in water or aquatic creatures to be the catalyst or if the rune could simply do this on its own.

Aside from that, he noticed that the rune itself caused a reaction with elemental water energy or at least that's what he believed. He wasn't too sure considering it was his first fish branding. Deciding to see what else has been achieved he spoke to the fish brain.

"Rock Explorer! I'm sure you noticed what I did, so go on and test it out. Let's see what other changes you have had!" With this thought, Daede released his control over the fish aside from observing the changes through its eyes and seeing if any interior changes were produced.

The fish who had just been branded and near brutalized was once again back in control of its body.

The fish at first was worried and anxious as it had no idea what the hell was happening but once it regained feeling of its body and control, it noticed something on its upper body that was feeding it. Not in the usual sense but it somehow was siphoning energy from the surrounding water and had started attracting them to the fish.

It carefully sensed its body and noticing that it wasn't impacting it negatively the fish started swimming around.

This was when it noticed that even as a fish born from water, it actually realized it could swim better than before which shocked the fish.

Soon with some time and courage, the fish shot around the water at blinding speeds, its speed had nearly doubled. It was even more shocked as it started to sense a hidden familiarity with water that it had never sensed before.

"Oh? It can even do this?" Daede mumbled as he was noting down the changes the fish was going through.

The fish was actually just floating on the water surface at this moment but little arcs of water would form around its body and start shooting in different directions and from the abnormal display it seemed it was in control of it. Nothing fancy but little water sprouts were created left and right and Daede could sense that the fishy was the cause.

"These runes are friggin' cool..." Daede once again lost himself while thinking of a variety of possibilities.

"Hmm, let's inspect the inside." Daede changed his focus to the interior of the fish which he lighted up with the glow from his shiny rock. At first he didn't really notice anything but then he decided to have a better look by spreading out his consciousness and trying to scan on a deeper level.

What he saw was another beautiful discovery.

"It's flesh and blood is actually being rejuvenated... this can't be that ridiculous could it?"

As he scanned the cells he could see, he noticed abnormal activity as well as a form of passive strengthening, it wasn't a godly level but still, as they say, even mosquito meat is meat. The fish should go through quite the improvement over the years with this level of passive ability.

"Hehe, you're welcome my little ship," Daede mumbled with childish joy.

He finally concluded that the runes he was using were a lot more useful and powerful than he had imagined. Which drove his curious mind to renew its motivation and double down on studying the runes he had access to.