Heretical Fishing (Heretical Fishing, #1)

by Haylock Jobson

There were many things I desired in this second life of mine, but I could reduce them to two key deliverables: genuine interactions with others and as much fishing as humanly possible.

“Well, churches are blasphemous for a simple reason—there are no gods left to worship. They all ascended and won’t be returning. A cult is normal, because they’re worshipping the eventual rise of another human or creature to godhood.

Damn, the System called it common twice. Did my boy dirty . . .

“Well, definitely not human, but he’s a nice demon, at least.” Fergus bellowed a laugh. “Aye, that he is.”

Sergeant Snips will protect.

“And what do you call this monument of stupidity, heretic?” The words only made my happiness swell. “This, my good man, is called a pond.”

Snips pointed at the sand and dug her claw through it, then pointed toward the forest, where Fischer had shown them his pond. The otter cocked its head and chirped, clearly not understanding. Great—it’s a moron.

With Fischer gone on a trip with the speckle-faced human, Snips had told her they would let her in on the secret—finally. That was two days ago! Claws was a patient and magnificent otter, but there was only so much waiting she could handle. She chirped again, frowning at Barry and Snips in turn.

She spared another fraction of a second to assess the cultivator’s speed. Pathetic, she decided.

“Yeah, I wasn’t taking the piss.” “Piss?” Joel asked. “What is the piss?” “Sorry. It’s just a figure of speech. Where I come from, piss is another word for, er . . . urine.” “Oh, oka—wait, what?” He frowned, blinking tears from his eyes. “Why would you take the urine? Whose urine?”

“Thank you, Fischer, but I should get back home. My father will be worried if he wakes and I’m not there—I just wanted to make sure you made it to bed and didn’t fall asleep in the ocean.” Fischer beamed. “What would I do without you?” “You’d wake up with crabs.”