Floco

Biography

The Water God beneath the deep sea

Floco was once an Azure Scale Clan being who completed his transformation into a water elemental and reached strength equivalent to Fifth Rank. Soon after beginning to travel through stargates, his arrogance led him to offend a much stronger Fifth Rank known as Cat Lord. The defeat destroyed his main body and nearly annihilated his spirit; Cat Lord preserved his consciousness only to imprison it beneath a deep-sea seal. Centuries of suppression reduced Floco to roughly Third Rank and left him communicating through a white-cat spiritual form tied to porcelain Cat's Gratitude figures. (Chapters 769–770, 775)

The seal turns Floco's blessing of luck into a cruel economy. Worshippers who accept good fortune also absorb portions of the deep-sea curse, and their suffering slowly relieves pressure on his prison. When Saul enters Floco's consciousness space, Floco first considers seizing his body, but the sight of Saul's fate-line form terrifies him as the sign of a Death Demon. Fear gives way to negotiation: Saul recognizes that redirected curse power could create the equivalent of a tsunami, while Floco accepts that cooperation offers a faster route to freedom than another several centuries of accumulating sacrifices. (Chapters 769–771, 775–776)

Escape and the second Symphony target

Saul spreads Cat's Gratitude replicas and arranges auxiliary formations across Sky City so the accumulated curse can be driven back toward Floco's prison. When the trap is ready, he cracks the primary porcelain cat, sends fate lines into the deep sea, and pulls at the instant Floco's own strength is exhausted beneath the surface. Floco breaks through the seal and condenses as a palm-sized, transparent water spirit with a human torso and fish tail. The escape restores mobility and identity but not his former reserves, leaving him far below the power he possessed before imprisonment. (Chapter 793)

Because accepting Saul's fate power changes the course of his centuries-long imprisonment, Floco becomes the second target of the Symphony of Fate. He honors his side of the agreement by intercepting Ophelia, allowing Saul to escape Sky City even though the battle consumes power he has only just regained. Floco then hides near Mina, slipping into drinking water or blood as a nearly undetectable water elemental while he recuperates. His alliance with Saul remains calculated—each understands that their connected destinies benefit Saul—but Floco deliberately deepens it because Saul offers protection, information, and a path through the world's approaching crisis. (Chapters 794–795, 805, 825)

Azure Scale legacy and the mermaids

During recovery, Floco uses temporary mermaid vessels and advises Saul on elven and Azure Scale knowledge. His early attitude toward the modern mermaids is distant: they descend from low-status mixed branches rather than his own royal line, and he treats reproduction as racial insurance rather than a sentimental duty. Investigation nevertheless reveals traces of Azure Scale atavism and one body carrying Floco's own bloodline. The discovery, combined with the Tribunal's mutilation and confinement of mermaids, turns an abstract ancestral connection into an urgent problem about whether any viable people will survive. (Chapters 805, 817–825)

Floco intervenes decisively when Royer attacks the escaping mermaids. He blocks the wizard's fire with water, destabilizes Royer's spiritual body, crushes his vessel, and absorbs the remains, then tells Coral and Aqua that survival requires leadership rather than passive dependence. He guides the refugees away from the Tribunal and searches the seas for scattered members, insisting that the population must grow enough to survive future losses. Though he remains emotionally reserved and appears only when needed, his long-term work transforms the Azure Scale remnant from expendable experimental material into an independent community. (Chapters 860–868, 959)

Fate feedback and Douglas's attack

When Saul completes the fourth Symphony target at the Sighing Wall, the enormous feedback shared among the existing targets pushes Floco to the threshold of his former rank. His water-spirit body grows and becomes so integrated with the sea that nearby mermaids perceive him less as an individual creature than as the ocean itself. Even so, threshold power is not full restoration. Floco continues prioritizing mermaid settlement and recovery, aware that the approaching Abyssal Eye crisis leaves him little time to rebuild the reserves and stable strength lost during the seal. (Chapter 943)

That vulnerability is exposed when Douglas, a peak Fifth Rank from Floco's era, comes seeking knowledge useful for reaching Sixth Rank. Floco identifies Douglas's ambition and tries to hide in the sea, but Douglas stirs his water body apart, nearly extracts his soul, and leaves damage that cannot heal quickly. The fate line binding Floco to Saul makes Douglas release him rather than disrupt the larger plan involving the abyss. Saul subsequently directs more destiny power toward his recovery, while Floco warns the alliance that Douglas's apparent cooperation is driven solely by the chance to observe a Sixth Rank death. (Chapters 959–960, 996–998)

World defense and restored strength

Still below his former peak, Floco takes responsibility for the Sighing Wall during the final black tide. He stations Coral as a messenger, lures an anchor-point monster away from the defenses, and withstands it until Saul arrives. The fight confirms that Douglas's wound has left him below even his recovered Fourth Rank peak, yet Floco immediately shifts from personal danger to strategic analysis, recognizes the implications of the sea's sudden retreat, and urges Saul to reach Iskaper when the network of concealed Storm Eyes is revealed. He later contributes spatial knowledge and fate power to the coalition opposing Douglas and the abyss. (Chapters 1020–1022, 1028–1034)

After Saul is stranded in the aftermath, Floco joins Gorsa in calling through the fate lines for another Death Demon. The resulting Pei'er-form manifestation retrieves Saul, while Floco's fear and recognition help the others understand that the visitor is not merely the familiar Wind Sprite. In the decades that follow, Floco recovers Fifth Rank strength and continues caring for the mermaids until their population is no longer endangered. When Saul's fate presence finally returns, Floco is among the first to sense it and excitedly brings the news to Gorsa, showing that their strategic bond has endured across a century. (Chapters 1034–1037)

Appearance and personality

Within the seal, Floco appears as an elegant white cat with a young male voice worn down by centuries of confinement. The cat is a spiritual prison-form rather than his original Azure Scale body. After release he becomes a transparent, impurity-free water spirit shaped like a minimalist sculpture, with a human upper body and fish tail; as his strength rises, that form grows from palm-sized to several meters and seems continuous with the surrounding sea. He can also inhabit mermaid vessels temporarily, though prolonged possession strains both vessel and resident consciousness.

Floco combines ancient pride with the caution of someone permanently marked by one disastrous act of arrogance. He probes Saul's weaknesses at first, but becomes pragmatic once he recognizes the danger and opportunity in Saul's fate. His manner toward the mermaids is cool, demanding, and unsentimental, yet his sustained search for survivors reveals responsibility beneath that reserve. He is candid about high-rank dangers, strategically perceptive, and deeply afraid of Death Demons; that fear never prevents him from cooperating with one when the world's survival and Saul's rescue require it.

Abilities

• Water-element existence: Floco has transformed completely into water elemental life. He can merge with seas, replenish a damaged body from surrounding water, become nearly transparent, and hide in minute quantities of liquid or living blood.
• Water control and combat: He creates large water barriers, suppresses fire-element magic, forms adhesive water or gel restraints, disrupts spiritual bodies, and reshapes or crushes captured targets.
• Possession and vessels: His consciousness can temporarily inhabit compatible mermaid bodies, allowing remote action and access to their senses. Weak or damaged vessels cannot sustain him indefinitely.
• Luck and deep-sea curse: Through Cat's Gratitude, Floco grants good fortune while transferring part of his imprisoning curse to recipients. Saul later reverses this distributed pressure to create the force that frees him.
• High-rank knowledge: As an experienced stargate traveler, he understands world barriers, spatial magic, elemental transformation, Azure Scale bloodlines, and the conceptual differences among Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Rank power.
• Fate-line communication: His place in the Symphony lets him exchange thought across distance, receive or contribute destiny power, sense Saul's return, and help direct a call through the Prismatic channel.

Power progression

Relationships

• Saul: Saul frees Floco and makes him the second Symphony target. Their alliance begins as an explicit exchange, then develops into durable cooperation based on shared fate, strategic confidence, and mutual protection.
• Ophelia: Ophelia seeks Floco's advancement knowledge but cannot duplicate his complete elemental transformation. Floco fights her immediately after escaping, buying Saul the time needed to flee Sky City.
• Aqua and Coral: Floco recognizes them as viable leaders of the surviving mermaids, rescues their people, and sets demanding population and settlement goals while continuing to protect them from wizard persecution.
• Douglas: The two know one another from the older Fifth Rank world. Douglas nearly annihilates Floco and later uses him as leverage in his abyss strategy, making Floco one of the clearest voices warning Saul about Douglas's motives.
• Gorsa: They combine high-rank knowledge in the final defense and jointly use their fate connections to summon the Pei'er-form Death Demon capable of retrieving Saul.
• Pei'er: Floco recognizes the danger behind the Prismatic manifestation wearing Pei'er's appearance. His reaction helps distinguish that collective being from the separate Wind Sprite consciousness present among Saul's companions.