The water current was made obvious since the force of it brought a lot of white bubbles and foams with it. It was heading toward Angor’s position extremely fast.
The torrent was so powerful that the barrier sunk a little when hit by it. The water did not get inside, but it indirectly created a strong hurricane inside the barrier that further destroyed the already damaged buildings.
The ground was still shaking madly, while the violent water didn’t seem to be stopping. It only grew worse.
“Why’s the sea current suddenly turned opposite?! Hey Luna, don’t let go!”
Angor heard a familiar voice yelling from somewhere near him. He looked up and saw Keely trying pretty hard to descend through the current. She was aiming for his spot.
It seemed she couldn’t see what was under her due to all the bubbles and waves, so she could only rely on Luna to tell her where to go while trying her best to keep her body stable.
When she felt a brief decrease in the strength of the current, she cast a bright ember using the oil lamp she had been holding. The light finally helped her see where she was heading—a series of “man-made” buildings.
She was very surprised to find such things 8,000 meters below the sea surface. However, judging from Luna’s clue about Angor and how Angor always made the right choices until now, Keely believed that the buildings had something to do with the puzzle.
“He’s ahead of me again!” She felt irritated. She then quickly comforted herself, “Maybe I would have been the first one if I had not wasted so much time looking for him. The water’s slowing down, let’s get moving. I want to see what the asshole discovered.” Keely reached out a hand and patted Luna, who had been holding onto her skirt with both front limbs.
Luna meowed gently and reached for Keely’s hand with a paw.
The broken stones and sand had obstructed their view, so they failed to notice another tidal wave that was almost upon them. This time, it was stronger than the last one.
Luna failed to keep up after freeing one paw to “high-five” with Keely. The kitten was instantly taken away by water.
Keely felt her heart stopping when she realized that the torrent would soon bring Luna into the distance while she had nothing on her that could help the kitten. Luna was her only partner and friend now. She would never forgive herself if something were to happen to Luna.
Keely panicked as she tried and failed to find any spell to break through the cascading water.
A pair of transparent hands suddenly emerged from below.
Intermediate Hand of Spell was a level-1 cantrip that had a longer manipulation range and accuracy compared to the basic version.
Before Luna fully disappeared into the dark vortex, Angor managed to grab it. He then dragged the creature back into the barrier.
Meanwhile, Keely also joined him in the water-free settlement.
Luna shook some water off its fur and meowed at Angor as a thank-you before it hopped to Keely’s feet.
The lamp held by Keely gave out a brighter source of light that illuminated the entire settlement like a small sun.
Angor canceled his Light and looked at the girl in front of him. “Why did you come again?”
Keely was going to thank Angor as well, but her expression quickly turned dark upon hearing Angor’s words that sounded mostly like a complaint.
“And you think I want to follow you around?”
Before Keely could say anything else, both of them tumbled a bit when the ground started to shake again.
Keely decided to get to the more pressing matter. “What’s the deal with this place? Are we so unfortunate that an earthquake or some underwater volcano went off right below us?”
“I don’t know. This is all too strange…” Angor shook his head.
The disaster showed up right after he killed the strange reptile creature. There were rumors that killing certain mighty beings would arouse nature’s rage. For example, if someone were to slaughter “Child of Ocean” Jebra, it would be akin to provoking the ocean.
However, that monster earlier didn’t seem anything like that.
Angor believed it was merely a coincidence. This was the only explanation that he could think of.
The earthquake subsided a moment later, and the raging turbulence also calmed down.
Keely used her lamp to check what was outside the barrier without finding anything. It seemed she couldn’t move too far in the water without spending mana on certain skills, so she quickly returned inside.
“Where are we anyway?” She looked around the place and enjoyed the fresh air before she fixed her eyes on the pile of broken flesh in front of Angor.
Angor was busy thinking about the strange phenomenon, so he wasn’t paying attention. “No idea. An old home left behind by something that used to live here.”
Angor saw Keely checking the creature’s corpse and kept explaining, “This thing ambushed me just now. I think it was sort of a threat around these parts back when the locals were still here.”
While speaking, Angor tried to reassemble the broken skull of the animal.
It appeared the creature was the same thing as the ones who had their heads hung on the “totem altars”. This was how Angor reached his previous conclusion. Although this one was a little bigger than the rest.
Keely found nothing interesting or useful from the corpse, so she went off and began to explore the place on her own.
She saw teeth marks along the edges of certain buildings and told Angor. When Angor used the skull in his hand to match with the teeth marks and confirmed that the same monster attacked this place, they figured that it probably destroyed it.
Next, Keely also saw the wall arts in the biggest house.
“Are they mermaids?” She frowned. “But I’ve never seen such… unsightly mermaids before.”
“Maybe they don’t show us who lived here,” Angor said. He considered for a moment before creating an illusion of the Toad Skin monster. “Did you run into this thing earlier?”
Keely shook her head. “You mean, these things are the natives?”
“Yeah. I saw one of them before diving into this trench. It was highly developed. That Toad Skin that attacked me was as strong as a level-2 apprentice. I killed it.”
“Toad Skin?”
“I created that name,” Angor said as he grinned proudly.
Keely looked away and didn’t comment on Angor’s naming style.
“No. I’ve never seen them before, or even anything similar to them. Did they originate from here or did the city move them in the garden?”
Angor suddenly recalled the strange characters he saw among the paintings. “Can you use Discern Letters?”
“Why? You haven’t learned it?” Keely inspected Angor up and down.
Angor chuckled embarrassingly.
“Yeah, right… You’re an apprentice for less than two years, huh? Discern Letters, Discern Language, I know all of them. I can also read special characters such as the ancient rune scripts, the Mona tongue used in abyss, the scripture of winter…” Keely mentioned a number of strange concepts. “Those are all necessary for an apprentice. You better go and study more if you like to venture outside alone.”
Angor recognized none of these things and felt as if he was an unlettered peasant in front of Keely.
Well… at least I know something others don’t—Kanji.
He forced a smile despite his wounded ego. “I discovered their language, but I can’t read them. A little help?”
It was rare for him to ask for assistance from a stranger, and when he did, he tried to be as polite as possible.
Keely wasn’t interested in the ugly creatures, but she assumed that Angor had some clue that could help them escape, so she agreed to it.
Before Angor could prepare another illusion to display the characters, an extremely deadly aura suddenly made his hair stand.
It was followed by a sharp noise of something slashing past the air.
“Get out of here!”
The roof of the house was smashed in by a giant tentacle before it hit where they were standing a second ago.
Keely also avoided the attack thanks to Angor’s alert. They quickly left the house and were shocked by what was waiting for them outside.
A black octopus clung to a stone wall nearby as it gazed at them with its glowing blue eyes. That thing must be at least several hundred meters long, tentacles not considered.
“Is that a black version of Lord of Tentacles??” Angor quickly thought about the terrible monster he dealt with not long ago.
“It’s a half-step-wizard level monster too!” Keely glanced at the trembling Luna and quickly ascertained the monster’s strength. “We can’t fight it like this. Run!”
Angor quickly listened to the order. The octopus couldn’t use wizard-level power to suppress their movement from afar yet, which meant they could always avoid it.
It seemed the octopus saw their plan and quickly swung its thick arms around, causing the water currents to go berserk again.
“So this thing’s behind the tidal waves earlier??”
The deadly environment further convinced them to get away as fast as possible.
“Don’t resist, I’ll do something!” Angor still needed Keely to help him translate, so he ejected his soul and began to drag both his body and Keely toward where they came from earlier.
Keely felt a strange force taking control of her momentum. It took less than a second before her body was hurled away from the settlement like a bullet.
As they went farther, Keely glanced back at the giant monster and saw something strange.
Is there someone standing on its neck??
