Book 1: Chapter 48

Somewhere else on Oceana Jaleth feels a little helpless as he swims down to the next city on his list, which is another Deep City. Albeit the upper layers of the deep layers. This particular city isn’t as threatened by monsters as others since it’s at the edge of one of the deep layers in the ocean. Where the ocean is gradually getting deeper. But it is still a place to search. It also feels like a potential location she could be training. And she has to be training, otherwise she wouldn’t consistently be higher level than him and outside of the view of others. People would remember a high level person going around. Especially if their name was the same as the first ranker on the leaderboards. So the fact that no one has seen hide nor hair of her means she must be secluded somewhere training. And where better to train but in the caves of the deep layer. Jaleth continues hurrying towards the city closest to the place where caves are most common. But even when he arrives at the city, he doesn’t find anyone there. Not even a single soul. The city is abandoned. “Shklal!” Jaleth swears on the ancestors’ name before quickly trying to search the city. Only to find it completely barren. There aren’t even any corpses. Likely because the barrier around the city was destroyed, allowing the monsters from the deep to eat any corpses in the city. He even runs into a couple monsters. All level eighteen to twenty-three. But he avoids them since there are too many. Instead checking the city center to see if there’s any recordings of what went down. And to his good fortune, there are. Or he feels that way until he sees what is on the recordings. The recording begins with some lights flashing from deep down in the water. Far below the city itself. But just those lights are enough to turn everything into chaos as people begin falling into a trance with pain clear on their faces. All while they slowly swim downwards in the direction of the light. And Jaleth doesn’t even need to watch the video to know what happened after that. Some of the hunters in the city try to come out in the video to help save those being lured in by the monster, only to end up lured in themselves alongside them. Leaving the city almost defenseless. Then, as if planned, a shiver of large, four-meter-long sharks arrives at the city and attacks. Quickly destroying the barrier, flooding the city, and then eating every last remaining citizen inside the defenseless underwater city. Only for the light to return when the sharks are leaving the city, luring the sharks down into the deep as well. Jaleth closes his eyes and holds his head with both hands. There’s a delvi down beneath the city... He grits his teeth at that. Then, after taking a deep breath, he makes a call to inform several people about the dead and destroyed city. Along with the delvi. The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Normally delvi aren’t found very often. They’re monsters from depths around the seven thousand five hundred meter mark after all. But sometimes, when a delvi is hunting and flashing its lights, creatures thousands of meters above it can see the light and are lured in. Wait, the first ranker! He quickly checks the leaderboards again, only to let out a sigh when he sees her name still there. Implying she’s still alive. Either she’s in the caves or she’s not here. She’d have been caught by the delvi otherwise. So with that thought in mind, he begins to swim away from the city in the direction of the relatively nearby caves located a few hundred meters deeper beneath the city. All while hoping the delvi is long gone. Aqua My morning work is taken care of rather quickly. Especially since my arm is regrown all the way down to my wrist now. So I have an arm again. I’m just missing the hand. And even that’s starting to grow a bit. The entire hand should be back by tomorrow morning. Finally giving me my entire right arm back. Having most of my arm back at all makes my work a lot easier too. Although my first job of the day is just vocal training, which I knock out really quickly. The second job is modeling though. Specifically another swimsuit modeling job. Except one piece suits this time. That doesn’t take very long either before I change out of the swimsuits and begin to cancel the System Phantom. Only for a knock to sound on the changing room doors, catching my attention. “Aqua, are you still in there?” I hear Rhett ask from the other side of the door. “I have a couple things to talk about if you have the time.” I tilt my head after changing back into my t-shirt, hoodie, and shorts again. Then with a brief glance at my armor, I decide I don’t need them here and just leave them there to disappear. Seeing as they’re part of my phantom. “I’m here,” I state while opening the door, revealing him on the other side. “What’s up?” I put my hands in my hoodie pocket as he looks at me, seemingly a little surprised by my lack of armor. It doesn’t take long for him to answer though as he says, “There’s someone who would like to speak with you. Do you think you can make time for it? This meeting will be important.” I stare at him for a second before shrugging and saying, “Sure. If you think it’s important.” At this point I’m learning to trust him. I’m not sure why, but he seems to care about me. So if he’s recommending I meet with them, I’ll just meet with them. It’s not like a meeting could hurt me anyways when it’s just through a System Phantom. “Then I’ll be heading out now,” I tell him with a nod after finishing with that. “Just put it on my schedule as always.” And without another word, once I see him nod of course, I return to my body. Then I stretch a bit, do my usual after work routine, and head out in the direction of the snakes and eels. Since that’s the last unexplored place of these caves. While I swim though, I make sure to work on practicing my skills with this scythe. Which takes a lot of work to do. To the point that I’m still nowhere near used to it even by the time I arrive at the monster-made tunnel. So I just put the thing away, deciding to rely on my fists instead. Or fist, I guess. And skills. Mostly skills and fist. Anyway, I enter the cavern with the snakes and eels. Only to unfortunately find a lot of them higher level now than they were before. At around the low twenties for all of them. Which is confusing as I’m not sure what they’re even killing to get to this level. Sure there are other monsters spawning across the caves every now and then, but those are mostly low level monsters from the residual mana left here after the dungeon went caput. They’re so weak the monsters flee from me at first glance now. Not something these snakes and eels can level off of. So I guess there’s something else deeper in for them to fight? Either way, the cavern is still in the same semi-ruined state as before. Clearly made by a creature and not naturally. And when I enter the place, the snakes and eels all begin to avoid me for some reason. Are they afraid or something? Maybe they can sense my Bloodline or something? I’ve heard some monsters begin to sense your Bloodline as you get higher in level. That would be cool if it would stop some monsters from bothering me. Actually, maybe that’s why the other monsters are fleeing at the sight of me? Not because of my level but because of my Bloodline? It’s an interesting theory at least. Still. I came here to hunt. So hunt I shall. Without hesitation I activate Pressure of the Deep. Which surprisingly doesn’t actually kill the snakes and eels. It does keep them from moving though. And thanks to that I just walk up and crush them one by one without any real trouble. Eventually I get a level-up as I do it as well. [Congratulations! You have now reached level 29! Your total free points have increased by two, and your mana stat has increased by ten. Allocate the free points whenever you please.] And back to two again. The next level should go to three. I really like this trait. Makes me think I should try to keep the first ranker position.