Chapter 950 - The Demigod's body

Even while the probes continue to head deeper, I keep training. That's what these past months have been about, a near-constant training, experimenting, and preparing.

Not having to deal with other people, the floor quest, and other distracting stuff, I could really explore some things. Still, it is true that I like to gather some experience through training and then properly test it all during a fight.

Maybe because it's more enjoyable that way? Or because it's more efficient in my case? It probably says a thing or two about me, but hey, it works, doesn't it?

I'm a bit surprised, yet also not surprised at all, that Lily was able to keep up with me, delving into her own experiments where she sometimes forgot about me entirely for three days or so at a time.

After getting the frustration out of her system by giving me supercancer, well, temporarily giving me supercancer, she became calmer. Overall, I think that Lily is someone who requires some reassurance once in a while. She needs someone to tell her that everything will be okay, and that they don't hate her and plan to leave her or things like that.

If she doesn't get those reassurances, she might feel like she is about to be thrown away, as much as it isn't the truth.

All of it is very human, especially in combination with her helplessness regarding my current state. I've learned a bit more about that state from her, and well... you really wouldn't want to hear such a diagnosis from your doctor.

But it's not like any of that will stop me.

So, I won't lie and say that it wasn't fun to travel slowly and explore this floor, which I consider one of the prettiest out of the entire tutorial, but it also isn't like I forgot my original intention.

And that intention now becomes more real with every passing hour, now that my probes head deeper while we wait outside. I've already decided that if they don't find anything, I will create some sort of bubble around myself and dive down on my own. Hell, Lily can grow us gills, and we could swim, even if I'm a bit worried she might take it too far and turn us completely into fish. Just imagine, a fucked-up mana carp with my reserves.

True apex predator.

I shake my head, pushing these thoughts away before my mind starts thinking it could actually be fun for that to happen. Instead, I look down at my palm and at the three circles of my tattoo resting there.

Over the past few days, I have been thinking of using it on Lily. Not because she has the highest constitution out of everyone from Earth, and I would want to take some part of it for myself. If I wanted that, I would probably just use it on mini Kindness.

Nope, I'm thinking of learning from that tattoo, and during our time on this floor, I've tried to observe it as much as possible. Annoyingly so, without much success. I think I need it activated to truly learn something from it, or to "break" it and take it apart. My pupils would definitely take in something then.

Another fun idea is to try to somehow force it to become a part of my trait evolution or body upgrade. But yeah... how would that even work?

A familiar sound that I haven't heard in a long time suddenly alerts me, and I stand up, still thinking of the tattoo as I use Wraith Dance to move into the forest, using my mana sonar to locate Lily and quickly reach her side.

There, I find her holding a piece of aluminum foil that she has been extremely carefully and quietly unwrapping, with a last piece of chocolate sitting inside it.

“What the fuck are you, some fucked-up dog!?” she starts screaming right away, quickly hiding the chocolate behind her. “This is mine, I have been saving it!”

I take a slow step towards her.

“How did you even hear that!? Your sense strengthening isn't even that good! Do not take another step, Nat!”

“Lily,” I say softly. “We are friends, aren't we?” I give her a warm smile.

I take another careful step forward. “We went through so much together, and we shared so much of the good and the bad. Do you remember how I shared my mana with you so you could train? Yes, I did that, even while suffering from this terrible sickness I have.”

“Your mana deficiency isn't even real.”

“That is the most hurtful thing anyone has ever said to me. And what about that other day when you exploded and that anti-healing effect was stopping you from regenerating, and I went searching for all the pieces of you and then carried you back?”

“Well, that was nice of you, though I would have preferred it if you didn't stuff all my limbs into a sack that you just threw over your shoulder. Nat, I mean it seriously, not another step.”

“If I stop here, you will eat that chocolate. You will grow a mouth right on the palm of your hand and devour it while I think it's safe.”

“You are getting paranoid.”

“So you can't do that?”

“I mean, it would be simple enough if I wanted to, but stop walking! And stop smiling like that, it doesn't work on me anymore!”

“Lily,” I say as I reach deep into myself, tilt my head, and summon a thought that makes my smile much more real. A thought of the highest mana stat in the entire system, possessed by Nathaniel Gwyn.

I don't even need any further confirmation, just her expression alone makes it completely obvious that I have won.

It is twelve hours later when I get a ping from one of my probes, which then expands, creating a large cube as it presses out all the surrounding water to form a dry space within.

The other probes continue deeper as Lily and I prepare to leave, mostly not taking much with us, but putting some extra protections around the items we will be leaving behind up here, mini Kindness included.

Not much later, I teleport us both down, appearing inside of my probe turned room sized cube in absolute darkness. One of my trademarked thermal cubes lights up, casting a warm glow over the place where we are.

It reveals a tunnel, and this one was clearly made by intelligent life, though it's tall enough for someone to walk through without worrying about hitting their head. The tunnel outside is entirely filled with water, and when the light from my cube shines into it, some smaller fish quickly swim away, a few of them even glowing slightly in the dark.

I take over the room shaped construct around us, making it narrower and stretching it forward as I further expand it, pushing the water out of the way so we can walk on almost dry ground. Whenever we walk a bit forward, it shrinks behind us and continues to expand ahead.

Using the light of my cube, I shine a beam through the tunnel, narrowing the light, though so far I'm only finding fish. Still, there should be a weak signal in the distance that the probe has noticed, even if, weirdly, I do not sense it.

Getting impatient, I feed more mana into the construct around us, still keeping it looking like nearly transparent glass with a slight blue tint, while expanding it much further out. As we move, it molds itself according to the space we are in, filling the tunnel entirely and pushing all the water away. There is a lot of water pressure down here, but none of that matters to someone with my mana reserves and experience. Yes, my manablock, manatex, tempering, and all that other stuff are what make this possible.

The source of the signal we find further down the tunnel is, well... nothing.

It is just an empty wall that, no matter how much I examine it, reveals nothing at all, and the data I pull from the core of the probe also reveals nothing. There was no actual reason for it to send a signal about what it had supposedly detected.

Just to be sure, I break through that wall to see if there is something hidden on the opposite side, but even here there is just... nothing.

It annoys me a little, so we wait right there, and only a few minutes later I teleport us to another probe that also calls out for me.

After a bit of walking, we once again reach yet another wall with nothing there, and then the exact same thing happens two more times after that.

I'm starting to come to the conclusion that the probes are being damaged, so I create a few new ones that I modify slightly. As for the original ones, I set them to self-destruct the very moment they detect a signal similar to the ones that caused them to call for me before. That way, they will blow up whoever might be messing with them, if that happens to be the case.

Not that much later, I come to the conclusion that the probes were simply damaged by the environment, and that the damage started by messing up their probing capabilities. I reach that conclusion because the new ones I created do not summon me over some phantom signal, and instead, different parts of them start taking damage first.

A bit later, I begin to think that it is likely the water itself causing the breakdown, which starts making a lot of sense.

If the Demigod's body is down here, there is a good chance it is resting in the water. I imagine it like a Demigod shaped teabag that colored, affected, and changed the aroma of the water. That could be true even if the body itself is tiny in comparison to the sheer volume of water and is probably buried deep down somewhere, only connected to the rest by some small underground streams.

It is yet another phenomenon akin to what the mana radiation of a powerful being can do to the surrounding area. A bit like the Lycan's fingers and that fucked-up Weredeer.

My suspicions are confirmed even further as Lily and I dive straight down inside a bubble made of mana. Above us, a single thermal cube glows warmly, lighting up what feels like an abyssal darkness that we keep diving deeper into.

It is strangely cozy, as we are completely safe inside this bubble while the thermal cube creates a nice, comfortable heat. It even crackles like a real fireplace, though this time I skip the smoke effect for obvious reasons.

And the deeper we go, the more affected by the Demigod teabag the water becomes. Similar to the barriers that were previously surrounding the kaiju, the water itself is actively rejecting mana.

If I want to send a scan down there, I need to modify the pulse and feed it much more mana, or use compressed mana instead. The bubble around us also requires my constant attention. But I have a massive amount of mana that I gathered over the past two months, and I won't hesitate to squeeze even more out of my hearts if needed, so I just keep pushing down.

Even with the high diving speed we are reaching, the descent takes days, and Lily spends them sitting down and resting against the wall of the bubble. Her face is pressed right up against the barrier as she looks out into the endless darkness.

Sometimes we pass that time in quiet conversations, keeping our voices low for no reason other than the heavy vibe of the dark environment surrounding us.

As we get closer to the bottom, I'm forced to strengthen the barrier further, turning it into a darker and darker shade of blue, though I'm still trying to keep it transparent enough so we can see the deep sea blackness outside. I even continuously use my kinetic pulses to temper the mana in addition to all my other efforts.

Down here, there are some truly fucked up fish swimming around now. Some of them try to eat us, while others escape the very moment they spot us. Neither kind is all that powerful, and rather than the radiation of the Demigod's body twisting powerful beings that survived it to its liking, it seems like these fish evolved here over hundreds of years, selectively surviving until they fully adapted to the water.

Some of these fish have thick fur, others have sharp claws, and plenty of them have multiple heads, while most of them have no eyes at all.

And just when I start noticing a real decrease in the mana that I hold, constantly dipping into that huge amount I have been gathering over the past two months, we finally reach our goal.

The barrier around us is now tricolored, with white and golden veins, and at any moment I'm ready to compress it further and turn it black, though so far I manage to endure the pressure.

Just like many times before on our way down, mana arms grow out from the barrier along with a high pressure barrel made of mana that takes in a sample of the water, closes, and tightly seals itself. I teleport that barrel back outside onto the pile of dozens I have already sent up there, and then I create and send multiple more. Right here, where that anti-mana effect is at its most powerful, I gather fifty barrels' worth of water, even though teleporting them out from this depth is quite difficult.

Well, it would be difficult if I hadn't been using Scalar Beacon, which allows me to entirely ignore some of the interference from the miles of anti-mana water above us, only requiring an activation and a good chunk of mana to trigger the teleportation.

Only after finishing that do I move us lower, down to where the water loses its pure blackness and seemingly becomes transparent again. At its peak, we could barely see past the bubble, but as we continue our descent, the distance my thermal cube illuminates increases again.

Further down, the water even starts glowing with a nearly holy, gentle white light. It's not my doing, but the surface of the bubble Lily and I are in turns completely transparent under that light, almost as if the barrier isn't even there. There are no fish nearby either, and the light glows in such a mesmerizing way that I cannot take my eyes off it.

Below us, the body of a beautiful white lion floats serenely in the water. Its fur moves gently with the current as the body rests there, and it is that fur that is letting out lashes of glowing light. Every single time one of these lashes of light washes over me, I have to give it my all just to keep control of my mana and stop my constructs from instantly disappearing.

Just being here, in this water, in the mere presence of this lifeless body without a mind, is almost enough to make me entirely lose control over everything I have fought so hard to build over the years.

And just like a few times before, I know for sure that this is one of those hidden floor settings that was never meant or expected to be explored by an attendee.

Looking down at that huge lion's body even makes me feel a strange sadness that something so spectacular has died. But I don't dwell on it for too long, as I can feel that I'm getting pushed way too far and won't be able to hold out much longer. So I compress all of the remaining mana I have out and turn it pitch black, instantly feeling a wave of relief as even something as overwhelming as the lingering power of the lion's body doesn't seem to be able to do much against black mana.

Then, I use a portion of that black mana to place another Scalar Beacon nearby, while using the rest of the mana to create the core of a massive array before teleporting both Lily and myself back to the surface, appearing right at the top of the mountain made of the barrels holding the water I gathered.

Lily elegantly jumps off, but I just allow my body to go limp and slide down the pile of barrels all the way to the ground. That causes a small barrel avalanche, and a few of them slam against the defensive layer around my body, though they deal no damage at all.

Standing in front of me, Lily watches it all curiously while I take a few moments to think.

Once I'm done, I look up at her and say, "It will be too annoying to do anything with all that water getting in the way down there, so I will be teleporting the lion out here."

Then, so as not to dillydally, I release the full output of my Ignition Heart to redistribute its energy into mana, while also creating a black mana halo that I send high into the air to start gathering all the ambient mana I can get my hands on.

This time, I'm honestly curious to see if I will be able to gather ambient mana from across a continent or two.

***

Author's note: Sooo, as mentioned previously, I will be taking a week-long break, after which we will continue with the usual schedule.

I mentioned it so if you got screwed up by the timing, send me a message and I can refund you - I will go over the refunds once I'm back from the vacation.

And that's all, I think.

Thank you all for your support, and take a rest too!