43
Chapter 43
Splash-!
What appeared before their eyes as they dove into Alexandra's memories were the Slayers in the midst of a fierce battle.
"Tsk. I guess we can't see the memories from the Ascension. That's a shame."
"Russell. Xiao said we can only see up to four hours of memories before death. What were you doing instead of listening?"
Elvira's blunt reproach. It was a common occurrence among Oceanus, but this time, Xiao's reaction was a bit different.
"Quiet. Focus."
Her ridiculously heavy and serious voice, compared to her usual self, was enough to make everyone, including Parang, cower a little.
Putting idle chatter aside for a moment, they focused on the Slayers' battle scene.
However... something was strange.
"What are these guys fighting?"
No matter how much they looked around, there was nothing that could be called an enemy; only Bellua and other low-level monster fish were swimming around in massive numbers. It was almost half water, half fish. Furthermore, Han Siwoo and the Slayers were firing off various skills toward the bottom.
Wondering what it was, they looked down, only to see a pit that looked like a sinkhole.
"Xiao. Pause it for a second and explain. We can't understand anything just from looking at this."
"Got it."
With the viewpoint facing downward, Xiao stopped the playback.
"What's inside that pit? Are they fighting that?"
The impatient Russell couldn't hold back his curiosity and interrogated Xiao.
"No. They're fighting that pit."
"...What?"
"Look closely. That's not a sinkhole or anything. It's a mouth."
At those words, all of Oceanus, who had been closely examining the pit, stiffened.
It really was. It was so huge that they thought it was a geographical feature, a sinkhole, but now that they looked at it, there were things resembling teeth around the circular pit.
They were fighting a gigantic mouth.
A mouth with a radius of well over several kilometers.
It had an appearance that made them question whether such a thing was even allowed to exist in the world.
Furthermore, that mouth didn't just stay lodged in the ground and take attacks.
Swoosh-!!!
The enormous mouth that was enduring the Slayers' attacks suddenly opened even wider and began sucking in water at a terrifying speed.
Rumble--!!
Then, the ground in the area shook violently, and everything nearby could be seen being sucked into the massive mouth.
"Crazy, what kind of current speed is..."
"It looks to be about 25 m/s."
Elvira said as she watched the Bellua being helplessly dragged down.
25 meters per second is about 100 kilometers per hour.
The speed of a speedboat used for military purposes is about 50 knots. Converted to hourly speed, it's about 92 km/h.
In other words, it means that even a military speedboat wouldn't be able to escape this whirlpool.
With a hole several kilometers in radius creating such a whirlpool, a disaster was unfolding in the area.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of monster fish swimming nearby were simultaneously dragged into the pit without even putting up a resistance.
The current was already fast, but with the water forming a whirlpool, there was simply no way to escape even if they tried.
It was undeniably powerful.
Swoosh.......
They thought the whirlpool that had lasted for a few minutes had subsided, but another attack came shortly after.
Glug- Glug-
The pit, which had sucked in as much water as it could, now began to wriggle fiercely.
There is an unchanging truth in this world: what goes in must come out.
However, what came out of this pit was far too horrifying compared to what had gone in.
Whoosh-!!!!
It was unimaginable that this was just regurgitated water; an ominous, dark purple liquid erupted from the pit like an exploding volcano.
A liquid erupting at that speed would kill anyone upon impact purely from the physical force, even if it were just water.
But this demon's pit went one step further and spewed out a deadly poison.
■■■■-!!
■■■■.......
The monster fish that had dodged the liquid pouring out of the pit suddenly began to drop dead.
As if their bodies had been taken over by Sakis, they floated around with their bellies turned up.
And after a little while, the bodies of those monster fish could be seen rotting away.
Their flesh turned into a blackened powder that scattered in the water, leaving only bare bones.
Regardless of species, all the monster fish nearby died off in that manner.
The poison didn't stop there; it continued to spread.
Even faster. Not even a minute after the poison erupted, the area was so thick with poison that it became impossible to even secure a line of sight.
Aside from that, a series of bizarre attacks followed continuously.
Tentacles the size of buildings burst through the ground, and countless eyes from inside the pit stared straight up, launching a mental attack.
Parang thought.
Were the Slayers annihilated while fighting something like that?
Annihilated...?
She sensed that something was off.
Certainly, that pit gave off the feeling of a, well, final boss. Both in terms of its size and its impact.
Even if all six members of Oceanus attacked at once, it wouldn't be easy to achieve a complete victory.
They wouldn't know the specifics until they fought it, but an overwhelming victory was out of the question. If things went south, there even seemed to be a risk that two or three of them might die in battle.
With Parang there, the Kraken would eventually absorb it, but no matter how capable the Kraken was, it would take a lot of time to absorb a monster of that size.
If someone were to take a direct hit from the attacks spewing out of that pit in the meantime....
'Hmm.'
She erased the terrible thought from her head.
However...
It absolutely wasn't enough to annihilate sixteen Slayers possessing a divine body.
In fact, it seemed like the Slayers could have won a complete victory with everyone unharmed.
Of course, if there were sixteen members of Oceanus, the result would naturally be a complete victory.
Well, whatever the case. It certainly didn't seem like the Slayers had lost and been annihilated here.
In fact, the Slayers were already seizing the chance for victory.
For Oceanus to even witness the series of attacks from that pit in the first place, Alexandra had to have survived it.
"Hold on tight, everyone!!!"
"Thanks, Siwoo!!"
When the pit sucked in water, Hunter Han Siwoo raised a massive rebar from the ground, allowing everyone to hold onto it and survive,
"Yuri!!"
"Let There Be Light!!!"
And when the pit spewed poison, everyone remained safe thanks to the shield cast by Kang Yuri's skill.
"Dieeeee!!!!"
"Disappear! You filthy thing!!"
Even after that, the Slayers dismantled the bizarre attacks pouring continuously out of the pit one by one, using their skills in the right places at the right times.
If one member suffered a penalty from using a powerful skill, the remaining members would step up to protect them.
As expected of the protagonist's party, their individual combat prowess and their combinations were outstanding.
And as time flowed on. Two hours before Alexandra's death.
■■■■■.........!!!
The Slayers had defeated the pit.
The result was the survival of all sixteen Slayers, including Alexandra.
"What the...."
"Quiet. What comes next is really important."
Xiao cut them off again. Her voice was even more serious than before.
Grumbling at her words, Russell began to focus again.
"It looks like we won, right?"
Hunter Han Siwoo looked back at the Slayers.
As a protagonist usually is, he was handsome. With a bright halo shining behind him, he truly gave off the aura of a protagonist.
Looking back, there was a group full of beautiful women. Being the heroines of a novel, they naturally all had sculpted appearances.
Due to the intense battle they had just fought, some were completely exhausted, but ultimately, everyone had survived.
"Seems like it. Anyway, where exactly are we? Weren't we supposed to have Ascended?"
From here on out, everyone began to pay close attention. It was a truly important conversation.
"I have no idea. To begin with, I don't know why we even went out into the universe. We were originally supposed to stop much further below. We weren't supposed to end up down here underwater like this."
A woman wearing a researcher's gown and horn-rimmed glasses spoke bluntly.
Charlotte Eyra.
The scientist and researcher of the Slayers. She was the one who deciphered and designed the Ascension Ritual.
"Wasn't there some sort of error in the calculations?"
"I definitely double-checked it dozens of times. Of course, since the results turned out like this, I have no intention of denying the possibility of a mistake on my part."
"Even so. How does the Ascension Ritual connect directly into that damn pit? Anyone could see we walked right into a trap. We're not fish caught on a hook."
"Although it somehow ended up with the fish eating the fisherman...."
"Now, now, it doesn't seem like we'll reach a conclusion by talking about it right now, so let's head up first. We'll probably see something once we get out of the water."
Amidst the commotion, Hunter Han Siwoo mediated the situation with a good-natured smile.
Parang felt a strange emotion watching them.
Even though she hadn't paid them any attention after her reincarnation, they were still the core characters of her favorite novel.
Seeing them become a reality, laughing and chatting amiably like this, made her feel somewhat touched.
"Wait, Siwoo. I have one last thing to say."
"Yeah?"
"No matter how I look at it, this is Earth."
"What?!"
"Is that really true?!"
"Among those bizarre things hovering around that pit earlier, there was one I recognized."
"What the hell is it?"
"An organism from Earth called Bellua Maria. A monster known as a Monster Fish that came out of an underwater Gate."
"Then you're saying this is Earth?!"
"There is a high probability of that."
"No, no, no! Wait a minute!! We were in the universe. But we suddenly teleported to the ocean on Earth? Does that make sense?! Isn't it actually that we entered a super massive Space Gate, or something like that?!"
"Mari. First, since an error already occurred during the Ascension Ritual, whatever happens isn't that unnatural. Second, for this massive space to be inside a Gate is just nonsense."
"Well, I mean.... A Space Gate could be different...."
"I always feel this way, but it's truly impossible to keep up with your imagination. Mari...."
"Ah, what the!!"
"Now, now, stop it. If this really is Earth, it would be better to head up and figure out the cause. Let's get out of the water first and then think about it."
However, they never got to leave the water.
"Siwoo. Over there."
"...Yeah. I saw it too."
"What is... what is that...?"
From far away, something was approaching.
At first, Parang thought it was a cloud.
Despite being underwater, the reason she thought that was simply because it truly looked like a cloud. There was even a pitch-black shadow cast beneath it.
However, it wasn't long before Oceanus realized what it was.
A tremendous number of undersea anomalies.
Countless Monster Fish, enough to turn their entire field of vision black, were swimming toward them.
It looked to be millions, no, perhaps even close to tens of millions of them.
Truly, it seemed as if every Monster Fish existing in the world had flocked together to fight the Slayers.
What Parang thought was a shadow was actually a massive swarm of Statues walking along the ocean floor.
Yes. Those Statues.
Countless Statues were approaching the Slayers as if marching in perfect formation.
A veritable army of Monster Fish.
It was a video from 90 minutes before Alexandra's death.