The Eye of the Abyss

The sight of that colossal eyeball rolling in its socket was enough to make my body curl inward on pure instinct.

Worried it might notice me, I stayed on guard and took the photo.

Click.

The shutter sound rang inside my head.

Thankfully the creature stayed focused on gouging the city apart with its long, razor-sharp claws and paid me no mind.

I wrote up a gallery post, photo attached, hoping someone out there might recognize it.

Comments flooded in the moment I posted, but like any gallery, most of them were useless noise.

Even so, intelligent people still exist in places like this.

Soon enough a reply from TruthScholar appeared.

…Was he actually intelligent?

I could have sworn the way he commented made him seem like a mage.

The thought crossed my mind, but I decided not to dwell on it.

I’d already looked around, so I headed back toward the submersible.

Clunk.

The moment I sealed the hatch the creature’s revolting noises vanished.

A faint engine hum vibrated through the cabin.

Seated inside the quiet vessel, I began thinking about how to combine the resources currently available to me.

Emergency rations meant I wasn’t in immediate trouble, but eventually I would have to approach the city.

And when I did, I needed to be strong enough to either avoid those monsters or defeat them.

Ideally, strong enough to win.

“Can I manage it before the food runs out…?”

The doubt rose deep in my chest, but I pushed it down.

“No. I have to.”

If I couldn’t even do this, the only thing waiting for me was death.

The deep sea was not a gentle place that showed mercy to the weak.

I made up my mind, yet without any real data on the monsters I had no idea how strong I needed to become.

Asking the gallery probably wouldn’t yield a proper answer either.

‘TruthScholar did mention something about an era that disappeared…’

So what should I use?

Something that could reveal information about ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the ancient era and was easy for me to access.

“The crafting machine.”

An artifact that appeared to belong to the ancient city.

It was right beside me, perfectly accessible.

I immediately tapped the screen of the wall-mounted crafting machine.

Black text lined up beside the photograph.

Swimming through an ocean of information, I found the one item I needed.

Something that would help me both now and later.

It was something I absolutely needed, especially with how little information I had.

I wanted to make it right away, but…

“Mana stones? Mana condenser stones?”

I had vaguely heard of titanium in science class, but mana stones and condenser stones obviously didn’t exist on the surface.

This kind of knowledge was exactly why—

TruthScholar had said something weird, but DrawSwordSaint’s explanation cleared it up.

Now that I understood, it seemed better to see the stones in person.

The question was where to obtain them.

So I immediately replied to DrawSwordSaint.

“Where mana is especially dense…”

According to DrawSwordSaint, mana stones were more abundant in places thick with mana.

This was the deep sea—ten times denser in mana than the surface.

“Guess I should check.”

The city guarded by the monster was some distance away, so staying near the submersible probably wouldn’t be too dangerous.

With that thought I reached for the hatch again to go look for mana stones.

I wondered whether galleries usually had a streaming function, but—

“Well, can’t hurt.”

It would probably increase the number of armband reports, but since I wasn’t a moderator it didn’t really concern me.

Life down here would get boring otherwise, so having more varied content in the gallery seemed like a good thing.

I checked the gallery functions, found the word “Broadcast,” and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠tapped it at once.

“Broadcast title?”

After a brief pause, memories of old gaming streams came to mind and I typed one immediately.

The instant the broadcast began, comments started racing up the corner of my vision at blinding speed.

Hmm. More people had gathered than I expected.

I wasn’t exactly an entertaining person, so I had assumed at most a hundred viewers would show up.

The chat was a swirling cauldron of questions, confusion, laughter, spam, and panic.

I shook my head once and spoke.

“I’m going to look for mana stones and condenser stones now, so speak up if you see any.”

Even though there were a lot of comments, there were simply too many.

In a normal modern stream a manager would have cleaned them up, but I had no manager.

So I turned on one particular function right away.

“I filtered out the worst of it. It was getting too chaotic.”

Feeling much more comfortable, I pushed the hatch open.

The creak of old hinges filled my ears as I stepped outside.

Feeling the dry sand beneath my feet, I asked aloud.

“Are there any mana stones around here?”

I looked down. Sure enough, there was a single pebble.

A stone with a faint greenish tint.

“If this is a mana stone, where’s the condenser stone?”

I bent down again and scanned the sandy floor. A gray cubic stone caught my eye.

When I picked it up carefully, I felt the mana flowing through my body drift faintly toward the stone.

“Now I just need titanium…”

Just as he said, a small rock lay to my right.

I wasn’t sure if it was titanium yet, but my gut told me it was the real thing.

I grabbed the titanium and returned straight to the submersible.

Looking at the resources in my hands, one thought flashed through my mind.

Surviving might actually be doable.

A small, faint spark of hope kindled inside my chest.

Clutching that tiny flame, I approached the crafting machine.

The longtime users had all sorts of reactions when they saw it, but I focused solely on making the scanner.

I selected the scanner on the machine’s screen. A confirmation window appeared asking whether I wanted to craft it.

I pressed yes without hesitation.

Clank.

A panel on the wall slid open.

The machine displayed a message telling me to insert the materials.

I placed the titanium, mana stone, and condenser stone I had just gathered inside.

The panel closed automatically and mechanical sounds began.

Sometimes clanking, sometimes humming, sometimes giving off dull thuds.

Thump.

The wall opened again and the scanner dropped out like a vending-machine prize.

The scanner was mostly white and looked remarkably like a handgun.

The way to use it was similar, too.

I tested it on the green cube sitting in the center of the submersible.

A blue light swept across the cube.

I read the scanner’s text and paused at the section blacked out by censorship.

I was wondering why not all the information appeared when TruthScholar’s chat popped up.

Information concealment—perhaps that was the reason it was called the vanished era.

Still, I had managed to obtain some data, so I was grateful.

I immediately stepped outside to scan the monster whose information I wanted most.

Even knowing its stats would be better than nothing.

I stood on the sandy bottom, took a short breath, and stared directly at the city.

Aiming at one of the creatures roaming the streets, I pressed the button. Data appeared.

I kept reading until the final line, then froze.

When I looked up from the scanner toward the city—

Click.

The cyclops’s single eye was staring straight at me.

A hand tipped with razor claws began to move.

Purely instinctive reaction.

I ducked my head as fast as I could.

Shaaaak!!

When I glanced back using only my eyes, a claw-shaped scar remained where it had swept away both mana stones and titanium alike.

Had I really said surviving seemed doable?

…I take it back. This looks completely impossible to survive.