Chapter 38: Acting Up

‘Calculating fellow ... in record time he led them to elude me!’ Zax surveyed the mercury like water, but to no avail.

Soon after he followed the six into the Down Ocean, General Logan, the man at the forefront, exploited a daunting encounter with a passing Spirit to lose Zax, which succeeded only due to the latter’s inexperience...

‘Is this how it feels to be in the unrestrained presence of an Immortal?’ He verified again the direction the Spirit drifted toward, rather than swam, and every hair on his body was still like a prickly pin.

It long vanished but his memory of the event was as clear as his first recollection of the blue sky. It was dazzlingly bluish, semitransparent and in some aspects hazy. Since its aura was unchecked, to Zax the overall picture was akin to looking at the sun at dusk.

‘I have to be careful!’ He reminded himself and proceeded to dive in search for the third lock. ‘Both the Savage Caves and the Earthly Crater exuded effects on the soul and gravity as a derivative of the Three Locks formation. It should be the same in the Down Ocean. I just need to locate these forces and follow to their origin’.

An hour, two, three ... getting to the bottom of the ocean proved to be an arduous task as Zax attempted to be most inconspicuous; a fear he nearly forgotten gradually creeped up on him at every sighting of a Spirit.

There were not many, five or six in total, but the manner in which they transpired and the sense of inferiority that was no different to when an ant and a boot meet placed insane amount of mental pressure on maintain the prospects of keeping cautious and not losing the life.

The closer Zax got to making contact with a Spirit, which by the way they all looked vaguely the same, was in the second encounter. The Star Scavenger size Spirit appeared like phantom. In one second there was nothing ahead and in the second it halted right before ramming Zax.

At the time, Zax failed to figure if the induction of imminent death was due to his imagination or the Spirit’s actual intent. Regardless, he did not dwell on it and slowly bent backwards and slid across the Spirit.

‘Solid ground’. Zax sighed inwardly and was alleviated from roughly third of his fatigue. ‘There are weak undulations in the water resembling suction ... the pull of a gravitational force?’ It was difficult to perceive the things before one’s eyes in the Down Ocean, much less with Soul Sense.

He traced the source of the undulations.

‘No. It’s not the dark attribute’s Swallowing property or earthly attribute’s Gravity property ... specks of icy attribute are mingled in the undulation. It is suction, possibly resulting from the combination of the icy attribute’s Heavy and Flow properties. But is it a natural occurring formation of the Down Ocean or the making of the Three Locks formation?’ Zax mused. ‘People? No! These are members of Blue Sea’.

He discovered them after an hour of walking.

Eight humanoid aquatic beasts, scaly, with fins and various colors, were situated beside the entrance of a coral small palace. They stood as if in wait, sometimes staring at the same direction, other times contemplating among themselves should they go inside the palace.

Zax observed them for a half an hour before he advanced. He was too far for their eyes to see him and the undulations were too distracting to detect the mild changes his arrival made in the under currents.

“Admiral-” The first to notice him mistook Zax for Admiral Hamumni, only to have his oceanic complexion pale like a dead fish, which his ugly head was similar to anyway. “Activate the-” Before he could finish speaking, a hand clenched his throat, cracking its yellow green scales.

“Zax Zel!”

“Rear Admiral Reverka!”

The seven other members of Blue Sea hastily retreated twenty some meters away, about to execute a formation.

“You will lose. Besides, I did not come here to fight. Answer my questions and I’ll let him go”.

Zax’s height endured constant but small changes for concentrating his main cultivation path on bodily refinement – before taking a step farther to the mysteries of the attributes. In the past five years his height was set at one hundred and ninety five centimeters, taller than the average human. Nevertheless, it was still a strange scene seeing him detaining the over four meters tall Blue Sea’s Rear Admiral Reverka while the shortest of those surrounding them was also at least a meter taller than him.

“That’s where the undulations are being drawn to. What’s over there that you kept looking?”

Rear Admiral Reverka opened his mouth, seemingly about to speak, but the gap between his parted, oily lips became wider and wider, exposing his large pointy teeth and split blue tongue.

An inaudible sound emerged from his throat, causing the water to sear.

“Rear Admiral Reverka, stop, you’ll attract Spirits!”

“Get away, go! Escape to find Admiral Hamumni!”

Just as the seven prepared to run, a big, shiny black hand sealed Rear Admiral Reverka’s mouth and an even larger one manifested as a mantle shrouding him and Zax, as well as the reverberating sound wave.

“For a third level Martial Mortal you’re quite gutsy”. Zax snickered. “And your temper sure is that of a beast ... but”, his tone turned grave. “By commencing an attack against me, you just gave me pretext to kill you without owning your dear Admiral an explanation”.

BANG!

The hand sealing Rear Admiral Reverka’s mouth nudged and his head exploded.

Witnessing their leader dying shook the seven to their core. As they sensed Zax tyrannical dark attribute energy executing a domain to prevent their escape, fear from the enemy caused their mindset to regress into a feral behavior. They were all about to transform to their animalistic forms when few words echoed next to their ears, bringing back from oblivion or rather intimidating from losing sanity.

“For centuries you lot treated my kith and kin like inmates in an underground prison. Is today akin for you to yesterday? Can you affront your five leaders?”