Translator: Cheonsa & Jade
Editor: pigeon
Chapter 85
“Oh, is that so?” Rhine gave a skeptical gaze and directly walked to my side, his face showing a somewhat incredulous expression as he looked at my lower half. Regardless of the people present in the room, he started to pull down my pants, “Come on, my darling. Let me examine you a little.”
I moved away in embarrassment while Nick and the others all stood behind me rigidly, staring at us in shock, not knowing what was going on. They obviously had no idea I knew Rhine, and also did not expect for him to act like this towards me.
“Hey, did you even forget about the kiss from last night?” Rhine came over breezily, latching onto my waist intensely. From his mouth, it was frivolous teasing, as though he deliberately wanted to give the wrong impression about our relationship to the others.
I rammed my fist into his stomach in extreme disgust, but my elbow was caught swiftly by his own hand, so this punch didn’t injure him. However, I suddenly saw him crane down his neck and rubbed his nose as a trail of black liquid surprisingly trickled down, dripping onto my shoes. I withdrew my foot, startled. Wiping away at his face as he lifted his head and looked at the black liquid in his hand, his face even more startled than my own. His glass blue eyes showcased a type of fear I have never seen on him before.
I knew that the insidious trick Agares pulled on him last night was taking an effect.
I gleefully stared at him and retreated a little, “I already warned you. Best you stay away from me. There are some existences that you can’t afford to provoke.”
The moment it left my mouth—not sure why—but in my heart, there was this faint, sweet sense of superiority. Like showing off your very own magic weapon to your enemy in a majestic way—Check this out, I have a guardian angel, my Lord sashimi. I belong to him, touch me and you’ll die.
God knows that, if it weren’t for the presence of Nick and the rest, I actually would have really wanted to say this out loud.
The abrupt situation left Rhine with no choice but to stop his harassment towards me and went out the door hastily, probably went looking for a doctor (though it was highly unlikely for the doctor to be able to help him).
On the very same afternoon, we reached the end of the strait, our destination—an abandoned nuclear power plant that was sealed up within the canyon
Looking at it from the ship, it looked like it had completely turned into ruins. A portion of its steel structure was still embedded into the steep wall above, but you could no longer see the whole structure of it anymore. Most of it had already been reduced to coke and buried under thick layers of dust that had already solidified. It was like the aftermath of a volcanic eruption where a building got buried beneath ashes. Even though it was situated far from the main island of Hiroshima and within the protection of the strait, the nuclear plant had still become like this. You could see how destructive the nuclear bomb was on Hiroshima. Even though I heard records of it from the news before, to see it with my own eyes was shocking.
I became aware of a helicopter with a German flag attached to it parking on top of a temporarily erected helipad on the reef, close to the nuclear plant. This reminded me of the time where Agares controlled Rhine and interrogated him on the whereabouts of the merfolks spores. It was then, when Rhine mentioned about the helicopter that had already arrived at Hiroshima first. That must’ve been the one he spoke about, but where are those people and Agares’s merfolk spores?
Doubtful, I followed the water entrance leading into the power plant. Heaps of steel bars were blocked between eight huge stone pillars, only leaving approximately a two meter gap. Its insides were deep and indistinct that despite having night vision, even I couldn’t see anything in there properly. Those groups of people were probably the first who entered there with the merfolk spores. What motive does Rhine and the others exactly have?
While pondering this, I took notice of Rhine beginning to deploy armed men, and from the look of him, his body hadn’t been greatly affected yet. I hurried over with Nick and the others to avoid being left behind.
Almost fifty years have passed, so the radiation level reached a safe range, but we still had to wear radiation protection garments over our wetsuit suit along with an oxygen helmet. We looked like a dressed-down version of an astronaut, even having to equip an extra climbing tool then the astronaut.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Once preparation was done, we kayaked towards the power plant’s water entrance, but we had to swim to continue our journey inside. Yet lucky for us, the power plant was positioned around a continental shelf, so the water wasn’t deep at all. We could reach the floor and expose our heads from the water—no need to consume so much oxygen at this moment.
Xgbeq ys ugbeq, kf kfca atgbeut atf cjggbk fcagjcmf. Ktf ragemaegf kjr rlwlijg ab jcs batfg qbkfg qijcar—lar lccfg mbwqbcfcar kfgf ilxf atf ybaabw bo jc lgbc abkfg. Ktf qijmf kf fcafgfv kjr bglulcjiis jc fifnjabg fcagjcmf, yea ys ublcu atgbeut tfgf, P mbeivc’a tfiq yea offi afcrf jr atlr qbkfg qijca rffwfv bc atf nfguf bo mbiijqrlcu. Ktf raffi gflcobgmfv yjgr atja lcafgaklcfv jybnf beg tfjvr kfgf fcmjrfv lc ogbhfc ugjs vera, wjxlcu wf offi atja atfs kfgf pera kfjx qijrafg atja mbeiv mbiijqrf ja jcs alwf.
My throat tightened, even though the transparent helmet was filled with air, breathing felt somewhat difficult. The environment of the exploration this time around was more complex and challenging then all the other caves I had explored combined..
Hearing the tense breathings coming from the pager, I knew that the others were just as nervous as I was. Even Rhine, who had more experience in exploring caves, was solemn. I fiddled mindlessly with Agares’s wrapped scale in the pocket of my pants, which was separated by two layers of protective cloth. I couldn’t touch it, but I could feel a faint energy like it was converging into my heart, calming my anxious beating heart even by just a little.
——You’re by my side aren’t you, Agares? I will follow your guidance and find you.
Just as I thought of this, the pager in my helmet suddenly made an odd sound. It was like a low whisper, shocking my mind as I looked around in the water. Yet under the beam of the searchlight, I could only see the bodies of my group mates and the steel bars embedded into the cement pillars in the faint blue water. There were no suspected traces of Agares.
Rays of sunlight peaked in through the entrance we came from, shining onto the water surface. It reflected upon the surface gently and without any water ripples you could clearly see a few tenacious water insects who could tolerate the radiation leaping around the surface. But I clearly felt a current of water beneath that was coming towards me
I squinted my eyes and stared at the water, carefully feeling the direction of the stream…
“What’s the matter Desharow, why did you stop?”
Nick’s voice suddenly rang from the pager, and I was tapped on the shoulder, almost startling me. That faint stream that existed for a while disappeared, like it was just my imagination.
“Strange… it’s nothing. Just being overly suspicious. I’m probably too nervous, I shook my head, and hurriedly caught up with the crew.
Advancing around a hundred meters down, the water got more shallow and the sea-bed became littered with reefs of varying sizes. We had already arrived at the innermost part of the nuclear power plant and in between the high wall and steel bars at the end, there was a deep crevice that looked like it had been hacked open by an ax. The water flow was dispersed by the reefs into several small-sized waterfalls that converged into this rift valley and disappeared down into the deep darkness as if falling into a bottomless world.
Thinking to myself, it’s impossible for a nuclear power plant to be established over and on top of such a deep trench, unless the Japanese are crazy. This deep trench was formed possibly from the impact of the nuclear warhead on Hiroshima, causing the seafloor to split open. It was like tearing open an entrance to a completely different space from the sea.
“Team A, calling for Team A. Please report the depth you have reached immediately! Has the location of the submarine been determined?” Shinichi’s voice rang out from the pager at this time, and I couldn’t help but be surprised. Submarine? How could a submarine even be able to go through here?
“Reporting, doctor! 312.6 meters! The radar had already scanned out something big just another 105 meter down. It should be the location of the submarine!” A response quickly came from the pager.
“What’s the radiation index?”
“It’s not stable. Currently it’s closing on 10, doctor!”
My heart couldn’t stop from tightening. Although such radiation levels wouldn’t immediately kill someone in such a short time, the longer the exposure, the more a human body would easily become horribly prone to cancer. This abyss was simply a death zone. If any ordinary organisms were to mistakenly fall into here they would undoubtedly perish.
It seemed that we had to wear these annoying radiation protection jackets in order to go down there.
After using the axles and roller to fasten the rope units onto the stable pillar of the powerplants and the reefs, we slid into the abyss of death group by group. Hanging from the suspended rope, we glide into the deep and unfathomable darkness. The searchlight in the permeating fog could only illuminate an arms distance, before the rest was engulfed in darkness.
Everyone of us didn’t dare to be too far apart from one another. Nick, and I, as well as Rodia were in very close proximity to each other to ensure each other’s safety. The damp wind poured up from the sole of my feet, and like an invisible ghost swallowing our body, we felt a layer of coldness penetrating into our skin and bone. Even the radiation protection suit could not resist against the coldness, causing me to get goosebumps.
While in the process of slowly sliding downward, I discovered that on the wall of the abyss cliff, there were many small and large cave holes, resembling countless pairs of pitch-dark ghost eyes spying on us. This practically made people’s blood run cold. Some of these holes were quite narrow, similar to the size of a human head, while some were big enough to hold two people. I suspected that these might’ve been a type of birds’ nest. But what kind of bird would live in such a place? Eagles?
The urge to research organisms etched in my bones, began to faintly cause mischief again. I forcibly resisted the urge to use the small searchlights for inspecting these caves, and carefully tightened the ropes to slide down along the cliff. When the depth indicated on the ropes showed 200 meters, Rhine ordered us to stop.
Above our head, the entrance to this crevice was no longer in sight anymore. Whether it was above us or below us, we all found ourselves situated among a sheet of thick floating fog. Aside from the searchlight above our heads, we could see that the surrounding holes emitted specks of star-like flickering, fluorescent lights within. This kind of scene was not uncommon in underground caves. Insects and plankton in the absolute darkness were often a form of light.
Everything was dreadfully quiet, just like an immense burial mound. I could only hear the sound of my own breathing. My breath fogged up the transparent helmet from time to time, making my surroundings extremely alike to the outer space shown in American documentaries, making people feel stifled and helpless. Furthermore, the ounce of dread floating around the empty atmosphere was like oxygen mingled with poison, riding through our bloodstream and into our hearts. With each breath making these negative emotions more heavy. Just staying a day here would cause people to suffer depression.
“Calling for Team A!” Out of nowhere, Rhine’s voice suddenly exploded out loud among the silent environment, scaring me enough to tremble.
However, the only response back to him was the string of buzzing noises, which sounded like the noise of a tape-recorder getting stuck. No one had answered him. A sense of apprehension suddenly surged from the soles of my feet. Could it be that something happened to the people below?
Nick and I looked at each other in unison and simultaneously drew our guns that were equipped on our backs. Rhine waved his hand, motioning for us not to move, then took out a few glow sticks and threw them down after lighting them.
The traversing green light streaked a short track in the fog, but it was soon swallowed silently by the darkness.
Rhine adjusted the pager a few times and continued to call for Team A, but like before, he still didn’t get any response. He violently gave the rock wall a punch, and my heart sank along with it. We were confronted with an imminent dilemma—whether to go back to the top or continue down.
But no matter what, I wanted to continue to go down, because I just knew that the entrance to Atlantis existed right below—and that’s where Agares will definitely go.
“We shouldn’t continue anymore. Something bad must have happened to those people down there. This bowl of soup, I don’t want a share anymore.” Nick retreated first. He was a smart man. After experiencing the ghost ship incident, he obviously realized that life was far more important than money.
“Then Nick, help me deliver a letter.” I looked up, about to tell him that on Poseidon, there was a letter in a drawer that was to be sent to my family, but then I remembered that Poseidon had already been burned down. I unrestrainedly let out a bitter laugh, “You all go up, I need to continue downward.”
“Why, Derte. Are you not afraid of death? In order to even make money, you need to preserve your life!” Rodia stated intensely, from the pager came the sound of Rodia’s harsh breath spraying into her face suit. Perhaps it was because her speaking was too ear-piercing that Rhine immediately shouted, “Shut up!”
As soon as his voice fell, a series of irksome, sizzling noises came from the pager, and then suddenly, a black shadow appeared instantly over my head. I looked up and met something crawling out of the hole above me, going right for Nick, who was crawling his way back up. He immediately leapt away, grabbed the rope and slid downward several meters before exclaiming, “Damn, why is there such a big spider here? Desharow, quickly get out of there!”
”That’s not a spider!” Rodia cried out.
The sound of something hard slashing across the rock wall came from the thick fog above, not too far away nor close by. In fear, I held the rope with a deathgrip. My feet were against the wall as I slid down with everyone. One jump lowered the limit of the rope’s load and this feeling was like bungee jumping. However it was probably because my physical fitness has been greatly enhanced by the mutation, that I could relatively keep a steady breathing during this extreme exercise.
With help from the searchlight, I saw several black figures with long limbs across the rock wall in the thick fog. At first glance it really did look like spiders. I simply turned off my light, and relied on my good ole night vision. Instantly, I could see those things clearly—at first they looked like a group of spider crabs’s legs, but the center of those limbs wasn’t that of a crab, but that of a Mermaid!
What kind of monster was this? A spider crab parasitizing on a Mermaid or a mutant of a spider crab and mermaid combined?!
My eyes widened in shock and felt all my hair standing on end. Just at this time, a black shadow pounced directly towards me, and I hastily dodged by stepping upon the rock wall with large strides, raised the gun in hand and directly fired towards that thing. In the darkness, sparks burst forth, yet unexpectedly it didn’t attack me but actually Rhine. He quickly raised his own gun and launched his own bullets. In a split second, several spider Mermaids followed each other’s heels and attacked towards Rhine, as though they couldn’t see me and Nick who were much closer, making Rhine their primary targets of their attack.
Rhine was surrounded by the group in a split second. I leaned close to the rock wall and looked down in bewilderment. I faintly understood that maybe this was already planned by Agares. He had turned Rhine into a bait for these monsters so that I wouldn’t get attacked.
Even though I did wish to get rid of Rhine, this annoying bastard, having to witness it with my own eyes still made me feel uneasy. The nerves in my brain were jumping in my head, but in truth, I couldn’t really see everything clearly at all. I could only hear the chaotic static sound coming from the pager churning into a hot messy soup.
Then an ear-splitting sound of a bullet echoed through. Rhine’s rope couldn’t handle the load and trembled violently in midair as it was weighed down. In an instant, the rope reached maximum length before stretching tightly and abruptly snapping apart, it recoiled upward at a great speed like a rubber band. Immediately, all our ropes suddenly sank!
I realized that Rhine’s ruptured rope had damaged the rope’s axles, and in the next moment, before I could even do any remedial measures, I heard my own rope above me shaking violently and making a scary rattling sound. I didn’t know what this implied, so my heart also felt like it was hung from my throat by a rope.
Everyone immediately leaned against the rock with an ashened face. I dared not get close to those holes behind me, but at the moment, being stuck in this state with it being the last resort made me want to approach one of them. However, as soon as I stretched out my arm, a dull sound suddenly came from above, and the rope that held me in place suddenly turned lax. With screams of alarm coming from all around me, I lost my own gravity and plummeted down toward the bottom without a warning.
The intense sense of weightlessness swept my entire world. I opened my mouth but not a sound could be screamed out. I could only feel the wind scraping past my ears. My heart felt like it had jumped out of mouth from my throat and all of my nerves were stretched taut into a tense line. It seemed like death had never been so close to me, as though in the next second, it would devour me like this darkness——
Suddenly my waist was firmly tightened around, and my fall halted in mid-air with the hunting wind coming to an abrupt end.
My head felt like it was about to be thrown off my body as I swayed in mid air, feeling extremely dizzy with gold stars practically running circles in my eyes. For the next few seconds, I thought that my body had been cut into two, because when I turned my head, I could see my two calves. After a while, I realized that my rope might’ve been caught by something, causing me to suspend in the air. I looked toward the bottom dazedly and nearly passed out!
Below was a darkness covered with dense and impenetrable fog. It was simply impossible to judge how deep it was. Perhaps there was no end to it. It was possible that I was now suspended over a 10,000 meter abyss.
Damn it…
I tried to wiggle my arms and feet a bit and felt that they were working just fine, the only thing was that the suspended posture made it difficult for me to move. The nearest rock wall was close to 2 meters apart from me. This required me to swing over by force. However, there was only air around me, and I didn’t know how long the rope’s hold on me could last.
Just as I began developing a headache due to being stuck in a complicated and dangerous situation, a string of strange noises suddenly came from the pager. Although the static sound of the electric current was very loud, from the noises, I could still distinguish my name being called by a low voice.
”Agares, is that you? Where are you?” I looked all over, however, my surroundings were shrouded in nothing but a dense darkness. The rope that had me tied up was swaying as though something was crawling from above towards me. I also smelled an incomparable familiar scent, yet I saw nothing nor anyone at all.
I sought for Agares’s figure in bafflement, but I suddenly remembered that he was now a four-dimensional creature, he was capable of becoming invisible. He was obviously somewhere nearby, but why wouldn’t he answer me? Could it be that he was unable to directly talk to me when he was hiding in another space?
TBC
Hello! Translator here! For those who celebrate Easter… Happy Easter Sunday! And for those who are celebrating Qing Ming Day like me, hope you guys enjoy your time with your family!
— Cheonsa
Ohh scary!! Such atmosphere
Excited for next scene 😊
Thanks for the chapter ❤❤
Happy Easter -Qing Ming Day to you and yours too!
Thank you for update!
Those spider mermaids are scary!! Thanks for the chapter!!!
Thanks for the chapter! <3
All right Desharow, time to save mermanity.
Thanks for the great translation ♥️
Thanks for the chapter!❤
when will the previous chapters be corrected? I mean there aren’t many mistakes, but still, when?
However, as I had mentioned couple times before, if any readers are put off by some errors and mistakes that was found, feel free to comment or message me on discord to let me know and I will fix them immediately.
So If you see any errors in the meantime, I am happy to look over them and fix them if needed.
Thank You for Supporting Desharow!
Thanks for the update!
I’m suuuuuuuuuper excited. Can’t wait to get to the end of this story