Chapter 34: The Bottomless Deep

Rain was still sinking deeper into the ocean, watching as she drew closer and closer to the Titan below, who was still struggling to break the chains around his body. Rain looked down at the monster. The dragon was going to light along with her skin if she did not want to be burned alive. She needed to think of a way out.

The only things ahead had was an ability she just gained—Lightning Gaze. She looked at it as the system notifications popped up.

[ ACQUIRED SOUL ABILITIES ]

Lightning Mark

Lightning Blitz

Lightning Gaze

[ ABILITY DETAIL: LIGHTNING GAZE ]

Ability Name: Lightning Gaze

Ability Type: Acquired Soul Ability (Sensory / Ocular)

Description:

When active, the wielder’s vision shifts beyond the physical spectrum, perceiving reality through the fundamental flow of bio-electric currents and electromagnetic fields.

Rain read the description again. Beyond the physical spectrum. She was not sure what they meant as she looked down, sinking even deeper and deeper. Even a normal human would have been crushed to death by the ocean, but Rain was an Eclipser, so it was understandable.

As Rain succumbed to corruption, she sank deeper into the boiling, suffocating dark of the abyss. The crushing atmospheric pressure and the radiant heat spill from the chained Titan below burned against her paralyzed flesh.

She had three abilities acquired from slaying Dark Ones, but her options were practically nonexistent. Lightning Mark required physical contact or targeted movement—impossible while her nervous system remained completely locked down.

Lightning Blitz was an outright death sentence; releasing high-voltage electrical energy outward into the conductive ocean would instantly fry her internal organs from the inside out.

That left only Lightning Gaze.

What use is an eye technique in a place like this? Rain thought with a bitter, silent sigh.

With no other choice, she focused her mind and activated the newly synchronized ability. Her paralyzed eyelids opened, and her vision shifted violently.

The murky blackness vanished, replaced by a hyper-detailed overlay of the physical spectrum, the delicate flow of ambient energy, and the subtle currents of bioelectricity tracing through every living thing in the deep.

First, her gaze locked onto the colossal entity waiting directly beneath her.

Through the lens of Lightning Gaze, the Titan’s sheer scale was staggering—a towering, monolithic figure whose mere silhouette defied human comprehension.

Its massive, armored form was engulfed in flames, but this was no ordinary fire; it was pure, condensed light, blazing so intensely it turned the surrounding water into a silent cauldron. Thick, rusted chains bound its wrists, torso, and neck, anchoring it to the ocean floor.

As Rain peered deeper into its physical spectrum, her eyes widened.

Beneath the blazing light armor lay a blackened, twisted core: a corrupted soul. The Titan was not merely a wild Astral Beast. In this power system, beasts and Dark Ones shared similar ranks and paths, but their origins were fundamentally different.

Astral Beasts were wild creatures tainted by corruption, whereas Dark Ones were once humans or mystical beings who had succumbed to the darkness entirely.

This Titan was a human—or had been one long ago—before falling to corruption.

Rain tracked the glowing energy centers within its body. Five massive Life Gates burned furiously with raw power, confirming its standing as an Azure Class Calamity.

But right beside them, tucked deep within its sternum, Rain spotted a sixth Life Gate. It was faint, dormant, and slowly pulsing with a terrifying purple hue.

The bastard is on the verge of breaking through, Rain realized, her blood running cold. It’s about to become an Indigo Class Calamity.

Sinking closer at a snail’s pace, Rain shifted her gaze down toward the anchor points. Five sun-like cores hovered around the Titan, holding the titanic chains in place. But as her enhanced sight inspected the cores, she noticed a critical flaw: one of the five cores was dying. Its blinding radiance was flickering, its golden light sputtering out like a lamp running low on oil.

Yet that wasn’t the stranger part.

Branching off from the dying core was a thin, translucent pathway of energy—a subterranean conduit siphoning power away from the anchor.

Driven by desperate curiosity, Rain allowed her vision to follow the pathway, tracing it downward past the Titan’s feet, past the glowing orbs, and down into the seabed.

That was when a horrifying realization struck her like a physical blow.

The ocean floor beneath the Titan wasn’t the bottom. The Titan wasn’t standing on the absolute bed of the realm.

The siphoning pathway plunged deeper and deeper into an endless, false floor. The deeper her Lightning Gaze perceived, the more terrifying the reality became. The ocean felt bottomless, an infinite expanse of void disguised as water.

The energy pathway finally came to a halt against a massive, artificial barrier—an ancient, abyssal wall buried miles beneath the sea floor.

What is down here?

Determined to see what lay beyond, Rain pushed her Eclipser mental strength and her newly acquired eye ability to their absolute limits. Veins bulged along her temples as her vision pierced straight through the dense, enchanted stone of the wall.

What she saw on the other side made her heart stop completely.