Published at 24th of February 2023 12:20 am

Chapter 295: Red From the Depths Part 1

This chapter is updated by NovelFree.ml

At first I thought that the “Night Vision” effect that was characteristic of the “Glossy Feather”, the helmet that was serving as Tactical Warbeast’s “Suzaku” control unit, was the ability that the helmet itself had, but it turns out that it was just because it was powered up by Suzaku itself. Talk about a bummer.

Right about now I could really use that night vision power. Because even with the enhanced vision characteristic of player characters, the darkness that was currently surrounding me was deep and impossible to see through, even though my immediate vicinity was slightly brighter than the rest of the area.

But even without Night Vision on my hand, I must say that the technology from the Era of the Gods was really handy and it was making my life that much easier. Of course, there was no oxygen to be found underwater, so I had to utilize the strategy of escaping into the INVENTORY quite often and coming back here, but every single time I was doing that there was no water leaking into the armor’s inside. So once again: thank you, the technology from the Era of the Gods!

However, there was also another problem that emerged here: due to the combination of issues such as being underwater, the Tactical Warbeast having no power source to cause it to move and the armor being just plain and simple heavy as hell, I was moving extremely slow here. So slow, in fact, that I had to cast a certain type of magic onto myself in order to me able to move at an acceptable pace in this place.

「Now that I think about it, that magic would have been extremely useful during the battle with Nightprowler Luukan. Maybe it is going to be a part of “Luukan Meta” from now on……?」

Fortunately for me, it seems that whatever magic the player would cast onto himself with the help of the Lapis Star Cloak would also be transferred onto the Tactical Warbeast and affect it in the same way. That is why “Fugaku” was able to move right now. I am talking about a rather basic magic spell called “Magic Torch” here. It is a simple spell that cost about two thousand mani, which was small pocket money for me at the current moment. Its effect is that upon activation it generates an orb of magic light that continues to eat away on the user’s magic points until they either run out or the spell is cancelled. But the best thing is that the longer the spell is active, the brighter the light becomes. Of course, if you have a normal torch you do not need spell like that, but one: I do not have a torch myself. And two: normal torch would become useless here, underwater. Hence the need for the spell.

There is even more ridiculous thing to that magic as well: you can cast it basically in any kind of environment, as long as your hands are able to move and activate the spell itself. It is so broken that you could easily use it to expose Luukan’s alter ego and bully it to death, as long as you won’t forget to replenish your magic points reserves and remember to keep the spell on going.

However, the true value of that magic lies elsewhere. Basically, it is a passive kind of magic, one that only needs to be casted once to stay in effect, and then you can do whatever the hell you want with your hands, like using other spells or casting skills and use weapons. And I have no idea if there are class skills that would allow for such a thing to happen, but if you have a thing such as this Lapis Star Mantle, you can even cast multiple instances of such spell instead of one. So double or even triple the light source would not be a problem here.

「Disposable Magic Scroll…… “Active Sonar”!」

The price tag on this thing was two hundred thousand mani. For such a price you would expect it to be extremely good and universal, but it was actually extremely situational spell. Borderline useless, actually.

What is that magic? It is the kind of magic that allows you to detect enemies and display terrain information in the thirty meter radius from the caster, giving you specific information about the location of possible enemy mobs, NPCs, item boxes and such. On a side note here, usually with magic scrolls a following rule can apply: the stronger the effect written on the magic scroll, the bigger the price of the scroll itself.

As for why a simple sonar scroll like that would cost two hundred thousand mani…… Well, I think it’s because of the difficulty and complexity involved with the sonar. Normally your brain does all the heavy lifting when visualizing stuff that you see in front of your eyes, so magic imitating such an effect must be fairly complex and difficult to obtain via normal means. So it’s all about the resource allocation.

「…… And I mean, let’s be real here: did Siegwurm really just threw that other dragon here, flattened him and turned him into a lid?」

Combining the illuminating effect of the Magic Torch together with the magic sonar filling my brain with various information, it is easy for me to locate the possible place for that “lid”. Or at least something that was acting like it, since at the very bottom of the crater there was some sort of bony remains and a formation that resembled giant horns. So at the very least I know that some part of that story was apparently true.

At the same time, it could be seen that parts of the crater’s floor as well as its walls were covered in huge cracks. Those must be the scars created by the volcanic activity below, and fortunately enough they were wide enough that I should be able to pass through them without much of a problem. So even though the lid was still fulfilling its purpose as intended, there was a way for me to pass through it.

「Okay, here goes…… Hmngggh!!!」

CRACK!!! (The sound of “Fugaku” trying to pass through the cracks)

I knew it, this Heavy Armor is fat as shit…… I just hope I won’t get stuck in here. That being said, I had to make one trip inside of INVENTORY while passing through the cracks.

「So far so good. Even the water pressure is not that much of a problem…… Or is it?」

Now that I think about it, it may be possible that the further down I go, the tighter the pass will become. So maybe even with a more slender armor the free passage may be impossible. So that means I will have to exit the armor and proceed with my physical avatar? …… It’s not like I do not have means to proceed further, but I wanted to save it for some dire times. I did not wanted to abuse it or rely too much on it all the time.

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