Angor dodged again and pressed his back against a stone wall. When the harpoon came, he moved aside so that the weapon would get stuck inside the wall.
He thought he was safe for a moment. But the thick wall that was about ten meters high was shattered by the harpoon, which then began to chase after Angor again.
“Leave me alone already!”
After gaining some distance, he ejected his soul. With a swift move, he materialized the sequence of gravity. It became a gravity water cannon and knocked into the harpoon.
He felt the extreme power displayed by his own attack. The original beam-like gravity power was dispersed by water and turned into a large-scale strike. It broke the harpoon into several parts while creating a giant explosion underwater.
Being in water amplified the great noise by several folds. From the center of the explosion, violent ripples surged around, breaking corals and stones, and creating a storm of debris.
Angor didn’t expect his attack to be so drastic. Even he himself was dragged into the aftermath.
Using the sequence of gravity again, he dragged his body to a safe distance. He couldn’t see the fortress at this spot—there was only more darkness.
But he still felt the water current changing around him.
Again, he cast Light to see what was going on.
The first thing that entered his view was a large whale with a body length of over 50 meters quietly swimming past him.
The creature gave Angor an indifferent glance using its large eyes and slowly moved away.
The whale was not dangerous to him, but he still felt his heart skipped a beat when he saw such a towering creature upon him without even realizing it until it was near him.
Once again, he felt stressful and unsafe. Everything in this dark sea bottom could put fear in people’s minds. No matter where one went, one would still at the mercy of the ocean.
In such a situation, ordinary folks would soon get overwhelmed by loneliness, helplessness, and his own powerlessness, as well as the fear of the unknown.
The giant whale left Angor’s view without causing any trouble.
Angor was no “ordinary folk”. Soon, he recollected his spirit and got ready to move on. The sea was vast but not endless. Compared to the universe, this part of the sea was just as tiny as humans.
Using Light, he checked below him once again.
The cantrip couldn’t help him see very far, but since his physical properties had been enhanced by supernatural power, he had no problem seeing what he needed.
He saw a vortex emerging around the corner of a stone wall, which soon began to die down under great water pressure.
When all turbulence had settled down, he slowly moved deeper again.
Before he could reach the walls, a creature with a pair of glowing green eyes rushed at him.
He quickly created an ice wall, which did not help him block the incoming attacker much. However, it provided him with enough time to move away while casting Fear.
Enhanced by nightmare energy, the cantrip instantly turned the unknown creature into a flinching coward.
Those green eyes widened while the pupils shrank.
Angor heard it releasing noises of a very low frequency, which was usually inaudible to human ears. Although the voice made no sense. To Angor, the creature was only yelling random stuff.
Maybe that’s what it does when it’s afraid?
Before he could understand what the creature would do, he noticed that it had stopped moving. He no longer sensed any heartbeat from it.
Did I just scare it to death??
His “Nightmare Fear” could place victims inside an illusion where their worst nemesis would take form and attack them. And by doing so, the victims would actually believe that they were hurt even though their bodies would be fine.
Perhaps the creature “believed” that whatever it saw had killed it, and it died for real.
Angor frowned. It seemed his cantrip created something that did a pretty good job. Too good, in fact, that it didn’t even give Angor a chance to interrogate the creature.
Angor moved his light source closer and realized that the creature was the same one who attacked him earlier with a homing harpoon. It looked... weird. A pair of green eyes, a giant mouth, three tiny holes as its nostrils... Its skin looked like a toad, while a strange and creamy substance was leaking from it. Also, the creature’s head looked round and jagged like a sunflower.
It had six limbs. Angor guessed that it used “hands” to wield a weapon, but he wasn’t sure since all six limbs looked the same.
Other than these, it also had a small tail that looked like a tadpole’s tail.
Angor didn’t know how to describe the strange being. It didn’t look like a humanoid, but it knew how to use weapons, and it probably lived in that building, so it was likely intelligent.
Angor chose to call it “Toad Skin” for now.
He believed it belonged to a group of similar creatures that built their homes underwater, and it was possible that they knew something about the Sea of Purification.
However, he couldn’t possibly scrutinize a dead corpse. He had to move to the building or at least find another “Toad Skin”.
He took a brief moment to dissect the body and noticed that it had a completely different organ system compared to humans. It seemed the creature could breathe using gills, and it had developed a relatively large brain.
Although Angor found no trace of supernatural power. The gluey liquid that seeped from the creature’s skin did contain small energy residue, but the energy would quickly dissipate in the water before Angor could even examine it.
Similar to human blood, the blood of a Toad Skin was also red. It didn’t take long for several ferocious-looking sea creatures to be drawn by the scent of the blood.
In order not to draw any potential threat to the scene, Angor tossed the corpse somewhere far away and moved on.
The walls were damaged after the previous battle, but the round fortress was spared.
After making sure his Infinite Reticence was working, Angor moved to the building.
He had no idea whether more Toad Skins would show up, nor did he know how he was found out earlier. To be safe, he maximized the mana consumption of Infinite Reticence.
The fortress wasn’t big—about three or four meters tall, at best. It didn’t have any outstanding decorations or designs either, but the attached corals and seashells somewhat gave it a bright look.
No monster appeared again when Angor reached the wall of it.
So that Toad Skin lived here alone?
He looked around more. As far as he could see in this darkness, there were no other buildings.
The entrance of the fortress was located on top of it. Angor found a window and carefully inspected it. It seemed the “window” was made from a semi-transparent gel-like material. He gave the window a gentle poke and noticed that the material felt soft and stretchable.
He couldn’t see through the window, but he noticed something giving out yellow light inside like an oil lamp.
The door was left open. He swam through the entrance. He then kept going deeper into a sealed tube-like passage until he squeezed through another gel-like barrier shaped like an egg.
The egg was partially submerged in water, while the area above it was empty air. Angor moved upward through the egg and successfully entered the room.
He never thought such a habitat existed in this place. Whoever designed the tube passage he just traveled through meant to use pressure closure to keep water outside. And such an entrance was enough to suggest sapient being.
He looked around and realized that he was on the second floor of the building. A lit oil lamp sat on top of a coral stand not far from him. Its cold fire was releasing a pleasant fragrance into the room without causing any smoke or sharp smell.
He took a small tour around the room. Apart from the lamp and some seaweed that was meant to produce oxygen, he didn’t find anything else that could pique his interest.
There was a ladder hatch that allowed him to move to the lower floor.
The ground floor was a bigger chamber with a patch of corals placed on the ground, which made it looked like a colorful bed. Also, there were strange paintings and characters on the walls that resembled the primitive cave arts left behind by ancient human tribes.