A couple of days later, having only taken a single short break to let Ivor and Silica sleep, the sound of falling water finally begins to grow in the distance. The shadows surrounding them writhe with excitement, trying to slip through the cracks of Emily's light spell to reach them, and Mensacus steps closer to his mother, glaring at the encroaching darkness as if his gaze could ward it off.

"That's it, isn't it?" Pod asks, tilting his head towards the sound and reaching a hand back to rest on the grip of one of his pistols as a chill runs down his spine.

"Yep." Emily nods, pouring more mana into her light and noticing something flickering in the distance

She hurries forward, breaking into a sprint towards a dark shape pressed against the nearby wall. Lashing out with her left arm, she ejects a long blade from her palm and thrusts it into the dome of solid shadows, cracking the shell and skewering something inside. A sickening shriek rings out as the dark shield dissolves, and, while the enchantments on Emily's earrings pulse and respond to wrap her ears in a protective bubble, Pod and Ivor cry out in pain, raising their hands to cover their ears while Silica whimpers and buries her head in the ground, turning the stone to sand in the process.

Emily retracts her blade and reaches out, catching something slimy and strong in her vice-like grip. The creature tries to struggle against her, wriggling and squirming as she lifts it up to inspect it. It appears insectoid in form, made from segmented rings of chitinous shell with tens of soft, tentacle-like limbs poking out on all sides, secreting the thick, dark liquid covering it.

It keeps screaming from the eyeless, gaping maw at one end of its metre-long body, so Emily lets out a stream of machina, scanning the creature's insides while immobilising it.

"Ouch," Pod complains, half a tone too loud, stepping closer to get a better look at the creature while wiping blood from his ears. "What is that?"

Emily casts a quick Healing Light, wrapping her apprentice's head in a warm glow as Silica pulls her head out of the ground, shaking excess sand from her ears and letting it harden back into stone again, and Ivor walks over while sipping from a vial of vivid-red liquid.

"I have no idea," Emily says, glancing at Mensacus and receiving a head shake. "It's probably something new. It appears to be second circle, with a focus on cloaking and sonic attacks. If it's still living this close to The Abyss, it's probably in the early stages of its growth, though, so it may get stronger with age."

She pulls out an empty glass tank as she explains, using her free hand to punch the wall, breaking away shards of stone to fill the bottom of her terrarium before depositing the new species inside. The moment she breaks contact, the beast recovers from its shock and begins crawling towards the edge of the tank with deceptive speed, trying to escape. Emily closes the lid and begins weaving a spell around the prison, forming bands of silver and burning orange around it that solidify into place after a few seconds, sealing the beast within.

"That should hold for a few days," Emily mutters with a nod before her exposed skin glows with a purple hue and the terrarium is drawn into her Dimensional Factory. "I'll study it later. Come on."

She continues towards the sound of falling water, and Ivor hurries to fall in step beside her.

"Where did you put it?" he signs with a confused tilt of his head. "I thought spatial storages can't hold living beings."

"That's not quite true," Emily responds, signing out her words as she says them to assist Pod in learning the language. "Most spatial storage designs produced in Modo don't have a sufficient internal environment to support organic lifeforms. It's possible to make ones that do, but adding environmental controls to the enchantment significantly reduces the amount of mana you can dedicate to size alteration. I made something similar by creating a pocket dimension linked to me."

She pulls down the scarf around her neck, exposing the shifting patterns dancing across her skin for him to get a better look.

"It's perfectly inhabitable, if a little small at the moment. I'm working on increasing its size over time, but for now it's big enough to store that specimen at least."

The sound of crashing water gets louder and louder until they turn a corner and see the edge of their light vanish completely, absorbed by the darkness as the passage opens up. They approach the edge of the light, watching the stream beside them fall away into nothingness far below.

"Whoa," Pod mutters, peeking over the edge before jumping back when a light breeze brushes past his cheek. "That's kind of horrifying."

"Incredible, isn't it?" Emily says, leaning out and gazing into the gaping darkness as she switches spells, igniting an orb of pure light that burns fiercely enough to illuminate most of the upper cavern, reflecting off the dim crystals on the ceiling and revealing dozens of separate waterfalls feeding into The Abyss.

Ivor pats Pod's shoulder, siding with him, while Silica approaches her mother's side, peeking out into the cavern once before turning back with a shiver and padding over to Pod. Mensacus joins Emily, staring down into his origin with an unreadable expression on his metal face.

"Are we going in?" he asks, a hint of reluctance bleeding into his grating tone.

"You don't want to?" Emily questions with a raised brow, not breaking her eyes away from the darkness below for even a moment, drinking in every minute detail as she tries to further her elemental comprehension.

"I hear the shadows cry," he replies, glancing at the shifting darkness before looking back to his mother. "They're familiar, but not inviting. I have faith in you, absolutely, but I wouldn't risk entering alone."

"That's sensible," Emily agrees with a nod, her eyes and skin shifting as she calls upon her metal connection. "Even I feel a little apprehensive."

She stomps her foot, releasing a sudden wave of liquid metal that reaches out into the air above The Abyss, arcing towards the centre of the cavern while splitting and growing limbs to the connecting tunnels. The metal solidifies once every path is connected, slowly taking on a more refined look with clean-cut support struts and scattered runes carved into it.

After ten seconds of focus, Emily releases her connection with a sharp breath, feeling nearly half her mana vanish in an instant from her reserves to reinforce her construct.

"There you go," she says, turning to Pod and Ivor. "This should make resource gathering easy. It should remain for the duration of my trip down below without issues, but if it fades, you're on your own."

She lets out a small collection of robotic soldiers from her belt as well, separating the storage item and handing out pouches to her troops.

"I'll leave these guys under your control," she tells Pod before turning and walking out onto her new bridge with a wave over her shoulder. "Suck this place dry!"

He nods and sets to giving out commands as Mensacus follows his mother out onto the bridge. They settle down at the large junction in the centre for her to recharge her reserves, studying the writhing shadows without any other signs of life below.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"Ready?" Emily asks, standing up as her reserves become full.

Mensacus silently nods and takes his place beside her, wrapping a tendril-formed arm around his mother's metal limb before they both step forward into thin air and plunge towards the dense, malicious mana below. They fall without any protections at first, leaving behind the burning light above and entering the thick, pooling darkness that completely blocks their view and steals the surrounding sound, leaving them in an unsettling quiet. The rich, cloying mana suffusing the darkness flows across their bodies, coiling around their limbs and slipping through their pores, but Emily quickly uses her machina to burn it away, sensing its less-than-friendly signature trying to enter her.

After a few seconds of falling through nothingness, they hit the surface of a pool of water and sink into it, feeling water swallow them, but seeing nothing as they continue descending through the unrelenting darkness.

¯¯¯¯¯

Chain-Quest completed: The Abyss: Gaze Into

[The Abyss: Gaze Into]

[Rank:] B

[Description:] You've found The Abyss, the heart of The Glade's darkness. Now risk a journey into it.

Requirements:

-Enter The Abyss (Complete)

Rewards:

-Chain-Quest: The Abyss: Gazes Back

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Chain-Quest generated: The Abyss: Gazes Back

[The Abyss: Gazes Back]

[Rank:] B

[Description:] You've taken a risk and taken the plunge, now live to see it through.

Requirements:

-Meet The One Who Watches (Not Complete)

-Survive (Not Complete)

Rewards:

-???

_____

Emily scans through the system pop-up before blinking it away, focusing on her surroundings instead. She can barely tell up from down, and the unnatural quiet, despite her son clutching tight to her arm and clicking his teeth, sends chills down her spine that stay there as the creeping feeling of being watched joins her discomfort.

The invasive mana around them only grows thicker and thicker as they continue to sink, pressing in on all sides and making them feel as if they're already thousands of metres below the water's surface.

This pressure would have been hard to resist at third circle, but I don't see why I couldn't have come this far at least.

After a few seconds, a faint whispering tickles the back of Emily's neck, starting as a weak discomfort hinting at another's presence and quickly growing until it's an incessant hum that threatens to break her sturdy mental defences.

Never mind.

Frowning, Emily finally begins fighting back against the space attempting to smother her by channelling light, focusing on the element and converting as much mana as possible to a cleansing white. It pours from her skin in waves, dancing with the surrounding darkness and ever so slowly pushing it back.

She only manages to claim a few metres around them, but it keeps back the infectious song that was attacking their minds.

'This is unsettling,' Mensacus whispers into her mind, spinning his head around and seeing nothing within their halo of light but murky water.

'Incredibly,' Emily replies, keeping most of her focus on her elemental battle even as she takes note of every oddity she sees, from the odd grey hue of the surrounding water to the shadows that look a little too much like aquatic monsters circling them but never entering their protective light.

They keep sinking, unable to discern their speed thanks to the lack of air bubbles rising around them, and only able to tell time is passing by the tick of Emily's Clock. After ten minutes, a few shadowy, scaled body parts brush their bubble of light, revealing the presence of nearby creatures that Emily can't detect at all. The thick mana interferes with both her extended magical senses and the few detection machines she brought along in her Factory.

After twenty minutes, one of the fish attacks, shooting headfirst into them with its teeth bared. Emily fires a single burst from her Spitter into the open mouth, destroying the brain of the beast before she pulls it into her Factory to inspect. With a deft scan of machina through her linked dimension, she finds that the creature is a second circle breed from the same family as selachi, with a similar internal structure, but with a leaning towards ice instead of fire.

After thirty minutes of sinking, the looming darkness far below changes, taking on a faint hue of shifting colours, so dull Emily isn't sure if she's just imagining it at first. They blend between blues and greens, flickering orange before dropping into a deep crimson that bleeds away into muddy browns before it all repeats again, following a random order each time. Occasionally, the colours appear to fight short battles, flowing back and forth between two until one takes over completely, reminiscent of Emily's current struggle to keep their bubble of light.

Another thirty minutes, and the indistinct shapes moving around them seem to vanish at once, leaving only the faint, dancing colours that always remain in the distance, never getting even half a shade brighter as they shimmer at the edge of what Emily can and can't see.

'Shouldn't we be approaching the bottom soon?' Mensacus eventually asks, unconcerned by the lack of oxygen, but growing tense from the dearth of external stimuli, with even his own movements appearing muted and distant to him.

'I have no clue how deep this Abyss is, but even if it's not spatially expanded, we could be sinking for hours,' Emily replies in an even tone, already starting a countdown in the back of her head till her Clock won't allow her to escape with one click. 'Just relax and let the current carry us. If there's something to find, it'll take us there.'

'And if it doesn't?'

'I'll take us back and we'll try a more active search,' Emily answers, tapping the watch in her arm to emphasise her point.

The water surrounding them noticeably drops in temperature as they keep descending, cooling to an icy chill that seeps into Emily's bones, adding to the weighty pressure limiting her movements. She adds a little more fire to the elements she's producing to fend off the darkness, only using enough to heat her body and carefully avoiding letting any out into her surroundings, unwilling to risk conflict with the water.

The off-putting feeling of being watched that has accompanied them since they hit the water grows the longer they're submerged, and Emily begins to notice the shape of eyes among the shifting hues below. She asks Mensacus what he sees, to make sure she isn't imagining it, and he admits they've never looked any different, appearing as a watchful gaze from the moment he spotted them.

Either his mana sensitivity is better than mine, or those lights, if I can even call them that, are changing based on our mental states. Are they a combined mental attack with the song, or just a feature of this space…

She tries to direct her light down, pouring more mana into the spell and dropping her reserves faster, but the hues stretch with her attempt, maddeningly remaining at the edge of her sight.

Twenty minutes later, with no changes other than the song of the deep growing louder and trying to slip through Emily's protective shield, she decides to try something else. Since no aquatic beasts have revealed themselves recently, she takes a risk and forms a spell from wind and water, wrapping her intent in a thick shield before forcing it out into the water in an echoing pulse. The wave of sound, carrying a message asking for contact, ripples out through the water they can see before vanishing into the black. Emily only knows it's working from her natural link to the spell.

At first, nothing happens, leading her to believe it didn't work. However, ever so slowly, the colours below her begin to grow more distinct, and the song surrounding them beats in a building rhythmic pulse that makes Emily's heart want to beat in sync. The beat gets faster and faster, as if building to panic, and the darkness fighting against her light rages, taking on a watery tint and crushing her with the pressure of thousands of tonnes.

Fuck.

Emily pours mana into her defensive spell, rapidly draining her circles as her light grows to a blinding white, igniting with red-hot flames that instantly flash boil a few metres of space that she fills with air in a quick burst of wind. The encroaching shadows start to recede, building into a dark iridescent wave before slamming down on her defences in one final hurrah.

Emily grits her teeth and holds, watching as her small bubble of safety shrinks to only a few centimetres from her face before freezing, finally stopping the heavy wave.

This time, when the darkness recedes again, it pauses after giving Emily a few metres of safety before rushing into a single point directly in front of her. She feels a sharp blade of mixed elements slice through her shield and hurries to form a second layer, forcing her cores into overdrive. But, instead of attacking her, the invading darkness gathers together into a thin humanoid form that looks like a dark storm cloud playing tricks on Emily's eyes, appearing both impossibly flat and covered in multicoloured textural folds in the same instant.

"Hello," the figure says, their voice carrying through the thin air in Emily's bubble and ringing inside her head as they speak in a language that's both foreign and familiar, translating into Modo's common tongue before she can remember any of the true words being spoken and setting off a splitting pain at the base of her skull.

She scans for internal damage and finds none, despite the ringing now filling her head.

"You're the first to survive my greeting. Welcome back, World's Chosen. I'm The One Who Watches."

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