Shrouded Seascape

First Mate Seth's words made everyone listening instantly tense up. They clearly suffered an accident. Charles put the black microphone to his mouth and anxiously shouted, "First Mate Seth! Report! Respond if you can hear me!"

However, no more noises could be heard from the speaker. First Mate Seth had gone radio silent. With furrowed brows, Charles grabbed the nautical chart to check their positions.

"Malfoy and Scorpion's Tail, you two are the closest to them. Change course and go to the rescue! The other ships will head there immediately as well!"

After hearing two acknowledgements, Charles turned to the brass communication pipe that led to the turbine room and shouted, "Chief Engineer! Maximum speed! We must get there immediately!"

"Copy that, Captain!" Audric's voice echoed from the pipe.

A low whirring reverberated throughout the Narwhale as she began to accelerate. The rest of the crew prepared for a battle to break out at any moment without waiting for any orders from Charles.

Time ticked by slowly, and the atmosphere on the ship grew heavy. Fortunately, the crew was in a stable mood. Casualties were inevitable when it came to exploration, and they clearly had long gotten used to such casualties.

After two hours of non-stop moving, they finally arrived at the last known position of First Mate Seth's vessel. As a ship-cum-submarine, the vessel was like one big lump of iron; the vessel was modified for diving, after all.

Upon arriving at the seafloor that resembled a canyon, Charles was greeted by a region full of metal debris rather than a massive lump of iron. It seemed that First Mate Seth's vessel had been torn apart like paper.

The two ships that had arrived before Charles were moving around, sweeping the seafloor with their searchlights in an attempt to look for any survivors. However, Charles knew that their effort was bound to be futile.

They were so deep that if an ordinary human being were to expose themselves to the crushing water pressure, they'd die instantly.

Charles' brows were knitted tightly as he pondered over their next course of action. After a while, Charles went to the aft deck and brought the puppet with him to the foredeck. He pointed at the scene outside the reinforced glass and asked, "You've been here before, right? Tell me what's behind this."

The half-headed puppet looked up, and its rusty eyeballs rotated stiffly to gaze at the debris outside. "Lion..."

"What?" Charles almost thought that he had misheard the puppet or it had expressed itself incorrectly. How could there be a lion in the sea?

The puppet moved closer to the glass and sluggishly said, "Almost... there. I go out..."

Charles instantly understood what the puppet was trying to do.

The puppet was going to lead the way for them.

Charles stared deeply at the puppet for a while before waving his hand, allowing Dipp to lead it into the decompression chamber. There were dangers lurking up ahead, but they had already come this far; they couldn't give up halfway.

"Dipp, send our coordinates to the other captains and tell them to gather here!" Charles ordered. It was impossible to perfectly counter an unknown danger, so the best course of action was to stick together and fight together.

The puppet towering over four meters tall was sent into the deep sea. Contrary to its sluggish movements on land. It was incredibly agile in the water. Blue creatures that resembled sea anemones had grown out of its joints, allowing the puppet to swim as effortlessly as a fish in the deep sea.

A few hours later, the other exploration ships arrived one after another. With the Narwhale and the puppet at the helm, they moved in a line, quietly streaking across the deep sea.

Soon, they covered a distance of more than fifty nautical miles. If it hadn't been for the compass and the other equipment telling them that they had been traveling northward, Charles would have thought that the puppet was making them move in circles in the pitch-black deep sea.

Just as they were about to breach sixty nautical miles of distance traveled, the puppet suddenly came to a halt. The next second, the sonar generated a pulse of sound—something colossal was above them.

The huge searchlights on the eleven exploration ships rose upward, and everyone saw an island suspended in the water. The island was massive; there was a cloud of mist above it and a huge dark red tube beneath it.

There was no mistaking it—the island was their destination!

The exploration ships surrounded it carefully, and divers with oxygen tanks began approaching the island up above.

Charles didn't go with them. He decided to stay in the Narwhale to oversee the entire operation. Bandages, Dipp, and the crew members of the other exploration ships swam up to the island.

The people who had been chosen to swim up to the island were not chosen randomly. They were selected carefully, and the combination of their abilities would ensure that the exploration was completed as soon as possible.

There were also reasons as to why Bandages and Dipp had to go.

As a Deep Dweller, Dipp was incredibly useful in the deep sea, while Bandages couldn't get affected by the island at all, which meant that he would not get trapped in the walls. In other words, he could keep providing support to the others from the outside.

Charles' heart was in his throat as he watched them swim into the colossal island.

They had been here before, so they knew that the island was capable of pulling people into its walls and trapping them inside. However, the island was a god's torso, so no one could say for sure whether there would be any other complications or not.

Time seemed to slow to a snail's pace, and everyone waited anxiously on the deck of their ship. Eventually, the group returned from their exploration.

Dipp's green scales on his abdomen had been torn off, and blood was seeping out of the wound. When there was no longer any water in the decompression chamber, Charles walked into the chamber.

"How did you get that injury?" Charles asked with a solemn face.

"One of the creatures trapped inside did this to me," Dipp said, shaking his head to shake off the dizziness. "Humans aren't the only ones trapped inside, but that does not matter. Captain, we haven't been to this island. I searched all over, but I couldn't find your left arm."

"What?!"

"Really, I made multiple rounds around the island, but I still couldn't find it. At first, I thought it was simply because I wasn't looking around as meticulously as I should have been, but then I remembered that Bandages had scribbled some words on the walls to guide us out of the island.

"However, I couldn't find any of those words on the island. I'm sure this island wasn't the same island we visited back then," Dipp explained.

Charles glanced at Bandages, and the latter nodded in agreement.

Charles fell into deep contemplation. He then remembered that dozens of islands sank along with that island at the time. In other words, there were many islands similar to that one, and Charles had to find the island where he had lost his arm among them.

The others stared quietly at Charles, waiting for his order. As the captain, he had the highest authority among anyone here.

After a long time, Charles finally looked up and said, "Pass my order down to the other ships. Spread out and advance along the tube below the island."

"Captain," Dipp chimed in, "What's below that tube is..."

"I know. Just do as I say. If we want to find the other islands, we need to track down the source."

Just like that, the ship-cum-submarines on the seafloor began moving. They stayed close to the dark red tube connected to the bottom of the colossal island as they sailed away into the distant darkness.

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