Kwawurrurrr!! Kururrring!!
‘W-What the heck is going on?!’
In this chaotic situation where the entire ground felt like it was rumbling, Parang was flustered while Alice seemed to think she had found her chance to break free.
Luckily, Parang was focused enough amidst the chaos to not miss Alice’s escape.
Zziik—Zziiik—
Alice, having made a tiny hole, peered outside through it.
Her eyes darted around as she presumably searched for a suitable exit.
Parang couldn’t help but feel tense as her movements appeared exceedingly cautious.
Zziik—Zziiik—
At first, Alice discreetly tore her cocoon, trying not to attract attention in the noisy scene, but as the statues failed to notice her tearing the cocoon, she grew bolder.
Now the hole was bigger, enough for Alice’s full face to peek through.
Kwahrrruuuk!! Kududek!!
Despite this, the vibrations showed no signs of stopping, and the statues were busy running around to prevent the building from collapsing.
‘Aren’t they gonna protect that thing?’
Clearly, nothing inside this building seemed more important than the cocoon Alice was in, yet none of them cared to check on its condition.
Parang couldn’t help but feel puzzled.
‘Wait a sec, looking closely….’
These movements weren’t just absent-minded flailing…
‘They can’t approach at all, can they?’
That thought turned out to be true.
From the moment Alice made a hole in the cocoon, or rather, from the moment the entire building began shaking, or maybe even from before that…
‘From the very beginning…?’
Indeed. From the very start, the statues hadn’t approached the cocoon Alice was trapped in beyond a certain distance.
To verify that, Parang flew up to the ceiling of the building and looked down at the scene.
‘N-No way?!’
Surprisingly, the statues hadn’t even set foot within about a 5-meter radius from Alice’s cocoon.
Ever since Parang entered this memory, or maybe even with almost 100% certainty, even before that…
The statues hadn’t lingered around Alice.
It was unclear whether they hadn’t stayed or they couldn’t, but as far as Parang knew, her long-time friend Alice would never…
Fwoosh, vwoosh!!
Miss such an obvious opportunity.
With all her strength, she forcefully tore the cocoon open and stood outside.
An ominous aura surrounded her, and needles that had clung to her from the water now awkwardly pierced her, leaving wounds all over her body.
In the water, her blood spread out like fog, and the veins beneath her skin glowed purple.
Her face was gaunt, and her body trembled, likely from having not moved for a long time.
And the status window accurately described her condition.
[Warning: ‘Fusion’ was abruptly interrupted before completion. Serious abnormalities detected in the user’s body.]
[If fusion is not resumed, or if other appropriate measures are taken, the probability of death is extremely high.]
Countless pieces of evidence yelled at her, indicating she was on the verge of death.
But her eyes.
Brilliantly shimmering in a light purple hue, those beautiful and utterly clear eyes.
Even with her shaky body, they focused solely on what lay ahead.
The burning desire for survival and the even hotter will surged in her eyes, conveying that Alice had no intention of dying here.
Alice quietly glanced back at the cocoon she had just torn herself from.
Fwoosh—vwoosh!!
As she grabbed it and energetically tore it away to drape it over her shoulders, it looked like she was cloaked in a purple mantle.
‘Huh? What’s that…?’
And from within the cocoon Alice tore away, something caught Parang’s eye.
Black mist.
At the exact spot where Alice had just lain, a black mist mimicking her form lingered.
The faint purple glow emanating from where her eyes used to be was something Parang had seen before.
‘That was, back then…’
The monster fish that appeared in Alexandra’s memories.
The entity that had first shown up when Parang encountered the Slayers’ memories.
If Parang’s life were written as a novel, it would be around episode 44.
‘Is that, like, a byproduct of Alice?’
Then it meant that originally, the Slayers should have fought against the fused Alice instead of that thing.
Parang wanted to ponder further, but focusing on the memory right in front of her took precedence, so she briefly shifted her gaze away.
Meanwhile, Alice, through instinct, intuition, deduction, or whatever means, seemed to realize there was no one to stop her right here and began to walk slowly but surely forward.
Pitter patter, pitter patter, pitter patter.
Her bare feet on the stone floor should have made no sound in this watery place, yet oddly enough, Parang could hear them very clearly.
The building continued to shake relentlessly, but strangely, the space around Alice remained eerily calm, resembling the still surface of a pristine lake.
The statues within the building watched Alice, who had broken free from the cocoon, as if they had become genuine sculptures.
As they ceased to freeze, the trembling building began to collapse rapidly, and stones and decorations fell mercilessly from the ceiling, walls, and pillars.
However, the objects slowly descending through the water didn’t hinder Alice; on the contrary, they fell beside her, adding dramatic flair to the moment.
Eventually, she walked out of the collapsing royal chamber and found herself at the door.
During that time, the statues seemed to be blocked by some invisible wall, unable to approach her.
Without any interruption, Alice pushed hard against the thick, heavy stone door, and the outside scenery unfolded before Parang and Alice.
‘T-This place…!’
The landscape outside was something Parang had never seen before.
They were atop a mountain underwater.
A colossal mountain that could easily be believed to stretch from the ocean floor all the way to the surface.
Parang had never seen a mountain this large on land or even under the sea.
It was a pale, treeless rock mountain rising majestically in the beautiful turquoise waters, with a temple perched at its peak.
From the main gate of the temple to the base of the mountain, a wide path wound down along the mountain’s contours, and the entire mountain was filled with old Greek-style stone buildings made of black rock.
The sizes of those buildings varied; some looked like homes for humans, while others seemed more like homes for giants, and the largest ones seemed like they could house a mountain inside.
Not only that, but there was also a distant line of more black buildings stretching down to the flatlands below.
Parang had no idea where this place was but felt a sense of déjà vu from something she knew.
She unconsciously mumbled the word out loud.
“Atlantis…”
The lost city, Atlantis.
If it really existed, it might look like this, Parang thought.
But just as that thought crossed her mind, there was plenty more shock to come for both Parang and Alice.
Immediately, there was the source of the vibrations that had been shaking the seabed nonstop from earlier.
Parang had initially thought it was a naturally occurring earthquake.
Indeed, the underwater crust was unstable, so it was common for earthquakes to happen during explorations.
But this time was different.
‘That’s….’
Not too far from the mountaintop where Parang and Alice stood, there was ‘that eye.’
[Skill ‘Waterproof Sanity’ is activated.]
The eye Parang ultimately had to defeat. The very entity that could drive one mad at a mere glance was present.
‘Ughhhh…!!’
Parang’s head began to throb intensely.
Throb, throb. As if trying to awaken from the buzz of a heavy drinking spree.
Remarkably, Alice seemed fine, perhaps due to the fusion.
But just that. Any strange or uncomfortable effects were not noticeable.
In the midst of confusion, Parang remembered that her body was still submerged in water.
‘How did I manage to relax while doing this underwater?’
She thought it was a good reflection on her habit of always sleeping in the water and noted she should keep doing so whenever possible.
The creature’s eyes did not seem to be facing the temple, allowing Parang to see its back.
This was likely the reason for her relatively mild mental strain, Parang thought.
After all, the mental attack began the moment it ‘opened its eyes’ when she first saw it.
Perhaps the key to defeating this eye monster lay here, Parang desperately engraved this fact into her mind.
‘First time seeing its back. Surprisingly ordinary-looking.’
While observing what appeared to be a mass with several tentacles from behind, Parang then noticed something peculiar.
Beyond that, what the eye was looking at was somewhat bizarre in appearance.
No, calling it bizarre might be a stretch; it was rather absurd.
What stood there was…….
[Kraken]
The word ‘Kraken’ stood there.
Yes, it was a word.
As if a clumsy editor had crudely shoved a text box into a photo, the space of the blue ocean was sliced away, leaving only white background where the word ‘Kraken’ existed.
Just, in Hangul.
‘What on earth is that…?’
Parang couldn’t let this slide; she organized a few possibilities in her head.
‘First off, there’s no creature that looks like that.’
It’s utterly nonsensical to claim that whatever looked like that was clashing with the eye to cause this earthquake.
There’s a high possibility that a distortion of perception occurred in the process of Alice’s memories being conveyed through evidence to Parang.
‘Then where did that happen?’
First off, it wouldn’t be between the eye and the Kraken. They couldn’t have injected the word ‘Kraken’ into memories written in such a neat script. That had to be the work of a human.
‘But if a human did that, it’s even stranger.’
Is there anyone who would meet Alice? Even if Oceanos searched the entire sea, would he find her in the end? That possibility was dismissed.
Then only one possibility remained.
‘Alice herself.’
She must have for some reason left behind the Kraken’s form from her memory and instead planted that word there.
As for the method and intent behind it, that was still a mystery.
‘IfIget a chance to meet her, I should definitely ask about this.’
Parang glued another note in her mental notebook.
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