Chapter 27

Chapter Twenty Seven – The Light In the Darkness

As Lin continued to travel forward, day and night switched back and forth.

Lin saw many things. In this vast water, sand was the primary environmental characteristic and then there was some rock. Lin rarely saw anything other than these two things. If Lin discovered something else, it would not miss it.

Right now, Lin was swimming towards a place like that. However, darkness blocked its progress.

Cold, empty. In the dark water, Lin could only see the surrounding environment illuminated by the dim light of the lantern. Lin had experienced night many times but it could not familiarize itself with night.

The light of the lantern was always limited and restricted Lin’s vision. When night came, Lin would slowly rise to the water surface to gaze at the endless stars. Then it would start moving again when day came.

Lin closely rose to the water surface. However, this time, the sky seemed slightly unusual … …

The Leviathan floated to the surface and observed upwards using an eye it had made temporarily. But it only saw darkness.

Where were the stars? Where were the flashing lights? Had they disappeared?

Would they also be obscured by the darkness?

As Lin was puzzling over this, an extremely bright light suddenly flashed by. Its light illuminated the entire region of water. Lin could feel the air and water trembling the moment it appeared.

What was that? So unique … …

Lin suddenly became excited. Travelling, as expected, was the correct choice. Lin was able to see many unknown and interesting things.

Then multiple lines of light flashed and disappeared. However, the light was not as strong, and the water and air did not shake.

These lights that originally belonged to the sky flashed by. While they were not as beautiful as the starry sky, Lin felt extremely interested.

Suddenly, Lin felt the outer shell of the Leviathan being hit by something. While the force was small, there were many of them.

Was this … … water?

Countless small droplets of water fell from the air region. They hit the Leviathan’s outer shell as well as the surrounding water, creating waves and ripples.

Such an unique phenomenon. Why would water fall from the air?

Lin was curious but it did not linger here because this region of water was starting to shake. If Lin did not leave, it might be carried somewhere unknown.

The Leviathan released a part of the gas inside its gas sac and continued to sink into the water. Only when it reached the deep would it not be affected by the water current.

Lin did not like darkness. In this world, Lin was only accompanied by the weak lantern light. Everything became extremely difficult during this time. While LIn would occasionally find some organisms in the darkness, most of the time, there were none.

However, single-celled organisms were everywhere. Lin suspected they were in all waters.

Suddenly, an enormous black shadow flashed by Leviathan and then disappeared into the darkness where the lantern could not illuminate.

It seemed that Lin wasn’t alone in the darkness.

The Leviathan released a large number of floating lanterns to increase the range of Lin’s vision. Lin observed carefully if that organism would appear again.

The Leviathan still continued to sink and appeared defenseless. As expected, that figure appeared again. It immediately caused some lanterns lights to go out. It seemed they were eaten.

This organism ate the lanterns upon appearing and then fled back into the darkness. As the lantern light was not bright to begin with, Lin could not see the organism clearly.

However, Lin estimated it was a fast organism about the size of the mothership. Lin found that the lanterns had died … … being torn apart by countless hooks.

This was an arthropod.1

Arthropods mostly stayed on the sand and moved slowly. The most common trilobite was an arthropod.

This was the first time Lin encountered such a fast arthropod. It felt peculiar. Maybe its inner structures would give Lin a surprise.

This arthropod didn’t directly attack Leviathan but swam around to hunt Lin’s floating lanterns.

Lin put away all of its lanterns. It created a special lantern. This type of lantern would give off light, but Lin shoved many exploding balls inside.

Lin released many lanterns filled with exploding balls. Not far from the Leviathan, one was immediately eaten. While Lin could not see in the dark, the special sense tentacles on the Leviathan immediately detected the vibrations in the water.

That organism was shaking its head. Lin could feel the water currents it produced. It appeared the organism had fallen for the trap.

Following this, Lin released a special exploding bomb. It was similar to the previous exploding bombs, having a siphon and jet system to swim fast. Lin added light balls on the sides for illumination and an eyeball at the front, naming it a “Light Guided Exploding Bomb!”

Countless Light Guided Exploding Bombs charged towards the arthropod in the darkness. When they neared their target, Lin saw the other clearly.

This organism had a flat and oval body with leaf-shaped limbs on both sides for movement. At the front of the head was a pair of thick and inwardly curved segmented limbs with many sharp reverse hooks on the surface.

Lin would call it a “hooked worm.”

At this time, it was shaking its head in the water. It appeared the exploding bomb had affected it significantly. This was where Lin was different from other organisms. When other organisms felt pain, they would commonly flee or go crazy, doing some strange things to accelerate their own deaths.

Most likely, the cells were constantly relaying messages back to the “brain” and caused the “brain” to become abnormal due to too many messages. If the “hooked worm” had a brain, that is.

To Lin, pain was a message to attack, but it didn’t affect Lin’s thoughts at all.

Lin saw the hooked worm’s weakness through the eyeball of the Light Guided Exploding Bomb –the gills.

What was … … this feeling?

A strange feeling came from Lin’s thoughts. The temperature of the water suddenly increased and the entire region of water seemed to be shaking.

Boom … …

In this moment, the entire water region was as bright as day.

What was that?

Burning hot lava exploded out ot the enormous rock protrusion on the sea bed. The entire seabed was constantly trembling.

This was where Lin wanted to go to! During the day, that only looked like an enormous hole at the bottom of the water. Now it sprayed out lava?

The light of the lava illuminated the dark water. They spilled outwards onto the surrounding seabed. All organisms were desperately running away and those that could not move were consumed by the lava.

From where Lin was right now, it was not threatened. It calmly crushed the hooked worm’s head into pieces and then had the gathered the remains and ate them.

As Lin enjoyed its food, it admired this unique underwater scene.

As the lava exploded out accompanied by large burst of gas bubbles and things like smoke which Lin had seen before, the power of the explosion rose into the water, and Lin could clearly feel the accompanying high heat.

Lin also saw the opening where lava had exploded from slowly bulge up. However, it stopped shortly after, and so did the lava.

The lava gradually slowed its spread, and stopped moving as though it was solidifying. As the bright red light became dim and disappeared, this region of water became dark once again.

Translator Ramblings: Times like this I wish I learned Latin so I can create my own scientific and grammatically correct species names.