Chapter Nineteen.

I know that there’s a point where water can get so deep that it will actually turn to ice from sheer pressure. I’d googled a chart out of curiosity a couple of years back and I could vaguely remember it was something ridiculous like two hundred kilometers at earth standards. While I hadn’t gotten that deep yet, I’d hit a dead-end anyway from the monstrous pressure. A rough guess put me at over sixty km straight down, following the stone column the whole way. And even if my main form was mostly liquid, the worm decidedly was not.

Pain leaked into the link from it with every movement. The giant worm had been designed as a terrestrial creature, not for deep-sea diving. Every meter of progress was measured in torment for our already bedraggled steed... but we had to keep going down. Absorbing the [Blightlings] into me, I exited the worm in a fluid mass that the ocean’s pressure had no effect on. Turning back to the worm I reached out to it directly through the link for the first time since we’d started using it as our transport. The sensation that greeted me summarized exactly why I’d avoided talking to the thing for so long.

Limitless hunger. A bottomless void of gluttonous avarice that would consume all living things and not even have the decency to enjoy itself in the process. A monster of ravenous apathy that I only recognized because it reflected the dark thing lurking in the back of my own mind.

Shuddering, I gave it my last orders—hoping I wouldn’t regret them someday.

Go. Eat and grow strong. We will return.

A sense of satisfaction was the only reply as the massive worm turned and began ascending back up to the surface, leaving us alone in the water once again. Well, that definitely wasn’t ominous as hell.

I spread my body out as much as possible until we were almost indistinguishable from the water around us—since we’d just lost our armored shelter—and we kept heading down. Like everything I’d seen of Haven so far, it was everything on Earth dialed up to eleven. This far down we’d left the more terrestrial creatures way behind, and things were getting… weird. Beautiful, but weird.

Colonies of jellyfish floated serenely as far as I could see, flashing brilliantly in the dark water. The sight reminded me of the River of Souls, stretching off into the distance. They came in so many different shapes and sizes I couldn’t keep track at all. The coolest one so far looked like a transparent manta ray the size of a house, trailing glowing tendrils behind it for dozens of meters as it passed gently through the water.

Schools of smaller fish swam in dizzying patterns of light, spooling and unspooling in a hypnotizing display. It was almost enough to forget how dire my situation was. But Haven was keen to remind me just how dangerous it really was.

We’d made our way down for hours, careful to not draw attention. Without the worm as a measuring stick, it was tough to figure out how far we were going, but I guessed we made it another twenty kilometers before we found the bottom. Where the peaceful veneer I’d been basking in vanished like I’d been doused with ice water. Because while we’d reached the bottom of the undersea, we couldn’t see it. Under the mountains of corpses.

Bones, chitin, and decaying flesh stretched as far as I could see. Remnants of the titanic battles playing out above and a million lesser deaths every day. Bodies of kaiju lay broken and twisted, dismembered in defeat with their bones stretching high like monuments to death. And it writhed.

The bottom feeders of the undersea were no less varied than everything I’d seen above, just more… horrific. Something felt deeply wrong with their appearance, like the decay of this place had settled into their flesh. Innumerable crustaceans scuttled over every surface, their shells pockmarked and diseased as they fought for scraps of rot. Billions of amphipods squirmed and struggled like a carpet of pale maggots, competing with swarms of hagfish and lampreys to strip islands of flesh bare.

We floated there in shock for a few minutes, awed by the horrific sight. Well, I thought it was horrific, my minions saw a limitless buffet and promptly filled the link with the mental equivalent of puppy-dog eyes.

“Seriously guys?? You’re not even a little put off by this?”

A chorus of, “No!” “Hungry!” and “So much food!” returned and I briefly wished I had a face to facepalm.

“Alright, but stay close and be car—”

My words were drowned out by squeals of joy as the [Blightlings] descended on the nearest carcass—their evolved forms making quick work of the swarming scavengers, cutting them apart with brutal glee.

“—Aaaand they’re gone.”

I sighed, eventually chuckling at my little murderhobos. We could definitely use the biomass—Spook, Gnaw, and Pollo all had yet to fully evolve and this was definitely a great opportunity to get them caught up. It didn’t even take twenty minutes before the three of them had filled up enough to once again begin the process of evolving into their mature forms.

The three mature [Blightlings] all stood guard over their siblings as their evolution pods slowly grew over the next few hours. I used the time to practice making my aura a little less… ostentatious. Don't get me wrong, protecting my cosmic power looked awesome and it was fun as hell, but my recent experience with horrible sea monsters had fully convinced me that sometimes I needed to be a little more discrete.

Trying to make the lights just dimmer failed miserably. My Ideal of Cosmos feeling almost… affronted that I'd try to reduce its glory—although I may have been reading into things a little. Thinking of workarounds, I thought of trying to shift the light into other spectrums instead of dimming it down. Which caused other problems.

First, there's a lot of spectrums of light other than visible and I had no idea how to change them other than fumbling around with my will. Second… a lot of non-visible light is super bad for you. Fun as weaponizing my aura like that would be, I don't think I'm immune from UV or gamma radiation. Wouldn't it be just peachy to come all this way only to accidentally irradiate myself out of existence? Hard pass.

Eventually, I managed to figure out how to shift the colors without dying horribly. The least visible were all shades of red, which ultimately made my choice for me despite how it somehow managed to make me even more ominous looking. A brief look at myself through Skritter’s eyes confirmed this, with my shapeless mass at the center of a nebula of deep red stars.

Great, I totally don’t look like an apocalypse beast. At least red light gets absorbed fastest by water, or at least I think it does.

Resigning myself once again to the ‘evil monster’ look, I settled in to wait for my minions to evolve. Which (thankfully) didn’t take too long.

Attention.

Minion [Blightling Scavenger] has evolved into a new type.

Type: [Blightshaper]

A highly evolved form specialized in the generation of [Blight] and its effective utilization. Negligible defensive and offensive capability in exchange for an immense increase in non-combat utility. Capable of independently spreading [Blight] to corrupt and suborn nearby flora/fauna. Can directly alter [Blight] sequences to produce desired mutations. Can be summoned directly for increased cost if requirements met.

The dark craftsmen and architects of the horde, [Blightshapers] are bloated monstrosities that will twist all nearby life to serve. Transforming docile creatures into warbeast abominations and erecting impenetrable fortresses of living flesh, they are the backbone of the Blight.

Note: Adult form. Additional evolutions possible, but at greatly increased cost.

My minions would always have a special place in my heart, but my God the new bodies of Pollo and Gnaw were ugly. Gone were the mutant frog/bug/rats, they now looked like enormous slugs supporting themselves on a dozen coiled tentacles. The ends of the tentacles were all liquid [Blight]—the same dark goo Pollo had used to make the worm. I watched as each of the ends transformed quickly into dozens of shapes, from needles to masses of cilia-like tendrils and a variety of others that would make any mad scientist proud. They were my biggest minions yet, each over three meters long with the tentacles stretching out for easily another five.

A small crab scuttled forwards behind them, and Gnaw locked onto it like a homing missile. One of his tentacles shot out, spearing the diseased-looking crab but not killing it. Instead, it was pumped full of [Blight] and transformed uncontrollably, ballooning in size as its shell shattered and reformed continuously. After a few minutes, the transformation was complete, the crab now a mutated amalgamation of parts that stood silently, awaiting orders.

Well, I’m impressed.

My other minions weren’t as excited, perhaps recognizing from the maniacal cackling coming through the link that they’d have to fight the two crafters for access to food from now on.

Spook finally finished his own evolution, which surprised me greatly because he’d gone in an entirely different direction than following in Skritter’s footsteps.

Attention.

Minion [Blightling Hunter] has evolved to a new type.

Type: [Blightwatcher]

A highly evolved form specializing in detection, infiltration, and observation. Trades direct combat prowess for greatly increased camouflage and senses. Integrated multi-spectrum sensory organs for maximum observational coverage. Capable of broadcasting enhanced senses to nearby allies via telepathic link. Can be summoned directly for increased cost if requirements met.

While not as helpless as the [Blightshaper], the Watcher is not a frontline combatant. Instead, it has embraced the fluid nature of its origin to host a suite of sensory organs that would likely fry the brains of any normal creature, reverting to liquid in the event of danger. Using these senses, it renders itself all but invisible to any form of detection—the perfect scout.

I couldn’t help chuckling at my most nervous minion’s transformation into a living manifestation of paranoia. His skin had changed to a smooth texture like a squid’s, and as he stood it rapidly shifted colors to mimic his surroundings. With that notable exception, his body hadn’t changed as much as the others except growing longer—at least until you got to his head. Six pairs of eyestalks crowned his elongated face, the pupils a myriad of colors and shapes that swiveled independently to observe every direction at once. Long, wispy antennas stretched out like whiskers from his nose and he’d gotten an additional pair of ears.

Experimenting with sharing his senses through the link resulted in a wave of sensory overload that had me wanting to puke up my non-existent stomach. I had no idea how he could process that much information, but it didn’t seem to bother him at all.

“Finally… I see everything. I am safe.”

My chuckles devolved into full-blown laughter as his contentment filled the link. Eventually I calmed down and turned back to the landscape (or maybe corpse-scape?) around us.

"Alright guys, we're at the bottom. Time to see how we can go deeper. If we're lucky, we'll be out of this place soon."

Of course, that's when things went very, very wrong.