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Chapter 179: Stepping Out into the World (1)

When Aquaz informed him that the presence of a Forbidden Land had taken over the mermaid city, a window appeared before him.

[Quest 787.]

[Respond to the Other.]

It was the same quest window that had helped him since the white snowfield and had occasionally appeared even after he ventured outside.

The content of the quest was to respond to the Other.

Until now, Ketal thought the Other mentioned in the quest referred to the monkeys.

However, even after dealing with the monkeys, the quest completion notification did not appear.

The quest was still ongoing.

“……”

Ketal’s eyes narrowed.

Of course, it wasn’t strange that the quest hadn’t been completed.

He hadn’t confirmed the depths where the monkeys lived.

He assumed they had all come up, but there could still be remnants.

The most likely reason the quest wasn’t completed was that some monkeys were still hiding in the deep sea.

But something was bothering him.

Ketal’s intuition warned him that this wasn’t the reason the quest hadn’t been completed.

“Kukulitan.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Do you have a map of the sea?”

“A map? Yes, we do.”

Kukulitan responded, flustered by the sudden question.

“We have a map that outlines the entire nearby sea.”

“Can you show it to me?”

“Yes.”

Kukulitan wagged his tail and went into the city.

He soon returned with a map.

“Here it is.”

“Thank you.”

Ketal spread out the map.

It was quite large, showing not only the nearby sea but also the continent on the opposite side.

This allowed Ketal to realize.

“…This sea is connected to the white snowfield.”

At the edge of the map, a white continent could be seen.

There were no obstacles between the mermaid city and the white snowfield, just a vast sea.

“Yes, that’s correct…. Is there a problem?”

Kukulitan seemed not to understand Ketal’s concern.

“At least for now, there isn’t.”

However, Ketal remained silent.

Kukulitan, realizing what Ketal was worried about, smiled.

“Are you considering the possibility of something from the white snowfield reaching here? That’s an excessive concern. So far, we’ve never heard of anything emerging from the white snowfield.”

The white snowfield was vast.

The Forbidden Land existed in the center of the continent and was connected to many places.

If anything from there had come out, rumors would have spread long ago.

But there had been no news, indicating that nothing had come out of the white snowfield.

Kukulitan spoke lightly.

“Maybe there’s some special restriction because it’s such an old and large Forbidden Land?”

“……”

Ketal didn’t reply.

His very presence here proved Kukulitan’s assumption wrong.

Ketal had believed he was unique, having escaped the white snowfield through the format of the quest.

Therefore, he thought other entities couldn’t leave the white snowfield.

So far, he considered the appearance of other magical entities in the world to be unrelated to the white snowfield.

But what if that wasn’t the case?

Ketal recalled the words of the entity he defeated just before leaving the white snowfield.

[The stopped wheel is starting to turn again! Monster! Your desire will be fulfilled at the end of the distortion!]

At the time, he didn’t care.

His mind was focused solely on the thought that killing that entity would let him leave.

In that moment, he wasn’t in a normal state.

But now, those words came back to him.

‘The restriction hasn’t been lifted.’

Kukulitan’s assumption wasn’t entirely wrong.

If the restriction had been lifted, the entities wouldn’t have remained quiet.

The fact that they still hadn’t shown themselves indicated that the restriction still existed.

But what if it had weakened?

What if something was twisted?

Ketal maintained his silence.

Seeing his expression, Kukulitan stammered, sensing a foreboding feeling.

“Even if something did come out, wouldn’t it be too far for us to worry about? As you can see from the map, it’s extremely far. It would take a mermaid months to swim that distance at full speed.”

Mermaids are incredibly fast in the sea, outpacing most fish.

For it to take them months meant it was truly a vast distance.

But Ketal knew.

The distance means nothing to the monsters from that place.

Primate creatures living in the depths of the sea.

They were similar to Nano in being entities from the Forbidden Land, but they were few in number and individually not very strong.

Two superhuman-level strong individuals could wipe them out.

And likewise, the weak leader monkey.

The familiar, recent wound on its back.

“…I’ll be stepping out for a bit.”

“Huh?”

Kukulitan was flustered.

He tried to ask something, but Ketal stomped his foot.

A thunderous noise echoed through the sea.

The mermaids restoring the city were startled and scattered.

“Wha, what?”

By the time the sea calmed down, Ketal was gone.

* * *

A little before Ketal and Kukulitan’s conversation.

Aquaz and Baker were descending deeper into the sea.

As they went down, it felt like they were reaching the very bottom of the world.

They saw it.

A twisted underwater cave.

The entrance was enormous, about the size of a lake.

They instinctively knew this was the entrance to the Forbidden Land.

“Mr. Baker, are you alright?”

“Don’t worry about me, Aquaz.”

Baker said confidently.

Aquaz smiled faintly.

“Then let’s go.”

With serious expressions, they stepped into the Forbidden Land.

The moment they entered the underwater cave, they realized.

The air was different.

It was as if the space itself was separate; the atmosphere inside the underwater cave was different from outside.

It felt like a wall divided them.

Aquaz groaned.

“This is… the Forbidden Land.”

The Other that had existed on the continent for a very long time.

They were now inside the Forbidden Land.

Aquaz and Baker cautiously entered.

Baker spoke playfully.

“We could make a living as storytellers later, don’t you think? We’re probably the only ones who’ve entered the Forbidden Land in the deep sea.”

“That’s true. It’s something to brag about to our comrades when we get back.”

Aquaz agreed.

Though they were tense, they weren’t particularly anxious.

This Forbidden Land was the home of the monkeys.

And they had already exterminated the monkeys.

They knew their strength and level.

Even if there were remnants, they could defeat them without much difficulty.

And if it got tough, they could just hide and escape.

So their expressions weren’t dark at all.

They continued descending deeper into the sea.

“It’s deeper than I thought.”

“It’s not small, considering those big creatures lived here in groups. But it’s even bigger than I imagined.”

The underwater cave was wider than they expected.

They kept descending, yet the bottom was still out of sight.

As they continued going down, something strange happened.

Aquaz frowned slightly.

“…I smell something rotten.”

“Yeah, what’s that smell?”

Baker grimaced as well.

It was a highly unpleasant smell, like rotting flesh.

Pieces of what seemed to be prey left behind by the monkeys began to float in front of them.

“How filthy did those monkeys live?”

Baker muttered in disgust.

The smell intensified as they descended.

And it wasn’t just the smell that was strange.

“Our vision….”

“It’s getting darker.”

The blessing they received gave them adaptability similar to mermaids.

Mermaids have the ability to see through the sea, regardless of the darkness.

It’s an innate ability they’ve had since the beginning of their species.

The fact that their vision was darkening meant that even for mermaids, this place was so dark that it was impossible to see.

Unaware of this fact, they merely thought it was dark because they were in deep waters.

The deeper they went, the darker their vision became, and the stench grew stronger. Eventually, they could see nothing.

At the end of this descent.

“We’ve arrived.”

They reached the bottom.

But it was so dark that nothing could be seen.

“Um… I’ll light it up.”

“Got it. And the smell is horrible. What is it? Are they storing rotten fish?”

“I’ll check it out. The brilliance of the Sun God shines even in the absence of light.”

Aquaz prayed.

At that moment, a powerful light shone above their heads.

“…Huh?”

“Huh?”

Aquaz and Baker gasped.

As the darkness lifted, revealing what had been hidden, they could see.

They had reached the bottom of the Forbidden Land.

And there were the corpses of the monkeys.

“…Wha, what?”

“What is this?”

They couldn’t help but be bewildered.

This was the monkeys’ habitat, their sanctuary, so to speak.

Yet the floor was covered with the corpses of monkeys.

“Uh… could it be that they discarded monkeys whose lifespans had ended beneath the sea?”

“That… doesn’t seem likely.”

The monkey corpses didn’t look that old.

They didn’t even seem to be more than a few months old.

“Wait a moment. In that case, the rotting smell….”

It wasn’t the smell of fish caught by the monkeys.

It was the smell coming from the monkey corpses.

“How many monkeys are there exactly…?”

Baker muttered in disbelief, his face aghast.

Despite the vast expanse of the floor, it was packed full of monkey corpses.

At least hundreds, possibly over a thousand.

“There were this many monkeys…?”

They groaned.

Each individual monkey was a challenge even for superhuman-level beings.

And there were possibly over a thousand of them.

If they had all come out, even they wouldn’t have been able to handle it.

They would have devastated and collapsed the entire sea.

But that’s why there were questions.

Why were all the monkeys dead here?

Judging by the state of the corpses, it hadn’t been long.

They seemed to have died all at once, judging by the degree of decay.

It meant that several hundred monkeys had been slaughtered within a few months.

“…….”

The calm expression they had before disappeared from their faces.

“… Did they not escape?”

“There are piles of corpses. It seems they attempted to escape, but something blocked them.”

The corpses were piled up within a certain area.

It seemed like they had attempted to flee but were blocked by something.

However, there was no visible barrier blocking their escape.

Aquaz and Baker walked slowly across the floor with rigid expressions.

And they saw it.

One monkey’s corpse was right in the center of the floor.

That monkey was exceptionally large.

It was twice the size of the leader monkey they had seen.

Its physique was extremely robust and muscular.

“This, this is…”

They realized.

The leader monkey they had seen wasn’t the true leader.

It was merely a survivor who had led the remnants.

The real leader was here, reduced to a corpse.

Crunch. Crunch.

A monster was devouring the corpse of the leader monkey.