Bang! Bang! Bang!
Even though I was in the sea, I moved forward, stepping on the Footrest Panels with enough force to create huge shockwaves.
“[Good! You’re going down! 12 km. Keep it up, Ido!]”
“I'll show you that ghosts can't beat robots.”
“[You’re not a robot.]”
“Shh.”
Once every 6 seconds, I tensed my thighs and bang!
I cut through the water, undulating like a fish.
And again, I tensed my thighs and bang!
I descended endlessly into the dark Abyssal Depth.
A space where nothing was visible, where no light could reach.
I moved forward, instinctively sensing the direction of gravity.
Here, where only an endless expanse of water rippled, I began a fight with an unseen someone.
“[We’re gonna defeat some stupid ghoooost!]”
Spurred on by the cowardly Rudger’s cheers, I descended faster, more powerfully.
I could now feel my body starting to accelerate.
The effects of Acceleration were kicking in, and my body, already fast with 2,000, 3,000 points in strength and agility Stats, accelerated even more.
“[20 km. Good! Can you maintain this?]”
“Yes, Captain! I’m about to get even faster.”
Booooom!! Boom!
Momentum is determined by mass and velocity.
Of the two, my velocity increased like crazy as I descended below the unknown surface.
Bravely cutting through the lightless, quiet, and vast sea of darkness, I descended endlessly… ceaselessly.
It was then that the Mutation began.
I could now feel the movement of the water.
Something… something was pushing me up!
‘So you’re finally showing yourself!’
The deeper you go into the water, the fainter your senses become.
No visibility. The presence of buoyancy.
Even if I stayed still, it was actually hard to tell if I was floating, rising, or descending.
But because I was moving so fast, I could feel it. It felt like the entire ocean was rising to urgently expel me.
‘The sea itself is moving… so that’s why I couldn’t feel it.’
It’s like how humans don’t feel the massive forces of the sun’s gravity and the Earth’s Rotation Speed when they are sustained by inertia.
It had orchestrated the entire ocean so that I wouldn’t feel anything out of place, moving the planet itself to block me.
Now I could feel it.
A gaze watching me.
The source of a very powerful force could be felt from everywhere in this sea, from all around me.
I couldn’t be certain yet, but the presence of a massive Transcendent could now be ‘felt’.
‘You, you’ve gotten desperate, haven’t you?’
A movement that seemed almost flustered.
Because I wasn’t just descending at a moderate pace but shooting down like I was riding a rapid current, it had begun to use its true power.
‘Right… I think I’m starting to get it.’
Last night.
I had a discussion with the viewers, piecing together the puzzle of the enemy’s identity with the clues we had.
“Alright, here are the conditions. It’s not a living creature, it has the form of a monster, and it has clear hostile intent towards us. Our objective is Mining a mineral called ‘Jiro’. Who is the enemy? Try to solve the problem!”
??
-How would we know
-It’s a mystery of the universe
-What’s Jiro
-Jiro? You mean jiru?
-Heu-eung, endless Sex with a premature ejaculator’s dick…
-Rudger looks like he’s packing
Most of it was just weird chats, but there were some people who made logical deductions.
[Observer has donated 10,000 won]
The key is what the unknown monster did. It ran away when you flew in like a madwoman with your Vagina Rocket. That means it has intelligence.
“It has intelligence… How can there be an intelligent, a highly intelligent being on a planet with no life?”
Hmm…
-A Vagina Rocket is worth running from
-If you don’t run from that, you’re an Inanimate Object, Real kk
-Aliens?
-Is it something like the Cthulhu Mythos?
-Aliens seem the most reasonable. Water-eating aliens.
-I don’t know?
[Observer has donated 10,000 won]
You should study up on Jiro again.
“Jiro…? I heard some talk about it being a life stone or something, but I don’t know the details either.”
‘What’s with this person? They seem unusual.’
Just by looking, I could tell they had a different vibe from a quack, fraud, sex-offender scholar like Dotameok.
It was a feeling like, ‘I know everything, but I can’t tell you directly, so figure it out on your own’?
Jiro.
When I saw it in my past life, it was used as a substitute for an ultra-high-output magic stone.
I had seen it used as an emergency engine for a several-kilometer-class space battleship.
But it was such a rare mineral that I had never touched it myself.
Heh heh, you don’t know that? (I don’t know either)
-Why isn’t it on the internet
-When I search for Jiro, only some weird old space game comes up
-Ah, that game where you fuck aliens kk
-A space game? I only get a utility bill payment site.
“Umm… what is it?”
As I was pondering for dozens of minutes and spouting nonsense, they must have gotten frustrated because they just gave me the answer.
[Observer has donated 10,000 won]
Sigh, how can you climb the Tower without even knowing that. Another name for Jiro is Soul Stone. The civilization that uses it for battleship engines is moronic; it’s the only mineral that has reached the realm of the gods. Just 1g of it can give an AI machine a sense of self, and allow life to be born from among Inanimate Objects.
“Ne…? How do you know that?”
‘Come to think of it… wasn’t the title of the Mining operation plan ‘The Origin of Life: In Search of Jiro’…? I just skimmed over it, but I think there was something like that at the beginning?’
Is it information secretly collected by a Giant Guild?
-What the, how do you really know
-???
-Why does that exist
-Haven’t you read too many sci-fi novels?
I was suspicious, so I secretly looked into their ID later, but they weren’t a strange person.
However, they had never typed in the general chat, aside from their donation messages.
So I looked at what kind of donation messages they had sent before...
It was nothing but sexual harassment, filled with unspeakably lewd words.
‘Sheesh… are they just a pervert pretending to know things?’
I was a little confused.
That’s what I thought yesterday, but looking at it now, things seem a little different.
It’s not a definite stage yet, but what if a mineral that can perform miracles with just 1g is buried here in enormous quantities?
It wouldn’t be strange at all if something… something massive was born.
‘But for now, it’s just water. Is it hiding its identity somewhere?’
“[Alright Ido. You’ve passed 50 km. As expected, the performance is Missile-less!]”
“[Just like a company that says fuck ethics and prioritizes performance. I love it!]”
“Ne, this is the technological prowess of Missile-less. Don’t forget to give us 5 stars when this is over!”
I could feel gazes full of anger from all around.
It was an anger born from an instinctive resistance, as if to say, ‘How dare you, how dare you invade my space!’
But within it was fear.
That thing, it was clearly afraid of me.
It was like a kitten with its fur on end, hissing and trying to be threatening.
And it had every reason to be. My Divine Power is currently over 80,000.
Stats might just look like simple numbers, but they have their own meaning.
Exceeding 100 means you’ve surpassed human limits, and it’s the period when the potential for what’s commonly called a Swordmaster opens up.
Exceeding 1,000 means you’re approaching a Transcendent, and from here, depending on your martial path, if you gain enlightenment, you can become an out-of-spec, transcendent human like a Grand Sword Master, a master of the enlightened realm, or a 9th Circle Archmage.
Exceeding 10,000 means you become a being that approaches the level of a god.
It’s the stage where one recognizes the existence of gods and can even ascend from the human world. My Divine Power reached this level easily through cheap tricks, but even among people on the 70th-80th Floors, there’s no one with a Stat over 10,000. If I had to name someone, maybe the Giant Guild masters? They might have reached that point by now, but even if they did, it would only be for one main Stat.
Exceeding 100,000 means you’re treated as a demigod, a being approaching the complete realm of a god.
Of course, this is all assuming one has achieved enlightenment through a certain degree of harmony between body, mind, and spirit. Lee Do-hee, who copied her Stats through Lewd Energy and breeding Sex, has not yet attained the appropriate level of mastery.
But even so, a being with demigod-level power suddenly came flapping down from the sky and entered the water, so this unidentified aquatic monster got scared shitless and chickened out.
And… now the resistance was gone.
‘Is it planning to lure me in and then attack? Or… is it a judgment call to back off for now?’
I couldn’t know its intentions, but it had failed to stop me.
And it even got detected by me in return. It probably knows that too.
‘If it has intelligence… could I possibly resolve this through dialogue? That would be for the best, but…’
To be honest, I could feel that I was fucked.
It’s easy to descend now because it’s scared on its own… but what if it feels a threat to its life or something and attacks the Marine Plant... I could easily predict that some kind of immense mass attack that we couldn’t block would be unleashed.
Besides, I still don’t know its true identity.
I don’t know if it’s a 100km-sized super-giant sea monster, a 50,000-year-old water dragon that controls nature, just a planet, or just water.
But one thing is certain.
It’s not that aggressive.
If it were a fighter, it would have picked a huge fight with me on the first day as I was descending.
Didn’t it even send some strange monstrous creature, maybe a subordinate, during the first run?
Until just a moment ago, it was only using strange tricks to stop me from coming, not revealing itself.
I can tell it’s a pretty passive and gentle creature.
‘But should I tell them this?’
Honestly… this is all just my speculation.
And it’s speculation I can make because I’ve seen the first run.
“[Ido, you’re almost at 60 km.]”
“Ne, the resistance is gone, so I’ll keep going down. But, is this okay?”
“[Hmm? Suddenly?]”
“[What is?]”
“……It’s nothing.”
I should go up and carefully tell them what I’ve inferred.
And a short while later.
I hit my head on something soft yet hard.
Thump.
"Oop. I’ve arrived, Captain."
Since I couldn’t see anything, the hard floor told me I had reached the seabed.
“[Depth 89.5 km. Congratulations. You arrived safely? Any problems with your equipment or body?]”
“My body feels a little crushed, Captain. I can still move.”
Answering, I rotated my body and landed both feet on the ground.
Then I used the Divine Magic [Light] to illuminate the area.
In the deep, dark sea, a single bright light illuminated the surroundings.
And finally, the undersea world was revealed…
Contrary to my ominous premonition, there was nothing there.
The bottom was like sand or cement powder, but it had been compacted by the ultra-high pressure, giving it a strangely squishy yet hard feeling.
The water also felt slightly hot and heavier. It felt like it had… viscosity?
‘Is this that thing they call a Supercritical Fluid? Or just compressed water?’
Around the 10 km mark, it had become almost as cold as ice, but then the water temperature gradually rose. It was definitely over 100 degrees, but the water wasn’t boiling and remained in a heavy, viscous state.
"This is strange… There’s nothing special here. Should I go back up?"
I had pushed myself a little, so my arms and legs were quite sore.
“[Alright, good work. We’ll observe the strange phenomena with precision instruments, so come on up for now. Oh, and we need to do a geological survey, so bring a little bit of the soil with you.]”
“Yes, Captain. I’ll come up slowly.”
I changed my weapon into the shape of a shovel and scooped up the ground.
It was very tightly compressed, but I was able to scoop it up by pressing down hard with my foot.
For now, the first exploration objective was accomplished.
Hugging the lump of rock, I jumped high and pushed off the ground.
As I ascended, a large upward current formed and pushed me up.
'Yeah, yeah, I'm leaving.'
The creature's unpleasant and angry gaze changed slightly.
It was like it was chasing me away, saying, 'Get out! Don't ever come back!'?
I still don’t know where it’s coming from.
From all sides,
from everywhere,
it’s watching me.
‘What a voyeuristic rapist!’
The feeling of the water touching my butt must be my imagination, right?
After being sexually harassed (?) by the water, I quickly arrived at the plant.
I got lost on the way, but the unidentified monster kindly led me here.
'Is it a nice guy? No, it must have become nice, right?'
I still can’t forget the sight of our crew members dying brutally during the first run. It must have been scared of me.
"You worked hard. Rest well today. Tomorrow, we plan to start by investigating the strange phenomena, so if you have any hunches, feel free to speak up. The person who experienced it directly would know best."
At Roadmill's words, I told him what my viewers and I had inferred while we ate dinner.
I explained the special properties of the mineral 'Jiro' and the shady, unidentified perverted creature that kept visually raping me with its gaze.
"Eh, isn't that just a ghost?"
"What do you mean, ghost... you just get mental problems when you go into the Abyssal Depth. There's no way a monster like that exists."
Rudger and Mickey dismissed it as nonsense, but...
"That makes sense. The exploration results estimated the Jiro deposits to be around 100kg. That's a planetary-level of energy. It's entirely possible."
"Really? A ghost can be created?"
"Haven't you read too many novels?"
"Right, no, you guys... you haven't even read the first page of the Mining plan, have you...? It's only 6 pages long..."
Roadmill looked at the other crew members as if he was dumbfounded.
"Ahem... I'm a pilot, so..."
"I, I'm an equipment engineer, so..."
'That bastard Mickey, he gave it to me without even reading it himself? But then again, I didn't read the other parts either...'
Isn't it standard practice to skip the boring and pedantic parts about the purpose of the mining and the technical details?
Anyway, thanks to the wise intellectual Roadmill, a large amount of exploration equipment is scheduled to be deployed tomorrow.
And so, another refreshing morning came.
We were scheduled to stop by the Spaceship to get the exploration equipment, but...
“[Hand over the money and the broads quietly!!! Then we’ll at least spare your lives, khahahahahaha!!!!]”
Our Spaceship had been hijacked by Space Pirates.
Fargus's face was black and blue as he begged for his life, while pirates with cyborg-like modifications all over their bodies cackled and shouted in front of the screen.
'What the fuck, what is this sudden bullshit now?'