Before diving into the sea, Aliza covered her face with a mask-like transparent object. It was an object she took from a floating corpse of a blue-humanoid creature. After discovering it, she checked its function and soon noticed this mask was an artifact used for breathing underwater. But what surprised her was that this artifact had no runes engraved on it.
Aliza moved her hand towards her lower chin as she dived into the salt water and noticed that gills had appeared under her cheeks.
'Cool!' Her eyes sparkled in the deep-blue water.
Moving her hands, Aliza fearlessly moved deep into the sea while grabbing the Sanguis shark's fin.
She looked around the sea creatures after some time and then signaled the monstrous shark to dive deeper. Unlike the last time, Aliza calmly started breathing the fresh air using the artifact and observed the surroundings. Many marine fishes came towards her but soon scattered away as they noticed twelve-meter-long Zethis's presence.
Like a hunter of the seas, Zethis moved deep into the seawater while scaring the other marine fishes. Aliza's smile widened under the invisible mask.
She watched all those marine creatures and gave Zethis a soft pat.
Many dragon fishes with fang-toothed jaws, scarlet-bodied vampire squids, and goblin sharks with elongated snouts and needle-like teeth appeared in her sights. But when facing those primitive predatory creatures, she wasn't afraid. Instead, she looked at them more interested and started searching for a new slave. During the past few days, She also learned that she could enslave three living creatures at a time.
'I can still feel some connection with Rudie's soul through this spell. But to find his exact location, I need to increase my Spirit power.' Aliza thought to herself.
'What's reassuring is that he is still alive. That means he must have killed Keith by now.' As she thought of Rudie, she curled her lips upwards and smirked.
'I will kill Rudie and the other pirates once I go back to the land.' She clenched her fist and made a resolve.
Casting those thoughts away, she shifted her gaze towards the deep sea and noticed something was odd.
'How can I see clearly even though I'm currently in the deep sea?' She knitted her eyebrows in confusion.
'It must be due to this mask.' Aliza nodded and then noticed the water pressure around her body became heavy.
'If the pressure increases more, I can't dive deeper.' Aliza knew diving deeper into 1000 feet depth would crush her body.
'Damn! It is the limit.' As she was about to give up and return to the surface, her eyes caught something like a sky blue-colored layer beneath her. It was like a cylindrical tube-like layer that radiated dim light everywhere.
'The elemental energy is coming from that cylindrical tube-like structure. There is something in there. I won't die easily.' Aliza muttered under her breath and quickly ordered Zethis to move towards the blue cylindrical layer. This time, immersive pressure stuck all over her body and caused her to break harder. As Aliza was about to lose focus, she reached the sky blue transparent cylindrical layer.
Once her body entered the transparent layer, the heavy water pressure instantly disappeared. She breathed heavily and silently floated in the water to calm herself. After calming down for a few seconds, Azolla turned around and noticed that Zethis was swimming outside the cylindrical layer.
'Come on, Zethis. Why are you afraid of this blue transparent layer?' She asked telepathically and soon started to frown. Then, she looked closer around the large blue cylindrical layer and finally noticed a difference.
'There is not even a single fish inside!' She blinked in surprise.
She also noticed that the cylindrical transparent blue layer was only around a few hundred-meter diameters and seemed connected to the deep ocean floor.
'It seems marine creatures are afraid of this layer.'
After pondering for a bit, she made up her mind, commanded Zethis to stay outside to guard, and dived deeper into the twilight zone.
'Where is this cylindrical tunnel leading? Is it directly connected to some mysterious place?' She wandered her eyes in the deep seawater.
Due to the lack of water pressure and no predatory marine creatures in the cylindrical layer, she managed to move leisurely.
Moreover, due to the mysterious blue light, her vision was also not blocked and made her see the surroundings more clearly. She also saw some large strange sea creatures roaming outside the cylindrical layer and grew more curious about the deep sea.
'These creatures' sizes almost look like Zethis!' She glanced at the creatures with a stunned expression and slowly went deeper.
She would see one or two deep-sea creatures from time to time, but she didn't pay more attention to them.
After a long time of swimming deep into the sea, she finally managed to see the bottom.
'Is it an ocean floor?' Aliza's black eyes flickered in the dim light.
After a minute, she slowly landed on the bottom floor, surrounded by rocky areas, and looked around warily. A second later, her face stiffened up. Instead of normal land filled with rocks and sand, she saw a human statue at the center of the cylindrical layer.
Moreover, she was very familiar with that statue.
'Mother Goddess's statue? Who put her statue in the deep sea?' She peered at the average slim woman's statue and warily walked closer. She also noticed the concrete floor around the statue and felt more confused.
'Who built this statue here? Why?' She couldn't even be able to guess the reason.
'I don't know what purpose is, but I have a feeling it is not a simple statue. Moreover, this is deep-sea, not the mainland.' Aliza soon arrived in front of the five-foot-tall metal statue and started to observe it.
Even though the statue was still inside the deep water, not a single scratch could be seen on it. Aliza also saw some runic characters engraved on the rocky floor and frowned. Something caught her attention as she was about to check the surrounding areas.
'What is that?' She got startled inside and looked at the Mother Goddess Statue's forehead.
It was a thumb-sized blue crystal. Aliza noticed that the crystal was directly attached to the Mother Goddess statue's forehead and became more curious.
'Is that an elemental crystal?'
She raised her right hand and thought of taking out the blue crystal from the statue.
Rumble!
Aliza felt a rumbling sound from below as her hand touched the blue crystal. A second later, she saw the rune characters engraved under her foot start to shine in white light.
'Sh*t! Did I activate a magic rune circle?' She was stunned for a second and quickly snapped out of it. Alas, her expression went death pale as she noticed that she couldn't move an inch away from the runic magic circle!
Spark! Buzz!
Aliza felt a suction force from the magic circle with a slight vibration. The next instant, her head became dizzy as the runic letters started to glitter brighter. Before she understood the situation, her vision got blurred. She noticed that her surroundings began to distort, and an invisible force pulled her into some strange place.
The next instant, Aliza felt her breath become harder and fell with a loud thud.
'Hmm? Air?!' She opened her black eyes warily and glanced around while removing the transparent mask from her face.
'Where am I? Shouldn't I be in the deep-sea? How come I'm able to breathe normally?' Countless questions whirled inside her mind as she stood up on the white concrete floor.
At that moment, Aliza realized she was not in some deep sea but standing in some ancient building corridor!
Multiple circular pillars stood firmly on her sides, holding the ancient building together. She also saw multiple white crystals embedded in those pillars, illuminating the surroundings like magical lamps.
All those pillars were painted blue, giving off a unique beauty. A black metallic door around 4 meters tall and 2 meters wide at the end of the corridor stood firmly and appeared dominating. And in front of that door were two human-like statues with wings; they seemed to be guarding the gate. Both were in a kneeling position and held spears in their hands.
'Angels!' She instantly identified those statues and got perplexed inside.
'What is this? Who built these statues here? Where the hell am I now? Did I somehow teleport to some church's secret chamber?' That simple thought made her body numb. She felt both the fear of the unknown and a strange curiosity.
'First, I want to know where I am teleported to.' Aliza thought while looking behind and soon widened her eyes. Behind her was a white wall and on it were murals paintings of sea creatures and humans. Those beautiful paintings made her legs move near the white wall subconsciously. In the five-meter tall white wall, she saw the humans were capturing and killing the humanoid creatures and seemed to be burning them.
She was disgusted by the humans' cruelty and clenched her fist tighter in anger and hatred.
'Humans are indeed the worst creatures!'
Soon, another creature's face that almost looked like a human caught her attention. That tiny creature had a lower fish body and appeared five to ten years of age. But Aliza held her breath because the child's teeth almost looked like shark jaws and seemed eerier. In another mural, four angels flew from the sky and attacked that child using many spells, swords, and spears. Finally, they captured the sea child in the final painting and pierced the child's heart using a black rod.
The simple picture made Aliza's lips tremble!