Going Deeper

Sitting near a hole leading to the underground ocean, Axiolypito was inspecting his body in details, his light resting against a mossy wall.

Blood was dripping into the watery hole, coming from the neck of a recently deceased knight of the depth, with great effort, Axio had been able to conjure up the spawners to overwhelm a single of those knights effectively.

It was truly ridiculous the amount of restrictions just being in this place had put on him, not only was he struggling to even activate most of his abilities, his spawners wouldn't stay well for even a measly five minutes!

Something was corroding them and causing the spawn rate of his beasts to go down as well, some sort of dark blue hue seemingly melting them away and warping their form until they shattered and disappeared.

Forcing Axio to use one of his tricks as his main way of utilising his ability, which was to overcharge spawners and let them spawn a high number of animals in a single go at the cost of their own destruction, as long as he kept them right in between his two palms, the affliction wouldn't take hold hard enough to delibitate them.

Though, he could only use a single spawners or multiple extra-small ones, the same applied to his seeds, though locked at one for certain for them, he was also forced to exclusively use super growth to even hope that they would grow at all.

Still, the dungeons and towers were always quickly halted in their formation and broken down before they could truly bloom.

Axiolypito was highly limited in his options down there, it didn't help that the enemies weren't utter weaklings either, the fish-like knights may have appeared feeble against the old man but in reality, they were plenty strong and resistant individually.

And they rarely moved alone.

The wretch wasn't planning on hunting them down, just like he wasn't hoping to take down the man that was proclaiming himself a 'venator', whatever it meant.

He had simply gotten one dead to use his blood and body as bait for creatures of the ocean, the plan was fairly simple, the blood would attract the beasts lurking below, however, it wasn't like Axio had a fishing rod or could wrestle with the slimy bastards.

So he had to use his cunning, which in this instance, was using his illusions, he hadn't make much use of them in combat, apart from that one dungeon core, most enemies had enough brain to notice when something changed or something was wrong whilst in combat.

The ones that couldn't, well, they could always be dispatched easily by his creatures, he had basically no access to the latter now however.

The illusion was simple, displaying a wide passageway with a tasty meal at the end of it, but when inside the illusion, the tricked ones would start to see competition for the food, inciting them to rush forward and launch themselves at what was actually a hole leading to a cave without water and with a fairly narrow entrance.

This plan wasn't perfect of course, the creature could try to attack the fake competition and noticing that something was terribly off, thus deciding to flee, most creatures were probably completely blind as Axio suspected and some could be too large to get trapped.

It was a great plan, but it had worked a few times, enough for Axiolypito to gain multiple aquatic adaptations, his hands and feets could become webbed now and he could even manifest gills on multiple parts of his body.

Which was why he had decided to ditch his torn clothes and wear something more modest, reminiscent of the first piece of clothing he had owned.

It was best to not be weighted down in the swamp-like ocean, now that the wretch had obtained those mutations and multiple others, such as shark-like fins and a way to feel electric fields when under water, he was going to go take a swim into the deeper parts of the water.

His numerous explorations of the caves, aided by a light had bore no fruits, the old man must have gotten there somehow but he wasn't leaving, so he probably had no idea of an exit either, his best chance was to search in the water now.

His first and foremost idea had been to simply get Faceless Lord to warped him back to the surface, but after taking control of one of his needled monster in his castle and getting in touch with the lanky minister, he had found out that the connection they used to have had been broken.

'It as though you have died, the sensation I felt was just like the one for Undying Prophet, may he enjoy an afterlife of combat as he so liked' he had said, the discovery that Undying Prophet, of all the ministers, had gotten killed was quite surprising but Axio was really more worried about that deal that had together, which was now going to be left unfulfilled.

Axiolypito didn't even need to ask to know that it was the doing of Sir Solitar, the swordsman had seemed like an unstoppable force, the fact that he could slay an immortal only solidified that idea.

Since he was left on his own for good, well, not quite since he still had a few of his scout offsprings that he could call upon, but since they were utterly useless, he might as well have been alone.

After catching a small fish, smashing its head against a rock repeatedly and eating it whole, Axio ended his meal with the dead knight and then went to swim into the water.

Swimming straight down, following after the lights he had dropped ahead of himself, not wanting to outright reveal his position but also not willing to part with a source of light, he had stolen as much of them from the knights, letting them illuminated what was ahead of him.

Able to stay underwater as much as he wanted now and the mud-like water no longer irritating to his body, he went for a long, long time.

The passage of time was hard to tell but it had seemed like hours, upon hours until the furthest light hit something that wasn't just a passing beast.

'Oh me' he thought with a slight grin as he saw patrols of swimming knights in the distance, getting a good idea of what he had discovered.

'An entire city, at the very bottom...'