A body floated past a jagged, rock-like structure half-submerged in water.
The sun rays red in color from the crimson sun that had finally risen for the first time bent unnaturally around a certain area or field, their path deviating to create a large, pronounced shadowy ring there.
Despite Aziel’s continuous efforts to overcome the pulling force, even after shifting his archetype to solid, it all seemed futile, as his body kept dragging toward the ring aggressively.
It was a pull unlike any before, life-threatening.
Almost like the feeling of traveling through a wormhole or a teleportation circle, disorienting, consuming.
Almost impossible to escape.
A metallic smell clung to the air, as faint sounds of bubbling ripples echoed across the vicinity.
That is to say, all in all, his previous plans of escaping right when he spotted something important had gone into ruins.
As soon as he crossed into the shadowy ring, the pull nullified, almost as if it had never existed in the first place.
A warm, hot air clung to his limbs that floated below the water’s surface, like someone was breathing right beneath him.
His legs froze in horror, and he slowly dipped his face into the water.
However, he couldn’t see anything clearly due to the unusual thickness of the liquid, much denser and more dull and colorless here than anywhere else.
For a heartbeat, it was just dark liquid and warped red light.
Then the shadow below shifted.
Visibility cleared in patches, and his stomach dropped.
Beneath him, an enormous, upright mouth gaped open, so vast it seemed to split the sea in half.
The scale crushed his sense of distance.
The mouth wasn’t a shape, it was a landscape.
He was nothing but a grain of salt floating above it.
Water thundered downward in invisible torrents, thousands of gallons ripped from every direction and funneled straight into the void.
The pull was alive, like the sea itself was being inhaled.
Inside, millions of glinting teeth spiraled endlessly into darkness, a tunnel of blades vanishing beyond sight.
The mouth pointed straight up at him, a black, upright abyss, swallowing everything, never stopping.
It wasn’t just a creature.
It was the embodiment of the ocean breathing.
The reason why that ship from before had seemed frozen.
The explanation for the force tugging him even at the edges of the sea.
"This enormity all alone... d-dragging the whole ocean along with it and....where in the heck does billions of gallons of liquid go?
Who even gave birth to this"
He stopped, letting his mind catch up.
"I’m as good as dead here."
And then realization sank deeper.
His body had been inching closer to the jaw at a tremendous speed without him noticing, just like any other matter caught in the pull.
He was going to be swallowed.
"H-hey E-even though I admit that ship was big as heck, there’s no way in hell it just slipped past this horror.There has to be some way to avoid it, or escape it"
A trembling voice escaped his lips.
A feeble attempt to convince himself he could still find a way out.
It was nothing, but a defense mechanism.
"My journey comes to an end here.It sucked, definitely.Trying to complete the quest while I’m alive.Fuck... I wasted my skill slot for this bullshit."
His trail of thoughts cut off as he shifted his body to liquid, letting his form stretch and bend to reduce the pain of the pull and the agony he’d face scraping past millions of teeth.
He entered the gaping maw, and for a moment, everything should have darkened, swallowed whole by the abyss.
But unexpectedly, the mouth never closed.
The black, upright space stretched endlessly, and he kept struggling, twisting, avoiding contact with the jagged stalagmites of teeth.
He scraped past some barely, limbs stinging with each impact.
Sometimes he used his foot to push against the rotating, glinting blades.
Sometimes his arms caught sharp edges.
The maw was no less than a death zone.
Every movement carried the risk of being ripped apart.
The suction dragged him deeper, along with the surrounding water, the currents folding around him like living threads.
Then the chaos suddenly stilled.
He found himself in a vast, open space, a hollow chamber filled with thick, black liquid that shimmered faintly like oil under faint red reflections.
The air if it could even be called that pressed against his skin, warm and heavy.
The walls weren’t still either.
They pulsed faintly, slow and rhythmic, each motion sending waves rippling through the syrup around him.
It was enormous, so enormous that the edges curved away into darkness, giving the illusion of infinity. Official source ıs 𝔫𝔬𝔳𝔢𝔩·𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕖·𝘯𝘦𝘵
But that wasn’t what caught his eye.
His gaze locked on the eye-shaped slit ahead, trembling in the thick black liquid.
It was in the centre of it all.
It looked like the sea itself had cracked.
A thin, wavering line existing out of nowhere, edges twitching and folding inward, pulling water, light, and debris silently into itself.
Aziel felt it before he fully processed what he was seeing.
His limbs tensed, twisting, trying to resist, but the pull was already there, dragging him forward at a speed that made his stomach flip.
"This... what the hell... this has to be... its stomach, right"
he muttered, panic threading through his voice.
"I’m inside the damn thing!Okay, just slip through, just ugh"
He kicked weakly against the currents, twisting his liquid form.
’Millions of teeth?Nope, not teeth... wait, yeah, definitely teeth somewhere in here...let me just hold onto one.Oh god, it’s moving, everything’s moving!’
Aziel’s chest tightened as the pull dragged him faster.
’Maybe I’m not supposed to survive this... maybe it’s dinner time for me... slide through, don’t touch anything, don’t ugh don’t get digeste-