After a long walk through the seemingly endless coral forests of the Depths, having fought off several jellyfish along the way, Nakate finally asked, "So… are we just heading straight to the Drowned City of Celtor?"
Lix shook her head. "No, not yet. We're going to stop at the Divers Castle first."
Nakate looked curious. "Where's that?"
Before Lix could answer, Cole spoke up coldly, "Forward. But I won't be coming with you. The Divers… well, let's just say they're not really fond of me."
Another jellyfish appeared right in front of them.
"Ah, great. Another Gigamed! Just how many of these things are we going to run into?" Cole said, clearly annoyed.
But Klark didn't hesitate, he walked straight toward the Gigamed and with a single powerful swing, took it down.
'Oh, that's what they're called.' Nakate thought, watching.
***
After around a day of walking, they finally got to rest. They had some soup left to drink, and they found a small shelter inside the hollow of a broken coral structure. It wasn't much—but it was safe enough. They didn't have anything to make a flame, but at least they had each other for company.
"I can't believe how little you know, Nakate," Lix said as she leaned back against the coral wall. "It's like you were never taught anything in school. Not even about monsters—you didn't seem to know what a Gigamed was."
She raised a hand before he could speak. "But before you cut me off... Look, all I'm trying to say is, I want to teach you some stuff. Stuff you don't know. And no, I don't need to hear why you don't know it. We all have our lives, our own drama. So just ask a question, and I'll tell you what I know, whatever it is."
"Right. Well, I just wanna know all the Luminants and how Ether works."
Lix nodded. "Let's start with the Great Luminants. There are four main ones: the Northern Luminant, the Western Luminant, the Eastern Luminant, and the Central Luminant, then inside those Great Luminants there are the smaller Luminant. As for the fifth Great Luminant—what used to be the Southern Luminant— was drowned during the Great Drowning that happened near end of the Canticlysm. That sunken city we're heading to? That was its capital, Celtor. Also the world above is called The Lumen."
"Okay, so kinda like continents and countries?"
Lix seemed to be confused by the question, but ignored it. "Then to travel between Luminants, you need a Lightborn to open a gate through the Voidsea."
Nakate blinked. "What's a Lightborn?"
"They're basically people who descended from celestials or gods, in a way. They control something similar to an attunement. It's not exactly the same, though. Yes, they do wield notes of the Song, but they don't use them like we do when we call for attunements." She paused for a moment, letting it sink in.
"And the Voidsea," she continued, "is an endless, shifting ocean. If you sail into it for too long, you'll drown—no exceptions. A lot of people have tried to cross it without a Lightborn, but none of them ever made it. So yeah, if you ever want to reach another Luminant, a Lightborn is your only shot. No way around it."
"As for the attunements and Ether?" Nakate asked again.
"Oh, right," Lix said, stirring the soup idly. "Attunements are still kind of a mystery—at least some of them. We know a few were created by man, and others by the Drowned Gods—those are the deities of the Depths Below. I'm not gonna dive into all the gods and the people who became gods, that'd take forever. I'll stick to the basics."
She leaned back against the coral wall. "There are a good few of known attunements in total. You can learn four of them without anyone hunting you down or labeling you a criminal. Some people are born with an attunement naturally, others gain them through training. The four commonly accepted ones are from the Canticlysm Flamecharm, Thundercall, Frostdraw, and Galebreathe. Originally, the people who first discovered the song didn't know how to attune its notes, meaning there were no attunements — people were only able to create flame, not charm it. Then in the Canticlysm, they learnt the first attunement Flamecharm.
Nakate nodded slowly, taking it in.
"We still don't fully understand how to perfectly control the attunements," she continued. "Take Flamecharm, for example, it can be mastered, but only if you learn it directly from Pleeksty, like all his followers did. Once we get back to Lumen, you could go to a library, read more about them, maybe even try to learn one yourself. Or… well, maybe not, since you're from the Southern Island of a lost Luminant, Owlisland. But hey, if you ever manage to leave that place, who knows? You might have a chance."
She paused, her tone shifting slightly.
"Now—about Ether," Lix said, resting her head back. "Attunements draw Ether from the world around you, or channel it through specific means. But attunementless magic? That's just you using the Ether inside your own body. It's raw, kind of unstable, but it works well enough."
***
After a few hours of napping and finishing what little food they had, the group started to get ready. Lix stretched with a quiet yawn, Cole silently packed what supplies remained, and Klark muttered something incoherent as he stood.
Nakate rubbed his eyes and rose to his feet, the soreness in his limbs a reminder of how long they'd been walking. The coral hollow that had served as their shelter was now dim, the soft blue glow of the Depths casting long shadows outside.
They didn't say much as they got ready, there was an unspoken agreement among them: rest was over. The path ahead still stretched long and uncertain.
They stepped out from the cracked coral hideaway, ready to continue their adventure through the Depths.
Lix suddenly spoke up. "Alright everyone, if we run into any higher-tier monsters, ones that are too much for any one of us to handle. We'll go with this formation: Cole and I will hit from the sides, Klark takes the front. Nakate, you hang back and look for weak spots. Use your dagger if you can, but only if it's actually able to pierce their hide."
"I'll be fine with the dagger, don't worry. It's enchanted with some weird purple lightning."
"Oh? A Storm Enchant? That's pretty fancy for someone who doesn't even know what world he's in," Lix said with a chuckle. "Well, with that settled, we've got a plan. And Nakate—if Klark gets taken out or too badly injured, you'll need to move up and take the front. I believe in you. And if things get too dangerous, remember—we've got our A-rank Shadowcaster to pull you out."
Cole replied coldly, "I doubt I should use my Shadowcast while we're heading to the Divers' Castle. Some of them can sense the negative emotions I channel to use it. Still, my physical capabilities should be enough. So don't worry."
"Well, let's get going then." Nakate took hold of his dagger, keeping it at the ready—just in case. They were now entering one of the most dangerous areas mapped within the Depths, the Celtor Wastes.
Unlike the dense coral forests they had passed through earlier, the Celtor Wastes were wide open, scattered with massive, mushroom-like trees. Only a few of the strange coral trees remained, their twisted shapes fading into the distance. But what the Wastes lacked in cover, they made up for in chaos. Monsters roamed freely, many of them actively fighting one another.
To their left, a massive dark-blue crab was locked in brutal combat with a gigantic pinkish-purple jellyfish. Nakate recognized the creatures from Lix's explanations the night before, the jellyfish was a Queen Gigamed, and the crab was a Crustaceous. But even those weren't the peak of their species. There were stronger, larger versions known as King Gigameds and Crustaceous Rexes, towering monsters with power and size leagues beyond their lesser kin. According to Lix, they were so distinct in size that it was nearly impossible to mistake them for anything else.
Beneath the looming mushroom trees, smaller, crocodile-like creatures slithered and burrowed through the earth, Threshers, vicious predators that stalked silently. A larger Mama Thresher lay nearby, keeping a watchful eye on her children. And just beyond, half-hidden beneath the fungus tree, the enormous snout of a King Thresher jutted from the soil like a warning.
The ground in the Celtor Wastes was riddled with cracks—some narrow, others wide enough to swallow entire monsters. According to Cole, these fissures led straight down to Layer 2 of the Depths, a place known only as the Eternal Gale. That name alone carried a sense of dread, but it was all Nakate really knew about it.
When he peered into one of the larger cracks, all he could see below was an endless, swirling dark fog. It churned like a storm, thick and impenetrable. There was no bottom, no solid ground in sight, just that heavy, unnatural mist.
Every so often, a monster would fall, either shoved in during a fight or stumbling in by its own clumsy steps. As they disappeared into the fog, Nakate would see a flash of bright white light rising from the depths below. The same kind of light he'd seen when monsters were defeated by their group.
It left him wondering, 'Were they truly dying from the fall? Was the Eternal Gale some kind of final end? If so, then perhaps the creatures that fell wouldn't be waiting for them deeper down.'
But it was all just speculation by Nakate.