Fortal Hunter's City

Jaleth Aerwyn rushes through the guild building in a hurry as everyone in the guild itself shows just as much urgency as he does. All the way until he arrives at the Guildmaster's office and bursts through the door, immediately asking, "Is it true? Is there really a valla nearing the Surface Layer of the Qualta Ocean?!"

The Guildmaster and several other people in the room – officials from the Qualta Ocean's Hunter's City Guild – turn towards him at his arrival. But none of them say anything about his rude entrance due to his power as the Second Ranker and the current situation.

"It's true," the Guildmaster says, his powerful voice filling the room. "And it's level two hundred-twenty."

Jaleth's eyes widen before narrowing again at his confirmation.

Why would a valla get so close to the surface?! This has never happened before!

He grits his teeth.

A valla is a monster that appears at the seven-thousand six hundred meter mark depth of the Qualta Ocean. And it is known as a very predatorial monster. One that hunts everything it smells to eat and absorb into itself.

The monster itself has no eyes and has the shape of a massive jellyfish. One that directly absorbs its food through its body without any form of mouth.

It's deep purple in color and lets out a powerful energy all around it in the form of an electrical charge that paralyzes everything within thirty meters of it. But since it has no eyes, it can't actually see. So it relies entirely on its sense of smell.

And it doesn't care what it's eating.

Whether it's another monster or a human or even nonliving objects like cities and rocks.

It will eat anything it can smell. And since the creature is over three hundred meters tall, it can eat a lot.

But usually it never gets anywhere near cities since the monster lives so deep underwater.

"Do you know what pushed it upwards?" Jaleth asks while clenching his fists.

The only reason a deepsea monster would get close to the surface like this is if an even stronger monster has migrated into its territory down in the deep. Which could potentially cause even worse problems depending on the deepsea monster.

Everyone in the room shares a look before one of the officials from the Qualta branch focuses on Jaleth and answers, "A quasi kicked it out of its territory."

Jaleth's mouth drops open in shock at that news.

"A… quasi?" Jaleth asks after several seconds of silence. "Did I hear that right?!"

Everyone silently nods their head in response.

"And… its level?" Jaleth continues.

Silence fills the room for a few seconds before the Guildmaster himself answers, "The quasi is level four hundred thirty-three from what our scouts have told us."

Jaleth feels a chill run down his spine at that.

A quasi changing homes is big news for the world.

Terrifying news.

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The quasi is one of the very few monsters the Guild knows about from incredibly deep in the ocean. So deep they don't even know how deep it lives.

Or they didn't know until the System gave them the power to dive down deeper in the water to check.

"The quasi was discovered when our investigative team of level thirties went down deeper using the help of Objects obtained in the Anomalies after the migration of the valla," the official from the Qualta branch says without being asked. "It now lives at the nine thousand five hundred meter depth."

Jaleth stays quiet as a cold sweat covers the back of his neck.

The people of Oceana have only seen a single quasi before. And it was a few years ago. When one of them began radiating light so bright that it reached the upper depths of the ocean.

After that, the Guild branch of that ocean sent scouts down as deep as they could, but even then, all they could make out of the creature was its general shape. Which was that of a massive spider-like fish.

But that was all they could tell about its appearance.

What was more terrifying about it was that after a week passed, everyone who was exposed to the light became gravely ill. With over half of them dying from the sickness.

Then numerous small spider fish – creatures that looked like spiders with fins and scales swimming in the ocean – rose from the depths of the water to collect the corpses of anything killed by the illness.

Bringing the corpses they could collect back down into the depths.

And the spider fish themselves were already far stronger than anything in the depth levels they usually deal with.

Eventually Jaleth asks, "Has it shone its light yet?"

"Not yet," the officer answers, making Jaleth sigh in relief. "The creature seems to be dormant from what our investigative team could tell. It is lying on the ocean floor on an incline going deeper within a large partially open cavern and appears to be asleep. So the investigative team believes that the creature won't shine its light until it wakes up and grows hungry."

Jaleth looks down at that in thought.

That's good at least. We have some time to evacuate the ocean within range of it.

He looks up again and asks, "And its appearance? Have the investigators learned anything new about it?"

The officer glances at another one of the Qualta Guild representatives, making them hand over a paper to Jaleth. Which he reads immediately.

And in the paper he learns that the quasi itself appears to have five eyes on its spider-like head, along with a single eye on the joint connecting each of its limbs to its main body, and a spinneret like a spider on its rear. With a type of underwater silk filling the partial cavern with cobwebs.

On top of that, the monster spans over a kilometer in length, has multiple fins on its different body segments sides, back, and front, and doesn't seem to have any sort of lantern.

Implying that the light most likely either shines from its entire body, or from its eyes.

Jaleth hands the paper back while looking down with a frown on his face. Then he turns to the Guildmaster and says, "We need to focus on the valla first while evacuating the people."

"Agreed," the Guildmaster says in response.

Then the two look towards one wall in the direction Aqua last headed.

I hope Aqua returns soon. She is the only one who might be able to hunt the valla.

Aqua

I grit my teeth as I activate Devourer of the Abyss, making numerous orca mouths appear all over the place that chomp down on the half dead monsters I left around. Which immediately causes my body to begin regenerating at a breakneck pace.

Regrowing my right arm and my left leg along with several large chunks of my torso that were ripped out.

And lastly, a few stab wounds across my torso.

Despite my latest trait, I'm still getting quite a few injuries. But at the same time, I don't want to think about what sort of injuries I would've gotten without that ten percent immunity to physical damage.

Not that ten percent is all that much. But it's still something.

My scales are more for magical damage than physical damage after all. Even if said scales are no different from regular human skin.

I look around at my current abyssal servants. Which have drastically changed since I first entered this place.

All because I keep replacing them with the stronger monsters from this dungeon.

To the point that almost half of my abyssal servants now are more humanoid in appearance.

It's too bad it doesn't really change anything if they're humanoid or not though. Considering that I can't use my abyssal servants outside of the water.

The best I can do is use Call of the Abyss to fill the area with water. But then their being humanoid and capable of walking is made kind of pointless.

What with their being underwater still.

Overall though, these monsters are a lot stronger than the ones I came into this place with.

But still not strong enough to do much against the boss.

I grit my teeth at that thought.

Honestly, I'm not even sure if they can scratch the boss's scales. Much less do any real damage to it.

So I'm still kind of at a loss on how to deal with it.

I let out a sigh before focusing entirely on hunting.

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