They entered the swamp and searched, but they came up with nothing. There were no relics to be found; all they got for their troubles was to get covered in stinky mud.

At least they were saved the trouble of having blood and who knows what sprayed on them. Galthor wasn't so lucky, as the intestine of the toad spilled out immediately after he ripped the stomach open.

"Nothing here as well. At least we'll make some good money from this. Brakthar, come take this monster's body. We'll use the money to buy seeds and farming tools for the villagers," Galthor said as he shook his hand to get the dirt off.

"I don't suppose you know where I can find water? We need to wash. Any monster we're after would smell us before we are even close."

When Abyssal lands appear, they are usually in a perfect ecosystem they choose. A desert would be a desert with its rolling dunes and little water. A forest, like the one they were in, would have its own lush trees and rich soil. Obviously, they all carried their own dangers.

"There's a stream we can use, but I don't know what can be hiding in it," Karathra warned.

Drakira snorted. "What's in the water doesn't know what's on land as well. The Chief is with us!"

Ever since she saw the way Galthor handled the toad that they all struggled to wound, the look on her face when she looked at the Chief had changed.

And with a declaration like that, there wasn't much to be said. In truth, isn't the Chief with them?

Karathra led them once more, pointing out different locations in the forest for them and giving warnings where one was needed. Eventually, they reached the stream.

It was a slow-moving one and as black as tar. When Galthor saw it, he was instantly reminded of how he would shout internally at the protagonists of horror audiobooks when they encountered something similar.

Everyone knows something must be hiding in such kinds of water, so it always baffled him when they would just get naked and rush inside.

Luckily, the barbarian masters were smart enough to stand and observe the moving water from a distance.

Karathra pointed. "My lord, that is the water."

'...Yes, I can see it, but you want me to go near it and investigate, right? Is this the so-called bane of the powerful, where they always have to be where the danger is the thickest?'

Even then, as a god, Galthor made his face as still as a mountain, without showing anything he was thinking. "Of course."

He moved near the water, his steps decisive and his aura flaring. Divine energy quickly warped around his body—just in time too, because as soon as he was five feet near the stream, it suddenly exploded outward as a monster heaved itself out with a loud screech.

Unfortunately for the monster, it wasn't a cursed one, and it had just attacked someone who had killed a cursed monster.

The monster looked like a cross between a swordfish and an octopus. Its head ended in a long sword-like flesh that glittered sharply, and the rest of its body was filled with tentacles that wriggled and coiled, the suckers filled with tiny needle teeth.

If Galthor wasn't covered in his divine energy, then the suckers currently wrapping around his body would probably be ripping him to shreds at the moment.

As it was, he easily held the monster by the head and pressed his fist tight, crushing it within his grasp as easily as crushing a rotting fruit.

Galthor threw the corpse to the side. "What a weak monster."

The others behind him gave him a dubious look. Of course, the monster wasn't on par with them as they were masters; it was still strong in its own right. This confidence that their Chief had—was it the result of the blessing of their god?

Before they could examine it further, though, the water boiled and seethed before it exploded once more, and more of the same monsters poured out.

Galthor grunted as he began to kill them, his hand smashing them as if they were mosquitoes. They were more of an annoyance to him than deadly monsters, and he treated them as such.

"I'm even more covered in gore than when I arrived here," Galthor complained.

It was fortunate that the stream was a flowing one and already carried the bodies of the monsters, along with their gore, downstream. "Alright, you guys can come here and wash."

Galthor himself walked into the stream and used the dark water to clean himself, all the while thinking about the first monster he killed and how the divine interface called it a "blood sacrifice." It was one of the things he was looking forward to when he finally activated it.

He was thinking of all this while all the masters were in the water cleaning themselves of the filth of the swamp. And although they did not look up, their senses were spread throughout the surroundings, and anything strange would be caught instantly.

But even then, none of them noticed that the stream they were standing in had expanded. It first turned into a river, then a sea in the blink of an eye.

Galthor was the first to notice—divine intuition. He suddenly raised himself with a deep frown carved into his face. "This... fuck!"

The others raised their heads as well, their hearts beating fast when they realized that the stream, with its banks and dry ground, was gone.

Now, they were standing in the sea!

Karathra swore. "What in the Abyssal land!"

The illusion that they were standing in the stream with their legs touching the surface suddenly broke, and since the sea isn't somewhere they could stand on, they fell into the sea, the salty waters rolling over them without giving anyone the chance to say another word.

The first thought that came to Galthor was, '...Fuck it! I don't know how to swim!'

☆☆▪︎▪︎☆☆

Another day to ask you guys to read my other book, The SSS Legendary Dragon Choose Me On Rebirth.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.