Baby System: I'm the Beast World's Only Hope!-Chapter 167: Episode : I am all alone.

Waking up the second time was less violent than the first, but infinitely more disorienting.

Roxy drifted back to consciousness, floating through layers of heavy, dark fog. She opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling.

It was a rock. Dark, glossy obsidian rock that curved upward like the inside of a geode. Veins of blue glowing moss pulsed slowly along the stone, mimicking the rhythm of a breathing lung. It was beautiful, alien, and suffocating.

Roxy tried to sit up, but her body felt stiff, as if she had been starched.

She looked down at herself.

"You have got to be kidding me," she rasped. Her voice sounded small and flat in the humid air.

She wasn’t wearing her tiger-skin dress anymore. Nor was she wearing the doe-skin tunic Ren had styled her in. She was naked, but she wasn’t exposed.

She was wrapped from her armpits to her ankles in wide, thick strips of green, slimy material that smelled like brine and iodine.

"Seaweed," Roxy muttered, poking the wrapping. It felt cool and rubbery against her skin. "I’ve been turned into a human California roll."

Roxy actually thought she was being dressed and ready to be eaten.

That was the only way she could explain whatever she was wrapped in.

She wiggled her toes. They poked out of the bottom of the green cocoon. At least she still had ten of them.

She took a deep breath, bracing for the sharp stab of her broken rib. It came, but it was duller now, a throb rather than a scream. The seaweed, despite smelling like a tidal pool, seemed to have a numbing, analgesic effect.

"Okay," Roxy whispered, swinging her legs over the edge of the giant clamshell bed. Her feet hit the soft, sandy floor. "Okay. Step one: Do not panic. Step two: Try to access what the fuck you are going to do."

She stood up. Her legs were wobbly, like a sailor getting land legs, except she was technically under the sea.

She walked to the center of the cave. It was silent. Dead silent. The only sound was the rush of her own blood in her ears.

"System," Roxy called out mentally. "Wake up. I know you’re in there. Stop ghosting me."

For a moment, nothing happened. The silence stretched, heavy and oppressive. Then, a static noise screeched in her mind, like a radio tuning between stations.

A holographic window flickered into existence. It wasn’t the crisp, high-definition blue interface she was used to. It was grey, grainy, and the text was scrolling sideways like a broken ticker tape.

[System Reboot: Safe Mode Active.]

[User Vitality: 45% (Recovering).]

[Connection to Main Server: UNSTABLE.]

This was the reward of her stupidity; not everything inside her and outside was broken.

"Great," Roxy sighed, rubbing her temples. "Windows 95 mode. Just what I needed. System, where the hell am I?"

The screen flickered. A loading bar crawled across her vision, agonizingly slow. It stopped at 99%, hung there for a terrifying second, and then loaded the data.

[Location Identified.]

[Zone: The Abyssal Trench.]

[Specifics: The Pearl Garden]

"Okay, trench," Roxy muttered, pacing the sandy floor. "Trench means deep. How deep? Can I swim up?"

[Depth Calculation: 11,000 meters.]

[Pressure: 1,086 Bar (approx. 8 tons per square inch).]

[Distance from Iron-Wood Manor: Vertical Drop: 7.2 miles.]

[Horizontal Drift: Currents carried the subject approximately 40 miles South-East.]

I have to fucking be out there, only god knows what that bitch was doing to her mates right now.

Just the thought of it made her blood boil.

Roxy stopped pacing. She froze mid-step, staring at the numbers floating in the grey box.

Seven miles.

She wasn’t just underwater. She was at the bottom of the world. She was deeper than Mount Everest was tall.

She walked to the massive opening in the cave wall, the threshold where the magical air bubble held back the ocean.

She looked out.

It wasn’t like the aquarium. There was no sunlight dappling through the water. There were no colorful coral reefs.

It was black. Pitch black.

Fucking hell.

The darkness was absolute, a heavy, physical thing that pressed against the bubble. The only light came from the bioluminescence of strange, terrifying creatures drifting in the void. She saw a jellyfish the size of a bus pulsing with neon red light. She saw something long and serpentine with teeth like needles drifting past in the distance.

White flakes drifted down endlessly from the unseen surface miles above. Decaying organic matter falls into the deep.

"Seven miles up," Roxy whispered, placing her hand against the invisible barrier. It felt cold and rubbery.

The realization hit her like a physical blow to the gut.

She couldn’t swim. Even if she escaped the Merman, the moment she stepped outside this bubble, the physics of this world would kill her.

At 11,000 meters, the water pressure was over eight tons per square inch. It would be like having an elephant stand on every inch of her body. Her lungs would collapse instantly. Her bones would snap like dry twigs. She would be reduced to a red mist in a millisecond.

She was trapped. Not in a cage, but on an alien planet where the atmosphere itself was lethal.

"Zarek..." she choked out.

She thought of him flying. She thought of his massive dragon form, soaring through the clouds. But even a dragon couldn’t survive this. If he tried to dive down here to save her, the pressure would crush his scales. He would die before he reached the halfway point.

"I’m alone," Roxy realized.

The adrenaline that had kept her moving since she woke up drained away, leaving only a cold, hollow despair. She thought she had even an inkling hope that she could do something.

But to her dismay...

Her hand slid down the barrier. She sank to her knees in the sand.

Then, a sharp, throbbing pain in her chest reminded her of another reality. Her breasts felt heavy, tight, and painful. Her milk was coming in.

Tanith.

The image of her glittering basilisk daughter flashed in her mind. Tanith needed to feed. She needed her mother; she wasn’t a toddler like the triplets; she still needed milk.

What is the newborn supposed to do without her?

"They’re waiting for me," Roxy whispered, her voice cracking. "And I can’t get to them."

She curled into a ball on the floor, burying her face in her knees.

She cried.

It was ugly. It was loud, heaving sobs that shook her seaweed-wrapped frame. She wailed for her babies. She wailed for her mates. She wailed for the unfairness of it all, to survive everything, only to be pushed off a cliff by a jealous teenager in a hospital gown.

"I want to go home," she sobbed into the silence. "I want to go home."

Outside the bubble, in the crushing dark, eyes watched her.

Caspian floated in the water, his long tail undulating slowly to keep him stationary against the current. He held a spear made of bone in one hand.

He watched the Land-Walker.

He had seen many things in the trench. He had seen Leviathans fight. He had seen the thermal vents erupt fire into the water. But he had never seen this.

The creature was shaking violently. And water... water was leaking from her eyes.

Caspian frowned, his golden-rimmed eyes narrowing.

Is she damaged? He wondered. Did the pressure fracture her ocular spheres during the transport? Is she leaking vital fluids?

He moved.

He didn’t like that the being he saved was troubled in some way; he was curious about her, and that curiosity made something stir in his heart.

He had seen females, but not ones as beautiful as she.

He pushed through the barrier, the magical membrane shimmering as he entered the air pocket. The water sluiced off his pearlescent scales instantly.

Roxy didn’t hear him enter over the sound of her own sobbing. She only realized he was there when a shadow fell over her.

She flinched, snapping her head up.

Caspian loomed over her. In the dim light of the cave, he was terrifyingly beautiful. His silver hair floated around him as if he were still underwater. His chest, broad and pale, was still wet.

He stared down at her face.

"You are leaking," Caspian stated.

His voice vibrated in her chest, deep and resonant. He didn’t sound concerned in a human way; he sounded curious, like a scientist observing a specimen that was behaving oddly.

Roxy sniffled, wiping her nose with the back of her hand, recoiling slightly. "I’m not leaking. I’m crying, you oversized tuna."

"Crying?" Caspian tilted his head. He lowered his long body, his tail coiling on the sand like a snake, until he was eye-level with her. "What is... crying?"

"It’s what humans do when their lives turn into a nightmare," Roxy snapped, though her voice wobbled. "It means I’m sad. I’m hurt. I’m scared."

Caspian reached out.

Roxy tensed, ready to slap him away, but she was too exhausted.

His webbed hand, cool and damp, touched her cheek. He caught a tear on his finger.

He pulled his hand back and inspected the droplet. He brought it to his mouth and tasted it.

"Salt," Caspian murmured, looking confused. "You excrete salt water? But you are from the Dry Lands."

"We have salt water inside us too," Roxy muttered, hugging her knees. "Look, can you just... leave me alone? I’m having a breakdown here. It’s private."

Caspian didn’t leave. He slithered closer. The bioluminescent scales on his tail cast a soft, purple glow on the sand.

"Sad," Caspian repeated, testing the word. "This means... distress? Like a whale breached on the rocks?"

"Yes," Roxy whispered, fresh tears welling up. "Exactly like a whale on the rocks. I’m miles from my family. I have babies who need me. And I’m stuck in a bubble at the bottom of the world."

She looked at him, her eyes pleading.

Caspian looked back at her. He saw the fear, the desperation, and the raw emotion pouring off her.

To him, she was a fragile, exotic thing that he had saved from the crushing deep. She didn’t understand that she was already home.

He reached out and patted her head, awkwardly, imitating a gesture he might have seen once. His hand was heavy and cold.

"Don’t worry, pretty land walker," Caspian hummed, his tone oddly cheerful given the circumstances. "Everything will be fine."