Baby System: I'm the Beast World's Only Hope!-Chapter 183: Episode : Getting Cleaned.
"You have got to be kidding me," Roxy gagged, covering her nose. The smell alone was enough to make her eyes water, a potent mix of sulfur, rotten eggs, and concentrated iodine.
"No jokes," Caspian said, his face dead serious. "To breathe under water, you must become water. Eat."
"Can’t I just... hold my breath?" Roxy bargained, looking for any other option. "I’m really good at holding my breath. I used to do it in the bathtub all the time."
Caspian looked at her like she was a moron. "The Thermal Pools are three miles south. Can you hold your breath for an hour while swimming against the Abyssal Current?"
Roxy opened her mouth to argue, then shut it. "No."
"Then eat," Caspian commanded. "Or stay dirty. The choice is yours, Little Landwalker."
He looked smug. He knew he had her. He knew she was itching in her own skin, desperate to scrub away the layers of death on her body.
Roxy looked at the seaweed. She looked at her grimy fingernails.
"Fine," she hissed. "But if I die, I’m haunting you. I’m going to be the most annoying ghost this ocean has ever seen."
She snatched the weed from his hand. It was cold and slimy, the texture reminded her of raw liver causing her to gag.
"Don’t think, just chew," she whispered to herself.
She squeezed her eyes shut and shoved the entire mass into her mouth.
Crunch. Squish.
It was bitter, acidic, and violently salty. The texture was rubbery, resisting her teeth as the slime coated her tongue in a numbing layer.
Roxy gagged. Her stomach heaved, trying to reject the foreign matter.
"Swallow!" Caspian barked, watching her with intense fascination.
Roxy forced her throat to open. She gulped, feeling the cold, heavy lump slide down her esophagus like a stone.
[System Alert: Foreign Biological Agent Detected.]
[Analyzing... Sub-species: Abyssal Kelp (Mutated).]
[Effect: Respiratory Adaptation.]
[Assimilating... 10%... 40%... 100%.]
[Adaptation Complete. Duration: 4 Hours.]
Fuck! Never again! Absolutely never again, would I eat such a thing!
Heat exploded in her chest.
It wasn’t a subtle warmth; it was a searing fire that spread from her stomach to her lungs. Roxy dropped to her knees, clutching her throat. She coughed, but it felt like her lungs were turning inside out.
"Breathe," Caspian instructed, leaning towards her.
Caspian didn’t hesitate. He grabbed her arm and dragged her toward the water wall.He pulled her through the membrane.
The transition was instant. One second, she was on dry sand; the next, the crushing cold of the deep ocean enveloped her.
Roxy’s instinct screamed at her to hold her breath, to clamp her mouth shut. But her lungs were burning for oxygen.
She opened her mouth and inhaled. Water, heavy, cold, and liquid, rushed into her throat.
She waited to drown but it never came.
The water flowed into her lungs, and instead of choking her, it felt... cool. Refreshing. She felt the oxygen extracting from the liquid, feeding her blood. It was a bizarre, heavy sensation, like breathing thick soup, but she was breathing.
She opened her eyes.
The world of the Pearl Garden vanished, replaced by the true Abyss.
It was terrifying.
There was no light here. Above her, the ocean was an infinite, crushing black void. Below, jagged cliffs dropped away into nothingness.
But it was also breathtaking.
Glowing jellyfish the size of hot air balloons drifted past, their tentacles trailing for hundreds of meters like curtains of light. Schools of tiny, neon-blue fish darted in unison, creating living rivers of light in the dark. Strange, skeletal coral structures glowed with a ghostly green pulse.
Roxy floated there, weightless, her hair fanning out around her like a halo. She felt small. Insignificant. A speck of dust in a universe of water.
Then, she felt a prickling sensation on the back of her neck. She looked into the shadows and saw movement. Slitted yellow eyes. Shapes that were too large, too spiky, too hungry.
A massive, eel-like creature with a jaw that unhinged snaked out from a crevice, tasting the water. It locked onto Roxy.
Roxy whimpered, a stream of bubbles escaping her lips. She tried to backpaddle, but in this endless void, she had no anchor.
A hand clamped around her waist.
It was heavy, possessive, and reassuringly solid.
Caspian pulled her flush against his chest. He didn’t look at the eel. He simply flared his gills and let out a low, vibrating thrum from his chest. It was a warning.
The eel froze. It looked at Caspian and slowly but wisely retreated into the dark.
"Stay close," Caspian’s voice sounded different underwater, clearer, more melodic. "The shadows are hungry. But they fear the Royal Trencher."
He didn’t swim fast. He seemed to understand that she was a clumsy land-creature. He moved with lazy, powerful strokes of his tail, keeping one arm securely around her waist, towing her through the water.
Roxy clung to his arm with both hands, burying her face against his shoulder whenever a particularly scary shadow moved. For the first time, she wasn’t looking at him as her captor; she was looking at him as her only lifeline in a world that wanted to eat her.
They swam for what felt like miles, winding through canyons of black rock and forests of giant tube worms.
Finally, the water temperature began to rise.
Ahead, a soft, orange glow illuminated a shelf of rock carved into the side of an underwater mountain.
"The Thermal Pools," Caspian announced.
He swam them toward the shelf. There, a series of natural basins had formed. Heat vents from the planet’s core boiled up from beneath the rock, but the way the currents moved, it created pockets of super-heated water that trapped the fresh steam, separating it from the heavy brine of the ocean.
Freshwater springs in the middle of the ocean. Caspian guided her into the largest pool. The water was not boiling hot, but it was right where she wanted it.
Roxy gasped as the heat penetrated her cold skin.
"It is fresh," Caspian said, floating at the edge of the pool, watching her. "The salt does not touch this place."
Roxy didn’t waste time. She pulled a bar of lavender soap and a rough sponge from her Inventory, items she had been hoarding for this exact moment.
She removed her dirty clothes, stripping right in front of him, she didn’t care, all she wanted to do at that exact moment was to get squeaky clean.
She scrubbed.
She scrubbed until her skin turned pink. She washed her hair three times, digging her fingernails into her scalp to dislodge every grain of sand. She washed behind her ears, between her toes, under her arms.
The grey water swirled away, carried off by the thermal current, leaving her feeling lighter, softer. Human.
"Oh, fuck" Roxy moaned, sinking up to her chin in the hot water. "This is better than sex. Almost."
She closed her eyes, letting the heat soak into her broken rib, soothing the ache.
"You have drawings on you," a voice said, breaking her trance.
Roxy opened her eyes. Caspian had swum into the pool. He was hovering behind her, his golden eyes fixed on her the mating marks on her body.
"They are freckles," Roxy muttered, too relaxed to be modest. "It’s a human thing."
"And here," Caspian reached out. His webbed hand, usually cold, felt warm in the water. He touched the middle of her back, right between her shoulder blades, a spot she hadn’t been able to reach because of her injury.
"You missed a patch of grime," he stated clinically.
Roxy stiffened slightly, then relaxed. "I can’t reach it. My rib hurts when I twist."
"I will assist," Caspian said.
He took the sponge from her hand.
He didn’t make it weird. He didn’t try to grope her or turn it into the mating wrestle he had attempted earlier. He simply began to scrub.
His movements were precise and surprisingly gentle for a creature that hunted whales. He scrubbed in circles, working the soap into a lather.
"Your skin..." He explained, his voice filled with genuine wonder. " It is just... soft. From the neck to the hip. How do you survive? If you scrape against a rock, you bleed."
"We heal," Roxy said softly. "And we wear clothes. It serves as our own little protection."
"It is terrifying," Caspian admitted. He stopped scrubbing and just rested his hand on her back, his large palm covering nearly half her torso. "To be so exposed. To feel everything directly."
Roxy turned her head slightly to look at him over her shoulder.
His face was unguarded. He wasn’t looking at her like a piece of meat or a prize to be won. He was looking at her like she was a puzzle he couldn’t solve.
"Finish your washing, Little Landwalker," he said quietly. "The currents are shifting. We must return to the bubble before the Leviathans wake."
Roxy watched him float there, a god of the deep, powerful and invincible, and completely, utterly alone. She realized then that Nimue was right. He didn’t just want a mate to spawn with. He kept her in that bubble because she was the only thing in his cold, dark world that was warm.
"Caspian," Roxy said, handing him the bar of lavender soap.
He looked at it, confused.
"My back is done," she said, offering him a small, tired smile. "But your hair is a disaster. Turn around. If we’re going back, you’re going back smelling like a flower."
Caspian hesitated. He looked at the soap. He looked at her soft hands. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂
Slowly, warily, the Apex Predator turned his back to her and lowered his head, submitting to the touch of the softest creature in the ocean.
