Becoming a God Starts with Acting-Chapter 402: Turbulent Seas (9)

Everything happened in nearly an instant. By the time Silvanus reacted, he was already plummeting toward the bottom of the tower.

Before his eyes stretched a pitch-black expanse, where faint specks of light drifted like floating fireflies.

Suddenly, a glow flared from below. It was dim, yet bright enough to seize the attention of anyone swallowed by darkness.

Silvanus looked down. Because he was in free fall, his cloak rippled without pause, and his hair fluttered wildly. He was clearly at the bottom of the sea, yet it felt as though wind were threading through every strand of his hair.

In the distance, he could make out a hazy silver-white radiance, as if an entire world lay beneath him, waiting for someone to explore it.

But it also seemed to be revealing just how deep the tower truly was. He was falling freely, yet minutes passed and Silvanus still could not see the end. It was terrifying.

The moment that thought crossed Silvanus’s mind, everything abruptly changed.

His falling speed suddenly slowed, his cloak drifting upward from inertia.

Suspended in midair, Silvanus sensed the white, firefly-like motes growing more and more numerous. They rose from below, drifting upward, and at a certain height they shattered into dust like sea foam.

Silvanus descended slowly. Light burst into his vision, making him squint slightly.

He heard the roar of iron chains, the sound of water being disturbed, like some massive creature taking heavy, deliberate steps.

A ring of water floated before him, glowing with a deep blue light. Above it, nine Kirin walked in a slow circle, each one dragging an iron chain almost as large as its own body.

Their steps were heavy. The light of their scales had grown dim, their manes hung limp, and the cloud-like fur around their legs fluttered weakly, growing fainter by the moment.

As if sensing an intruder, they simultaneously glared toward the center. Their horns flickered with light as they opened their jaws and let out a deafening roar.

Silvanus instantly created a shield, blocking the sonic shock that warped the surrounding water.

After the tremor subsided, the space seemed to regain its calm. The Kirin could not stop moving. They continued their laborious march, step by heavy step.

Silvanus watched the scene, his brows knitting slightly. So the iron chains encircling the tower were maintained by these Kirin?

But Kirin were said to be mythical creatures with their own territories deep beneath the sea. They and Aqualon were supposed to keep to their own waters. Why were the Kirin imprisoned here?

Moreover, Kirin were known to possess the ability to bend time and space—instantaneous movement—yet now they seemed utterly powerless.

They were trapped in this place, turned into shackles binding some kind of existence...

Instinctively, Silvanus looked down toward the deeper depths.

Yes—this wasn’t even the true bottom of the tower.

Without the slightest hesitation, he shot downward like an arrow.

The world below grew brighter and brighter, while the light above gradually faded away. Silvanus descended until everything over his head became pitch-black. Then, as though he had stepped into an entirely different world—

The ground stretched endlessly beyond sight, covered in pure white blossoms that glowed in the dark. They resembled lilies, but lacked stamens, and their stems were much shorter.

The flowers blanketed the earth. Looking ahead, Silvanus saw a single tree growing in this place. Its trunk was thick, though the tree itself was somewhat short—perhaps a little over four meters tall. Its crown spread wide, yet no leaves could be seen. Instead, countless branches extended outward, sharp and slightly translucent, glowing with a shimmering silver-white light.

Beneath the tree’s base, a jutting slab of stone rose up, like a grave marker.

Silvanus stared fixedly at it as his feet slowly touched the ground.

"Crack..."

A sound like snapping bone echoed out. Silvanus felt the strange sensation beneath his boots and paused in surprise. Glancing down, he saw that the flowers he had disturbed had shifted just enough to reveal fragments of bone.

The ground was covered in bones—and from their shape, it wasn’t hard to recognize them as merfolk remains.

Which meant this place was... the Azure Depths, the burial ground of the merfolk.

Every merfolk, upon sensing that their life was nearing its end, would try to return to this place. If they could not return, they would send their soul back instead.

For every life that falls, another life will one day rise.

Silvanus watched the trembling blossoms before him, then the drifting firefly-like motes rising slowly toward the heights of the tower. He paused for a moment before finally moving toward the lone tree at the center of the vast expanse.

The small stone protrusion reached only to Silvanus’s thigh. It was nothing more than a rough, unremarkable rock—a simple marker—but the ground before it was conspicuously bare, not a single flower growing there, as though it were a solitary grave.

Silvanus felt his heartbeat quicken unnaturally, each thump echoing like a drumbeat, urging him forward.

Something deep within his chest was screaming at him—dig up the earth, uncover what lies buried.

A path lay open before him. It felt as if everything around him was calling out, demanding that he search, that he discover.

Silvanus obeyed that voice in his heart and reached toward the ground.

"BOOM! Clatter clatter!"

But in that instant, a violent tremor surged through the earth. The ground quaked under his feet, and Silvanus staggered, frowning as he immediately lifted himself into the air. Yet the shaking rippled through the entire space, sending the surrounding waters into a frenzy.

At the same time, a sound like a raging storm burst forth. Petals were swept up into the swirling currents. The merfolk bones beneath the earth seemed to come alive as light threaded through them. They began to converge, and in moments, a monstrous form rose from the once-flat ground. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

A merfolk forged from countless bones—petals forming its skin, bone turning into weapon.

Its frame was nothing but skeletal lines, and at its heart burned a bright, flickering light like a living flame. The rest of its bones stretched outward, its tail built from rib-like segments that extended until the tail fin unfurled like a massive fan.

The skull opened its jaws and released a thunderous roar. Its entire body shuddered as it rose upright, swiftly towering over ten meters in height. The shockwave it produced blasted past Silvanus like a fierce gale, whipping his cloak and hair wildly, as though trying to hurl him off his path.

Silvanus stared in astonishment. If not for the complete absence of any dark-element energy around him, he would have thought an Undead mage was at work.

The skeletal merfolk gave him no time to think. It launched both elongated arms past its tail toward Silvanus, its bone fingers—each over a meter long—piercing through the spot where he had stood just moments before, moving with a speed sharp enough to slice through the very water itself!