Blood picked Calixan up and placed the man on his shoulder. Then, he began to climb down.

Grey sighed. Maybe he was going about things the wrong way. He wanted his own personal carrier slave too. But did he want that more than he wanted to make fun of a grown man for having another grown man carry him?

Absolutely not.

Grey laughed to himself. Then Helion Resonance activated a bit and his weight was cut down by more than half in an instant. He felt like he had the strength of a man and a body as light as a female gymnast all of a sudden.

He had almost died the first time he climbed down this thing, but he had a feeling he would be just fine now.

It was when they were halfway down that Grey realized he had overthought things.

The black lightning, the hurricane force winds, the all-around dangerous aura, was nowhere to be seen. It was just a normal climb downward.

Sure, the fall itself was still quite the danger. But given his current stats and abilities, it might as well have not been at all.

Even if he fell from here, Grey was pretty sure he could have just fluttered to the bottom like a feather riding on the wind. If there had been the hurricane force winds of before, that would just have opened him up to being slammed into a rockface and smashing his skull to pieces.

But clearly that wasn’t a problem now.

It took almost half an hour before they finally reached the bottom. It must have been at least three or four kilometers down.

By this point, Grey was a lot less sure he’d be able to flutter down so easily.

"Holy shit..." he muttered.

For one, it was so dark he could hardly see his hand when he looked away from where Calixan stood. The Bishop was radiating a golden light, seemingly on purpose to give them some sort of sight to work with.

Second, it was fucking hot. Grey was pretty sure if not for his increased END, it would be unbearably hot for him. Not in the take off a layer of clothing sort of way, but instead in the move your hand away from the fucking stove sort of way.

The third thing was that it was so hard to breathe. The air was thick with water vapor that seemed to have settled down here. Oxygen was usually about 20% of the air they breathed. But down here, Grey felt like it was halved if not more.

There was simply no way for a normal human to survive down here.

Blood had already put Calixan down and they began to walk forward.

This walk wasn’t nearly as long as the climb down, but the distance was similar.

Grey saw their goal long before they arrived. In the sea of darkness, outside of Calixan, it was the only thing radiating any sort of light.

It was a dull, indigo blue. A lake beneath the surface that looked almost as thick as vaseline, but was somehow fluid enough to bubble from time to time as pockets of dense air escaped from it.

The closer they got, the more of what was beneath its surface Grey got to see, and his lip couldn’t help but twitch.

There was an army, a whole sea of them. They were chained to the bottom of the lake and looked almost like statues. But every time a bubble formed and popped on the surface of the lake, Grey caught a whiff of an energy signature that suggested one very important thing...

They were alive.

At the very center of the lake was a small island. This island had what looked like a tomb on it, a stone monument with a sealed entrance.

As though sensing their arrival, the tomb shook and the surface of the lake grew agitated.

More bubbles began to form on the surface, accumulating in more and more gas until Grey realized where else he recognized this feeling.

’The Fog of Chaos. Well, fuck me.’

The lake was literally producing the Fog of Chaos. No, the lake wasn’t producing it, whatever the fuck kind of hell spawn was down there was.

’Esmeralda said that the Fog of Chaos cursed the Dark Kin. Then she said the Savage Races grew arrogant enough to believe that they could take it for themselves and were then cast down even further. None of that seems to suggest exactly what the origin of the Fog of Chaos is, just that it’s something bad...’

Esmeralda had also said something else. She said something about flying too close to the sun.

What had she meant by that, exactly?

Grey looked at Calixan who was breathing a bit heavier than normal, but that wasn’t because of the environment. As a Vector Class Bishop, he was more than capable of withstanding this level of heat. Though, the quickly accumulating Fog of Chaos would definitely be a problem soon.

That was why Calixan had brought Blood in the first place.

The Bishop’s guard picked him up again and a glow radiated from his white tattoos. Then...

Blood took a step onto the surface of the thick lake.

’I don’t know what she meant by flying too close to the sun, but it feels like this Calixan fellow is about to do the exact same thing.’

Grey looked down to the army beneath them. Every one of them was dressed in black armor, their faces obscured, their bodies chained down to the point they couldn’t move a single inch.

Maybe he spent too long looking at them, maybe it was because he had been looking at one in particular, but a head suddenly snapped up to face his gaze, a crimson pair of orbs boring into his eyes.

BANG.

Grey’s head was knocked back as though something had punched him in the forehead. He took a step back, frowning as a swirling darkness tried and failed to enter him.

He could feel Abyssal Anchor at work.

’Fucking hell... what is this place... How can they attack me if they’re imprisoned?’

Grey looked up to find that Calixan was already halfway. The army beneath the surface didn’t seem to be reacting to him at all.

’Shit.’

He had gotten too distracted trying to figure everything out.

Blood’s feet began to sizzle across the lake’s surface, the scent of burnt flesh mixing in with the Fog of Chaos. Burnt pieces of flesh began to flake off of him almost like he was being skinned alive.

And then they reached the island.

The lake rumbled.