CHAPTER 114: DEEP PRESSURE

The world turned from the bright lights of the Crucible to a silent, dark blue abyss. As they dove deeper, the last of the surface light vanished, leaving them in a world lit only by strange, glowing plants and the faint blue lines on their own armor.

The pressure outside was immense, enough to turn a spaceship into a tin can, but inside their re-woven gear, they felt nothing but a comfortable stillness.

They moved with a grace that felt impossible. With a small kick, they could glide for a hundred feet. They twisted and turned through the water like a school of fish, perfectly in sync.

"Team, check in," Ryan’s voice came through their comms, calm and clear.

"Emma here. All systems green. The gravity negation is holding perfectly," she reported, her tone crisp and professional. She was already scanning their surroundings, her mind mapping the vast, vertical maze of the Sunken Arena.

"Zara. Vitals are stable. I’m getting some fascinating energy readings from the local flora. I’m taking samples," she said, her voice buzzing with academic curiosity. A tiny drone detached from her wrist and carefully plucked a glowing piece of seaweed.

"Chris here," the big man’s voice echoed slightly. "I’m, uh... I’m not sinking. This is weird. I feel like a very handsome, very well-armored dolphin." He did a slow, clumsy backflip to test his new agility. "Okay, maybe a manatee. A majestic manatee."

Scarlett’s voice was the last to check in, a soft whisper in their ears. "Scarlett. All clear. I see movement below us. Other teams."

They looked down. Far below, they could see the bright headlights of several bulky submersibles and mechs. They were moving slowly, their powerful engines fighting against the crushing gravity.

One team, piloting what looked like a giant metal gorilla, got one of its legs stuck in a narrow crevice between two ancient Precursor buildings. They watched as the pilots struggled, their machine groaning under the strain.

"Big toys get stuck in small places," Chris chuckled. "Guess size isn’t everything."

"They are attracting guardians," Scarlett noted.

As if on cue, several of the shark-like machine beasts swarmed the stuck mech, their metal claws tearing at its armor. The water lit up with flashes from the mech’s cannons, but it was trapped and outnumbered.

"Let’s go around," Ryan ordered. "Let them handle their own problems."

They bypassed the fight easily, their sleek forms slipping through narrow archways and around crumbling towers that the larger vehicles couldn’t navigate.

They were moving at least twice as fast as any other team, their silence and agility their greatest weapons. The Sunken Arena was not just a race; it was a test of adaptability, and they were the only ones who had truly adapted.

They were making great time when a new light appeared behind them. It was a bright, obnoxious gold.

"Uh oh," Chris said. "I think the angry toaster has found us."

It was Lord Valerius in his massive command mech. He had clearly spotted them and was now barrelling down at full speed, his engines leaving a trail of angry bubbles. He was faster than the other mechs, and he was closing the distance.

"He’s not trying to race us," Emma said urgently, her eyes wide. "His weapon ports are open!"

A series of high-pitched whines cut through the water. Two long, sleek torpedoes shot out from the mech’s shoulders, homing in on their team.

"Evasive maneuvers!" Ryan yelled.

The team scattered like startled fish. The torpedoes were fast, and they changed direction, following Scarlett and Chris. Chris let out a yelp and swam as fast as he could, his movements more like a panicked walrus than a majestic manatee.

Scarlett, on the other hand, was a blur. She led her torpedo on a wild chase through the ruins, pulling off sharp turns that the missile struggled to copy.

But Valerius wasn’t done. A low hum started to build, a vibration they could feel in their bones.

"He’s charging his sonic cannons!" Zara warned. "The sound waves will ignore our armor and rupture our insides! We can’t outrun them!"

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Ryan saw the cannons on Valerius’s mech begin to glow. They had nowhere to hide. Valerius was going to blast them out of the competition, right here and now.

Ryan’s mind raced. He couldn’t create a shield big enough, and he couldn’t teleport them away. He needed to stop the attacks themselves.

System, impose a new rule, he thought, focusing all his will on the water between them and the mech. Right here. Right now. Make it... thick.

Just as Valerius fired, the water in a hundred-foot cube in front of him suddenly changed. It didn’t freeze or turn to rock. It became something like invisible, ultra-dense jelly.

The torpedoes, which had been streaking through the water at top speed, slammed into this invisible wall. They didn’t explode. They just... stopped.

Their engines whined as they tried to push through the thick water, but they were stuck, suspended in place like flies in amber.

The sonic blast hit the barrier a moment later. The invisible waves of force, which should have passed through instantly, distorted and bent as they struggled to move through the dense medium. The deadly, focused blast was turned into a weak, harmless ripple by the time it reached them.

On Valerius’s command screen, he would have seen his torpedoes stop for no reason and his cannons fail to have any effect. He would be seeing the impossible.

"What... what was that?" Chris asked, panting as he stopped swimming.

Zara was staring at the space where the attack had been stopped, her datapad running frantic calculations. "The localized density and viscosity of the water just increased by a factor of ten thousand for exactly 1.7 seconds.

That’s... he just told the water to become a wall. A wall made of water." She looked over at Ryan, her expression a mixture of pure shock and intellectual ecstasy. "The applications are limitless!"

"We can talk about science later," Ryan said, his voice a little strained from the effort. "Let’s move before he tries something else."

They dove deeper, leaving a confused and furious Lord Valerius behind. They soon entered a darker, more treacherous part of the arena. Here, the ruins were closer together, and shadows were everywhere.

And the shadows were full of guardians.

A pack of them, at least a dozen of the biomechanical sharks, shot out from a ruined building, surrounding them. They were fast, much faster than the team that had been ambushed earlier.

"I’ll clear a path," Scarlett said, her voice dropping to a low, focused pitch. "Keep moving towards the center."

Before anyone could argue, she was gone. She became a predator in her natural element. The three-dimensional battlefield was her playground.

She used the dark water and deep shadows to her advantage, disappearing from sight only to reappear right next to a guardian. Her movements were a silent, deadly ballet.

Her new Shadowfang Dagger glowed with a faint, dark energy. When she struck, the blade didn’t clank against the guardians’ thick armor.

It passed right through it, as if the metal wasn’t even there, and stabbed directly into the machine’s inner workings. One by one, the guardians froze, their red eyes flickering out, and then drifted lifelessly into the dark. She was a ghost, a whisper, a blade in the deep, and the mechanical monsters stood no chance.

The rest of the team pushed forward, protected by her deadly dance. Soon, the last of the guardians was disabled, and the path ahead was clear.

They emerged from the maze of ruins into a vast, open cavern at the very bottom of the arena. And there, in the center, they saw it. A huge, glowing crystal, the size of a shuttle, pulsed with a powerful blue light. It was the Heart of the Leviathan.

They were the first to reach it. A wave of relief washed over them.

But their relief was short-lived. As they got closer, the cavern floor began to tremble. From the abyssal darkness below the Heart, something enormous began to rise.

Huge, coiling tentacles, each one tipped with a glowing energy drill, unfurled from the gloom. Then came the body, a colossal, squid-like biomech covered in thick, ancient armor.

Its single, massive eye, a burning orb of red light the size of a house, opened and fixed its cold, mechanical gaze upon them.

Chris gulped, his voice barely a whisper in their comms. "Is that... the Arena Warden?"

"I believe so," Emma confirmed, her own voice shaky.

The colossal kraken-like machine let out a deafening, low-frequency roar that shook the entire cavern. It was the final guardian. And it was waiting for them.