Chapter 104. Leaving the cave.
Aiden observed the corpse.
"This corpse looks human. But it’s clearly been here for a very long time."
The corpse was not a skeleton. It had pointy ears. Its eyes were closed. It wore some tattered clothes. It was a female.
"Clearly not human. Is it a creature from this pocket world... or," Aiden’s eyes widened, "it’s from some sort of interstellar civilization. Perhaps, a part of the spatial boundary of this pocket world destabilized into some interstellar civilization in the past. This person from that interstellar civilization may have entered it with an expedition team to close the gate, and in the end, she ended up dead here. It’s either that or she’s a creature from this pocket world. But I lean more towards the first possibility. With the way she’s dressed, she looks like someone from a very intelligent civilization."
Aiden had never been one to believe that Endra was the only intelligent civilization in the universe. It was not because of some revelation he had. It was simply his logical opinion.
In his opinion, the universe must be too vast for Endra to be the only intelligent civilization in it. Endra’s satellite technology was simply too primitive for them to discover other life in the universe. Also, no legendary rank 4 warrior had been able to leave the boundary of Endra to travel the sea of stars, so Endra didn’t know anything about intelligent life in outer space. A group of legendary rank 4 warriors tried to leave Endra in the past. The energy in outer space was too much for their bodies to handle. They got killed, turned into ashes by the energy in outer space in seconds.
He theorized that there may have been a traditional cultivation system that allowed traditional warriors to advance beyond legendary rank 4. However, Endra just didn’t have access to it because they were not part of the interstellar community that had access to it yet.
Aiden didn’t know how accurate his thoughts were. But he’d come to realize it in the future.
"Perhaps, I can try to leave Endra when my power hits the ceiling of a legendary rank 4 warrior. I’m not a traditional cultivator after all. I don’t think the rules of normal cultivation where I will be shredded into pieces by cosmic energy in outer space will apply to me."
Aiden turned his blood into crimson hands and touched the corpse with it. The moment that happened, the corpse turned into ashes.
"The fact that she died in a rank 2 pocket world meant that she was a rank 2 warrior. Had she been a human, I would not have even realized that she’s from another civilization in the sea of stars," Aiden thought.
"What’s that?" It was a bracelet. It had some buttons on it. One button had the writing equip. Another button had the writing, unequip. The last button had the writing, view.
The crimson hand picked the bracelet.
The crimson hand pressed the equip button.
A rock in the cave disappeared into the bracelet.
Aiden tapped the view button.
A holographic panel appeared in front of him.
[Current item, stone]
"I see. So it’s more like an advanced version of a storage bag. It seems interstellar civilizations have more advanced technology than Endra," Aiden thought.
"But the owner was dirt poor. To think only the stone that entered the bracelet is the item in it."
Aiden sighed.
"But I guess I won’t have to use storage bags anymore from now on."
He put the storage bracelet on his wrist.
After that, he tapped the unequip button.
"Now how do I deal with these sharks? I have an advantage they don’t have. They are limited by distance, but I’m not. They can’t have access to me, but I can have access to them," Aiden thought.
Blobs of his blood appeared before him and turned into long knives.
The long crimson knives shot out the cave.
There were thousands of knives.
The knives whizzed through the air. Simultaneously, they pierced through the eyes of the sharks, cleaved through their brains, and appeared at the back of their heads.
The sharks didn’t even know how they died.
They had the advantage of numbers on their side. But because they could not attack their opponent now, the attack advantage had switched to his side.
All of them were dead, their blood spreading in the ocean.
Aiden left the cave. He absorbed the blood essence of those in a 200-meter radius, then moved to another 200-meter radius and absorbed the blood essence of those there.
He did that for a very long time because there were a lot of them.
Very soon, he had absorbed the blood essence of all of them.
He left the place.
His range of vision had increased further.
And he was stronger than before. If he confronted the sharks now, he would not have fled and used the terrain to his advantage to kill them. He would have openly confronted them and eliminated them.
As Aiden moved through the ocean depths, he realized the ocean pressure was becoming very crushing and heavy.
Even his crimson armor crushed under the weight of the pressure. The thousands of crimson knives turned into blobs of blood and shot towards his crimson armor. They reinforced the armor further.
Aiden still felt the pressure.
"This pressure is unlike anything I’ve experienced. The gravity in the gravity chambers and gravity towers on campus are literally a joke compared to this deep sea pressure," Aiden thought.
He coughed a mouthful of blood. His organs were literally being crushed under the pressure.
He reinforced his crimson armor with more of his blood. The pressure was lessening, but it didn’t disappear.
But it was much better than before. His internal injuries as a result of the pressure were healing at a fast pace due to his regeneration.
At the same time, he was also scanning across him to identify any unforeseen threats. Aiden was walking on eggshells at the moment. He was in a very dangerous situation.
Soon, he spotted a swarm of intermediate rank 2 creatures ahead.
They were very translucent. They looked like jellies. Aiden knew nothing about these creatures.
What he noticed was that wherever they passed, all the plants in the ocean around them withered and died. Currently, they were headed his direction.