Taking the Mafia to the Magic World

Chapter 1091: Underwater Discovery

As he swam towards the depths of the sea, Vicente ignored the darkness in his path, moving his feet and arms as if he were a fish in its natural habitat.

His speed soon showed, as he crossed a long distance that would take too much effort for even sea creatures to complete. He proceeded to ignore the small eye-catching dots floating at different levels of the sea, quickly leaving the zone hit by sunlight and entering a large penumbra.

In this dark area, he soon spotted a series of fluorescent creatures that glowed in the darkness and couldn’t be seen when observed from the surface. Most of them didn’t even seem to have any intelligence, acting as if they were rocks or natural components of the environment. But as he continued towards the ocean floor, Vice saw some large fish with this same characteristic and others that didn’t glow in the dark, each of them intelligent enough to look in his direction and understand what he was.

Vicente let a fraction of his powers reach his surroundings, efficiently scaring off most of the creatures eyeing him.

With an 8th stage cultivation, it would be difficult for a group of initial creatures on an underwater journey like this to have enough to intimidate him.

But Vicente soon spotted some beings powerful enough to catch his attention, drawing his interest to the peculiarity of the underwater world.

For those who traveled through the Sea of Stars, it was possible to think that most of the underwater beings were very strong and violent. But below the twilight zone, in the super-dark part of the sea, Vicente came across a vibrant community of living beings, with numbers so high he couldn’t count.

He saw entire shoals of the same race of creatures, all their members above the 7th stage, moving en masse as if amid an ordinary everyday situation.

In less than 15 minutes of exploration, he felt he had already seen more creatures there than in his last 10 years of traveling around Anicane!

Most of the creatures naturally avoided him without blinking, too weak to consider anything.

But even the strongest, they didn’t immediately act against him, as he had expected. These creatures maintained their positions, keeping an eye on him and what he intended to do, but without making the first move to stand against him.

Vicente let his common sense work, readily imagining that, as long as he didn’t do something that would be considered too negative for those creatures, they wouldn’t attack him.

’Sea creatures are smart and organized. They won’t randomly attack me knowing that I can do them a lot of harm... They must be suspicious of me, but that’s all. They’re probably as afraid of me as I am of them.’

Vicente continued swimming towards the area he was feeling called to, now slowly seeing what this place was all about.

Near a gigantic network of tunnels and depressions on the ocean floor, there was an area where a golden crystal was resting around a sandbank. There, the luminosity of the area was greater than anything in thousands of cubic kilometers of space.

Vicente still didn’t understand what it was all about, but he could already tell that he had a great affinity with the source of that power.

’Light,’ said the voice of the consciousness of the Throne of Darkness and Light in his mind as Vicente got closer to that source of light.

When Vicente was less than a kilometer from reaching the gem that looked like a small sun at the bottom of the sea, a serpent with golden and silver scales entered his path.

”Young earthling, you are in the ancient domain of the Drowned Lord of Light,” said the creature, speaking in an ancient tone of voice that made it sound as if Vice had gone back millions of years and the time of things had suddenly changed. ”As the bearer of the essence of light, you may contest the position of lord of the domain.”

Vicente felt his surroundings changing, with a vortex of mana and light enveloping everything around him, making it seem as if he had suddenly been teleported into a spherical construction, where the glowing gem that had attracted him had now taken the form of a large golden throne.

His eyes narrowed tightly as he tried to use his strength to fathom what was happening.

’This?’ He almost couldn’t believe it when he realized he could no longer feel the outside world and everything around him seemed to be reality and not an illusion, as he had expected.

’What kind of place is this?’ He turned his attention back to the only one there he thought he could ask for help, the creature that, from its serpent body, had become a colorful snail, now standing next to the golden throne.

”You have two unique entities within you, but you will have to choose which path to follow. You can’t be on the side of life and death at the same time.”

The voice hit him like a blow to the stomach, sending him flying backwards as a stream of information appeared in his mind in the form of rapid images.

He saw a crossroads leading to two paths, one golden and warm, the other black and icy. Soon after, he found himself surrounded on a battlefield, with beings of various shapes and powers, so strong that they seemed like giants fighting in the presence of a mere insect—him.

Then worlds and stars exploded, followed by the emergence of new life forms, until once again the shape of the colorful snail and the golden throne appeared in his mind.

A pattern formed in his mind, with nine positions and a specific path shaping halfway between each of these positions.

His eyes widened in surprise as he felt the essence showing itself to him.

’Nine Paths?’ His eyes fluttered as he could barely breathe amidst the whirlwind of sensations and thoughts.

An ancient war flashed before his eyes, showing a glorious and connected before to an even stronger but entirely compartmentalized after.

He couldn’t exactly say that the images and sensations he felt at that moment made him understand exactly what the colorful snail was showing him. But Vicente felt absolutely confident that this was related to the Nine Paths and how he could use this to his advantage.

”Choose your side and take your stand. An unprecedented war is approaching and only the strong will see the rebirth!”

With those last words, Vicente saw everything around him blur, a lot of water coming at him and the strange place he had been taken disappearing, replaced by the area at the bottom of the sea where he had gone.

Still not quite understanding what had just happened, he found himself surrounded by sea creatures and something else that made him shiver.

Gulp!