Industrial Revolution of the Mage Lords

Chapter 536 Wandering in the Abyss
Soren Dawson opened his eyes, jumped off the soft bed covered with hay, looked around and found himself in a small barn that was enclosed on all sides.

This was where he lived as a child. There were many lambs and poultry that needed to be looked after on the first floor of the barn, and a small mezzanine above was used for young Dawson to rest and keep watch at night.

This barn is also a thought buffer zone he created for himself in his sea of consciousness to block the mental erosion of the target of thought invasion and ensure his own safety.

I pushed open the barn door with ease, and was surrounded by warm golden sunlight. Only a small pond ten steps away seemed a little out of place in this peaceful rural scene.

The pond was so calm that even the breeze didn't create a ripple, and there wasn't a single waterfowl like a duck or a goose wandering on the surface... You couldn't even see the bottom at a glance, as if it were a completely solidified, turbid crystal.

Dawson didn't care at all. He hummed a tuneless country slang while walking around the pond. Then he squatted down, rolled up his trouser legs, dived into the water, and sank quickly, disappearing from the water in an instant.

Dark, turbid, cold...

And there is an unstoppable fall.

Dawson was not panicked. He opened his eyes and began to look around carefully. He was immediately attracted by the scene in front of him.

He was currently in the dark, deep blue sea, as if falling straight down from a high cliff. On his side were cliff walls as hard as obsidian, and below him, because the water was too turbid, he could only faintly see some flickering dark red cracks emitting faint light.

It seemed that there was lava erupting from an underwater volcano below... Dawson suddenly realized that it was no wonder that the black cliff was slightly circular. Although the end could not be seen at a glance, it could still be vaguely seen that it was in the shape of a huge underwater crater.

These demon lizardmen indeed live in the bottomless ice sea. It seems that the information provided by Harvey is not too wrong. They do use the sea vents formed briefly after the underwater volcanic eruption to break through the ice layer and land on the land to carry out activities.

Thinking of this, Dawson couldn't help feeling a little proud... Harvey was said to have developed an alchemical submersible that could dive in the deep sea, but he could guarantee that the submersible could not reach the bottom of such a deep abyss.

From the moment he entered the target's sea of consciousness until now, he has been falling rapidly and unstoppably, which means that this place is at least 10,000 meters away from the sea level.

Of course, the huge submarine crater wasn't all he saw.

As we got closer to the bottom of the crater, some protruding stone buildings began to appear on the circular cliff. Their style was different from any known ground buildings, and they looked more like cocoons made by insects after pupation. The more we went down, the more we saw them... They grew densely on the black cliff, and their number was so large that it was impossible to count them.

Could these cocoon-like buildings be the residences of the demon lizard people?

Dawson couldn't help but marvel at it. He originally thought that the mind invasion would directly connect his consciousness with the target's final battle and capture scene, so that he could experience firsthand the fighting methods of these strange enemies and how they communicated with each other. He didn't expect that he would go straight into the opponent's nest base.

What's very strange is... it's so quiet here, with no signs of any activity from the Lizardmen. How come this piece of memory that he cut out from the collective sea of consciousness doesn't even reveal a single living alien?

Should I immediately float up and break away, or continue to stay where I am and wait for changes...

Before Dawson could make a decision, the entire crater suddenly began to tremble slightly. This was not the underground turmoil caused by lava gushing out before a volcanic eruption, but some kind of... some kind of extremely regular resonance.

Suddenly, the giant cocoon clinging to the cliff beside him silently cracked, and a deformed figure, with long, twisted limbs, resembling a humanoid spider, slowly crawled out. Then, more cocoons ruptured in resonance, and tens of thousands of humanoid spiders emerged. Their flat, featureless faces seemed to sniff for a moment before swiftly swarming along the cliff wall toward the bottom of the crater. Dawson hurriedly followed suit and continued his dive. Only when he reached the bottom did he realize… those dark red cracks he had just vaguely seen were not rifts where lava was erupting, but rather huge, constantly opening and closing "insect mouthparts."

Every time these huge mouthparts open and close, they will spray out an extremely thick black liquid. This black liquid does not dissolve directly in seawater. Once sprayed out, it will quickly decompose into spherical black liquid balls, which are grabbed by the humanoid spiders that come one after another as if they were treasures. The moment they touch their bodies, the spherical black liquid immediately spreads and covers their entire body, completely wrapping up their thin and deformed bodies, leaving only two red sacs on the sides of the ears that are not swollen or contracted.

This is how the Lizardmen were born!
Dawson suddenly realized...it turned out that the scene that the target of the invasion remembered most vividly was the moment of its birth.

The lizardmen who had successfully acquired the possession of the black liquid began to float up one after another, but Dawson keenly discovered that there were still a very small number of humanoid spiders below. They did not choose to embrace the black ball directly, but flexibly moved in the black liquid, as if they were looking for something.

The huge dark red mouthparts opened and closed again, spewing out a large amount of thick black liquid, but this wave of black liquid was mixed with dozens of deep red crystal fragments, which were wrapped in the black liquid and decomposed into dozens of balls floating in the water.

Those humanoid spiders that had been lingering for a long time immediately moved, came to the location of the crystal fragments at an extremely fast speed, and couldn't wait to grab this special black liquid ball.

Soon... they were wrapped in black balls mixed with red crystals as they wished. Their flat faces, which originally had no facial features, suddenly cracked and grew into a huge swollen eyeball, with a faint red light flickering in the huge pupil.

This should be the existence of a "Red Lizard Man" similar to a spellcaster...

Dawson nodded, finding that Harvey's analysis report on the characteristics of the black lizardmen and red lizardmen was extremely accurate, exactly like what he saw with his own eyes.

"It is unheard of that an intelligent race like an egg-laying animal can possess a sustainable civilization and extraordinary abilities..." Dawson couldn't help but sigh secretly.

Were it really these alien races from the sea that came ashore and drove the human race out of the center of the continent?
But they were clearly born and reproduced from the bottom of the sea, so there is no need for them to compete with humans living on land for living space?
Thinking deeply along this line of thought, Dawson felt that there were more and more doubts and unknowns.

Suddenly, he felt a huge shadow appear above his head. The invisible deterrent even caused the giant insect mouthparts at the bottom of the crater to instantly close. Dawson subconsciously raised his head and looked upwards...

A... a huge deep-sea "floating island" that is several times or even dozens of times larger than the Sky Domain... is slowly passing over the crater with a diameter of nearly 10,000 meters above its head. The shadow even completely covers the magnificent crater, making it impossible for Dawson to guess its specific size.

Countless demon lizardmen who successfully obtained the black liquid covering their bodies quickly floated up and successfully entered the interior of the "floating island" through the countless cracks that appeared at the bottom of it. More demon lizardmen continued to flock to it, like a huge ship that had just arrived at the dock, waiting for passengers to board.

It turns out that this underwater crater is only their birthplace, not the city where the Demon Lizardmen actually live... They actually live on a ship... a "floating island" that is so huge that it can sail and move in the deep sea.

Anyway, it was just a piece of consciousness that was cut off. Dawson immediately decided to follow the tide of the demon lizardmen and float up to enter this "deep sea floating island" to find out what was going on.

But before he could get within a hundred meters of it, a gap on the side of the "floating island" facing the crater, which was obviously several times larger than the other cracks, suddenly opened up - a cloudy and swollen eyeball as huge as a silver moon, covered with red and black lines, immediately locked onto Dawson's invading consciousness.

Without any hesitation, Dawson immediately cancelled the mental invasion the moment he was targeted, and rushed straight towards the sea level like a stream of light.

(End of this chapter)