Even after almost half-a-century, humanity still knew very little about gates, realms, and abyss creatures, which are still mostly a mystery.
Humans had ventured into three realms: The sea realm (Thal'mora), the elven realm (Lumeryth), and the underworld realm (Nethergrave).
Even with that, only Thal'mora and Lumeryth have been explored to an extent; Nethergrave has been deemed to be a "Hell zone".
All these realms possessed a level of corruption.
The elves are very reserved before a lot of areas were restricted for other species, though they had some representatives in the human world.
Gates were even more of a mystery; all people knew was that when they opened, abyss creatures were either pouring out or in the vicinity.
The only way to know where gates would appear and what their level was was by the level of essence present.
Conquering them was a different issue.
They had to kill the gate guardian and take control of the tomb to prevent abyss creatures from getting through.
Nova felt as if her body went numb.
"What do you mean?
How is that possible?"
"I don't know, this is something I've never seen before.
Since a tomb has been secured, the gate is under the control of the one who secured it."
'What's going on?'
Nova had no time to spare.
"Raid team dispatch immediately."
The remaining 14 members appeared in front of the gate in an instant, and looks of surprise and worry crept onto their faces.
"Captain, how – "
Nova interrupted the awakened and continued.
"Listen, even I don't understand how this is even happening but we still need to find out what's going on."
She paused and looked at them all, then spoke again.
"Let's move."
Kael stepped into another realm for the first time in his life.
Aside from the island they were standing on, as well as a few others in sight, there was mostly just water in sight.
The air was clean and smelled of the ocean, even though there were several abyss corpses on the floor – their smell didn't corrupt the air.
"This is your first time going through a gate, right?"
Mr. Allen was walking ahead of him.
"Yes, but where exactly are we?"
"This is Thal'mora I assume?"
Logan was practically beaming with joy.
He had been taught about the discovered realms since he was very young, and visiting the sea realm was a dream of his.
"Yes, it is. You're quite knowledgeable about the realms, aren't you?"
Mr. Allen turned to face both of them.
"Well, my parents hired a teacher for me who taught me about the known realms and abyss creatures."
"Oh, your parents must be quite comfortable to afford one of those."
'What are they talking about? Thal-what's-it, or whatever it's called.'
"Wait, what did you call the name again?"
"Thal'mora.
That's what the sea realm is called."
Kael appeared a bit surprised as he was piecing all the information he had together but Mr. Allen interrupted his thought.
Okay boys, let's get to work.
As Kael moved closer to the corpses, he shuddered a bit at the sight.
The serpent-like creatures looked small but vicious, possessing several rows of extremely sharp teeth.
Even when dead, these creatures still looked menacing.
Their skin looked thick and rough, but had many deep cuts.
Just the sight of them sent a chill down his spine.
"This is your first time seeing one of these, so just watch as we do it first."
Immediately, a long knife with a bronze hilt manifested from weaves of light into the man's hand.
He buried the knife into the corpse, turned to look at the device in his other hand.
It was an X-ray-like device for detecting where the soul cores were.
Kael watched as the others also began working.
He was still thinking about the piece of information he received.
'The realm was called Thal'mora, while the family who had access to it was the Stormfang family.'
He willed the 'Harun's dagger into existence, and it appeared in weaves of light as well.
"This isn't your first time wielding one of those, right?"
Kael smiled at logan who had a worried look on his face.
"Of course I do, don't I look like someone who can fight?"
Logan laughed nervously.
"No, that's not what I meant to say.
You just look like someone who's never killed before."
The statement made Kael laugh a bit.
True, he wasn't a combat type awakened, but he knew he was definitely not as warm-blooded as the young man thought.
He took a short breath and used his demonic eye to see where exactly the soul stone of the creature was located.
Even though it was dead, there was still a flow of essence to the core, which showed what state the soul stones were in.
'Interesting'
He wanted to take a few minutes to examine how the corruption didn't affect the soul stone but at that instant, he heard someone yell a few meters away from him.
As Kael turned around, what he saw made him freeze in terror – A spatial tear occurring just about a dozen meters away from them.
To everyone, although it was unprecedented in its own right, what made him shudder was the ominous essence that he could see beyond it.
It took the shape of two figures engaged in a horrific skirmish.
"Everyone, run."
As he turned around, most of them were frozen in fear – at first, he couldn't understand why.
Until it finally dawned on him; The terror experiences he had made the situation look rather mild.
Most people hadn't felt the kind of pain, anguish, and helplessness he had felt.
He gritted his hard and then yelled at the top of his lungs.
"Are you stupid? Do you want to die here?"
Many of them finally snapped back to reality.
Yosef, who had also frozen up in fear, looked at Kael in astonishment.
"Kael, what-?"
"Just shut up and run, you idiot."
Just as the porters started running, Kael felt a shift in the essence in their surroundings – it was looking more and more similar to the essence inside the tear.
'Don't tell m – '
Just then, a lurid and irritating sound hit his ears, making him cover his ears with his palms.
He was about to turn around when he heard the word ring in the air.
"Die"
The voice reverberated across his entire body as if he were hit by a sonic attack; he let out a squeal as he fell to one knee.
As he came to his senses, he instinctively summoned his trusty cloak of comfort.
The silk cloak wove into existence and wrapped itself around his neck. Immediately, he felt a slight sense of relief.
But his relief was short-lived as he caught a glimpse of a figure charging at him with incredible speed.
'Crap'
He was only able to avoid it hitting his vital body parts, but it still collided with him with devastating force, which sent him crashing through a few corpses.
He had passed out for some time.
By the time he woke up, the place was mostly wrecked.
Many of the members of the team had been crushed by whatever had slammed into him.
Hollow sounds of an intense battle between two abyss creatures were ongoing – one was a tall, menacing creature that looked more like a beast walking on two legs.
Its body was covered in a flowing, dark, mist-like substance that looked to cover most of the body details.
The other one was a huge sea creature about twice the size of the dark fiend, arms like those of a heavyweight brawler.
Even though Kael could see its details and couldn't wait to check most of it, he instinctively ran in the direction of the gate through which they had come.
The fierce fight had destroyed the path he was supposed to take. Using the cloak to fly wasn't a good idea, so he decided to find somewhere to find and wait for them to kill each other.
He hid along the collapsed part of a mountain, about a dozen meters away from where the fight was taking place.
Since he was an awakened, his vision was much better than that of normal people.
Though he was still injured by the collision despite it grazing him a bit, just the sheer force broke a few bones in his left shoulder and ribs.
Kael paid attention to it as he watched the fight in awe, checking the details of each of them.
The dark shrouded beast was actually a defiled monster; its abilities were gloom step, echo veil, and shadow cloak.
'No direct combat-oriented powers?'
While it possessed no abilities that were suited for combat, its well-defined teeth as well as claws longer and sharper than swords, made up for it.
The sea creature was a wretched horror, a whole level and rank above the dark beast.
Its abilities included sonic scream and tidal grip; it also possessed a turf advantage since it was in the sea realm.
But Kael noticed that the dark shrouded beast was drawing essence from the portal to stay in the fight.
He took a minute to think about what he was able to read about the abyss creatures – first, he was able to view the level and rank, and he could also check their abilities, but with no explanations.
'This is quite helpful indeed.'
The sea creature seemed to have caught onto this fact as well, since it kept using its tidal grip ability to hold the beast in place before throwing a powerful punch at it.
The beast seemed to be in more control at first since it could pop out in the shadow of its opponent and land a strike, but it was getting weaker, and more of the sea horror's dreadful strikes were landing more and more.
Though the damage it dealt was not as effective as it wanted because of the [shadow cloak] covering the beast.
The fight looked to be swaying in the sea creature's favor as all of a sudden, the beast received a direct hit in the forehead as soon as it came out of the shadow of a rock.
But the beast seemed to completely dissolve in the air – it was an echo.
Suddenly, a sharp claw dug out of the creature's side, which hurled it through the air at terrifying speed,
'So that's the [echo veil] ability, extremely useful to have.'
The fight looked to be coming to an end, either for both of them or for either one of them.
The beast's dark armor was broken all over, and dark blood was seeping through many deep wounds, as well as a gaping wound on its chest.
On the other hand, the sea creature was faring better; it had multiple cuts and stabs all over its body as well as heavy bleeding from the stab on its side.
Some of its fins were broken, and breathing was labored.
'Well, this was the expected outcome.'
Even though he didn't expect the beast to win, he was secretly hoping it would.
A whole rank above Defiled.
Wretched.
He had partly forgotten his situation as he was immersed in the fight.
All of a sudden, the beast's pitch-black eyes seemed to gleam a bit with some sort of determination.
Its aura gave off a "I'll take you down with me" vibe.
A strange spark ignited in Kael's heart as he saw the beast refuse to back down.
It slightly reminded him of when he refused to give up even when defeat seemed sure.
The beast suddenly lunged forward without using its [gloom step] ability, the horror unleashed its sonic ability at the opponent, but the beast dodged it by a hair's breadth and continued moving with tremendous speed.
The horror also lunged forward and grabbed the beast in its hands.
As it began to crush the beast, the beast suddenly hurled its two claws into the horror's neck from both sides and put all its strength into it.
There was a loud shriek, and what followed completely stunned Kael.
'What just happened?'
The head of the sea horror fell onto the floor, and blue blood splashed and spilled.
The dark beast also fell to the ground as it was extremely weak.
The corpse of the sea creature lay lifelessly next to the beast.
Kael was about to seize the opportunity and run for it when an idea hit him.
It could kill him.
It should kill him.
But if it didn't…
He would no longer be weak.
'Here goes nothing.'