Byrne's heart skipped a beat when he saw the change in the pendant.
Could it be... that it has sensed the presence of the ship plaque?
He immediately halted his ascent and adjusted his diving suit's positioning.
At that moment, the blue crystal embedded in the center of the pendant was emitting a soft yet steady halo of light. Its vibration grew faster and faster, as if responding to something deep within the ocean.
Herder had told him that the pendant could sense the aura of the ship plaque—the closer it was, the stronger the resonance.
The pendant's reaction was so intense that the half of the lost ship plaque had to be nearby.
And the direction it was pointing to...
Byrne looked back toward the shipwreck behind him. The dark hull lay in the deep ocean like a slumbering behemoth.
The life-and-death struggle he had just endured still felt vivid, as if it had happened only a moment ago.
Although that four-man squad had been wiped out, Byrne couldn't guarantee that he wouldn't run into other people from the Marketing Development Department.
After a moment of hesitation, Byrne was forced to temporarily abandon his plan to ascend. He turned and swam back toward the shipwrecks.
Although the pendant was pointing toward the shipwreck area, it wasn't the transport ship Byrne had just infiltrated.
Otherwise, his pendant would have reacted much earlier.
After swimming for about ten minutes, Byrne reached the outer perimeter of the shipwreck area.
Several relatively small frigates lay silent and scattered across the seabed here.
The blue light of the pendant grew brighter and its vibrations more rapid, eventually pointing directly toward a frigate half-buried in the silt.
The stern of this vessel had completely collapsed, leaving only half of its battered hull behind like a forgotten skeleton of the deep sea.
Byrne swam a lap around the hull and quickly located a shattered observation window.
He lowered his body and squeezed inside.
The interior of this frigate was even narrower than that of the heavy transport ship he was in earlier.
The cabins had collapsed more severely, with twisted metal scaffolding crisscrossing to split the once-connected corridors into isolated pockets of space.
Byrne tried to swim as slowly as possible, worried that disturbing the fragile hull structure would trigger a further collapse.
The deeper he went into the ship, the clearer the resonance of the pendant became, as if an invisible thread was tightly binding him to the half-plaque.
Avoiding unstable beams and navigating past a few skeletons already blackened by Stellaron energy, he finally stopped before a partially collapsed officers' lounge.
This place was not as orderly as the bridge, nor as spacious as the cargo hold.
Messy bunks, overturned lockers, and personal belongings scattered in the seawater spoke in a silent testament to the disaster that had occurred.
"It's here..."
Byrne groped his way forward inch by inch, traversing slanted corridors and bypassing collapsed bulkheads.
Before long, he arrived at a cramped deep-sea equipment bay.
Byrne looked down. Half-buried in the silt was a rough stone shard.
The stone had an ancient feel, its edges jagged and broken, carved with several wavy patterns resembling sea waves. It was an exact match to the half Herder had given him.
"Perfect, I finally found it."
Byrne picked up the stone shard and wiped away the silt and seaweed clinging to its surface. The rough, stony texture transmitted through his suit's gloves, and it fit perfectly with the piece Herder had given him.
The wave patterns on the stone were clearly legible, though a few fine hairline fractures ran along the edges.
Having fulfilled his promise to Herder, Byrne breathed a sigh of relief, but the doubts swirling in his mind had not lessened in the slightest.
The Canglan crystals had been shipped out ahead of schedule, Victor had escaped through a faked death, the Marketing Development Department was hot on his heels, and then there was Aventurine's hidden, true motive.
It all tangled together like creeping vines, tightly wrapping around his thoughts.
Just then, the power gauge of his diving suit fully flashed red, and the oxygen support system blared a frantic warning.
[Warning. Warning. Remaining power is below 10%. Please ascend to the surface immediately.]
"Shoot, I'm out of power."
Byrne didn't dare waste a second and immediately turned, swimming back toward the observation window.
Just as he was about to slip out of the observation window, the cabin suddenly gave a slight tremor. A metal plate overhead came crashing down, narrowly missing his shoulder as it slammed into the seabed, kicking up a cloud of turbid silt.
Byrne's heart skipped a beat. Not daring to linger, he squeezed the absolute last bit of propulsion out of his thrusters, bursting out of the frigate and shooting toward the surface.
The deep-sea pressure gradually eased as he ascended, and the surrounding water grew brighter.
The hum of his diving suit grew fainter and fainter, and the oxygen supply had begun to sputter intermittently. Ice-cold seawater seeped through the unpatched gap in his suit, choking Byrne and making him gasp for air.
He gritted his teeth, kicking his fins with everything he had left, with only one thought driving him forward: Get back to the Shadow.
He had no idea how long he had been ascending, but fractured flecks of light finally appeared overhead, and the sound of waves lapping the surface drifted down through the water, growing clearer by the second.
Just as the power in Byrne's suit was about to run completely dry, he finally broke the surface.
He looked up. The Shadow was anchored on the waters not far away, its black sails swaying gently in the light breeze. Everything seemed peaceful.
But just as he prepared to swim toward the Shadow, a shadow darted past in the corner of his eye beneath the water.
What was that?
Byrne's muscles tensed the moment he emerged. He instinctively held his breath, his eyes locked onto the direction where the shadow had vanished.
But after scanning for a few moments, the surface remained dead calm with no sign of anything unusual.
Forget it, probably just my mind playing tricks on me.
Byrne shook his head and began swimming toward the distant Shadow.
With his energy reserves completely drained, the propulsion thrusters were offline, leaving Byrne to swim relying entirely on raw muscle power.
To a thoroughly exhausted Byrne, the distance of a few hundred meters felt agonizingly long.
At long last, he grabbed onto the Shadow's gunwale. Summoning the absolute last shred of his strength, he hauled himself up and collapsed heavily onto the deck, panting heavily.
With his suit's power completely dead, the visor popped open automatically. The cool, salty sea breeze rushed into his mouth and nose, triggering a rough bout of coughing.
Byrne lay sprawled on the deck for quite some time before his strength slowly started to return.
He stripped off the diving suit, tossed it aside, and pushed himself up. He then looked down at the wound on his flank.
"Hah. The Marketing Development Department... I'll remember this."
Meanwhile, on the waters near the Tears of the Mother Goddess, an IPC vessel lay anchored.
Inside one of its cabins, a man dressed in a white suit sat on a sofa, taking slow sips of red wine.
A holographic screen in front of him projected a real-time nautical map of the Tears of the Mother Goddess.
At that moment, a red dot representing the shipwreck site blinked twice before winking out completely.
Seeing the red dot vanish, the man in the white suit didn't show the slightest hint of annoyance. He tilted his head back, draining his glass of red wine, and chuckled softly. "Connor, that overconfident fool, ended up tripping over his own feet after all. Oh well, at least he managed to send back critical data before he kicked the bucket."
"The Itans... and Cangdu of the Decaying Waters..."
—
"Heh... this mission is getting more and more interesting."