“This really does feel much safer. Do we need to do anything?”

Ayla pressed against the window. She had no idea what was below them, nor what they were supposed to do next, but it seemed that as long as they stayed here, they wouldn’t come into contact with those dangerous things.

“My instinct is warning me that if we make any rash moves, something extremely troublesome will happen.”

If not for the power of the Instinctive State Rule Fragment, Lin Ye might have already sent Ayla away.

“……Is there something moving out there? Something deep blue…”

Ayla looked out the window. She thought she saw some strange things, but she couldn’t confirm what they were. This feeling was very odd.

“There’s nothing out there except the seawater itself. What you’re seeing is just the water.”

Lin Ye said in a very certain tone.

“You mean the seawater is constantly moving?”

Ayla didn’t think she couldn’t even recognize seawater.

“The sea is always moving. This world is also always moving. You just never realized it before.”

Lin Ye had already closed his eyes. He, too, had seen something strange—far stranger than what Ayla described—but he wasn’t about to say it.

“I’m not talking about the seawater. It’s a living thing, deep blue. Seawater can’t move like a living creature, can it?”

Ayla said stubbornly.

“Why can’t seawater be some kind of creature? If this planet is a living organism, then the ocean inside it might possess a certain biological activity. That’s not too hard to understand, is it?”

Lin Ye emptied his mind, trying to block out external information, but Ayla kept talking, and that somewhat pleasant voice was drawing closer to his ear, closer to his brain.

“If all this is true, then why are you closing your eyes? Why not just send me away? Have you given up on me? Mr. Lin Ye.”

Ayla leaned against Lin Ye, whispering softly close to his ear.

“……Because I don’t want to touch the Abyss in this state. You wouldn’t want me to open a passage to the Abyss here, would you?”

Lin Ye didn’t open his eyes. Closing his eyes was an attempt, but now he couldn’t open them anymore.

“Why? I really want to go to the Abyss, especially the deepest part. I heard no one has ever been there.”

Ayla gently stroked Lin Ye’s cheek. The moist touch felt very strange, as if it wasn’t Ayla touching Lin Ye, but some kind of deep-sea creature.

“So you’re not some enemy behind the scenes, but…”

Ayla covered the alien body’s mouth, stopping him from finishing.

“Shh. That’s enough.”

Ayla said in a very cheerful tone.

“You’re right… This is the first time I’ve communicated with an existence like you. Is there anything you need me to do?”

Lin Ye thought about how to handle this situation, but it was really beyond his capabilities.

This was an existence far more troublesome than the deity’s corpse from before.

“I’ve been watching you for a while. Unlike other humans, you keep coming into contact with me. I hope you can agree to one thing.”

Ayla’s voice grew fuzzy, as if it was gradually turning into something else.

“Can I refuse?”

Lin Ye didn’t want to agree to something like this.

“Of course you can, but you don’t know what will happen.”

That thing made a sound like laughter.

“……Then I have no choice but to agree.”

Considering the entity’s identity, Lin Ye couldn’t refuse its proposal.

“Good. I hope we can get along for a long time.”

With those words, that presence vanished. Lin Ye clearly sensed this information.

“……I hope so.”

Lin Ye opened his eyes. He saw Ayla sitting by the window, looking outside, as if nothing had ever happened.

“There doesn’t seem to be anything here?”

Ayla said somewhat disappointed.

The Massive Tendril Monster had reached the deepest bottom of the sea. The seabed was covered in fine white sand, and aside from that, there was nothing peculiar here.

“No, before we arrived here, there was actually something here.”

Lin Ye also looked out the window. He glanced up at the ceiling. Something was approaching.

“What is it?”

Ayla asked curiously.

“It was the unknown. We are the first creatures to arrive here, so before we came, this was all unknown territory.”

What Lin Ye had just encountered was the unknown itself. It was hard for him to imagine that such a concept could possess self-awareness, but it had indeed appeared before him and communicated with him in a way he could understand.

And he had agreed to a completely unknown request.

This was really damned.

“The unknown? Is that some romantic way of putting it?”

Ayla looked at Lin Ye with a strange expression. She only saw a stretch of sand, nothing else.

“No. That’s the truth.”

Lin Ye was no romantic type; he was just describing the facts.

This was probably the kind of thing fools couldn’t see.

The emperor’s new clothes might not be a lie after all, because there really are sights that only certain people can see.

“Hmm… What should we do now? Should we ascend?”

Ayla decided to change the subject.

“We wait for the fishhook to arrive.”

Lin Ye answered calmly.

“Fishhook?”

Ayla couldn’t quite follow Lin Ye’s train of thought.

“This is a Fishing Competition. We contestants aren’t the ones fishing—we’re part of the fish pond. Those human faces are the bait, but only contestants who reach the deepest bottom of the sea are worthy of having the Organizers cast their hooks. Now we just wait for the fishhook to arrive.”

Lin Ye explained the competition’s specific process in a way Ayla could understand.

“I see… But why go to the deepest bottom of the sea? There’s nothing here? What’s the difference between us here and us up there?”

Ayla still had one thing she couldn’t figure out.

“So I said, the unknown is here. The difference is that we have come into contact with the unknown.”

In truth, probably only Lin Ye had made contact with the unknown. But to give Ayla a sense of participation, Lin Ye deliberately used the word “we.”

That was Lin Ye’s unique tenderness toward his friends.

“……I see.”

Ayla didn’t expect the topic to circle back again.

She suspected Lin Ye made all that up just to bring the conversation back.

But she said nothing.

“The fishhook is close. I might be a little rough soon. Even if this didn’t happen, I probably couldn’t escape anyway, but you’d better fasten your seatbelt first.”

A mass of tendrils pinned Ayla to the floor.