Chapter 98: Hadal Encumbrance, and Apologising (1/2)
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The link is also in the synopsis.
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[This chapter isn't edited. I did go through it before posting, but I am not good at this, so have fun!]
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After another water teleportation, Quinn arrived at an appropriately lit area, and immediately his eyes hurt, causing him to wince.
”Ugh, should've seen that coming,” grunted Quinn and squinted his eyes to let them adjust to the new lighting. After a few seconds, when his eyes adjusted to the light, he opened them up and looked around.
”Much better.”
Looking at his surroundings, Quinn found he was standing on a white marbled floor and was inside a cylindrical room with walls that matched the white marble floor.
When he looked up, Quinn saw that the ceiling of the room was around twenty feet high. In the walls of the cylindrical room were crystals, inlaid in a grid pattern that went up to the ceiling, bathing the room in bright white light.
The next feature of the room that caught Quinn's eyes was the circular hole in the marbled floor. Quinn measured with his eyes and guessed that the circular floor had a fifteen-feet diameter, while the hole in the middle of the floor was of a ten-feet diameter.
Quinn walked closer to the hole and squatted near the edge.
”More water, huh,” Quinn breathed out and touched the water with his hand, and at first touch, nothing stood out to him.
”What is the deal with this one?” asked Quinn to himself, and he got the answer when Quinn turned his head and looked at the wall behind. ”Ah, there it is. Let's see...”
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「<-~| HADAL ENCUMBRANCE |~->」
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”Hadal Encumbrance, now what in the name of Tehom does that mean?” sighed Quinn as he moved closer to the words etched on the wall with a bold and grand font.
”Encumbrance, now that is a big boy word,” chuckled Quinn and crossed his arms as he stared at the wall. ”An impediment or burden. Yeah, that checks out. At least it isn't something like delight. This gives me so much relief... And, there is Hadal. What does that mean? Pretty sure a mythological reference.”
He turned back to the 'well' filled with water and wondered, ”Now, what is the impediment or burden inside there.” He walked to the edge and looked down to see if he could see the bottom of the water-filled hole, and surprisingly, Quinn could see the end clearly.
”Oh, there is the exit. Oh my, what a... pleasant... surprise,” spoke Quinn as he stared down into the water. There saw the triangular exit on the floor of the cylindrical well. ”I am getting weird. Why can't I just feel safe when I see positive signs. The side-effects of being a veteran are so stressful.”
Quinn squinted to read the wording of the next door, but the text was too far away for him to make out the words.
”I guess I would just have to dive inside to see the words clearly,” hummed Quinn and then rubbed the royal blue insignia on his arm, wondering about his next plan of action.
”Well, let's start slow,” decided Quinn, and dipped his legs inside the water before slipping down into the blue waters.
From the second his body submerged into the water, Quinn put himself on full alert and very slowly let himself slip down the water.
'Hmm?! This...'
Immediately, Quinn felt something off. As Quinn continued to sink inch by inch, the pressure around his body started to increase at an accelerated rate.
The density of water causes ambient pressures that increase dramatically with depth. But right now, Quinn could feel that same pressure increasing unnaturally, something that wouldn't happen at the shallow depth Quinn was currently at.
'Underwater atmospheric pressure is increasing!' thought Quinn, and he understood what the trial title's meant. 'So this is the encumbrance, huh. Certainly, this is a burden.'
He looked at the distance he had sunk and then at the depth that Quinn had to sink to get to the bottom. He had barely sunk down five percent of the total depth, and already Quinn could feel a considerable amount of pressure.
'T-The pressure at the bottom must be incredible, huh,' thought Quinn, but then a smirk appeared on his face. 'But this is not that serious, is it?'
Quinn cast magic, and water magic showed its charm to create a sphere of water around him. The pressure that Quinn was feeling disappeared completely. It was like he was swimming at the base sea level.
”I can use water magic to adjust the water pressure,” smirked Quinn before a serious expression appeared on his face. ”Now, let's see how deep I can go.”
Quinn had observed the increase in the pressure in his five percent descent, and if the development in water pressure was linear, then with Quinn's calculations, he didn't believe that he could cancel out it after a certain point.
”At least I would get some data to work with.” Quinn gulped in some water and restarted his descent.
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Ten percent mark: Quinn didn't break a sweat and continued on.
”What did the ocean say to the shore?” ”Nothing. It just waved.” ”Then it became salty because the land didn't wave back.”
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Twenty percent mark: Quinn had to put in some conscious effort to cancel out the pressure.
”A cube of ice flexed on a glass of water by saying, I was water before it was cool.”
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Thirty percent mark: Quinn began feeling some difficulty in canceling out the pressure.
”The hipster fish didn't swim in the river because it was too mainstream.”
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Forty percent mark: Quinn had his eyes closed to concentrate and was solely focused on resisting the pressure.
'How do you make holy water?' 'You boil the hell out of it.'
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Fifty percent mark: The water sphere around Quinn maintained at normal atmospheric pressure and started to ripple at the boundaries.
'R.I.P boiled water, you will be mist.'
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Sixty percent mark: The protective sphere around Quinn had reduced to half the size it was in the fifty percent mark and was rippling wildly at the boundaries, and it looked like it was going to collapse.
'...'
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Quinn didn't descend beyond the sixty percent mark, deciding to stay at the spot. Any more than that and Quinn wouldn't be able to keep normal atmospheric pressure.
It would start to slip, and the pressure would increase. Some slippage wasn't bad, but it turned out that while the increment in pressure was linear, the slope on the graph was too steep. If Quinn went down from his current spot, the pressure would start to slip too quickly and cause complications inside his body.
Nitrogen narcosis, the 'narks,' starts with the perception of euphoria and over-confidence but then leads to numbness and memory impairment similar to alcohol intoxication. Those symptoms were never a good sign and especially not in the current situation.
If he took the chance and couldn't handle the pressure and then tried to come up a bit too quickly, Quinn would suffer from decompression sickness, or the 'bends' and excess inert gas left the solution in the blood and tissues forming bubbles. Since bubbles could be developed in or migrated to any part of the body, they produced many symptoms, and its effects may vary from joint pain and rashes to paralysis and death.
His body could suffer from Bone degeneration and could injure while he was inside the water. Those injuries might cause him to lose control of the pressure sphere and cause further complications.
And above all of that, there was a danger of oxygen toxicity resulting from the harmful effects of breathing molecular oxygen at increased partial pressures. Severe cases could result in cell damage and death, with effects most often seen in the central nervous system, lungs, and eyes which would be fatal in his current environment.
Immediately Quinn swam back up, and because he was at normal atmospheric pressure, he was able to come out quickly without complications that deep divers needed to look out when emerging from deep down below.
”... Sixty percent cleared, not bad for the first try. I was totally expecting to escape using teleportation,” laughed Quinn after taking deep breaths to recover from the relatively heavy magic exertion that was used to hold back the pressure.
”How much was that? Six hundred times the normal atmospheric pressure? How much is that? It is definitely more than the sperm whale can handle,” shrugged Quinn because he didn't know the exact pressure values. ”I need to see how much pressure is that in terms of underwater depth levels.”
Overall, Quinn was feeling really good because, in a single day, he was able to clear Tehom's delight and had made substantial progress with Hadal Encumbrance. This level of progress was first for Quinn.
”After the water wave sonar progress against the Kraken, things are going good for Quinn. Good job, buddy,” laughed Quinn as he patted himself on the back before triggering teleportation insignia on his arm.