Chapter 442: Abyssal Scar [1]
2nd March, Year 715 A.G.
[05:32pm]
Northern Edge of the Central Belt.
Leon stood close to one of the biggest, feared, and one of the most well-known landmarks in the world.
The Abyssal Scar stretched beyond the horizon.
From the ridge where Leon stood, it looked less like a crater and more like a wound that was carved into the planet itself.
The earth simply... ended.
A jagged abyss split the continent from east to west, vanishing into the distance until even the enhanced optics of the Zerphyr-7 Stealth Reconnaissance UAV couldn’t follow it.
Leon felt like he was looking at the end of a world, an abyssal drop that was seemingly endless and boundless.
He had heard about the Abyssal Scar from Ren Nora months before now, he knew what to expect but still, seeing it for himself was totally different from what he expected.
For the second time since waking up, Leon experienced a feeling that gave him a hint to how the Earth he knew died.
The first time he felt like this was when he climbed out of the SpaceX facility for the first time, staring at the horizon where he saw neon storms clouding the sky, forcing the world in a state of perpetual evening.
The lack of sunlight was especially glaring at first to him, the sheer wrongness of it was what first convinced him that he was not on Earth.
And now, Leon experienced the same feeling when looking at this crater, a feeling of total wrongness. But unlike the neon storms, the sight of the abyssal scar made his hair stand on end.
From where he stood, he could see the distant silhouette of ancient mountains that had collapsed into its depths.
Far into the distance, he could see entire forests that clung to fractured cliff sides, while rivers poured over the edges into the deep abyss like silver veins, disappearing into the glowing fog below.
Yes, the entire Abyssal Scar spanning hundreds of thousands of kilometers from east to west was filled entirely with a faintly familiar glowing fog.
Leon knew this fog; it was the same bioluminescent mist that spread across all of Neo-Tokara every night.
He blinked. ’Wait, is this the source of the bioluminescent fog?’
He didn’t know what to think about that; the fact that Ren Nora didn’t tell him about it though meant that no one could confirm yet if the bioluminescent mist came from the Abyssal Scar.
How could they? Afterally, they can’t even explore the crater properly.
Leon exhaled and tried to look beyond the fog into what the boundless crater contained. Beneath the fog, all that waited was darkness.
Not true darkness, something worse- a thicker, much more harrowing ocean of bioluminescent mist that churned inside the Scar, making Leon shiver at the sight of it.
His face turned grim. ’What is the true source of this mist?’
He felt like he didn’t want to know the answer.
He sighed. ’Mysteries, mysteries, mysteries’.
Despite how apprehensive he felt at this moment, Leon had no intentions of turning back though.
His will was to go into the depths of this inhumane crater and find hints to his past, anything that could potentially supercharge the ChronoSystem to boot again and he would not let this mist or its source hold him back.
But he was not going to be reckless about it either. Afterall, he still remembered Ren Nora’s warning vividly.
With how much he knew about the true nature of the ’Glitch’, if even an Ascended as harrowing as Ren Nora could not explore the true depths of this world safely, Leon did not want to overestimate his own ability.
He gave the Scar the respect that it deserved.
For a few minutes, he just stood, observing the layers upon layers of glowing vapor that drifted through the abyss, illuminating the depths in eerie shades of blue, green, violet, and sickly white.
Unlike when it engulfed the world at night when it was dormant and mostly harmless, here, the fog moved like a living thing, swirling around ruined skyscrapers that occasionally emerged from its depths like the skeletons of drowned giants.
Yes, skyscrapers.
After having a deeper discussion with Ren Nora already, from the little that the General explored, Leon knew that what hid within the Scar were cities, ancient Cities, fragments of the old world.
Entire districts from humanity’s forgotten age lay buried down there, and nobody knew what else.
From Omnicore’s research and Ren Nora’s own deep dive into history, the world’s collapse had created countless disasters- mega tsunamis, continental earthquakes, volcanic winters, and even meteor storms.
But none of them compared to the event that birthed the Abyssal Scar, perhaps only the rise and spread of the Endless Ocean could compare.
The land itself had split apart.
Millions had died, and entire nations had vanished overnight.
Now, centuries later, the Abyssal Scar remained one of the 2 final unexplored regions of Neo-Tokara.
Not because people lacked curiosity, but because no one sent inside stayed long enough to get truly deep and ever survived.
Everything sent inside simply died; drones vanished, explorers disappeared, and even military expeditions never returned.
Only the C Rank Sovereigns of the world have ever returned, but even they have never managed to spend more than 2 hours within it.
But just like Ren Nora, the other Sovereigns came with matching information.
The Neon Beasts living within the Scar had evolved alongside the region itself, most of them being far more powerful and harrowing than what normal Neon Beasts outside the Abyssal Scar are.
And the deeper one descended, the stronger they became.
Thinking of all this information, a faint smile appeared on Leon’s face. "Perfect, just perfect".
Behind him, the massive truck rumbled quietly. The massive truck looked insignificant against the scale of the abyss.
Leon’s pitch-black eyes narrowed as he stared into the mist, then he sighed.
As high as he thought of himself and his chances of actually exploring the Abyssal Scar, Leon had no intentions of being reckless about it.
This is why following the plan that he already created ahead of time, he set base right on top of that hill after erecting a camouflage barrier already.
BZZZZ!
Under the flow of his grayish white ADE, Doom Rover v0.1s stepped out as he turned them to labor workers, setting up his base.
Apart from swiftly erecting a mini observation tower for him, Leon also let the Korrelite-I "Vanguard" Auto-Turret and the Sentry-IV Autocannon Drone loose.
Miniaturization!
He didn’t send them into the Scar yet, he simply erected them as the core defensive threat of his new base.
With the Turret chamber housing the Gun Drone, the combination of both was more than enough to take care of any Neon Beast at the periphery of the Scar that would take a liking to their new neighbor.
Within minutes, a temporary forward operating camp had materialized even as Leon sent a few observatory C-5 drones into the Scar.
Within the next hour, the Turret and the Gun Drone did some work, shredding 8 Neon Beasts to bloody pieces, using their corpse as a deterrent to other Neon Beasts at the periphery that would set their sights on their master’s scent.
And then, at exactly 7:20pm on the dot, something changed.
The fog began moving.
