Chapter 28: Chapter 27: The flames of devotion

The most terrifying dungeon in the world is undoubtedly the Blackwater-Abyss.

Situated roughly one kilometer outside of the coast off of Moonpearl Bay, on the western shore of the far-eastern continent, the Blackwater-Abyss is the world’s only currently existing ocean-type dungeon. Sitting right in the middle of the water, it can only be reached by ship.

Swimming is highly inadvisable, not even because of the distance or the rip-tides that will pull you under and into the darkness. But simply because the ocean is full of monsters in a way that is indescribable to anyone who has never seen it before.

A forest might have some goblins, some slimes and some mush-mushes, yes. But the ocean, the depths of the ocean are full of creatures, constructed of horrors from a deranged mind. They are creatures so twisted and strange that, with our landborn eyes, it’s entirely impossible to see them as something as a part of our natural world. The water teems with them.

— And that is simply what lurks in the black waters at the start of the ocean. Who is to even say what swims further out and deeper below? The ocean, being an element not natural to our species, is beyond our powers and the dungeon there, the only of its kind, is much the same.

Having had time to grow and a secure place to do so at, it has grown to be the highest leveled dungeon in the world, with an average monster level of eighty.

It has often been debated if it is worth sending a destruction team here, but, given its unique location and the fact that it does no harm to the shipping routes that it lays between, it has until now been mostly ignored. Despite this, there have been many cries to economize the dungeon, as with all others. If this is not possible, as it would seem, then there are voices who say to destroy it, so that a new dungeon can be born somewhere else; one that can be harvested of its natural resources like any other. However, these voices are quickly silenced, when they are given permission to go out into the waters themselves to do the job.

— Barring a world-ending, hundred year crisis, no adventurer or destruction team in their right mind will ever go here for more than a cursory visit of the first floor.

Some might call it a loss for us. But I find that it helps to simply view it as the way things are. It is easier to imagine that there are simply forty-eight dungeons in the world in total.

This one is best forgotten about and best not thought of, especially during dark nights near the water.