Ethan stared at the opening.
This can’t be a normal entrance, he thought. The Bottle shaped Isle was enormous—stretching from the ocean’s surface down nearly nine thousand ters. If he could sohow haul the entire thing up, it might even tower over Mount Everest.
He ran his hands along the rocky surface, tracing every groove and ridge, searching for any hidden chanism or sign of life. After a long while, he found nothing. Just as he was about to return to the small opening and probe it with his Soul Sense, sothing unusual appeared—a fish, drifting into view.
Ethan froze. The creature was hideous, almost grotesquely so, with a body that seed patched together by nature’s mistakes.
Then, from the very opening the little Golden Dragon had discovered, ca a sudden gurgling sound. A bubble shot out—not lazily floating upward, but blasting forward as if launched by pressure. It grew rapidly, swelling to dozens of ters across in an instant, completely engulfing the monstrous fish.
Ethan gawked, startled by the sight. Before he could react, the bubble reversed direction and sped back toward the Bottle. As it moved, it shrank, compressing from sothing massive to the size of a thumb before vanishing into the opening.
Yet the fish inside wasn’t crushed. Instead, it shrunk right along with the bubble and disappeared into the Bottle as if it had been swallowed whole.
"What the... Is this thing alive? Does it hunt fish?" Ethan muttered in disbelief. His eyes narrowed as an idea took shape. He cast his Soul Sense outward and soon detected two more large fish nearby. Swiftly, he maneuvered his ch suit, catching one and dragging it back toward the strange opening.
Sure enough, as soon as he approached, the Bottle spat out another bubble. It wrapped around both Ethan and the struggling fish. His pulse quickened—this had to be the way in. But as the bubble began to shrink, he realized sothing was wrong. It passed right through his body, ejecting him while only drawing the fish back into the Bottle.
"Son of a—" Ethan cursed. "You picky Bottle!" He floated there, fuming. If he couldn’t get in this way, then what was he supposed to do?
After a brief pause, a reckless idea struck him. He caught another fish. The mont the bubble erged again, Ethan pried open the creature’s grotesque mouth and slipped inside. Thankfully, his ch suit shielded him—otherwise, the thought alone would’ve turned his stomach.
As the bubble drew them in, Ethan extended his Soul Sense and felt his own body begin to shrink. This ti, it was working. He drifted forward, weightless, toward the opening.
Then ca a soft pop. The bubble burst, and Ethan knew he had entered.
He imdiately punched at the fish’s mouth. The ugly creature convulsed and spat him out. As Ethan stumbled free, he spotted the little Golden Dragon peeking from a small crack in the distance. When it recognized him, it wagged its tail with excitent and darted over, circling him happily.
Ethan took a mont to orient himself. His body had returned to its normal size, though the transition had left his senses buzzing. Around him, three fish flitted about nervously, startled by his sudden arrival. It seed the creatures the Bottle captured weren’t killed—just stored here.
"Eeyah-yah!" The little Golden Dragon fluttered before him, its translucent form made from the Ancestral Dragon’s Imperial Aura. It waved its tiny claws and chirped urgently, pointing deeper into the Bottle.
Ethan tried communicating with it through Soul Sense, but the creature didn’t respond at all. He sighed. The little thing clearly didn’t understand him.
Still, he had co this far. Whatever lay deeper inside, he needed to see it for himself.
Ignoring the dragon’s fussing, Ethan gathered himself and started forward.
He gently pushed the little Golden Dragon aside and swam deeper. It struck him that he had been underwater for more than two hours since leaving the surface. Without his personal combat ch, he would’ve long since run out of air.
He still hadn’t tested whether his Druid’s Travel Form—specifically, the Seal Form—could let him breathe underwater in the real world. Fortunately, his ch was powerful enough to extract oxygen from the seawater and keep him alive down here.
The little Golden Dragon led the way, glowing brilliantly in the dark. Its light shone even brighter than the ch’s floodlamps, casting rippling golden patterns across the cavern walls. It kept pointing forward, urging him on.
Ethan frowned. If this was really a Bottle, and he was moving toward its base, then shouldn’t that an he was actually going upward? Yet gravity still pulled him down. It felt as if the Bottle wasn’t standing upright at all, but lying on its side.
The farther he went, the narrower the passage beca. Soon he was certain: he had reached the middle section, and the Bottle was indeed positioned horizontally. But that didn’t make sense—outside, it had appeared perfectly vertical. Was the space inside disconnected from the external world, existing under its own strange laws?
At the narrowest point, the seawater ended abruptly. A faint, translucent mbrane shimred before him, separating the water from a dry chamber beyond. Ethan hesitated for a mont, then pressed forward.
The instant he crossed the barrier, everything shifted. The pull of gravity flipped, and his body dropped like a stone. He twisted in midair, glancing upward—what had been the tunnel behind him now hung above, the water glimring at its mouth like a suspended pool. Sohow, by entering this inner chamber, his orientation had changed completely.
His ch’s thrusters flared, catching him before he hit the ground. The little Golden Dragon wasn’t so lucky—it tumbled helplessly through the air until Ethan grabbed it by the tail and steadied it. The creature blinked several tis, dazed, before finding its balance again.
"Eeyah-yah!" it chirped suddenly, its eyes lighting up. It pointed downward and shot off before Ethan could stop it.
"Hey—wait!" Ethan lunged forward, snatching the reckless creature out of the air. If it ran into danger, he wouldn’t have ti to react.
Below them stood a structure that looked like an altar, eerily similar to the one on the island above. At its center rested a massive, spherical object glowing with a dim, sinister light. Heavy chains bound it in place, forming a cage that imprisoned the egg-shaped orb.
Ethan held the struggling Golden Dragon close as it thrashed and nipped at his fingers, its eyes locked greedily on the orb. Drool almost hung from its mouth.
"You want to eat it?" he asked, half incredulous.
The dragon froze at his words, then nodded eagerly, pointing again toward the orb.
Ethan hesitated. He could feel the energy radiating from the thing—an aura that echoed the Dragon Child and the Golden Dragon itself, yet beneath it lurked sothing darker, twisted and malevolent.
He floated there, eyes narrowed, studying the chained egg as the dim light pulsed like a heartbeat.
Whatever this was, it wasn’t just a relic or a treasure. Sothing alive was sealed inside.
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