"What is this?"
Aron stared at the bronze doors that had suddenly appeared before him, his face taking on a strange expression.
He immediately pulled out an exorcism card and activated the ritual, but he clearly felt that there were no demons nearby.
In other words…
Quaggs had not appeared!
Whether it was the dense tentacles or those strange bronze doors, they were all hallucinations created by the power of quarks.
"Hallucinations?" Aron immediately drew the Sorcerer's Eye that Odin had given him.
The moment he activated it, the Eye engraved itself into his brow and turned into a third eye.
In an instant, the illusion disappeared.
The peak of Mount Makalu returned to its original state.
The only thing that still remained were the bronze doors, now even clearer and more real than before.
Moreover, everything around them seemed distorted, almost as if time itself had become unreal.
"Doesn't this mean…?" Aron paused, recalling the words of the Ancient One. She had once said that Quaggs was sealed together with an even more terrifying being.
It was becoming clear to him now, he had stepped right into a trap.
If he opened these doors, he would be forced to step into an unknown world, perhaps even into the very core of a dimensional lord's power.
The scariest part of it all was one question: what if that world was a place where the exorcism system had no effect at all?
Aron tried to evaluate his own trump cards. His hidden assets were: the Reality Gem, the Space Gem, the ability of resurrection, as well as the power to summon the Evil God through the Voice of the Heavenly Law and destroy everything along with the enemy. But beyond that… nothing more.
"It's too thin. If I face a true lord of dimensions, even that might not be enough."
At that moment, while he hesitated between entering or retreating, the voice of the Ancient One echoed in his mind.
"Return it to me when you're done."
Then, before him, a portal opened, and from it floated out the Eye of Agamotto.
"I love you, Supreme Mage!" Aron grabbed it without hesitation.
Now he was completely secured. The Eye of Agamotto gave him the ability to set a time loop—so that, in the case of a fatal injury, everything would rewind to a preselected moment.
The very same trick Doctor Strange had used against Dormammu.
In other words, the save-and-reload mechanism of a game.
"Now that's something! It's great to have backup from behind the scenes."
Without hesitation, Aron set a time loop and moved toward the bronze doors.
The moment his hand touched the handle, the illusory doors became solid and tangible.
Creak.
He slowly pushed them, and behind them opened a sight that instantly froze his blood.
He stood at the edge of an abyss.
No, he was at the bottom of the sea.
Through the doors he had stepped directly into the ocean, at the very bottom of a boundless abyss.
Water pressed against him from all sides, as if hundreds of tons of weight were crushing down upon his body.
"I hate the ocean floor the most…" he muttered, frowning.
Quickly, he activated his demonic power and created a protective barrier around himself, isolating the seawater.
"This is definitely not Earth."
He expanded his awareness as far as he could, trying to sense the boundaries of the world he was in.
But no matter how far he extended it up, down, forward, back, left, or right, he could not find an end.
This ocean…
Was endlessly deep.
And infinitely wide.
There was no land.
No exit anywhere.
Only unending darkness and the abyss of the sea.
"This is the ocean dimension, man."
Suddenly, a deep voice appeared.
Aron turned, and his gaze fell upon a massive chain stretching through the boundless sea. The chain was hundreds of meters wide, its length vanishing into infinity. And it wasn't just one, many such chains intertwined, binding the seabed in a terrifying net.
At their end, everything converged with a mountain range that extended beneath the ocean.
"You're Quaggs?" Aron approached the colossal mass.
The mountain suddenly trembled. Slowly, from within it, an enormous eyeball opened.
The mountain wasn't stone at all. It was a monster with endless tentacles, shackled and imprisoned deep beneath the sea. The tentacles were covered in silt and sediment, so from afar they looked like mountain ranges.
"Incredible…" was Aron's first thought as he gazed upon Quaggs. Just one of his eyes was larger than entire cities.
As he came closer, he saw that the capillaries in that eye were the size of rivers. And then, all around him, other "mountains" suddenly began to open.
One after another, they all turned into colossal eyeballs.
Twelve eyes.
All of them fixed on him.
Cold sweat ran down Aron's back. His skin crawled as he felt the gaze of those titanic eyes, as if they would shatter his mind if he looked too long.
He decided not to beat around the bush. If this continued, his mind might completely collapse.
"Quaggs… let's make a deal," he said aloud. "I know you're sealed here. I can help you break these chains and regain your freedom. All I ask in return is a small portion of your power."
Aron wasn't lying. While observing the chains, he noticed they weren't held by matter, but by complex, mysterious inscriptions. Someone had carved them with unimaginable power. If the exorcism system ever decided to act, Aron was convinced he could break that seal.
But Quaggs suddenly laughed.
A deep, mocking laughter echoed through the entire ocean, like thunder tearing the sky apart.
His body shook, and from the force of that laughter, the entire dimension trembled.
The sight reminded Aron of the legend of the Monkey King pulling the needle from the sea. The whole world trembled from the movement of a single being.
"What are you laughing at?" Aron frowned.
"Hahaha! Human… do you even know who sealed me?"
Quaggs's voice was both terrifying and disdainful. "You dare speak of freeing me? As if it's a joke."
One of his eyeballs suddenly shone. A dark-purple beam shot forth, tearing through the water.
It wasn't even aimed at him. It was just a casual flick, as if to demonstrate.
The result was terrifying.
Hundreds of tons of seawater vanished in an instant, evaporating into nothingness.
Not even a trace remained. The pressure of the surrounding ocean couldn't fill the void fast enough, leaving behind a massive vacuum, a hole in the sea.
"See?" Quaggs spoke coldly, almost proudly. "That is my power. That is what you want."
Silence fell, and then the monster raised his voice.
"I am Quaggs! Once the master of the Tentacle Dimension! At the peak of my power, I was at the level of a universe, mortal!"
His words echoed like waves crashing against cliffs.
"And now… now I am sealed. Imprisoned in this darkness. In the prison of the ocean dimension. My power is bound. Not even a fragment of what I was remains. And you… you, a man who has not even reached the power of the Heavenly Father, dare to make noise and ask of me? I despise it!"
His roar shook the entire dimension. The water churned, the dark pressure shattered like a storm, and Aron felt his body trembling.
But then, the chains that bound Quaggs suddenly glowed.
The inscriptions upon them lit up one by one, each like a burning seal.
"AAAAARGHHH!"
Quaggs screamed. His colossal body twisted, convulsed under the force of the seal, and then suddenly collapsed to the seabed. His eyes shut, and his monstrous form remained pinned to the ocean floor like a dead deity.
Silence.
Then he spoke in a hoarse, weary voice:
"Go, human. I will spare your life. You are the first living being I've seen in thousands of years. That is my gift."
The eyeballs, one by one, closed. Darkness once again fell upon the ocean.
"Wait!" Aron shouted, realizing something important in what he had just heard.
"Quaggs… just now you said you were the master of the Tentacle Dimension. If that's the case… then this isn't your true world, is it?"
His eyes gleamed as he spoke the words.
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