Marvel: A Lazy-Ass Superman

Chapter 746: Chapter 746: The Aegean Sea Floor

By the time Henry passed the two-hundred-meter mark, the light had already dimmed to the point where it was difficult to make out anything. At a depth of one thousand meters, it was pitch-black.

His ocular abilities had yet to recover, so Henry did not turn on his flashlight for illumination. Instead, with an experimental mindset, he vibrated his vocal cords to produce sound waves and relied on his ears to identify the terrain and surrounding objects.

This method was quite similar to his ability to model objects using sound waves on land. Moreover, sound traveled even faster through water, allowing Henry to ”see” the terrain and objects around him even in the darkness.

The only problem was that marine creatures that got too close to him displayed considerable discomfort and hurriedly fled.

Since this method was more useful than a flashlight, Henry was naturally pleased. He expanded the range of his senses and began surveying an even greater distance.

At a depth of roughly 1,500 to 2,000 meters lay the thermocline. There was no physical barrier caused by any drastic temperature change. The temperature simply became relatively stable, with the water hovering between zero and four degrees Celsius. It did not freeze, but neither did it warm up.

Having dived to this depth for the first time, Henry’s only thought was: Hopefully there aren’t any ancient giant marine creatures trapped beneath the thermocline.

The greatest difference between the deep sea and shallow waters was the marine life.

Unlike fish living in shallow waters, which emphasized streamlined bodies to evade predators or pursue prey, deep-sea creatures had evolved to withstand terrifying water pressure and survive in their environment. They were practically all sorts of Lovecraftian monstrosities.

The one thing they had in common was their extremely slow speed. Deep-sea creatures rarely hunted by chasing their prey. More often, they attracted prey to approach on its own, like an anglerfish, and then captured it with a sudden burst of speed.

Giant deep-sea creatures were not particularly rare. Giant octopuses and squids could easily grow to more than ten meters long. If Henry approached one of those monsters slowly, it might well swallow him like bait.

But the Kryptonian’s movement speed in the deep sea was not much slower than in shallow water. He simply kept his accelerator running as he drilled toward the seabed. The current he displaced would naturally push other marine creatures away from him.

If any creature entered Henry’s wake, however, it was in trouble. The wake would suck the creature in and carry it along as Henry continued downward, taking it toward the even deeper seabed.

Fortunately, Kinger was covering the rear. The creatures sucked into the wake never had a chance to follow them deeper. Even if they might not have been able to adapt to such depths and would eventually have been crushed by the pressure, Kinger would still blast them apart with a shot before that happened.

With Kinger watching his back, Henry naturally continued deeper into the sea.

Under the combination of his sound waves and hearing, the world beneath the sea was completely exposed to him. In fact, after reaching the seabed, Henry discovered that because sound was transmitted through liquid, he no longer needed to actively make sounds. He could construct a terrain model simply from the feedback carried by the water.

With such a convenient ability, Henry did not immediately put away the round-cased deep-sea flashlight. Instead, he switched it on so that he could communicate with the others. More importantly, he wanted to confirm Cassandra’s condition.

During the descent, Henry had been keeping an eye on Cassandra. Now, even at a depth of three thousand meters—a depth where ordinary humans could not possibly survive—the Spartan woman sustained by an Isu artifact could still move around like a normal person. Her physical constitution was clearly formidable.

After agreeing on emergency signals and a rendezvous point, everyone chose a direction and split up to search. Henry tied the chain and the switched-on flashlight to the spot, marking it as their meeting point, before turning and heading off.

Using nothing but sound waves to explore, Henry discovered that there were not many man-made objects on the seabed.

And after such an unimaginably long period of time, even if objects had fallen from the surface, they could easily have been buried beneath all sorts of strange things. He therefore had to identify them carefully.

Fortunately, the returning sound waves did more than allow him to distinguish outlines. Sound traveled at different speeds through different materials, and with that difference, Henry could roughly determine what certain objects were made of.

Although he had never encountered the material of the Isu equipment Cassandra had mentioned, how could he possibly be unfamiliar with wooden crates and iron chains?

Before long, Henry found several suspicious targets.

He examined the nearest one. The wooden crate had lain on the deep-sea floor for who knew how many years. The wood was still relatively intact, though it was covered with various strange growths.

The iron strips holding the wood together, however, as well as the chains wrapped around the outside, were in terrible condition. They were covered in rust and looked as though they would snap at the slightest touch. Some sections had already broken.

Considering the difficulty of opening a crate on the seabed and then resealing it for transport to the surface if it really contained his target, Henry decided to bring the suspicious objects back to the yacht for inspection.

His main concern was that the rusted iron strips and plates holding the crates together might crumble and cause the entire box to fall apart. He was far less worried about whether the tremendous water pressure would prevent him from opening the crate.

At this depth, regardless of how sturdy the crate had originally been, if it contained air, that air would either have been compressed away or the crate would have been damaged and flooded. Once the inside and outside were both filled with water, the difficulty of opening it would depend solely on whether the crate’s structure had been damaged.

There was also the possibility of impacts during its descent, along with other forms of damage. Whether the chains Cassandra had used to bind the crate were still there, whether the crate had been completely destroyed, and whether its contents had spilled out were all factors that had to be considered.

Thus, Henry selected the two man-made objects closest to him, grabbed one in each hand, and returned to the rendezvous point.

The other three had not returned yet, so Henry went back out and hauled several more crates over, piling them beside the meeting point.

When Cassandra and the others finally returned with their finds, they were astonished to discover that Henry had already gathered a considerable number of crates and was simply waiting to transport them back to the surface.

If Henry had been alone, he would not have cared about decompression sickness or similar problems. His ascent would have been faster than his descent, not slower.

But now he had to bring three people back up, and everyone was carrying a piece of their spoils. They obviously could not ascend at top speed.

Henry therefore slowed down slightly, using the chain to tow the others as they returned to the surface.

The Eternals’ physical constitutions were beyond question. Even Cassandra, the woman whose immortality came from an Isu artifact, endured the descent and ascent without incident.

With Tina’s help from the yacht, everyone hauled their spoils aboard and climbed back onto the vessel using the boarding ladder at the stern.

Henry himself simply activated his flight ability and rose directly from the sea, placing the wooden crate in his hands lightly onto the deck.

Cassandra, however, was ultimately no Eternal or Kryptonian. After climbing aboard, she braced both hands against the railing and gasped for breath.

The other three Eternals, meanwhile, casually settled onto the yacht’s sofas and even had enough energy to fetch themselves some beer.

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