Baby System: I'm the Beast World's Only Hope!-Chapter 268: Episode 266: Traveling with Syris

Roxy breached the surface, replaced by the dense, icy embrace of the ocean.

The roar of the wind and the crashing waves above were instantly muffled, swallowed by the heavy, suffocating silence of the water. Bubbles trailed in her wake as her momentum carried her downward.

[You know sometimes. I really admire you]

Nikki wanted to reply but she was trying to understand why she was not breathing under water yet.

For a fraction of a second, the crushing weight of the water panicked her human instincts. But before her lungs could seize, the ancient, abyssal mana she had absorbed during her time in the Spires flared to life in her chest.

A shimmering, brilliant blue light erupted from her skin, illuminating the dark water like a sunken star.

The waterproof leathers she wore seamlessly dissolved into her inventory, replaced by the magic of her oceanic biology.

Her legs fused together in a painless, fluid motion. Shimmering, iridescent scales cascaded down her lower half, glowing in mesmerizing shades of pink. The magnificent, powerful flukes of her mermaid tail fanned out, catching the water with absolute, perfect grace.

A few yards above her, a long, sleek shadow sliced through the water with terrifying speed. Syris descended like a living javelin.

The Snake Beastman didn’t fight the ocean; he adapted to it. His lower half shifted entirely into his beast form, elongating into the thick, powerful coils of a sea serpent. His emerald scales flattened, catching the currents as he undulated effortlessly downward to join her.

Roxy spun around in the water, a stream of silver bubbles escaping her lips in a joyous laugh. With a powerful flick of her magnificent tail, she darted toward him.

"Welcome to my other world, Syris!" Roxy spat out, her voice bright and ringing with excitement.

She grabbed his hand, pulling him deeper. The surface light quickly faded from blue to a deep, twilight blue, but the ocean was far from dark.

As they descended past the continental shelf, the abyssal flora began to reveal itself.

"Look over there, by the trench wall!" Roxy pointed eagerly. "Those are kelp forests. They only bloom when the currents shift. And look down there! See those little glowing lights? Those are jellyfish They travel in pods of thousands. If you swim through them, they change colors based on your mood. Caspian told me they turn red when predators are near, but right now they’re just calm blue!"

She was an enthusiastic, beautiful tour guide, completely in her element. She twirled in the water, the heavy pressure that had once terrified her now feeling like a comforting, familiar blanket.

She pointed out bioluminescent coral reefs that glowed in neon pinks and greens, and schools of translucent, silver-finned fish that darted around them like shooting stars.

"And over that ridge is where the Leviathan breeding grounds start," Roxy continued, swimming backward so she could face him, gesturing animatedly with her hands. "We won’t go near there, obviously. But the sheer scale of the architecture down here is going to blow your mind once we reach the city gates. The Spires are carved directly into the bedrock of the ocean floor. It’s entirely lit by thermal vents and pearl-light—"

She was talking a mile a minute, entirely swept up in the adrenaline of the dive.

Syris, however, was not looking at the Kelp. He was not looking at the Jellyfish, nor did he care about the Leviathan breeding grounds or the architectural wonders of the Deep Spires.

The Snake Beastman was entirely, hopelessly deaf to her words.

His vertical green pupils were blown wide, completely fixated on the movement of her lower half. The way her hips swayed with every powerful stroke of her tail was hypnotic.

The bioluminescence of the deep ocean caught the iridescent pick of her tail, making her look like a goddess carved from the sea itself. The sheer, ethereal beauty of her mermaid form—the dangerous, sleek power hidden beneath that delicate, feminine grace—had completely short-circuited his cold, analytical brain.

"Syris? Are you even listening to me?" Roxy’s voice cut through his haze, slightly amused.

Syris blinked, his tongue flicking out instinctively, though he tasted nothing but saltwater. "Yes, my Queen," he hummed, "Fascinating. Truly a marvel."

He hadn’t heard a single word about coral reefs. He was just watching the mesmerizing ripple of her abdominal muscles as her tail flicked, completely captivated by the fluid, sensual poetry of her movement.

He understood, in that exact moment, why the Merman King had been so fiercely, terrifyingly possessive of her. If she looked like this every day under the water, Syris wasn’t sure he ever wanted to return to the surface either.

They continued their descent, the water growing darker, heavier, and significantly colder. They passed the twilight zone, entering the true, crushing abyss.

Suddenly, Syris’s smooth, effortless descent faltered.

His thick emerald coils jerked, a sharp, involuntary spasm wracking his serpentine half. He slowed down, his movements becoming sluggish and forced. The sheer atmospheric pressure of the deep ocean was beginning to press against his scales

Roxy noticed and halted her descent, backpedaling with her flukes to hover in front of him.

"Syris?" Her violet eyes widened with concern.

The Snake Beastman gritted his teeth, his pale face tightly drawn. He pushed forward, trying to force his body deeper, but his internal organs were screaming under the weight of thousands of tons of water.

His cold-blooded identity had allowed him to survive the temperature drop, but his Surface-born anatomy simply lacked the reinforced skeletal structure necessary to survive the crushing depths of the Spires.

"I am fine," Syris hissed stubbornly, his mental voice strained. "I can keep going."

"No, you can’t," Roxy commanded softly, swimming up to frame his face with her hands. She could feel the tense, rigid strain in his jaw. "You’ve hit the depth limit for a Surface Beastman. If you go any further, the pressure is going to crush you."

Syris’s emerald eyes darkened with a potent mixture of frustration and wounded pride. His tail coiled agitatedly in the dark water. He hated this. He hated the fact that his body was failing him, that he couldn’t escort his mate all the way to the safety of the city gates.

The idea of letting her descend into the utter blackness alone, where the Merman King and Gods-knew-what-else waited, made his beast violently restless.

"I am supposed to protect you," Syris sulked, looking away from her, his pride deeply bruised.

Roxy’s heart melted at his adorable, incredibly dangerous pout.

She didn’t argue with him. She weaved her arms around his neck and pressed her body flush against his chilled chest.

She tilted her head, capturing his lips in a deep, desperate, breathless underwater kiss.

Syris’s eyes fluttered shut, his frustration instantly melted. His arms wrapped fiercely around her waist, pulling her impossibly close. He opened his mouth, deepening the kiss, his tongue tangling with hers as he drank in the sweet, intoxicating taste of her that defied the salt of the ocean.

When Roxy finally pulled back, her forehead rested against his, her green eyes glowing with fierce promise.

"You wait for me okay?" Roxy whispered in his mind, her tone leaving absolutely no room for argument. "I will go down, speak with Nerissa, gather the abyssal ingredients we need, and I will come right back up to this exact depth. Then we will synthesize the cure together. I promise you, Syris. I will be back so soon you won’t even have time to miss me."

Syris let out a slow, reluctant sigh. His thumb brushed over her cheekbone. "Do not linger with the Merman, little mouse. Or I will find a way to drag the ocean to the surface."

"I won’t," Roxy smiled, giving him one last, lingering kiss.

With a final, reassuring squeeze of his hand, Roxy turned away. Her powerful tail flicked, propelling her downward like a shooting star into the pitch-black abyss, leaving Syris hovering in the dim blue light of the upper trench.

Syris watched her go, his emerald eyes tracking the bioluminescent glow of her tail until it was nothing more than a tiny speck in the crushing dark. He prepared to turn around and find a crevice in the canyon wall to wait, perfectly still and perfectly camouflaged.

But as the Snake Beastman shifted his coils, and the Queen of the Deep descended further into the black...

Neither of them noticed the absolute, terrifying absence of light directly below them..

A massive, unimaginable shape slowly detached from the trench wall. Two enormous, milky-white, dead eyes snapped open in the pitch black, locking onto the fading glow of the descending mermaid.

The water pressure violently displaced as the leviathan began to rise.