Beast Gacha System: All Mine

Chapter 424: Upending Crisis

"It’s vertical, facing the reservoir. I’m ninety-percent sure it’s water on the other side, too. The pressure from both sides just balanced it. Only the filth is seeping in."

Arkai said, as usual, delivering a tactical assessment while his body screamed at him to get out of the water. The dizziness from corruption poisoning was no joke.

"Which means it’s aquatic monsters," Oathran said, his tone grim.

"And more corruption will leak into the reservoir from the rift if we keep pumping away the water..." Eastiel was strained as he whispered, his mana still pouring into the concrete and his claws still digging into the cracks.

"Local Werebeavers are here!" Damon said, cutting through the comms. "A new temporary dam is being constructed upstream. S-Ranked Hunter, Miss Rachel, is also here. She is on her way to you to help plug the leak from the rift, don’t worry!"

"We still at least try to reduce the pressure from the reservoir. How about the other water magic users?" Arkai asked.

"On their way!" Damon’s voice was almost manic now as he juggled a dozen moving parts. "Ice magic users too. Worst case scenario, we freeze the reservoir—"

"I am a bit sleepy... brother, slap me on the back..." Eastiel’s voice had gone distant and dreamy, his body was reaching its absolute limit.

"I can take over. Pull away." Oathran said immediately, even a bit commanding.

"No, you can’t," Eastiel scoffed.

"I can. Pull away."

"Shut up."

"Brother..."

Arkai didn’t say anything. He simply reached out, grasped Eastiel’s side abdomen, and squeezed hard enough to jolt him back to full consciousness. The lion’s claws scraping against the concrete and his mana flaring back to full strength.

"Fuck..." he hissed. "Thanks."

"I’ll fund that research about mana transfering after we get out of here, I swear on my fucking life—" Arkai cursed as he held him in place.

"Oathran," Eastiel called, voice clearer now. "Did you leave her alone at home?"

Oathran didn’t answer for a long moment and the silence stretched. Of course she would be in his mind right now. She had always been in their mind. She never left their thoughts.

"Just focus. We want to see her again. Regulate your mana, East."

Upstream, the werebeavers’ wooden dam had already begun to take shape. They worked with astonishing speed. After all, they were creatures whose entire existence revolved around reshaping water to their will.

Logs interlocking, mud packing, a temporary barrier rising slowly against the flow to the reservoir. It wouldn’t hold forever since it didn’t need to. It just needed to hold long enough.

Meanwhile, Swanson saw a shadow moving through the water a few meters away. It was long and sinuous and graceful. "That is—That’s Miss Rachel!"

A beautiful, angel-like figure descended from the surface, her long, snake lower body weaving and coiling through the water. Her fluid elegance proved that she was born to inhabit the deep.

S-Ranked Weresnake, Miss Rachel, was a semi-aquatic green anaconda beast. Her water magic was among the best on the continent, and Swanson humbly knew that he couldn’t compare.

"Mr. Swanson, Miss Rachel says she still needs your help shielding them from the corruption. She will focus on plugging the spill from the other side on both rifts. She will communicate underwater with her throat in Morse code, and we will interpret it from here."

"Copy!" Swanson was already moving, maintaining his water magic around them. His barrier of clean, controlled current wrapped around himself, Eastiel, Arkai and the anaconda as she approached.

Rachel swam beside Eastiel, her dark eyes scanning the concrete, the cracks, and the darkness of the rift hidden within the structure. She was determining how she would do it. Merely creating a dense wall of water over the rifts wouldn’t be enough. She needed pressure. She needed—wait... this...

"What?!" Damon’s voice suddenly exploded through the comms. "Miss, are you sure? It’s saltwater coming from the other side...?"

"Is that what she said?" Arkai asked sharply. "The pressure..."

"It’s okay. Solution... solution..." Damon was muttering now, his mind racing audibly through the comms. "Let’s freeze the water after all..."

Everyone started racking their brains. None of what they were doing was a permanent solution.

Even with the pumps and the water magic and the werebeavers’ dam, now that they knew the other side of the rift was a corrupted ocean, an entire sea of black, poisonous water pressing against the fabric of reality, there was only so much they could do.

Oathran, and more importantly Eastiel, wouldn’t be able to hold on much longer. Even with more earth magic users on the way, they wouldn’t be much better than Eastiel himself. He was already one of the best elemental magic users in the continent, after all.

Water magic users could help pump out the water and plug the leak. Ice magic users could freeze the reservoir, but they would need to do so continuously, just like every other elemental user.

But what came after? They were all just treating the fatal symptoms with everything they had. Not the cause itself.

What happened when the monster, whatever it was, on the other side of the rift decided to rip the opening even larger and breach through?

It wasn’t just time they were racing against. It was a literal corrupted ocean and an unknown aquatic monster. All that while the dam was cracking under the pressure.

"I have a confession."

Oathran suddenly said.

Everyone’s blood chilled the moment the White Mist said those four words in the middle of an active crisis. What kind of confession... at a time like this...?

"I actually brought her here. She insisted," Oathran said solemnly. But he still sounded guilty. "She threatened to leave if I didn’t bring her along."

He clearly had been given an ultimatum and had folded like wet paper—

"WHAT?!" Eastiel’s arms shook, his claws scraping against the concrete. "Oathran, you—"

"I’m sorry, Ark, East," Oathran said, knowing he had made a choice and was prepared to face the consequences. "But I think she has a solution."

The comms went quiet.

The three men fortifying the dam had been talking about ’her’ since earlier. They assumed it was their family, or even one of their wives.

But now, a room full of professionals simultaneously realized that something had just been said that didn’t fit into any of their existing categories.

Until Damon broke the silence with a very reasonable question.

"Wait. Who is ’she’?"

SSSSSHHHHHHHHHHH—

The people underwater felt it first. Especially Eastiel and Miss Rachel.

One moment, the crushing weight of the depth was pressing down on their bodies. The next moment, that pressure was... lifted...?

Then Oathran felt it. The dam, the cracking, straining structure he had been pouring his mana into for the past fifteen minutes, was no longer straining.

The hairline fractures that had been spreading through the concrete like veins through flesh had stopped. The groaning, grinding stress of water against stone had fallen silent.

Was... the reservoir itself suddenly decided that gravity was optional?

As fast as it had happened, the edge of the water that had been kissing the concrete of the dam separated from it. A gap, a pocket of dry air where there should have been liquid pressure bubbled from the surface to base.

And then—

The entire one side of the reservoir, all one hundred billion cubic meters of it, pushed back into itself.

"What—"