Inside the Divine Kingdom, the sky remained that azure, glazed dome.
The flame of the golden altar leaped violently under the touch of Aaron’s consciousness.
He had no time to inspect his domain.
“Water spiders. Diving beetles. Water beetles. All aquatic insect believers, gather before the altar.”
The divine oracle descended.
The voice did not travel through the air.
It rang directly in the consciousness of every believer—clear, precise, and absolute.
Within three seconds, seventeen aquatic insects rushed to the white altar from various water sources across the Divine Kingdom.
The water spiders, the largest of the group, were only the size of a thumbnail.
Their abdomens were enveloped in a layer of silver air bubbles, making them look as if they were wearing miniature diving suits.
This was their core talent, “Bubble Storage.” Relying on this bubble, water spiders could survive underwater indefinitely, returning to the surface periodically to replenish their air before diving again.
The diving beetles were even smaller, their black carapaces gleaming oilily in the firelight.
Their talent was “Cutaneous Osmotic Respiration”—an extremely inefficient but very real ability to exchange gas directly from water through their body’s outer membrane.
Seven water spiders, six diving beetles, and four water beetles.
Seventeen weak, almost negligible aquatic talents.
Taken individually, none of them were worth mentioning.
A water spider’s bubble storage was only enough to sustain an insect’s breathing.
The cutaneous osmotic efficiency of a diving beetle was so low that using it to supply a human’s oxygen requirements would take about ten thousand years.
As for the water beetle’s talent, it was merely “Paddling”—something completely meaningless if applied to a human.
But Aaron did not need these talents themselves.
What he needed was for them to serve as “raw materials.”
“Talent Sharing. Fusion Mode. Activate.”
The golden flame on the altar suddenly surged threefold.
Faint points of light lit up on all seventeen aquatic insect believers simultaneously.
This was the process of their talent essence being extracted by the Godhead.
Painless and harmless, it was pure “sharing.” The talents still belonged to them, but a perfect copy was extracted.
Seventeen faint copies of these talents swirled and collided in the altar’s golden flames.
Still not enough.
Aaron’s consciousness turned to the other side of the altar.
The Demiguise was curled up on the steps, its silver-white fur bristling from the sudden flare of the flames.
It raised its head, its round, dark eyes reflecting the golden firelight, filled with confusion.
“Do not fear,” Aaron’s divine oracle fell into its mind, gentle yet precise.
“I need to borrow a portion of your talent.”
The Demiguise tilted its head, then placed its front paws on the steps and lay down obediently.
The core talent of a Demiguise was “Invisibility,” but that was merely the surface of its capability system.
Its deeper essence was “Physiological Reconstruction.”
A Demiguise could turn invisible because it could alter its own physiological characteristics under conscious control.
The light-refraction rate of its fur, the rise and fall of its body temperature, and even the operational modes of its internal organs could be adjusted in real-time according to the environment.
This was exactly what Aaron wanted.
A copy of the Demiguise’s “Physiological Reconstruction” talent was extracted, joining the swirling cluster of talents in the altar. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
Eighteen talent copies.
Seventeen respiratory talents from the aquatic insects, plus one core of physiological reconstruction from the Demiguise.
“Fuse.”
The golden flames of the altar erupted, swelling from three times their original size to ten.
The entire sky of the Divine Kingdom was painted gold.
In the flames, the eighteen talents were no longer independent entities.
They were shattered and broken down into the most basic “rule fragments,” then reassembled under the will of the Godhead.
The water spider’s Bubble Storage—the core logic was “confining gas within a thin membrane.”
The diving beetle’s Cutaneous Osmotic Respiration—the core logic was “achieving gas exchange through a semipermeable membrane.”
The Demiguise’s Physiological Reconstruction—the core logic was “remodeling organ functions on demand.”
The three logics clashed.
Arrangement, recombination, elimination, and iteration.
An information panel that only Aaron could see appeared in the golden flames.
[Talent fusion in progress…]
[Base Materials: Bubble Storage × 7 / Cutaneous Osmotic Respiration × 6 / Underwater Propulsion × 4 / Physiological Reconstruction × 1]
[Matching fusion blueprint… Match complete]
[New Talent Generated: Water Breath (Passive)]
[Effect: Generates energy gill-slits in specific areas of the body surface, allowing oxygen to be stripped directly from water molecules to achieve unlimited underwater respiration. This ability does not consume magic, produces no magical fluctuations, and cannot be detected by conventional magical means.]
Aaron’s consciousness returned to reality.
His body was still suspended in the pitch-black water of the Black Lake.
The dull ache in his lungs had reached its limit.
His diaphragm was twitching, and the edges of his vision were turning black.
He estimated the time.
It had been about two minutes and forty seconds since he entered the water.
He was about thirty seconds away from irreversible hypoxic brain damage.
It was enough.
The information of the new talent flowed from the Godhead into his body.
The change was instantaneous.
Beneath the skin on both sides of his neck, something was forming.
It wasn’t a physical organ mutation—no scales broke through his skin, and no physical gill slits split open.
The change occurred on a much deeper level.
Two extremely faint, translucent patterns of light appeared on the surface of his skin.
Pale gold.
Very light.
Almost invisible in the dark water.
They were two energy channels only five centimeters long.
Embedded beneath his skin and less than a millimeter thick, their interiors ran a complete microscopic system capable of stripping oxygen from water molecules.
There was no need to inhale.
There was no need to open his mouth.
As the water flowed past his neck, those two energy gill-slits automatically captured dissolved oxygen from the water, feeding it directly into his bloodstream through subcutaneous capillaries. The source of this chapter is novelping . com.
At the same time, the carbon dioxide accumulated in his blood was expelled through the same channels.
The entire process was silent, imperceptible, and devoid of magical fluctuations.
Aaron “inhaled” a breath.
Not with his mouth, nor with his nose.
The energy gill-slits on both sides of his neck automatically completed the first gas exchange.
Fresh oxygen surged into his lungs.
The dull ache vanished.
The dizziness disappeared.
The twitching of his diaphragm stopped.
The dark edges of his vision cleared once more.
Aaron hovered in the freezing four-degree lake water, enveloped by water pressure and darkness.
Yet his breathing was as steady as usual, his heart rate returning to its baseline of sixty beats per minute.
It was as if he were not deep underwater, but sitting leisurely at his desk on dry land.
He wiggled his fingers, feeling the operational efficiency of the energy gill-slits.
The oxygen supply was sufficient—incredibly so.
It was even about fifteen percent higher than the amount of oxygen he obtained from breathing normally on land, because the dissolved oxygen in the water was extracted one hundred percent by the energy gill-slits, with absolutely zero waste.
No reliance on the Bubble-Head Charm.
No reliance on Gillyweed.
Without producing any traceable magical signatures.
Completely immune to detection.
The corner of Aaron’s mouth ticked upward slightly in the darkness.
He lowered his head and looked down into the bottomless, pitch-black waters beneath his feet.
The hunting ground was open.
Aaron adjusted his body’s posture in the water.
His swimming skills were mediocre.
The conditions in the orphanage hadn’t allowed him to learn any proper swimming strokes.
But with his current physical conditioning, the explosive power provided by his disproportionate strength combined with the precise control of his muscle groups from his Hyper-Speed Nerves made moving in the water quite simple.
More importantly, the performance of his Sensory Network in the water far exceeded his expectations.
Sound waves traveled four times faster in water than in air.
This meant his perception range underwater was directly expanded to nearly two hundred meters.
The swimming trajectory of every fish, the position of every rock, and the swaying direction of every water weed were precisely mapped in his mind.
He dove deeper.
No flashlight, no Lumos.
He didn’t need light.
The current slid past his bare soles, carrying a four-degree chill.
But the body-surface forcefield generated by the Godhead maintained his temperature within a comfortable range.
Ten meters.
Twenty meters.
Fifty meters.