Sixteen colossal warships plunged beneath the churning crimson surface in a locked wedge formation.
For sixty real hours, the fleet descended through the deep oceanic straits south of Void Lotus Prison Isle. Five hundred fathoms down, the ocean was not cold.
Rivers of superheated magma flowed through glowing cracks across the seabed, turning the black depths into a subterranean furnace. Bubbles of sulfuric gas the size of merchant houses rose toward the surface, boiling away the toxic purple mist of the Star-Marrow current.
The fleet anchored directly above the upper shelf of the Abyssal Fire Trench.
The pressure at this depth was staggering. The sheer weight of the ocean pressed down on the hulls with enough force to crush an ordinary iron barge into a ball of scrap metal.
Yet the Star-Iron hulls did not buckle.
Every seam had been caulked with Linnea’s defensive pastes, and the captured pearl-wood cruisers naturally dispersed the thermal currents through their intake vents.
Inside the flagship’s array room, the warm geothermal current bathed the ship’s engine core. Under Stage 5 Hibernation Compression, sixty real hours of steady underwater sailing yielded one hundred and twenty Fallow Hours.
