Transmigrated as the Cuck.... WTF!!!

"Is this perhaps the Red Sea they revere so much? Could be… the talks of the Red Sea's awakening were everywhere. Maybe this is what they meant by awakening… it had literally come to existence before my eyes."

I thought, my gaze fixed on the shimmering red veil stretching endlessly above me.

It was surreal but still, this wasn't something I could afford to dwell on right now. Marveling at mysteries was fine, but surviving them mattered more. There were better, more immediate matters to attend to.

So I pulled my eyes away from the crimson expanse and focused on the trench yawning below me.

It looked similar to the gorge I had encountered earlier, but there were key differences that couldn't be ignored. Trenches weren't just hollow scars in the earth—they were narrow, jagged rifts that dug deeper and deeper until even imagination failed to measure them.

The further I descended, the more unpredictable it would become. Either the trench would gradually expand, giving way to an enormous underworld chasm, or it would compress even tighter, squeezing me into suffocating darkness. Both possibilities spelled trouble in their own way.

If it widened, then I would be trapped in an overwhelming expanse, forced to waste precious time scouring the place for clues, while leaving myself exposed to whatever dwelled in the vast openness.

But if it compressed, then the suffocating narrowness would rob me of maneuverability, and worse, predators that thrived in cramped tunnels could ambush me from angles I couldn't defend.

Still, none of those outcomes changed the fact that I had no choice but to explore the trench. Staying idle was no safer than walking willingly into the lion's maw.

"Haahh…" I exhaled, bubbles rising lazily past my face as I spoke to myself. "I should just go down and look for ancient infrastructure or something akin to that. If this place is what Wannre is interested in, then there has to be some kind of secret hiding here."

That was the belief I clung to. Sure, Wannre could simply be an enthusiast, someone endlessly fascinated with the forgotten terrains of the ocean depths, drawn to strange ecosystems and alien wildlife. But no matter how I looked at it, that didn't sit right with me.

Because here was the catch: Wannre could read the minds of every creature present in the ocean. And I had no doubt in my mind that her ability extended to whatever lurked inside this trench. If she truly wished to know what was down here, all she needed to do was probe the thoughts of those who dwelled within. Simple as that.

And yet… here she was, relying on me.

"And most probably, she can't control them to venture into the place she intends to visit," I muttered, my frown deepening. "Otherwise, she would have done so ages ago, without needing me at all."

Which only begged the question: why send me, a human, someone far weaker than the creatures inhabiting this abyss? Why was my presence valuable at all?

The only explanations that made sense were troubling ones. Either it was tied to my immunity to her abilities or perhaps because I was a human, a completely different species from the marine beasts.

Whichever it was, I couldn't shake the feeling that Wannre was keeping something from me. That her reasons ran far deeper than she cared to admit.

A tired sigh left my mouth. "Whatever the reason… doesn't matter. I should move on. The trench will teach me about itself. One way or another."

And with that, I swam forward.

SWISH—

The water parted as I angled my body downward, letting gravity and momentum drag me into the trench's dark abyss. At first, there was still a familiarity to the descent.

Vegetation clung stubbornly to the rocky edges, drifting with quiet vitality as the water's currents passed them by. Small colonies of life stubbornly existing even this deep.

I picked a side and began scaling down carefully, keeping myself pressed against the rugged walls of the trench. My hands and feet worked in rhythm, treating it like rock climbing—only inverted.

The deeper I went, the darker it became. The last remnants of surface light dwindled above until it was nothing more than a pale memory, leaving me swallowed whole by the abyss.

I couldn't even see my own hands stretched before me. For a brief moment, it felt as though the world had collapsed into absolute void, and I was the lone speck drifting within it.

But unlike the gorge, where darkness had suffocated everything, this trench bore its own strange kind of beacon.

Unlike the eerie single lure of the angler fish I had once seen, here there were countless threads of light blooming together. Bioluminescent plants clung to the walls and jutted out into the water, their glow faint yet persistent, painting the abyss in strokes of pale blue and green. They acted like scattered lanterns, guiding the path deeper into the unknown.

Of course, I had come here under the excuse of searching for something related to infrastructure…

That was the excuse, at least. But if I peeled the layers of my own reasoning, it was more a fantasy I had nurtured to keep myself moving. A dream I had forged, and like any man desperate to keep walking forward, I clung to it.

There was never any guarantee I would find something like that down here. None at all. Still, a man could dream. And dream I did.

Swish—Swish—

My strokes grew heavier, dragging me deeper and deeper into the trench. The trench narrowed the deeper I went, closing in on me with oppressive patience. A hundred meters at a time, and the space shrank.

The vegetation had already thinned into a sparse memory. Down here, life was reduced to scraps. Maybe it was the gravitational pressure, but most plants and animals couldn't survive at these depths.

The deeper I went, the more it felt like descending into a graveyard where evolution itself had surrendered.

Still, a faint mercy clung to me. The bioluminescent plants survived here in scattered patches, glowing faintly against the darkness. They guided me, helped me navigate, their dim radiance brushing across jagged stone and barren sand.

Occasionally, I did come across creatures. If I could even call them that. They looked like octopus abominations, but instead of the rubbery skin one would expect, they had flesh like blobfish sagging, slimy, translucent, their bodies wobbling in grotesque ripples.

Every twitch of their limbs looked wrong, like meat moving without muscle. If I were to describe them in one word, it would be: disgusting.

If any normal person were to see them, they'd puke their guts out. And judging from how unnatural these things were, I wouldn't be surprised if they did literally puke their guts out and then die right after. Just the kind of monsters nature should have erased.

I only counted four encounters with them. Solitary, for the most part. Once, I caught sight of them drifting together in pairs, but even then, there was no warmth, no sense of companionship.

Just two grotesque shadows occupying the same water. I kept my distance from their slimy tentacles, no matter how sluggishly they moved. Curiosity could kill. I wasn't in the mood to test how quickly.

So I kept moving. Stroke by stroke, breath by breath, until I had reached a depth of nearly eight thousand meters. Down here, the trench had shriveled so tightly that the walls pressed in like the ribcage of a beast.

Barely two hundred meters from one ridge to the other. The space was suffocating, each ten meters deeper gnawing more claustrophobic than the last.

And here, the flora and fauna gave up entirely. Even the bioluminescent plants that had clung to survival above had surrendered. Yet, the darkness wasn't complete.

A faint spectral hue lingered in the water, a bluish shimmer that bled faintly. Whatever that phenomenon was, it gave me vision enough to continue.

It helped, yes. But I wasn't naïve enough to believe it was harmless.

That didn't mean I was relaxing. If anything, it sharpened the blade of paranoia in me. Because, strangely enough, even after coming this deep… I still hadn't seen a single one of the creatures Wannre had warned me about.

And that was wrong. Deeply wrong.

I had been on edge for so long, waiting for the inevitable strike. Every passing second twisted tighter and tighter into my nerves. Yet nothing came.

The thought clawed at me. "Did Wannre lie to me?"

Yes, she most definitely could have. But… why? What did she gain from lying? From sending me this deep into a graveyard of silence? There was no obvious benefit to her wasting her own time with deception. Which meant the truth was likely far worse.

I cut off the thought before it rooted too deep. Trying to guess at the mind of a millennium-old hag was an exercise in futility. I couldn't begin to understand the madness of that much time.

Flash—!

I froze. From the corner of my eye, something caught me. A shard of light, glinting faintly against the spectral haze. It wasn't ordinary nor was it natural.

I turned my head, and my breath caught.

It looked like a shard of mirror, suspended in the water, reflecting light where no light should be. No, not reflecting. Refracting. Bending the spectral glow around itself in impossible patterns.

The shard glowed faintly, a strange pulse thrumming through it. Even in the water, even in this darkness, it shimmered unnaturally bright, alive.

I narrowed my eyes, fixating on it. Staring deeper. Watching the ripples distort, fracture, twist. The surface wasn't still. It was trembling, splitting, turning inward on itself.

"This… isn't a mirror."

The grim thought rose in mind. Whatever this thing was…

It was opening… or perhaps it was an opening.