Long before he ever set foot in the Abyss, Ashe had heard countless rumors about it.

Most of what he knew came not from what he had picked up at Shattered Lake, but from the Swordswoman's idle complaints during their chats.

Almost every region where sorcerers gathered in large numbers eventually spawned an Abyss nearby. Sometimes, one would manifest directly beneath a bustling metropolis, becoming a permanent subterranean hazard that could never be fully eradicated. The monsters within were endless. The slightest slip-up could send a tide of beasts crashing into the streets above.

In the bygone eras when the human population was sparse and civilization fragile, the Abyss was a nation's most pressing concern, a matter of existential national defense.

But as the number of sorcerers skyrocketed and their civilization entered an era of rapid, explosive development, the balance shifted. While the Abyss grew stronger in tandem with the rising tide of magic, the monsters' evolutionary pace could never keep up with the exponential advances in sorcerer technology. Year by year, the threat posed by the Abyss steadily declined.

Eventually, its status plummeted from a grave existential threat to a mere daily chore, barely even registering as a footnote in national security briefs.

The Blood Moon Kingdom eventually handed its Abysses over to adventurers, or, more accurately, utilized them as a convenient dumping ground for the barbaric, combat-addicted sorcerers unsuited for civilized society. Meanwhile, the Gospel Kingdom assigned each of its Abysses to the Bluebeards for suppression. Bluebeard was not a branch of national defense, but a private corporate military. In short,...