Awakened

Raphael used the imprint of trees to create stakes that impaled the octopus monsters right through them. For the ones that escaped, he cast the imprint of lightning and chained the effect to strike all of them at once. All of the octopuses collapsed on the ground. 

He left the forest to welcome the massive grass field with gigantic floating creatures in the sky. He opened his arms and closed his eyes, trying to capture all of the things going around him with his newly obtained senses.

When Raphael unlocked the Laws Layer, he perceived all of the Abyss for a few minutes.  He learned that this was not actually the last layer of the Abyss, but there was one more layer. And it was reached by going all the way to the center of this layer. He had always had good sight, but now it was on a new level. In the far distance, there was a titanic black tree without any leaves. Its branches reached to the sky like the hands of death.

Raphael went back to where the mermaids appeared and noticed his presence.

"Hey, friends, it's payback time."

Raphael had unlocked a total of three laws of the imprint of perception. The first one was the law of perception. It gave him the skill of Aetherial sight. When he looked at the mermaids, he was able to distinguish their core capacity, Aetherial mana, and, most importantly, their imprints and level of refinement.

The mermaids had a water imprint, a predation imprint, and a mimicry imprint. The last one was probably the reason they looked like human women, even though they were actually creatures. Also, their mana core and Atherial mana were quite prominent and refined, probably because of the influence of the Abyss, which was surrounded by pure Atherius.

In the same breath, the mermaid opened her mouth, and a water jet shot out of it with great pressure. It pierced Raphael's chest. But he didn't scream in pain or anything; his body vanished in a colorful display of light.

Raphael then got out from behind the column he was hiding behind and shot a beam of light so concentrated that it pierced through the mermaid's head.

Raphael smiled.

He had obtained the law of insight: "To understand a phenomenon is to see what lies beneath it." It allowed him to tap into the Laws Layer of the imprints he had studied over all those years, the main one being the light imprint.

Two mermaids tried to shoot him with their water jets, but he blocked them with a barrier of concentrated hot light, making them evaporate. Then he extended his arm, and as if it wanted to crush the air, the light bouncing around the mermaids distorted, and the barrier enclosed them and burned them to a crisp.

He then concentrated light on his hand to form a light spear. Then he used the imprint of battle spells, Enhance Strength and Enhance Speed, and went on to pierce all of the mermaids in the place. Some of them tried to sneak behind him and use their devouring tails to bite him, but when they tried, their teeth melted, as if they had tried to eat magma.

Raphael had cast the Laws Layer spell Armour of Light, which surrounded him with concentrated hot light, but removed the heat component of light from inside so he didn't get burned.

After a few more exchanges, the bodies of the mermaids lay all around him.

He gathered the mermaids' dark pearls from inside their tails, as they were an extremely valuable asset. Each could buy a whole mansion in the capital. He used Spatial Pocket, a Law Layer spell of the Spatial imprint, to store them.

"I knew studying the Spatial phenomena would have its perks. It was definitely not easy; it's really a very abstract phenomenon."

Raphael looked in the distance towards where the gigantic black tree lay. He smiled. It might take a day or two to reach it, but he couldn't hold his excitement to discover what lay there and along his way.

"I could use the spatial law spell Blink to teleport myself forward, but it's a spell that consumes quite a lot of mana."

Raphael used instead the Radiant Form, a spell that made his body out of light, and then thought of applying Light Speed, but that would take too much mana, so he reduced the speed to a very low percentage and intervals, making Light Step

This was enough to go faster than a horse while walking. But he would still eventually have to rest before his mana ran out, to generate food and drink. He used the tree imprint to create trees and build a hideout each time.

On the way, he faced more creatures at the level of mermaids. He destroyed them in a blink using his spells. He eventually got close to the tree. The tree now shadowed him like a gigantic titan. To see the top, he now had to look up.

Then he heard a massive and resounding sound of a whale. Before he knew it, a whale surged up and charged against him, opening its gigantic mouth.

"I thought you were friendly whales."

Raphael dodged the attack with Light Step, moving to the side of the whale. He used this opportunity to cast a light beam to kill the whale while she was unprotected, but then the whale released a resounding shock wave, like loud horns, directly into his ears.

He got dizzy, unable to stand up completely. The whale used her body to slam into him and sent him flying a couple of meters. Raphael became all bruised and wounded.

He immediately cast the healing imprint spell to heal his wounds. The healing had become faster thanks to his breakthrough of the law layer.

He stood up and saw that the whale was guarding the tree, not getting too far from it. He charged a very powerful version of the light beam. The ground trembled, and he was surrounded by the colorful colors of Atherius.

He shot the beam that traversed the sky in a blink. But just when it was about to reach the whale, a loud sound, almost like something breaking, emerged from the whale, and the beam dissolved violently in midair.

"What in the world?"

Raphael barely missed noticing a second whale just charging at him from the top. Thanks to his perception imprint, his senses had been heightened, so he was able to dodge at the last second.

He cast the imprint of trees to create a stake, replacing his missing arm, and then used it to stab the whale in the eye. He spread the wood like roots all over its body. The whale screamed in pain and collapsed.

Raphael was panting. He turned around and used his Atherioal Sight skill from the Law Layer. And he saw that these whales had the imprint of Sound and Gravity. The imprint of gravity made them able to float in the air, while the imprint of sound, which they had unlocked all the way to the Law Layer, had a spell of Silence, which canceled any frequency.

"As I thought, they are canceling the waves of light. But they can't cancel solid things, like the wood of trees."

Raphael watched the whale and studied its movements and intentions. It seemed to be a guardian, blocking the entrance to the tree.

"That means I just have to reach the entrance."

Raphael activated Light Step and rushed at great speed towards the entrance. The whale noticed and immediately blocked his path. Raphael smiled and then used Space Slash, which fractured space into a slash that wounded the whale.

The whale collapsed to the ground. But then, in its last breath, it emitted a deafening, high-pitched sound. The other whales floating around rushed and charged against him. They went so fast they broke the sound barrier and created a sonic boom, and in a blink they had surrounded him in the hundreds.

"So this is why you were all not attacking me. You were waiting for the right moment to surround me… But I'm a mage who knows more than just a few tricks."

Raphael activated the Spatial Imprint spell Blink, which teleported him a few meters forward. Inside the entrance of the tree, just as he had calculated.

The whales charged against the tree. Raphael got alarmed, thinking they would attack the tree. But then they stumbled into an invisible barrier. They frenetically attacked the barrier like rabid dogs in a cage, until they gave up.

Raphael sighed in relief.

He decided to make camp, prepare food and drink, and rest at the entrance before going any further. He had to regain his Atherius mana; he knew there was something awaiting him inside. Something dangerous. When he was ready, he stood up and started moving through the entrance, going deeper. Eventually, after a few minutes of darkness.

The light illuminated once again.

Inside the tree was a field of white flowers, and just in the center, a small girl with white hair, pale skin, and armour and a sword of pure black.

"So you've managed to reach the deep Abyss."