With his underwater gear equipped, Max continued his way down. Thankfully, this dock was not very deep, and Max reached the bottom within minutes. He still had two-day's worth of oxygen with him, and air was something he could basically refill anywhere but Backlund…
Instead of looking around, he just kept his eyes peeled for danger, while using his connection with the Amalgamation of All and whatever it was that was connecting to it sporadically to move through the water.
Thankfully, he was deep enough underwater that waves and currents did not affect him much, while the pressure was also enough that it did not cause anything more than slight discomfort in his ears.
Soon enough, he came across a flake of wood. Or at least it looked like it. But Max did not take any risks and immediately put it into the spirituality sealing flask. He had prepared this in case he needed to pick up something potentially dangerous, and did not want to, or could not due to restrictions like others watching, put it into the Amalgamation of All.
This object that was constantly trying to connect to his Sefirot definitely fell into the former; he simply did not wish to take the risk of bringing it into the Amalgamation of All. After all, he did not know how it had obscured the soul of the reincarnators from even the Amalgamation of All in the flashback, leaving his soul very pixilated compared to the other two souls. Plus, who knew if it has some sort of backup that would activate and possibly take over the Sefirot if it was brought inside.
Such things were better investigated slowly and in a controlled environment.
As such, after putting it into the container and sealing it using spirituality, Max swam up, but did not break the surface, and instead continued swimming until he reached a rocky area that was still part of the city, but not near the dock and with no lights around.
Waiting for a cloud to cover the mood and reduce the area to almost complete darkness, Max immediately rushed out of the water as soon as he noticed the time was right. He quickly made his way to a large rock that hid him from the cliff above, in case anyone came over to have a look.
'Phew… I have it… now I need to figure out what it is… and why it is trying to connect to the Amalgamation of All. For that, I need a safe area!'
'I could try and build a secret base in the middle of nowhere, like one of those umbrella corporation underground bases… But just like those underground bases, if I was discovered, there would be nowhere to hide or escape to. Compared to having one in a city, where I could hide in a lot of places and run into crowded areas in case of danger…'
'But the risk of being discovered inside a city is much higher due to the number of Beyonders constantly passing by…'
'What to do… what to do…'
Max first decided to change his clothes and return to the hotel he had booked, waiting for the storm to calm down and then return to Backlund.