Merlin's leather-shod feet touched down softly. Like a great black bird, he drifted onto the mud of the seafloor. Nearby, quite a few fish that had failed to react in time lay stranded, writhing and flopping frantically. Their round eyes stared fixedly at him, filled with terror and bewilderment.
Merlin paid no attention to the gazes of these lesser creatures. He merely bent down, picked up an iron pot from nearby, and examined it curiously.
That was right—the times had changed. Modern Earth was no longer the Earth of Camelot's era. Though the sea looked much the same, humanity's impact on it had long since taken hold.
All kinds of trash densely covered the seafloor: beverage bottles, parts from wrecked ships, discarded medical supplies. Essentially every kind of rubbish found on land could also be found beneath the sea.
For a time, many coastal nations dealt with their garbage by towing it out into international waters on barges and dumping it into the sea. Out of sight, out of mind.
Ordinary household waste was nothing. According to records from the International Atomic Energy Agency, between 1945 and 1993, NATO countries dumped roughly 200,000 tons of nuclear waste into the world's oceans, while Warsaw Pact countries dumped about the same amount.
But this was the Mediterranean Sea, so Merlin did not see those enormous lead-sealed concrete containers. There was only mundane trash, such as the old-fashioned enamel hospital urinal in his hand.
Perhaps because he had never seen such a thing back then, or because the pot carried a somewhat unusual aura, he fiddled with the strange container as he walked forward. He even rubbed it a few times as though polishing a genie lamp, then peered inside through its spout. After fussing with it for quite a while and confirming