Magic Breaker Ch 226 - 228 (Patreon)

Chapter 226: Control

“Stop trying to light things on fire,” I chide Lars.

His fist clenches, extinguishing the fireball inside it. His eyes stay on me for a long moment, before he grunts and looks away, refusing to make eye-contact. “Yes,” he says quietly.

Nodding to myself, I press a hand against the wooden door. It marks a change in what this floor has given us, so it must be important. A small electric shock hits my hand, but I unmake it. 

“Huh,” I hum.

“What?” Arithia asks impatiently. “It’s a fuckin’ wooden door. Open it.”

Tilting my head, I look at the door. It stands flush in between two metal rods, the kind that would usually have lightning chaining between them. And yet, there’s a simple door. “It zapped me,” I say, which is the truth.

What I leave out is the complexity of that zap. It wasn’t a generic bit of electricity, aimlessly frying my flesh. Instead, the burst was targeted, racing along my nerves to paralyze my arm, and maybe short-circuit my brain. How scary.

Humming to myself, I touch the door again, letting the zap reach all the way up my shoulder.

As I thought, my arm goes numb, refusing to listen to my commands. It feels a little strange, sort of like being attached to something that isn’t part of me. Then I unmake the electricity, and draw my hand back. “Strange,” I say.

“Can I burn it already?” Lars asks quietly, his fists on fire.

“Hm? Oh, no, you’d die if you touched it,” I tell him. His eyes widen at my matter-of-factly tone. There’s a sort of cold in the air as I touch it again, shaking my fingers out after another zap. Then, after a fourth and fifth little burst of electricity, I nod.

With a quick twist of my mind, I summon some mana, coat my hand in it, and lay my fingers on the door. Thin threads of magic creep through the wood, finding hidden pieces of charge, and little relays to deliver it in that very specific, efficient way. My own authority helped me decode it, after all, so it’s easier for me to figure out its targeting mechanism.

This feels almost like something I might have made, really. Quite impressive.

With a soft click and a hum, the door destabilizes. I smile, then nod. There’s still some leftover electricity in it, so I turn to lars, manifesting three needles. He stares at the floating weapons, even as they dig into the door behind me at specific points.

“You can hit it now. Please smack the targets I’ve so politely pointed out for you,” I tell him.

The man’s face flushes a little, but he nods in the end, stepping forward with heavy footfalls. The stomps ring out annoyingly on the metal floor. With a quick burst of motion I can barely follow, his fists crash into the wood, splintering the mana on the way.

Fire crashes forward, tearing the whole thing apart. For a moment, the cracking of the door fills the air, then, only silence. Lars turns to me with a look I can’t quite parse. I feel like he’s both trying to show off to me and asking for my affirmation? What a weirdo. 

Still, I nod at him. “Thanks,” I say politely, and he turns away. Arithia looks between us. Pout… predictably pouts at this. The energetic zoof who pestered me before - who I mentally dub “Nerves”, looks through the gap. She jumps on her toes, bouncing up and down as she checks ahead, running some sort of scanning skill.

“All clear!” she provides, beaming at the chance to be useful. I stare at her, then at the area ahead - which doesn’t help me with seeing, but is funny - and deploy my own scan. Mana ripples, crashing over the floor and through the door, the hallway past it, and to its very end. Then, I nod again.

“Cool,” I say, and walk forward.

Almost immediately, a bolt of lightning hits me in the face.

- - -

I spend my time in the safe zone picking ash from my hair, a small frown on my lips. I’ve already cut off the burnt bits, and regrown it to my preferred length. With a small sigh, I run a hand through it.

Nerves sits on the ground next to me with an oversized brush, cleaning her fur. The other zoof, who I dub “Cool”, helps her with it. 

The Stormcloud mono has different safe zones than the Cloudward mono. Instead of a calm beach, it looks to be inside a castle. The roof is made from panes of glass, showing a stormy sky, and occasional lightning flashes cut through the darkness. Other than the glass roof, the room is made from cold stone, and its only special feature is a cloud-shaped fountain, spitting… water, I think.

With a careful motion, I reach in, and drink a sip, then nod. The invigoration spreads through me, refilling my depleted stores of mana, and healing some leftover wounds. With a small nod, I inform the others. “Drink.” Truly, my magnanimity knows no bounds. 

Somehow, despite my better expectations, Lars is the first one to listen. I eye him curiously as he drinks, and then tilt my head when he nods. “Thanks,” he tells me simply. Then, again, he turns away. As if he can’t stand looking at me. Did I shake him up that bad?

Once he also drinks from the well, the others follow one by one. The last to drink is the feryran, a tall woman with a thin frame, who I decide to call “Wire”. For a moment, I consider if that’s speciesist, then remember that Anna’s surname is… silver-something, so it’s probably fine. 

Nodding contentedly, I lean against a wall. Arithia opens her mouth to speak to me, but with careful motions, I reach into my pack and withdraw my headphones before she finishes. When she manages to vocalize, some kind of curse, I imagine, I’m already wearing my headphones. 

“Motherfucker,” she huffs, before stomping off to harass someone else.

Lucky! I thought she was going to try and touch my headphones, and then I’d have had to call down the Ire on us when I cut off her hand. Such a situation does not occur, though. Instead, I spend about ten minutes listening to three songs I enjoy, then turn off my headphones and phone.

Leaning against the stone, I close my eyes. “We leave in a few hours,” I tell them leisurely. “Get some rest.”

- - -

The next floor comes like a breeze. It’s another corridor of metal, except this time, there’s no maze and no traps. Instead, the obstacle is simple: lightning-wolves.

Now, simple does not mean easy. In fact, at the moment, I kneel over Wire’s prone form, blood leaking from burnt puncture wounds on her shoulder, where one of the wolves latched onto her. Arithia then tore it off with a bit of shadow-magic, but the frail flob fell down shortly after.

Healing energy passes from me into her, my new adjustment making it consume more mana in exchange for being far easier on the body. I don’t know how many calories Wire has to burn, but given her silhouette, I'd wager on few. So, instead, I donate some of my plentiful mana. It’s what I’m being paid for, after all.

Her wounds close, and her shaking stops as she clenches her fists. “Ow,” she says through gritted teeth, the first word she’s spoken to me. 

“Dang,” I say. “I was betting on Cool speaking first.”

Wire looks at me and creases her forehead. “... Who?” she asks, and I point at the zoof. “That’s not his name,” she tells me. 

I shrug. “Does it fit him though?”

She pauses. Then, slowly, she nods. “Yes.”

“Awesome.” Then, with a swift motion of mana, I push her up from the floor and onto her feet. She stumbles to catch her weight, but then her superhuman physique comes online and she catches herself in a swift act of contortionism. Her mantle flares for a moment, a metallic, sleek thing.

And then, she vanishes forward, back into the fight.

- - - 

I pick shards of metal shrapnel from Lars’ knuckles in the safe zone. 

He looks at me as I wrap my mana around yet another one of the shards. A jagged piece of steel that embedded itself into his fist when he crushed one of the wolves. Dozens of them must lay broken in that hallway. Scorched and rotted, cut and frozen.

Pout leans against a wall, seemingly deep in thought. He didn’t get hurt, per-se, but he did get scared a lot. So many brushes with death might scare someone. I just watched him duck and contort, shifting his body to escape from a wolf. His sight-holes now linger on me.

Even the wound that I healed on Wire could have been a lot worse. It didn’t even puncture through her or break any bones. Just pierced skin and muscle. A wolf’s bite should have shattered her… clavicle, I think the bone is called.

But it didn’t. Because I was there. 

Lars hisses softly when I pull out another shard. I look at him. Then I tilt my head. “You did well. Why?” I ask.

He blinks. Then turns away, his lips twisting. “I don’t fuckin’ know,” he swears. “Just punched some dogs, that’s all…”

I look at him, pulling out another shard, and he gives another small noise of pain. Did I break something in him? He wasn’t afraid of pain before. Maybe some kind of pain immunity contributed to his delusions. It would make the world feel more fragile - I mean, it does make the world feel more fragile already.

If I couldn’t suppress my pain, would I push myself as hard? Would I be able to so casually lose limbs, keep poison in my body? But Lars doesn’t say anything else, so instead, I patch him mostly back up. The entire time, my mana-maze floats behind me, beautifully intricate and complex. 

Lars watches the threads of magic that course around me, the way mana pulses outwards in waves, scanning his hand for any leftover metal. I manifest a pair of tweezers, and stick them into a wound. “This might hurt a little,” I say, already [Suppressing] his pain.

Shaking slightly, he nods, and I pull out a fragment embedded in his knuckle-bone. This time, he doesn’t even wince, thanks to my help. I hum quietly, then heal the wound back up. “You’re done,” I say, and drop his hand. He looks almost disappointed, just kind of awkwardly standing there, not looking at me.

“Have a drink from the fountain,” I tell him, then lean against the wall. I take a breath, and stop my mana from flowing out of me. The waves still pulse, but I keep them within the confines of my body. Splashing out of my vessel, crashing through my mana-pathways, and then breaking against my skin. I pull it back into my vessel after the cycle, a steady back and forth.

The calm strain helps build my mana-veins, which helps me channel more power without disintegrating myself. 

[Class up! Vesselsmith 23 > 24]

[The Vesselmaker watches your technique with interest. He notes that you should, uh, try not to kill yourself for the final level.]

I look at the notification, then smile politely. “No promises,” I say with a shrug. “And if you’re stealing my techniques: pay up.”

[Sighing softly, the Vesselmaker shrugs with a dozen shoulders. You are sponsored additional essence.]

A trickle of information flows into me, and it’s… weirdly suitable for what I’m doing. Filling the gaps between what my class wants, and what the treasure-tome teaches me. I hum quietly, lips pulling into a frown. Is Warden the Vesselmaker?

[The Vesselmaker laughs, shaking his head, and firmly denies this accusation.]

… Well, I see no reason to doubt that. Is there something to be gained from lying to me about this? Probably. But the two of them have mismatched personalities. The Vesselmaker is loud and boisterous, and Warden is more of the quiet, mysterious type. Their skills do have some overlap, though… ah well. 

I’ll figure it out when the time is right. And if he lied to me, he’ll apologize, or I’ll be upset with him. My feelings truly are simple. 

Sighing softly, I resume the exercises, while the rest of the team rests. They’re sprawled out on the floor, sitting in corners, acting as if they’d been through the worst ordeal of their lives. Which, granted, might be true.

However, after only fifteen minutes of blissful quiet, I hear the telltale hum of someone using a portal, a quiet, low droning in my ears. “Huh? What is this? I was not warned I would be sharing this floor with peasants!” comes a voice.

Huffy, uptight… definitely a noble. Sighing softly, I draw my cloak over my face, letting Kuro manifest stark black bandages, wrapping my entire face without any gaps. I keep my mana internal, and yet, despite everything, of course something happens.

The idiot noble fires off an inspection at me, probing for my class and level.

Reflexively, almost by instinct, I do what I always do when someone tries to touch me - I avoid it.

In the blink of an eye, the invasive probe shatters. Half a second passes quietly. And then, an indignant, stuck up brat comes at me, clacking footfalls striking the stone as he walks towards me.

Just. Great.

Chapter 227: Swordfish

“Who do you think you are?” he demands, leaning into me. “You destroyed my inspection! You used mana against a noble! I should have you hung for this!”

Doing my very best impression of someone who can’t hear him, I keep holding onto my mana-maze, now resting in my hands. The exercises and complex puzzles it holds are far more fun than some prince.

Except, of course, the fact that there is a second voice. One I recognize.

A zoof sits down gently in front of me as the noble keeps ranting. I do my best to tune him out - but I still hear his words. They get on my nerves, so I [Suppress] my hearing. Then, things move in front of me.

The zoof summons a glob of mana. Liquid mana. The kind I remember so very distinctly from a party. “I remember the maze,” he says quietly. 

Slowly, I raise my head. And still, I don’t see him. But, now I’m curious. I want to know. In a single decision, I unseal my mana, and the crashing wave pours out of my body, rippling over everyone in the safe zone. The princeling stumbles backwards in fear as a torrent of mana passes over him.

“Did you see that?!” he says. “That brigand attacked me! I swear, I will-”

“Please, young master Seetang,” Leo says quietly. “Calm yourself. There is no violence in a safe zone.”

I smile, a tiny motion. “Hello, Leo,” I say. Meanwhile, I’m already analyzing his mana. He’s restructured it, and I can see so much more now. My seeing skill pierces deep into the very essence of the little construct he’s showing me. He’s already made it to the sixth floor, too. How cool.

Somehow, his mana now has self-adhesive properties, giving it a certain amount of surface tension. It’s so cleverly interlocked in a way that maintains flexibility, though, which is something mine cannot yet properly do. How did he make the bits of mana attract and stick without physical attachments? Some pseudo-electromagnetic mana force?

[Observation 29 > 30]

Leo clears his throat and smiles at me, teeth poking out from in between the fur. “It’s nice to see you again, Trouble,” he says. 

He knows I’m Ion, but he says nothing. So, he deserves it. Whispering conspiratorially, I lean forward. “Most people here know me as Yuki. You can call me Snow, though.”

For a moment, he thinks, tilts his head, and smiles. “Oh, how clever,” he says. “The same word, but in two different languages, both native to your planet. And one is more personal to you. Alright, Snow.”

Of course, he instantly gets it. I smile. What a clever guy. “How old are you?” I ask.

“Twenty-eight. You?”

“Twenty-three, now,” I nod. 

“Awesome,” Leo says. Then, he reaches for the mana maze. I nod, and place it in his hands, and quickly, his mana rushes forward, filling the gaps. It pushes through the maze like a stream of water, exploring cracks and crevices - and then getting stuck.

He tilts his head, and I tilt mine. Then, the noble kicks me in the side of the head. 

“Hello!?” the princeling demands. “How dare you ignore me!”

Leo looks at him. I look at him. The Monolith’s Ire wraps around him with a wrathful hand. I stare at him with surprise, more than hurt, my mana ripples over his skin. Harmlessly, but solidly enough that I see him. Tall, lanky, flowing cloak, hair clipped short in a nerdy bowl-cut. 

I look at him, tilting my head with annoyance, and slowly sit up from the stone. There’s a small bruise forming on my face. He sneers at me. “Stay on the ground, that’s where peasants belong. Tell me your name, filth.”

Slowly, I turn away from him again. The princeling stares at me as I turn towards Leo, and Leo turns towards the prince. “I apologize,” he says for me. “My acquaintance is-”

“A bitch,” Arithia provides. “A silent, sulking, suspicious snitch. Frankly, young master Seetang, you should kill the fucker.”

“What vulgar words,” the prince says, drawing a sword. The Ire comes down harder, and I feel the mana hum with a barely concealed warning. Somehow, the lordling still seems to dumb to get it. I watch him step forward, pointing the tip of the blade at Arithia’s throat. “Speak such disgusting drivel in taverns, not in the presence of royalty.”

Even his sword is fancy. A magic stick with elegant runes curving down the blade, no attempt being made at hiding them. They’re flaunted, out in the open, and so complex that copying them would still be hard. It’s… extravagant.

Another guard, an automaton, to my surprise, talks at the prince. Steam gushes from her mouth as she speaks, rusted gears clicking with the motion. “Please, lord Seetang. Lower your blade. It is a safe zone, to kill is to invite the Ire.”

“And to ensure my safety is your duty,” the lordling sneers. He steps forward, and Arithia steps back hands raised high as the tip of the blade draws a pinprick of blood from her throat. 

“Hey, hey,” she says. “Surely we can negotiate this!” 

Despite her words, I can see her lips curl into a smile. So small and tiny, it’s almost invisible, hidden behind her hair and a lifetime of lies. What a strange person. She’s goading him. I see her shoot me a glance.

Is she trying to cause me trouble? And here I thought Lars would be the annoying one. 

“Kneel, all of you,” lord Seetang asks disgustedly. “Show me your place and, in my magnanimity, I’ll consider forgiving you.”

Gently, I feel my defiance hum. I don’t move. Arithia doesn’t move, and neither does Lars. Slowly, I feel the air shift, The lordling’s authority flares outwards a bit, and ours rise to meet it.

Then, a heavy, gauntleted hand comes down on his shoulder. “Enough of that,” an older woman grunts. Her face is marred with scars, her armor covered in dents and deep furrows. She is a goliath of a woman, standing at least two heads taller than the lordling, and her skin is the same colour as the steel of the armor, her hair a white-grey of age. “Don’t go causin’ trouble in a safe-zone, Cassian.”

For a heartbeat, things seem to slow. Then, the lordling sighs, and his authority retreats. I can feel something heavy pressing down on him, and the woman’s eyes trail over all of us. More guards step through the portal, flanking the prince, each of them holding an authority. 

I watch them all arrive. Then, the giantess sits down next to me and Leo, and a small shockwave from the motion sends me lifting into the air for just half a second. Then I plop back down on the stony floor. The woman tries to clap me on the shoulder, and I lean out of the way. Her hand strikes the stones, and they crack.

She looks at me, with a bright grin. I look at her, afraid. 

Oh no.

An extrovert.

“Ho there,” she starts immediately, eyes glinting, and she tries to smack me again. I duck. “You’re a feisty one! My name’s Grisha. Grisha Wartorn. Tutor of Cassian Seetang. What are your names, climbers?”

I look at Leo and he gives me a sympathetic smile, and a shrug. More liquid mana washes over the maze, and I do my best to watch him, as the lady prattles on. She even gives clapping me on the shoulder a third attempt.

How are people so fricking dense? Like, goodness, I know she’s wearing armor, but with how dense she is, I would’ve thought she’s made from Osmium. Sighing softly, I finally open my mouth. “Please don’t touch me,” I say. “I’m particular about my personal space.”

Grisha grins. “Well met, Particular-About-My-Personal-Space,” she says, with an expression so bright it tells me she knows exactly what I meant. Sighing softly, as she opens up her mouth again, I get up and sit behind Leo.

For some reason, Grisha follows, sitting down next to me again, even as Cassian lordling sneers. Once more, she tries to clap me on the shoulder, this time moving so fast it’s almost impossible to dodge. I even have to deactivate the cruncher to make it out. But I do. Then I stare at her. She gives me a shit-eating grin.

“Won’t you talk to me, little whelp?” she asks.

“Please don’t talk down to me, I don’t do well with authority figures,” I say, getting up again. Grisha stands up and follows me, to the snickers of some of the guards.

I look at her.

She looks at me.

I sigh softly, then walk to Leo, smiling softly. “Sorry,” I say, taking the mana-maze back, and he gives me a mournful, betrayed look. “But I think that’ll be enough.”

Then, I drink a water-breathing potion, and head through one of the portals to the next floor, as Grisha loses her mind laughing. I ignore her, and simply wait on the other side as my team scrambles to follow.

- - -

Soft sand gathers underneath my boots. Water soaks through them entirely, and my mouth feels numb from the potion. It tingles in the back of my throat in a way that wants to make me retch, but I ignore it. Instead, I steadily breathe out, as more air bubbles forth from the magical concoction.

Lars is the first to follow me through the portal.

For a moment, there’s a soft sizzling sound, but then, his flames soon extinguish. We’re at the bottom of the ocean, after all. It must be pitch dark, not that it matters to me. I clamp down on my fear, and breathe out more bubbles of air. My mana brushes over them, watching them trail long paths upwards.

I breathe. Only out. It’s a kind of icky feeling. I hate the fact that I can’t breathe in. I feel the water pressing down all around me, soaking my skin, my hair, my clothes, turning everything heavy. It feels suffocating, claustrophobic, but I bear with the discomfort, even as my skin crawls.

Kuro wraps around me carefully, tightly, purring reassurances in my ear. I breathe out again, more bubbles leaving my mouth. Lars seems panicked, for a moment, clapping a hand over his mouth, but more air simply keeps leaking from his nose. Bubble after bubble leaks from him. 

For a moment, I consider opening my mouth to explain, but only bubbles escape. And then, I remember the one good thing about being underwater - silence.

A noiseless laugh escapes my mouth, mirthless bubbles coursing to the surface. I look at the path along the bottom of the ocean in front of us, as Lars’ face turns away from me, and he hides it between his hands. Arithia follows, then Cool, Wire, Pout and Nerves. 

I watch Lars walk up to the others, touching them, and I feel a faint heat signature permeating them. Finally, he walks up to me, hesitating, his hand glowing a faint orange. He… tilts his head in a silent question.

Very slowly, I nod.

Lars moves slowly, carefully, and his hand only lingers on my shoulder for a moment, until the spark of heat passes over. It’s faint and weak, but I can feed it with my mana. Only voluntarily - it doesn’t devour it by itself, or anything.

When fueled, the spark expands, a gentle kind of warmth that spreads through my body. Huh. I nod at Lars, and then look forward once more. My body is so dense these days that I sink naturally, but not particularly fast. So, walking across the bottom of the ocean is still slow, with long, bouncing steps. 

It takes about ten seconds until a swordfish stabs into my gut.

Chapter 228: Blood in the Water

Air bubbles out of my mouth in reflex as I let out a gasp. 

Then, I reach behind me, wrapping my fingers around the saw-like nose of the fish. Jagged teeth dig into my hand. I feel blood pool from between my fingers. But despite that, I twist and turn, pressing the nose to the side until it catches.

The fish squirms against my grip, trying to withdraw, but its saw-like nose catches on my ribs. I just kind of… hold it there, then take another step. And another. Slowly approaching Lars while the squirming fish tries to put me off balance.

Staring at me with a bit of fear, the pyromaniac’s eyes dart between the fish, my wound, and my face. I stare at him, calmly, deadpan, then mouth a very simple instruction. “Punch it.”

Lars swallows heavily, then clenches his fists. He strikes forward with a step, slamming it into the side of the fish, scorching flesh, and sending a sizzling shock through me. The saw-nose cuts deeper into my fingers, grinding against my bones. He needs two more punches to finish off the fish.

Then, finally, I let go of the nose and pull the swordfish out of me. There’s a bit of a pulling, grinding noise, distorted by the water. Moments later, another swordfish stabs into my leg. 

Oh come on.

- - -

Butchering the monsters is a frigging chore. We’re underwater, I’m uncomfortable, and I also have more holes through me, that are eating up my mana to slowly shut. The salty ocean water burns in the wounds, and I can’t exactly avoid the fish. Arithia has an easier time with them, at least.

Whenever she gets stabbed, she just jabs a knife into the fish’s eye, and they die soon after. She’s taken down a half dozen of them that way. Of course, her wounds don’t really heal, blood continuing to steadily pulse from them, clouding the water around her. But she also doesn’t seem bothered. 

In fact, I’m rather inclined to believe that one of her abilities seems to be some flavour of pain immunity. She’s taking all of this far too well, otherwise. A little bit like Inu, but more extreme in the whole “undying” direction.

I still don’t know how she survived the knife through her throat. Maybe I’ll ask her after the underwater level.

Since she’s good at dealing with the fish, I send her ahead. She gets stabbed a lot. I heal her when she does, spending some of my almost endless mana on it. More and more always gathers in my vessel, spreading through my channels, pulsing out in the world, then streaming back in, compressing my mana just slightly.

[Compression 2 > 3]

It’s almost like a secondary pulse. My mana, in my vessel compressing and uncompressing, like a spring. The process seems to be doing a lot to maintain itself. When my mana crashes back inwards, it wants to get back out there, because the pressure in my vessel is too high. When it’s out there, I have to pull it back in…

If I had Leo’s adhesive mana, would it stick to itself, draw thin, and then try to spring back together? Hm. Could I, then, turn a far larger area around me into, essentially, an additional mana storage for me? More mana… Always more. 

Another swordfish stabs into me, its nose glancing off my ribcage, leaving a long gash, before sliding off to the side. It pierces into Kuro - and then gets enveloped by darkness. When I look over again, not even bones are left. What a hungry little symbiote I have.

I gently pat Kuro’s head, as I heal up another three stabs through Arithia. She gives me a smug grin, seeming almost… happy to make me do work. I don’t dignify it with a reaction, instead just knitting her flesh back together.

Sneakily, I look for her skills while doing so, but come up empty.

[Obfuscation 18 > 19]

How bothersome. I can’t figure out how she does it. The lack of pain seems completely natural for her. Ah well. I move on with my life, and instead tinker with my other half-dozen projects. My own vessel, for example.

Focusing on it some more, it seems to behave funnily here. The pressure from the water squishing in on my body with crushing force seems to counteract the outward-push of my mana a little. Of course, it’s not hard to just release a bit of my attunement loop, but if this were in Downpour, I would probably be leaking mana like a broken sieve.

Which is about as much control as the average person has.

Down here, even people like Lars and Pout don’t emit too much. Which makes it all the funnier when the swordfish keep finding us. 

Okay, funny is a generous word. Pout responds very poorly to taking a stab wound. I have to rush over there and stitch them back up, even as they give me a low whine through the water. It’s a bit pathetic, but in a sad way.

But what bothers me way more than that, is when I can feel something far bigger on the edge of my mana sense.

Slowly, I stand up and frown. I tilt my head, bit by bit, and send out another pulse of mana.

Nothing.

Hm.

- - -

In the distance, there’s a graveyard. Bones of Leviathans pierce the sea floor, building tall pillars of ossific white. Swordfish circle them in schools, tiny swarms of the things sawing away at the skeletons with their noses. The water seems a little cloudy, stained by centuries of blood in the water that just doesn’t quite settle.

Is this really floor three of the monolith? It feels almost like the prelude should, like the next safe zone might be the pinnacle of the place, but it’s not. It’ll be just another safe zone.

My mana pulses out, and at the very edge, there is a glimpse of something enormous. I focus, my mind zooming in on it, my head jerking, my skills darting out, and I [Select]-

Nothing.

A small frown plays on my bandaged face, but I let it go with a sigh. More water bubbles from my lips, and I drink the third water-breathing potion, handing more to my party as well. Nerves quickly gulps it down, while the others all place the glass in their mouth, carefully gripping the lip of the vial with their teeth to let the contents pour into their mouth.

And we keep walking, towards the school of swordfish, like it’s the best decision ever, because it’s a landmark. And landmarks mean exits.

- - -

I breathe out a stream of bubbles. Almost magnetically, they’re pulled forward, towards the bones. A giant, eyeless skull of some ancient leviathan stares me down.

Tragically, I lose the staring content on account of being more blind and less dead than the thing. Schools of swordfish flit between the bones, but they drag their jagged saw-noses against the remains rather than us for once. The water here is thicker against my skin, heavier, stained with ancient blood.

I can feel it burning against my skin, just a little. The kind of pain that the goblins’ acidic blood gave me. An incessant need to scratch myself. Which makes the already uncomfortable place even more uncomfortable - which isn’t helped by the fact that I feel another touch of something enormous out there.

A frown plays on my face, even as Cool drags their fingers across one of the bones, promptly peeling the skin off of them. The ancient remains seem about as inviting to touch as sharp sandpaper, full of tiny little edges. I heal the wound, even as a few swordfish drift closer at the smell of blood.

Cool gives me an apologetic nod, and a thankful one right after. He conveys it all without even speaking a word. Impressive. A true connoisseur of the silent arts. 

The bone he touched shakes, just a little.

His blood paints a tiny red stain on its surface, and slowly, it absorbs into the porous material. It doesn’t dissolve into the water, like it should, but sinks in, and a tiny bit of tissue regrows on the bone. 

A deep, terrible rumble passes through the water at even that tiny notion of skin, and the swordfish flock to the spot, their jagged noses ripping the regenerating bit of flesh into tiny shreds. Blood dissolves, filling the water. 

I feel a terrible, crushingly horrid authority spread and lay itself on my shoulders. It’s ancient, vast, and horribly cruel. I feel like something is watching me, from a distance, and I feel mana gather.

And for the first time in a long while, I’m faced by someone with more mana than me, I think.

Uh-Oh.