Before letting go of the wall and jumping into the icy water, Lan wanted to try something. So far, he had succeeded in containing fire and water within mana, so logically, the same should be possible with air.
Since, despite his affinity with water, he couldn''t breathe under it, having extra air when he went and fought whatever was down in the lake could be key.
As he tried creating a sphere to contain air, he found it relatively straightforward. The only problem was that he couldn''t actually keep much air. If he made the mana sphere too big, it would cost too much to keep running. Looking at the softly glowing orb in his palm, Lan estimated he had about ten minutes underwater, but that could vary wildly if he ended up fighting something.
With this ready, he practised breathing through the sphere. Placing the orb to his lips, he pushed through the mana and took a breath.
''It works!'' Lan grinned and refilled the sphere. He looked down at the icy pool with more confidence than before.
"Let''s do this," Lan''s words echoed throughout the silent chamber, reverberating off every icy surface in an endlessly growing wave.
With a final shout, he jumped off the Ledge and dived into the pool.
Immediately, the icy water slammed into him, but having experienced this sensation already, he didn''t lose his cool. Since time was a pressing issue, as it always seemed to be, Lan dove straight down into the pool.
He brushed passed innumerable strands of rough, dark green seaweed that dragged against his robe and entangled his legs, making progress harder than it should have been. But Lan forged ahead, squeezing through the dense underwater forest and swimming deeper.
At about halfway down the pool, the seaweed got denser, which presented its own set of problems, but frankly, Lan was more preoccupied with his air bubble. The deeper he dived, the harder it became to maintain, forcing him to divert more concentration and mana to the process. ''What''s going on?'' Lan wondered, trying to figure out why the bubble would become harder to maintain the deeper he went.
In total, the pool was around three hundred metres deep, and at close to two hundred metres in depth, Lan was getting a better picture of the pearl. It was the size of a fist and shone like a lantern in the dark depths of the pool. In the centre of the blue pearl was a hollow black spot, and it appeared as though something was supposed to go inside this empty hole. Lan assumed another piece of the crown went in this spot, but he wasn''t sure.
When he had reached a depth of two hundred and fifty metres, Lan started to feel uneasy. Aside from the brutal temperature and annoying seaweed, where was the monster? Usually, by now, he would have fought a guardian and its entire extended family, so the pristine calmness of the pool left him on edge. He felt like an underwater goliath would jump out and fight him at any moment.
But to his surprise, he reached the pearl uncontested.
''What''s going on here?'' Lan looked around at the bottom of the pool for a hidden boss but saw only seaweed growing from dirt. Perhaps his vision was obstructed, and the monster was hidden elsewhere, but so far, this trip had been blissfully, unnervingly stress-free.
The huge pearl resided inside an equally colossal clam. Covered In algae and moss, the creature''s massive shell looked so old it could probably be classified as a fossil.
Lan swam up to the clam, feeling almost relieved. He was sure this thing was the final boss, and he was also convinced he could beat a clam.
But looking at the ancient mollusc, he was disappointed not to find any creature tag by the system. It had no level or name, making him wonder if the massive thing was even alive.
''Whether it''s alive or not doesn''t matter. Since it has the pearl, I''m going to need to grab it one way or another,''
Lan motioned to reach into the clam with his arm but thought better of it. Instead, he opted to send in a mana rope. The rope wrapped around the pearl, and when Lan had moved back as far as the rope would allow, he yanked the pearl out of the clam.
The pearl shot out of the clam just before it slammed shut emphatically, sending a wave of current rushing out in all directions from the force of its mouth closing.
''Good thing I…'' Lan didn''t finish that thought, as the entire pool had started to rumble.
Since he had gotten pretty good at reading ques like this recently, Lan immediately started to swim away.
''The big boss should be appearing any moment,'' He franticly swam up towards the surface, quickly stealing a breath of air before the fight began.
After rising barely fifty meters, Lan felt a sharp tug on his ankle. ''Huh?''
He turned to look, finding a thick piece of seaweed had entangled his ankle, apparently not by accident. It was wrapped tightly around his foot and squeezing harder by the second. Lan kicked at the seaweed and managed to break it easily enough, but when he looked around and saw thousands, tens of thousands of similar strands, he knew his uneasy feelings were warranted.
''I see what''s going on here,''
It started with just a few pieces, and Lan could deal with them. They snaked through the water like eels and wrapped around his limbs, constricting like a python. Lan managed to deal with these using a well-placed punch or simply tearing the seaweed apart bare-handed.
But that quickly became impossible when hundreds of the dark green tentacles rushed him in an endless wave of seaweed.
Lan quickly formed four high-pressure mana ropes and as the seaweed slammed into him, he began to slice it apart. Spinning the ropes like helicopter blades, any unruly piece of seaweed that got too close was shredded into a million pieces.
After a couple of minutes inching his way towards the surface while obliterating thousands of pieces of seaweed, Lan felt a sudden sense of danger. Perhaps It was instinct, maybe it was luck, whatever the reason, his gut was telling him he needed to move.
Grabbing a piece of seaweed, Lan hauled himself out of the way, barely avoiding something huge as it blew past him, exploding tens of pieces of seaweed in a cloud of green debris.
''What the fuck!?'' Lan looked desperately for whatever had just attacked him, but it was hidden behind the wall of plants. In fact, the seaweed almost seemed to move to cover the creature.
Using this brief reprieve, Lan began to swim upwards again, having the bright idea to spin a rope above his head and use it as a propeller to pull him through the water.
He soared up towards the surface, blowing seaweed apart like it wasn''t even there. Occasionally, a piece would sneak past his guard and entangle his arms or legs, but he was only slowed for a moment before breaking free and piling on more speed.
It seemed his sudden burst of speed agitated the creature as the next attack came shortly after that.
The seaweed opened up like curtains parting, and a beam of high-pressure water ripped towards Lan in a white blur. He could barely raise his arm in time and take the brunt of the attack, but afterwards, his skin stung like it had been burned.
With a numb arm, Lan stole a glance inside the gap in the seaweed. He was shocked to find that what had just attacked him was, in fact, the clam. Somehow, it had detached itself from the ground and swam up to steal back its pearl, which was safely clenched in Lan''s uninjured hand.
But what shocked Lan wasn''t that the clam had moved on its own, or that it had attacked him. He wasn''t even surprised by its ridiculous level. What shocked him was that the colossal clam had countless green tentacles growing from beneath its ancient shell. It looked as though the algae and moss that grew on the bottom of the clam''s shell had taken root in the floor of the pool and developed into the endless mass of seaweed.This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Seaweed that it could control.
The clam disappeared behind another curtain of green, moving at blistering speeds by taking in water through its mouth and expelling the water behind itself in short high-pressure bursts.
<table style="border-collapse: collapse; width: 99.9729%; background-color: rgba(52, 73, 94, 1); border-color: rgba(45, 194, 107, 1); border-style: inset" border="1">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="width: 99.052%">Lvl: 22 – Pearl Watcher</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
Lan stole another breath of his dwindling air and tried to figure out how to catch the clam, never mind hurting it. He had already decided to kill it since he needed the experience. The question was how?
Its shell looked stronger than stone, and his arm still stung from the clam''s attack. He would be helpless if it just hid behind the seaweed and fired off high-pressure beams of water.
Of course, that was only if Lan let the clam do what it wanted. Since it controlled the seaweed and was using it as cover, he would just have to destroy all of it.
Lan quickly stopped trying to swim upwards and instead combined all four of his mana ropes into one huge strand. With all the pieces combined, he made a rope almost fifteen metres in length.
For a brief moment, as he got the lengthy mana rope under control, the seaweed launched its next attack, entwining his arms and legs with hundreds of strands. As one, the strands began to pull in completely opposite directions.
Lan felt like he was getting rope burn on his entire body, but he endured it and began to spin the massive rope. It started slowly at first, taking a while to get up to speed. But when it finally started spinning quick enough to cut the seaweed, it was over.
Hundreds and then thousands of strands of seaweed were ripped to shreds by the rope as it blurred through the water like a blender.
Once again, the clam fired off a blast of water more powerful than before, which Lan managed to block with his injured arm. The part the beam touched turned a deep red and began to swell up as an ugly bruise quickly formed.
''Fuck, that hurt!'' Lan growled and pressed on with the rope, eviscerating any piece of seaweed that got near him.
In the chaos, he managed to steal another breath, but he was quickly running low on air and knew he needed to get to the surface soon.
Now that the seaweed had thinned, drifting down to the bottom of the pool in a bed of dark green after being cut, swimming was far easier. Taking advantage of this, Lan piled on the speed and swam another fifty metres upwards. As he neared the surface, the light from his lantern became more pronounced, and he could almost taste the fresh air.
Another beam of water slammed into him, this time hitting his left leg. Ignoring the throbbing pain, he kept swimming, drawing nearer the surface all the while.
As the number of seaweed depleted to the point that Lan could see the clam no matter where it was, he could predict its attacks to a certain extent and dodged them clumsily, lacking grace owing to his injured arm and leg.
Until suddenly, with no warning, the clam stopped attacking, and the seaweed went still.
Lan kept swimming for a couple of seconds before he stopped. ''Is it my imagination, or is the water getting sucked towards the clam?''
He turned to see a maelstrom of water pouring into the clam at an alarming speed. So much water was entering the creature that the level of the pool was dropping drastically.
Another uneasy feeling hit Lan, and he suddenly had the premonition that he wouldn''t be able to dodge this attack. It was nothing more than a gut feeling, but since his gut had been right earlier, he was going to trust it again.
Dispelling the mana rope, Lan started creating shields in between him and the swelling clam. They were crude sheets of ice that he froze by injecting mana into the surrounding water, but something was better than nothing.
While he certainly did have a lot of mana thanks to his new class, it was a limited amount, and all these successive skills had overdrawn his supply. He had barely a third of his mana left, and with each shield he created, his tank ran closer to empty.
After he finished creating the fourth shield, a metre-thick layer of ice, the clam exploded into action. The whole cavern shook as an enormous wave of water blasted out of its mouth. The wave crossed the distance between them instantly and shattered the first shield, losing barely any energy.
The roiling mass of water ripped apart his second shield, slowing only barely as it relentlessly shredded his third shield.
''Oh fuck.''
His final and thickest shield managed to curb the wave to some degree but quickly met the same fate as the previous three, collapsing under the immense pressure of the wave.
Lan was picked up like a ragdoll and flung helplessly against the cave wall. Rock cracked and splintered as he impacted the wall and stuck there, embedded in the stone.
Lan''s air bubble had been destroyed in the impact, but luckily, his bones had somehow remained intact. Not that his body was in good condition. Every single part, from his lungs to his legs, were screaming in agony, jostling and arguing about which part was in the most pain.
Groaning, Lan dislodged himself from the pool wall and glanced at the clam. Behind the drifting wreckage of the seaweed, it floated listlessly, clearly having taken some damage from releasing such an intense attack.
Lan glanced up. The surface of the pool and clam were about the same distance away, and he couldn''t hold his breath for much longer. If he attacked the clam and failed, he might drown. But if he went for breath and the clam recovered, he might end up worse off since he was practically out of mana.
Gritting his teeth, Lan swam straight for the clam. Risks were made to be taken, and he wouldn''t get anything as a payout if he never placed a bet.
In its stunned state, the clam didn''t react much to Lan''s approach. It just barely mustered the energy to swim sluggishly away, but it was nowhere near as fast as it had been before.
Every part of Lan''s body screamed in protest as he swam up to the clam. It took him one glance at the shell to know he wouldn''t be able to break it.
When he got close enough, the clam simply closed up, shutting its mouth firmly and floating motionlessly as though dead.
Lan had a sudden thought as he swam up to the clam and rapped his knuckles on its rocky shell. After cutting off the last bits of seaweed growing on the bottom of its shell, he started to push the clam up to the surface.
Holding the clam above his head, he could only kick with his legs, but he still quickly arrived at the surface. Gasping for air, Lan held up the clam, which was roughly 3 metres across.
Even when they broke the surface, the clam remained unresponsive. It was shut so tightly that Lan would never be able to break its shell. If he didn''t think outside the box, that is.
He gently lowered the clam below the surface of the water until it was entirely submerged. Then, he began to freeze the monster, using all his remaining mana to turn the water he touched into ice that crept across the clam''s shell like morning frost.
Within a minute, it was entirely frozen, and Lan doubted whether it would ever be able to open its mouth again.
When this was done, he jumped on top of the frozen clam, which was now floating on the pool''s surface and paddled over to the wall where his lantern hung.
Shivering from the cold, Lan grabbed the lantern and huddled around the flickering flame, greedily soaking up every drop of warmth it had to offer. For an hour, he sat like this on the clam. His body ached from the cold and his bruises, but it was recovering rapidly.
When the hour was up, his mana had recovered completely, and he was ready.
Lan lifted the clam out of the water and froze a small patch for it to sit on. Then he stood atop the clam and opened up the lantern. He quickly began to pour mana into the fire, stimulating the little flame until a roaring inferno engulfed the clam''s top half.
The ice that had once covered the entire clam melted in seconds under the intense flame, but this didn''t slow Lan down. He amplified the amount of mana he was pumping into the flame, but instead of keeping the range wide, like a flamethrower, he narrowed it down. In his hands, the Lantern looked more like a welding torch, with a flame that blazed a blinding white.
Putting one hundred mana per second into the flame, Lan pressed the searing beam of fire against the joint between the top and bottom of the clam''s shell. The ripping hot lance of fire melted through the shell like it wasn''t even there, and in less than a second, Lan had completely separated the top and bottom halves of the clam.
He tossed the top half aside and scorched the inside of the clam''s shell until he got a notification.
<table style="border-collapse: collapse; width: 99.9729%; background-color: rgba(52, 73, 94, 1); border-color: rgba(45, 194, 107, 1); border-style: inset" border="1">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="width: 99.052%">Alert: Killed Lvl:22 Pearl Watcher – Experience Gained (Bonus due to level difference)</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table style="border-collapse: collapse; width: 99.9729%; background-color: rgba(52, 73, 94, 1); border-color: rgba(45, 194, 107, 1); border-style: inset" border="1">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="width: 99.052%">
Level up! [15->16]
<hr>
Level up! [16->17]
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
"Holy shit!" Lan collapsed, exhausted on the floating island of ice. The entire cavern smelt like a burnt clam and his mana was utterly exhausted again.
This time, he was too tired to even pay attention to the sensation as two levels worth of stats rushed into him. All he wanted to do was rest again.
The cold seeped into his bones, sapping his strength away, reminding him of a time long ago.
A time before he came to the Bridge, a time when Lan was still young. When he had lived in the District, and slept in stranger, colder places.
The all too familiar chill lulled him into a deep sleep, where he dreamt of times long past and a friend he hadn''t seen in years.