Singer Sailor Merchant Mage

Chapter 196: Breath of Life

“How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is so clearly Ocean.”

Arthur C. Clarke

In the underwater tunnel, lit by the bioluminescence of the creatures living there, Arawn grimaced for a second at the uncomfortable intrusion of the seawater, but a second later, he was breathing in and out comfortably underwater. The miracle elixir gave him the ability to breathe without worry underwater. Something I desperately needed if the levelling of Iron Man was anything to go by. We had been swimming underwater for a long, long way now.

Ding! Iron Man (Lv66)

“Your turn.” Hulio wrote before he gestured to my own pill of Wlyde Glei.

Without waiting any further, I bit it open in my mouth and inhaled the contents. The astringent nature of the elixir caused me to cough and reflexively inhale the seawater in an attempt to soothe my throat. It did nothing of the sort and burned a little as it went down, sort of like breathing in alcoholic fumes, and I had to fight against the fear that I had just killed myself once again. But once the initial discomfort and panic had passed, I could still breathe, though in a different manner. The water was a lot thicker than air, I could feel it moving in and out far more readily, but as I grew used to it, I marvelled at the ability to breathe underwater.

Ding! Underwater Breathing (Lv1)

It opened up so much more of the world to explore once I was at a little higher level. Would it just take time to level it up? Or was it a matter of depth and pressure? Would I retain this ability now that it was on my status, or would it require another pill? Questions for another time.

“Continue.” Hulio wrote, keen to get back to exploring the tunnel further into Wester Levante. That was, after all, the main reason they had decided to accompany us, and they were far more suited to exploring the tunnel with or without us.

We nodded in response, still wondering at the ability to breathe underwater. We carefully picked our way through the tunnel's ecological niche. Pausing to allow various predators to float or swim on by, never attempting to fight our way through. Eventually, we came to the end of the tunnel or at least what remained of it. From sight alone, it was impossible to say whether this was the end, but I was not limited to just my sight.

Reaching out with my other senses, I explored the stone around me and was able to sense a thinning in the stone above our heads and the existence of water above that. It appeared that we had finally gone far enough to reach the internal lagoon of Wester Ponente. My skills also showed some of the cracks in the floor bed of the lagoon that led down to the tunnel we were in.

None of them were large enough for more than the water to exchange between the lagoon and the sea. However, with a little moulding, I should be able to open them up enough to let us loose into the inner lagoon. Finding our way to a small inner grotto in the tunnel wall, some pocket bubble in the lava tunnel, I carefully shifted the stone open enough to let us out. As I did so, I meticulously kept my mana constrained to the stone rather than leaking into the water. Even so, enough leaked to cause the crystal blue jellyfish to start drifting in our direction. Eager to feast on whatever was releasing the mana.

The Neriad kept them back from us at the end of their tridents. Puncturing the few that insisted on attempting to draw closer. Their corpses floated for a second before being feasted upon by their surviving brethren. The stings on the dead tentacles failed to prevent them from pulling them apart to become just another morsel. With the distraction of fresh food in front of them, they lost interest in me, or I grew better at restraining my mana.

At long last, the tunnel upward was large enough for all of us to escape into the lagoon as we headed up to the light at the end of the tunnel.

Ding! Stone shaping (LV31)

I took care to seal it behind us. I did not want to let the blue crystal jellyfish loose into the inner lagoon. I could imagine the ecological damage they would bring to our fishing ground and the death they could cause to unsuspecting fishermen long used to what to expect. With a cough and gasp, we breached the surface of the lagoon, clearing our lungs of seawater and taking our first breath of fresh air since we entered the tunnel.

“We found the tunnel, but where is the rest of Zavaria?” Hulio asked, confused. He had clearly been expecting more after discovering the statues at the tunnel’s entrance untouched by the flow of lava.

“Buried,” I responded.

I had never sensed the stone beneath the lagoon floor, only using sonar to map the area. I never looked below the water. Having now searched upward from beneath the lagoon, I noticed that the lagoon floor was a veneer of lava on top of a hidden underwater city. Much like the buried city of Pompeii, I could only imagine how the Neriad had fled their city only for pyroclastic flows to cover it behind them and block their return.

“Nothing remains?” Hulio asked, disappointed. I could imagine how he thought the rediscovering of Zavaria would have gone.

“It remains. It is just covered. Let me show you.” I answered It would take time, but not all was lost at all.

We dove back down to a large outcropping of rock protruding a little from the lagoon floor. Standing atop what I now knew was a building, I slowly revealed it to them. Less worried about releasing my mana in the tamer waters of my home island. A foot, two feet, three feet of stone below my feet rolled back to reveal the roof of an underwater dwelling. Walking around its perimeter, I revealed more and more of the building below, preserved by the stone that had entombed it. By the time I had completed a circuit of the stone roof, I had revealed the upper floor of a building still half buried into the lagoon floor. Still able to breathe underwater, we took our time to explore the upper and still buried lower floor. There was nowhere for the stone to flow that still covered the lower floor. It would take significant excavation to truly reveal the city we now knew lay beneath our waters. The Neriad looked out across the lagoon floor, imagining what might be hidden under the stone layer and lagoon floor.

I was wondering too. The stone house we had uncovered was hardly filled with riches, but we had found a coin or two, and I could imagine that multiplied a hundred or a thousand times over across the lagoon floor. Riches were buried in stone, just waiting to be uncovered. They once belonged to the Neriad, but they couldn’t recover them without me; it was my island. Fifty per cent of everything recovered seemed fair to me. Arawn pointed upward. It was time to go home and let them know what we had been up to.

. . .

“Thank you.” Hulio’s first words were as we emerged from the water on the westward side of our inner lagoon isle.

I gave him a quick, quiet nod in return, I doubted that the two envoys would have noticed our arrival anywhere, but there was no reason to tempt fate, and I wished to conceal the new immigrant Neriad from any prying eyes. They would not double our numbers, but given time, they would make up a significant portion of our population once they were invited in and the underwater tunnel cleared of the more lethal apex creatures.

“This way.” I led us in swimming back to shore triumphantly.

. . .

“Took your time.” Aleera’s grumpiness hardly hid her joy at seeing us return.

They had already been warned of our arrival by Namir, who stood silently behind her shoulder. We had worked our way into our palatial home through Arawn’s old home and the tunnel that led through the mountain.

I continued to search the stone for any other hidden building. Still, the mountain we called our home seemed to be purely volcanic in creation, probably the very volcano that ended the Neriad city of Zavaria. There was nothing new to sense that I had missed before. Zavaria lay solely at the bottom of the lagoon. Obviously, the ancient Neriad saw no reason to expand above the water line in earlier times.

“We were fairly busy.” I shrugged. “Discovered an ancient city, started relations with a new race, raised a sunken wreck to add to our fleet, and repelled the rapacious efforts of the local baron. You know, the usual.” I smiled deprecatingly as if this was just an ordinary couple of weeks in my life. Sometimes they were.

“How’s business going here?” I asked in return.

“I think they are about to break.” She smiled. “I don’t think that they can afford to spend much more time here. They are running out of funds.”

In our absence, the ladies of the house had instituted an incrementally rising tax for our tourists. Every day the prices rose for them. They had been restricted to staying on board their ships simply to save on costs, and their sailors were catching fish to stretch out their stores.

If it went on for much longer, they would struggle to restock for their return journey. With our backing, the townspeople had made a game of gouging the most outrageous prices for anything and everything they could get away with for anyone not resident on the island.

They were experiencing a cost of living crisis. But they always had the option of sailing away.

. . . .