Sinatro
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Chapter 40. Under The Sea
🕑 Added 2025-03-26 13:09:53 +0000 UTCNine hours was a long time, it turned out. It wasn't even five hours later when the portal opened up again.
‘Ding’!
The system called for his attention in its usual way.
You have defeated ‘Sand Monarch’ level 55.
And he had completed all his objectives with perfect scores. Except the very first of course, but it had only been an alternative anyway.
The monarch had ambushed him while he fought another of the specials, as he'd decided to start calling the mixed elementals, or rather as the system called them.
Your Skyholm's Fighting Proficiency has reached level 27.
Your skill Heavy blow has reached level 238.
Your skill Dash has reached level 13.
Only three skills had leveled up this time, which made sense given he hadn't used a lot of skills and most of the elementals were below level twenty.
Your class warrior has reached level 2. 2 stat points gained. 2 spec points gained.
Your pseudo class skill mimic has reached level 2. 1 stat point gained. 1 spec point gained.
Your race has reached level 2. 1 free stat point gained.
“It took me demolishing a whole population to gain one measly level. This pace for a basic class will not be tenable. I mean, these creatures are millions of levels ahead of me. I should be level ten by now.”
He couldn't make sense of it. Had Liam miscalculated just how much the injury had affected him. He should be half as slow as the average at leveling, shouldn't he?
You have completed a Side Quest.
You have completed room objective.(1)
You have completed hidden objective.(1)
Rewards: 1 quest point, 10 credits, health potion (1), stamina potion (1), class upgrade orb.
One quest point? That was hardly consistent. And there were only ten credits this time. He'd used all his stamina potions in this room, and getting only one was kind of a bummer. He didn't have to use his health potion immediately this time, which was a plus.
As for the class upgrade orb? He studied the small marble-like thing. It was a bit bigger than a marble but it was identical to one in every way. It had a transparent and thick glass like outer wall and something at its core. It seemed to be swirling and pulsing with many colors.
“Essence…” he breathed out.
He didn't know how he knew, but he was pretty sure that was what it was.
Class upgrade orb (common).
Enables a user to choose the direction of their class evolution once they reach the required threshold.
His new skill was already coming in handy. He frowned down at the orb though, not quite sure if that was all it did. It seemed a pretty shit reward for all the success he'd achieved in the room if he was being honest.
He already knew what direction his class was supposed to take next, and if he didn't get the option for a dodge tank he'd just have to take off a few weeks to train and force the option to appear.
Maybe the orb was rare and expensive in the outer multiverse? He didn't know a lot about the multiverse, but he was pretty sure with his quest system he was not going to be broke.
“Maybe I'll even be richer than my parents in the system era?” he considered out loud.
He stared around the continent sized room of the tower one more time before he moved on.
The third room had rock flinging cyclops. They did not have magic, and all they depended on was their brute strength. It was possible they were strong against magic users. Their eye beams were completely useless and totally discounted by Rafe as they required a target to stay in one place for a long time.
The reactive shielding, as he'd taken to calling the weird force field that acted as a barrier, was disrupted by his hammer releasing similar energy. He didn't know what it was though.
Flitting around was Rafe's whole style. Suffice it to say he grossly countered the room's denizens and moved on without using any of his potions. He gained one more of each potion, and a rare one hundred quest points and one hundred credits. He also received five free stat points.
“I can get stat points as rewards for completing quests?” he thought, thinking of just how broken the quest system was turning out to be.
He kept in mind that it was not normal to have the quest system awakened at low levels like he did. It was normal at higher levels though. Something he would have to investigate once he headed into the multiverse.
He was still thinking when he fell into the water. He panicked almost instantly. He knew how to swim, but the water had come from nowhere, and he was already floating, everything all around him dark. He didn't know how deep he was and which way was up and …
He was panicking. He sealed all his air holes tight with a flex of his consciousness. His lungs were starting to burn but he couldn't allow the water in. He flailed as he tried to ascend, to move.
There was no change in scenery. His grip on his air holes slipped with every passing second. Then he saw the light. It was so far. He would never make it in time.
He sighed in resignation. It was time to test that whole resurrection mechanism this tower employed. He let go. Water rushed in. He prepared for the pressure in his lungs. The pressure he well remembered from a few accidents. There was nothing. He could breathe underwater.
‘Ding’ Side Quest received.
Objective: Survive the sirens’ call.
Room objective (s):1. Go to the light
Reach the light in an hour. (59 mins left)
Reach the light in half an hour. (29 mins left)
Hidden objective: Slay five elder sirens. (0/5)
There had been five lightning attuned unique sand elementals in the second room. Only three had given his weapon their attunements on their death, but he'd discovered he could use the temporary attunement only once. He had received a lava attunement from one lava cross breed, and he had used it to great effect in the cyclops room. He only had two lightning attunements left on his hammer, but that would have to count for at least two siren kills.
The thing about the hidden objective was, he would get his reward even if he didn't kill five sirens. The objective did not say at least after all. When he'd killed the first unique elementals, the objective had been marked as complete, even if it had said twenty two. Five sirens was only necessary for a perfect score.
He looked around, trying to spot if any were about to attack him. It was still dark, forbidding. It was their mana he sensed first. With his eyes effectively blinded, he decided to depend on his aura senses and his racial ability.
Too bad his racial ability even if he pushed it to barely controllable limits couldn't stretch more than six inches from his body. He’d also never sensed an underwater creature before. What his aura senses returned confused him.
They returned feelings of home and frolicking in a field of poppies and family and everything Rafe wanted that was not violence. His aura senses urged him to unbuckle his sword belt and never use the instruments of death again. The surrounding aura was one of peace, tranquility, belonging.
Then his racial ability noticed the incoming sound magic. He tried diving out of the way but there were too many waves coming at him from different places. He felt it when they hit him. He felt the fight start to vacate his body.
In one last bid of desperation, Rafe used quick draw on his sword and stabbed himself in the thigh. Something slipped through his aura senses then. Something reeking of hunger and blood.
Rafe turned, trying to track its movements. That was when he realised a problem. He might be able to breathe, but his movements were still pretty much constrained as they would be in normal water.
“Shit!” Rafe cursed as the shape of a disgusting looking leathery sea creature appeared in his ability’s eye.
****
“Alright, I'm gonna call it. Enith, you are the total worst,” Sam complained.
“I agree. What is the point of torturing the boy like this?” the first Skyholm asked.
Enith shrugged. “He kind of pissed me off with his totally unwarranted disgust for me.”
“Yeah, but no one likes you, En,” the thief spoke, very reasonably in Noid's estimation.
“I just think it'd be a shame if he reached the top without unlocking the eye. You went through all the trouble of giving him a plan that he can't even yet use,” the enchantress answered Sam.
The thief gave her a withering glare. “So this whole quest system business was not the only reason you wanted him to have your eye then, was it?”
The enchantress did not answer, just looking at Sam with the most placid expression.
“Dammit! And I thought I was being oh so clever too. You had me in the palm of your hand the whole fucking time. Am I really the greatest thief ever?”
****
Rafe extricated himself from the corpse of the juvenile sea dragon, as he'd decided to call the creatures that seemed to follow the sirens around. The song hadn't faded entirely, but he found that a bite or claw from the monsters helped keep him on the straight and narrow.
He was using his arms to fight for now, finding it quite hard to use any kind of tool in this environment. An alarm went off in his head, and he felt the temperamental part of his racial ability activate. He pushed himself backward as a spear sheared through the space he'd just been in.
A muscular creature appeared. Humanoid but still green and with fins for lower limbs. Its upper limbs, and especially its hands were reptilian with webbed digits and its mouth was shaped like that of a crocodile.
He saw it in black and white with his ability as his eyes were still pretty much useless.
He wished that was different though. He wished he could see just a little more clearly. He wished there was another way he could see except the makeshift options he was using. Sure, his aura skill was over leveled hence his control of its secondary abilities, but it was still just a basic skill.
Most of his skills were stronger than normal, but they were basic skills one and all. He needed more tools if he was to survive encounters like these in the multiverse.
The creature attacked, Rafe adjusted his movements to face a more sapient warrior. He had fought a better spear wielder unarmed before in Liam, so it wasn't an impossible fight. Only he could see back then, and his movements weren't constrained. He dodged left, the spear nicked him a bit.
He tried to move in, his movements were telegraphed to the more experienced water mover. He received dozens of wounds in just as many seconds. He could feel the schools of underwater predators at the edges of his senses. They were being attracted by his free flowing blood. And there was not much he could do about it now as he was in the middle of combat.
He was slowly getting used to the monster's patterns though, slowly learning to interpret the information his abilities gave him. He only wished he could see more. And that was when it happened.
The creature before him lit up like a bonfire. And he could see the other creatures floating after his blood too. And he recognized one of the sirens. He could see their very souls.
