Chapter 65: Underwater Battle
Chapter 65: Underwater Battle
The briefing room smelled like old paper.
Helena had spread a nautical chart across the table, its edges weighted with smooth stones from Valerie’s collection. The Sunken Depths Tower was marked in blue ink: a Mid Class Tower set into a sea-cliff on the eastern coast, where the capital’s influence faded and the ocean began.
"It’s a flooded complex," Helena explained, tapping the chart. "Underground caves, submerged chambers. Underwater combat will be your primary challenge. The boss is a Tide Warden, a construct of living water and coral that controls the currents within the Tower."
She paused, her expression shifting.
"But. This Tower’s been flagged for unusual activity. A guild party reported the natives spotting some people around it. Could be nothing. Could be the strangers you’ve been tracking."
Nathan filed this away. Three Tower Collapses. Two direct sightings. And now evidence that whoever might be causing them was close If the strangers were operating inside the Sunken Depths, they needed to be ready for anything.
"We’ll handle it," he said.
"I know you will." Helena rolled up the chart. "Transport leaves at dawn. Old Marren’s driving. Try not to let him terrify you with his life stories this time."
"He doesn’t really talk."
"Exactly. That’s the terrifying part."
---
The portal deposited them into cold, knee-deep water.
Nathan’s first breath was salty. The Tower’s first floor was a natural cave, its walls rough limestone studded with barnacles and pale, blind shellfish. Bioluminescent moss clung to the ceiling, casting the chamber in shifting shades of blue and green. The water was clear enough to see the floor, uneven stone, already sloping downward toward deeper passages.
By the time they reached the first chamber, the water had risen to their waists.
Coral Stalkers came skittering out of the walls. They were crustacean-like creatures, their shells mottled grey and pink to match the coral formations they nested in. Their claws were sharp enough to break stone. They moved in quick, sideways bursts, and the water made every movement feel slow and heavy for the party.
"Formation!" Nathan called. [Hunter’s Insight] flared. "Mirko, center. Elise, freeze the left cluster. Garrett—"
"I see them!" Garrett’s mace was already swinging. [Impact Strike] sent a wave of water skyward as it crushed a Stalker’s shell. Red’s wool had adapted to the environment—still armored, but sleeker now, the crimson fibers somehow repelling water.
Mirko’s [Impenetrable Fortress] flared, creating a pocket of air around her as she blocked two Stalkers simultaneously. Her counter-stroke was slower underwater, the resistance dragging at her blade, but it was still lethal.
Elise’s Frost Golem was the most effective in this environment. Wherever it moved, the water froze solid—creating platforms, trapping enemies, turning the flooded chamber into a maze of ice and stone. Dillon’s Cloud Serpent crackled with renewed energy in the wet environment, its static discharges arcing across the water’s surface and stunning Stalkers before they could strike.
[Floor 1 Cleared.]
By Floor 2, they were swimming. The ceiling pressed low overhead, and the only light came from the bioluminescent moss and the faint glow of the Tower’s mana veins. Riptide Eels coiled through the water like living lightning, their bodies crackling with pale blue electricity. A single touch from one could stun a Climber long enough to drown.
Nathan’s [Mana Arrows] sliced through the water with a reduced velocity, Moonlight’s silver string hummed, compensating for the resistance and the arrows pinned eels to the walls. Elise froze them solid. Mirko’s [Aegis Strike] sent shockwaves through the water that disrupted their electrical fields.
Three Fish-men came next. Grotesque humanoids with scaled skin and wide, unblinking eyes. They carried crude spears of sharpened coral and moved through the water with the ease of creatures born to it. They were smarter than the eels, more coordinated. They tried to flank, to separate the party.
But they failed.
[Floor 2 Cleared.]
Floor 3 was where things changed.
The chamber was a control room of some kind: Old valves set into the walls, their brass fittings green with age. A puzzle mechanism, designed to drain the floor. The valves had to be turned in a specific sequence to lower the water level and open the path forward.
But... Someone had smashed through them instead.
Nathan floated near the shattered valves, studying the damage. The brass fittings were cracked. The stone around them was gouged. Whoever did this hadn’t even tried to solve the puzzle, they had just broken it.
"Whoever did this didn’t want to be slowed down," Nathan said, his voice echoing strangely in the flooded chamber. "They wanted something deeper in the Tower. Something on the lower floors."
Elise examined the damage. "The breaks are recent"
"So they were here. Recently."
"Or they might still be here."
The party exchanged glances. No one said what they were all thinking: if the strangers were still in the Tower, they were about to walk into an ambush.
Nathan drew Moonlight. "We push forward. Stay alert."
---
Floor 4 was a vast flooded chamber.
The ceiling was lost in darkness. Bioluminescent coral grew in large, branching formations along the walls, casting pale blue light across a space that could have held the Celestial Peak observatory twice over. The water was deep enough to require constant swimming, and the exit portal pulsed at the far end of the chamber, a vertical pool of silver light, shimmering beneath the surface.
Near the portal, a figure was waiting.
He stood on a ledge of coral, his feet just above the waterline. Dark grey robes hung from his frame, the fabric drifting in the Tower’s subtle currents. A hood obscured most of his face, but Nathan could see pale hands folded calmly at his waist.
Beside him, coiled through the coral formation, was a [Void Eel]. Its body passed through solid rock as if the stone were water, emerging and submerging in a rhythm that made it impossible to track.
’That summon,’ Kuro observed through the link. ’Phasing. Physical attacks will not work while it’s incorporeal. We must strike when it solidifies.’
’Noted.’
Nathan signaled the party to hold position. They floated in the water, spread out to avoid clustering, watching the figure on the ledge.
"You shouldn’t be here."
The stranger’s voice was calm. Almost bored. It carried through the water with an unnatural clarity, enhanced by magic, or by the Tower’s acoustics, or by years of practice at intimidation.
"This Tower is currently under the Court’s jurisdiction. Turn back now, and you won’t be harmed. Continue forward, and I can’t guarantee your safety." He tilted his head slightly. "I’d recommend the former."
Nathan’s [Hunter’s Insight] scanned him and Felt the Level 40+ Energy readings.
"The Court," Nathan said. "You’re the ones causing the Tower Collapses. The strangers near the villages."
The figure sighed. It was the sigh of someone who’d had this conversation before and was tired of it. "The Nemesis Court serves the natural order. The Towers are a test. Humanity was weak before they came: complacent, stagnant, unworthy. The Towers are a crucible. They burn away the dross. The collapses are simply... accelerated testing."
He spread his hands.
"We’re helping humanity evolve. You should be thanking us."
"People died in those collapses. Children. Families."
"Casualties are inevitable in any evolutionary process. The weak perish. The strong survive. That’s not cruelty, it’s just nature’s Grand performance."
Nathan drew Moonlight. "We’re not turning back."
The figure sighed again. "They never do."
Then he waved his hand, signaling his Summon to attack.