Chapter 223: — What the Depths Still Hide
The second day started with a fight he didn’t choose.
Arlen was crossing a wide, open stretch of riverbed when the water around him shivered with the particular, telltale pressure of something large moving fast, and he barely had time to register the shape before a pack of Deepclaw Crabs broke from the silt in a coordinated rush.
Five. More than usual.
He didn’t retreat. He planted himself against a jut of rock instead, back covered, and let them come to him rather than chase.
The first two crabs split wide, flanking, while the rest pressed straight in — exactly the kind of coordinated pack behavior Grennig had once warned him about, months ago, on this very stretch of floor. He met the center crab with Bulwark Strike, stone rising and driving forward in one motion, and felt the satisfying crunch of shell giving way beneath it.
The flanking pair reached him a half-second later. He turned into one, Steadfast Guard absorbing the glancing claw strike along his shoulder, and answered with a tight jet of Riverblade’s cutting current, driven straight into the gap between its plates where the shell couldn’t protect it.
It wasn’t clean. Five at once rarely was, even now. He took a shallow claw wound along his forearm from the fourth crab before he properly registered it had circled behind the others, and answered with Lightning Strike at close range, the bolt arcing through two of them at once where they’d clustered too tight.
The fifth broke off entirely once its pack thinned, scuttling for deeper water rather than press a fight it no longer favored. He let it go.
He surfaced afterward at the nearest air pocket, breathing harder than yesterday’s fights had left him, genuinely pleased with how close the exchange had actually run.
That’s the real test. Not one strong thing. Several ordinary things, arriving all at once and demanding I actually manage them instead of overpower them.
He pressed on, and a second ambush found him within the hour — a lone Riverfang Crocodile, larger than its usual rank suggested, bursting from a silted hollow with its jaws already closing on empty water where he’d been a half-second earlier.
He answered with Tidal Lance, two quick bolts thrown in succession, the current itself gathering speed behind each one as it cut through the water toward the creature’s exposed throat. The first missed wide. The second found true, and the crocodile thrashed hard enough to stir the whole riverbed before he finished it with a clean strike while it was still recovering.
Good thing I’ve got more than one way to hit something at range now.
He pressed on through the day’s remaining hours, the terrain shifting gradually toward a stretch of exposed, ancient riverbed scattered with half-buried stone formations he didn’t recognize from the guided trip. He paused there, curious, and caught sight of something pale and slow-moving wedged between two formations.
He approached carefully. A Crystal Turtle, broader than he expected, its shell catching the dim light in faceted, shifting patterns, barely reacting to his presence at all.
Placid. Good. Easy enough, probably.
It wasn’t easy, exactly, though it wasn’t dangerous either — the creature simply withdrew into its shell the moment he closed the distance, and he spent several frustrating minutes trying to find any opening at all. He tried Riverblade first, the cutting current scraping uselessly along the shell’s crystalline face. He tried a close strike with his sword next, and felt the blade skid off without purchase.
He finally gave up on precision and called Lightning Strike instead, the bolt arcing straight through the shell’s crystalline structure in a way neither steel nor water alone had managed.
It worked. The turtle’s defense cracked, and a second strike finished it.
He harvested the shell carefully, genuinely curious about it, and made camp a short distance off once the light began its slow, underwater equivalent of fading.
He ate a proper meal pulled from storage, the turtle’s meat added fresh alongside it, and the warmth arrived partway through, gathering cool and dense across his whole body rather than settling into any single limb the way most of his abilities had.
A name surfaced.
Water Armor.
He sat with it a long moment, testing the understanding bundled alongside the name — a layer of dense, compressed water drawn up to surround his body, cushioning impacts rather than simply redirecting them the way Water Sovereignty’s other functions did.
He tested it cautiously, calling the layer over his forearm and striking it lightly with the flat of his own blade. The impact barely registered, dulled considerably by the water’s give.
Different from everything else water’s given me. Not an attack. Not breathing. Just — protection, built from the same source.
He waded fully into the deeper water nearby, curious, and called the ability again while submerged. The layer thickened noticeably, drawing on the surrounding water itself rather than only what he carried with him, considerably denser than it had been on dry stone.
Stronger here. Makes sense, I suppose — more water to draw from.
He tested it once more, calling Water Armor and then launching a Tidal Lance from inside it, curious whether the two could operate together without interfering. They could. The armor held steady even as the water drew away to form the thrown bolt, the layer replenishing itself from the surrounding depth within moments.
That’s useful. Defense and offense, drawing from the same well without stepping on each other.
He reached inward, checking whether it recognized any kinship with Water Sovereignty’s existing foundation, and found it settling close, closer than anything had settled before without actually merging outright — a new voice, clearly related, not yet folded in.
Not tonight. Let it sit a while first.
He wrote briefly before sleep, the entry shorter than usual, his arm still faintly aching from the morning’s crab fight.
Five Deepclaw Crabs at once, properly tested. A Riverfang Crocodile that came in faster than expected, handled clean with Tidal Lance. Crystal Turtle gave me something new — Water Armor, a defensive layer that gets stronger the more water’s actually around me. Different flavor from anything water’s given me before. Worth remembering for anything that fights me in open water rather than on dry ground.
This floor’s still got things to teach me. Good. I was half-worried I’d outgrown it already.
He closed the journal, and let the quiet press of Region III’s dark, patient water settle around his small, secure camp, his arm’s shallow wound already easing under Vitalflow Endurance’s steady, familiar work.
He thought, drifting toward sleep, about how different this trip already felt from the last one — not because the water had gotten gentler, but because he’d finally, properly, caught up to what it demanded of him.