Dungeons were typically very dark. That was one reason the Light spell was so incredibly nice. It shrouded me in an aura of light. Anyone who wasn’t part of my team could not see the light I produced. This light worked whether I was in a pitch-black tunnel, or whether I was swimming underwater.
Naturally, I hadn’t thought about things like taking a breath. My entire mind had been singularly focused on following Miki. With her bond guiding my way, I swam straight down into the murky darkness. Before I could see her, I could see numerous tentacles. This didn’t make sense though. We hadn’t closed up the bottom hatch. Was the monster summon because we had closed the other hatch, or was this done because of Calypso?
I felt foolish having trusted Calypso to not suddenly summon the boss like that. She was the Dungeon Master, so who knew what kind of tricks she could pull. Just because I thought I knew the rules didn’t mean they might not be broken, especially when under the power of an intelligent person not created by the dungeon.
Maybe, this had some damaging effects to the dungeon, like damaging the soul of the boss by prematurely summoning them, but why would Calypso care about any of that? As long as she could keep summoning Bandits on the first floor, then the rest of this didn’t matter at all.
At this point, I was starting to realize I was running out of breath. However, I didn’t even think of resurfacing, Rather, I dived into the tentacles, finally able to see Miki struggling as she had one wrapped around her. Another tentacle darted for me, so I pulled out my sword and slashed. There was no room for acting innocent now. Had it been Calypso’s desire to force my hand, she had succeeded.
At that moment, a bubble of air suddenly exploded around me. I let in a gasp of fresh air. I went from completely submerged to treading water. Floating above my head was Celeste. Her wings were beating frantically as she held back the pressure of the water. In that respect, I hadn’t even noticed. My body was built far stronger than it once had been. This level of pressure should have been more than we could handle, but I seemed to be okay with it.
Celeste flicked her wrist, and a bubble of air popped away from ours. It was small, just the size of a head, but it quickly floated to where Miki was and went where her head was. I could see her gasping as the air seemed to stick to the top of her head.
“What’s the plan, Master?” Lydia asked, breathing hard.
“Most elemental attacks don’t work under this. We have to depend on darkness attacks! Shao… Salicia.”
“Huh? Ah… right…” Salicia grabbed her head awkwardly. “Wait… who, who am I?”
She was no longer in the safe room, so the miasma was clogging her mind again. She hadn’t been in the safe room for very long, so it looked like the miasma was able to reassert itself quicker. Without missing a beat, I grabbed her and casted Refresh.
“Salicia… listen to me. You are the incredible Bandit Queen Salicia. You are my slave, and my woman. You have several dark spells, use them on that!”
Her eyes cleared up suddenly and she looked over at me as water ran down her cheeks. “Master…”
“Salici -up…” A tentacle suddenly wrapped around my leg and pulled.
I was ripped from Salicia’s arms and yanked into the abyss alongside Miki.