The Martial Unity

"I was half-worried that the water would start pooling into these tunnels around us," Kane told Rui when he returned back to him.

"Nah, don't worry, I made sure that there was no way that that could happen, there are plenty of tunnels leading deep down into the dungeon, so we'll be fine," Rui reassured him.

He turned towards the lake. "I knew that this was not going to happen instantly, but damn, it's a ten-meter wide hole and the rate at which the water levels are receding is painfully slow."

The water level was falling a few centimeters every second, which indicated just how enormously wide the lake was, given that water was gushing out of a ten-meter-wide hole.

"It's just a matter of time now," Kane shrugged, before leaning against a tunnel wall.

Rui could already see esoteric ore deposits slowly starting to emerge now that the water levels were receding. Though it still was too dangerous to try and extract them given the fact that they could still be attacked if they were close to the water.

He ran his Riemannian Echo sense through the water as he studied the reactions of the various aquatic and amphibian monsters and creatures in the lake.

"They sure are panicking," Rui remarked.

Most of them had grown erratically active, understandably. The many creatures had probably not encountered a time when the very medium they had existed their entire life pulled them downwards with such a great force. If they simply remained still, they would get pulled down.

Thus each creature had gotten into a frenzy to stay as high up as possible. Fish began migrating higher and higher as the lake was getting dragged down lower and lower. Many amphibian creatures had already begun moving out of the water in order to avoid the powerful pulling current, although none of them had noticed Rui and Kane standing at the entrance of a tunnel to the floor.

Rui couldn't help but feel curious about the psychology of these creatures. To them, was water truly no different from air? From their perspectives, were they effectively floating and flying midair when they swam around in the water?

In that case, their circumstances would be even more inconceivable to them than he had perhaps suspected.

as Rui was about to relax as he waited for the water to

his eyebrows. "Have the water levels stopped

really tell…"

bottom of the lake where the hole was. "Wait

"By what? A

shook his head. "A creature blocked it. It looks like a

with its entire body. It used its tentacles to seal

source of the problem and

videos on Youtube where an octopus would solve some complex problems and puzzles. ('It appears that those

creature voluntarily blocked the hole?" Kane raised an eyebrow. "Are

bodies. The notion of them getting stuck is practically impossible. For another, this octopus looks like it's

not good for us, is it?"

one bit I'm afraid," Rui chuckled, but there's a pretty simple solution, although it's a pain

and

"Yep,"

the tunnel network where the

octopus was blocking the hole, thus the tunnels were not filled with water. The were many creatures en route, that had been left in the tunnels when the octopus

as he saw

SHING

"Not as

SLASH SLASH SLASH

the body of the octopus. The octopus' body internally cleaved apart as the cold bellhorn steel of his blade repelled the esoteric substances

far deeper than the blade's length, killing the