(Robin's POV):
We traversed through the flooded caves slowly but had noticed that it goes even deeper. It reached to the point where Jay is completely swimming now.
"This is troublesome..."
"Yeah, I guess we have to swim through this?" - Jay
"Hold, let me check visibility first."
I sunk down while holding my breath and tried to swim around. Movement is easy... Our sight though...
I resurfaced and regained my breath after a short dive. I got enough info that this could be a dangerous trip if I brought all of them.
"We can't see through the mana, we're going with plan b."
"Eh? Plan B?" - Jay
I brought out Mana Breaker and dispersed the liquified mana. It is a slow process but we can slowly progress through this while Mana Breaker disperses all of these.
"We're gonna have to walk through this slowly. We may get some things out of it but I'm gonna make sure this doesn't break due to overuse. At some point, we will have to swim around in zero visibility."
"I see, I hope there aren't monsters underwater like that..." - Jay
We continued walking through the dark flooded cave in a very slow pace. Surprisingly, we never encountered a single monster lurking inside the waters. Are caves this peaceful like in that game?
"This is weird, I don't sense any monsters."
"Yeah, though I think it's because they're hiding within the walls here." - Jay
There's a large space between the ceiling and the floor but the water level is currently somewhere around our stomach.
"Should we use a black rune?"
"No please, I don't want to be subjected to heavy risk." - Jay
Throwing a black rune into liquified mana will cause it to overload and explode violently, which is of course not a good idea to do in an open cave. Mana Breaker is made up of black runes but was colored well and changed the design drastically without changing the materials required to make it.
"Welp, it's the end of the line for Mana Breaker right now. I'll hide this so we might have to do a deep dive. Good thing I brought something to deal with it."
"Eh? I thought you have nothing to use when diving into a pool." - Jay
"Really? It's the reason why I brought these potions."
"Huh?" - Jay
I threw one ampoule towards Jay while I drank my own potion. It contains a oceanic blue liquid substance which allows me to breathe underwater. I took this from Denzel before having lunch on the castle. I was skeptical because he said something like having trouble to breathe on land.
"Oh and, once you drink, dive."
"Eh?!" - Jay
I instantly dove into the pool of mana and swam deeper. The visible is still nearly zero but I can sense monsters hiding under this area.
I sensed Jay coming closer so I had to stop him with one of my arms.
"Not yet, it's safe to open your eyes but you should be patient."
"Eh? Why? Holy, we can talk underwater?" - Jay
"Denzel's brewing experiments, underwater breathing. I want to explain more but we have company."
"I see..." - Jay
No, both of us can't see here.
The water resistance is something very troublesome as it would slow us down greatly in combat. I took out my two lightest swords, which is the Mana Phaseblade and a Searing Blade.
Both these swords that are made up of mana are giving off light which increases our visibility but also increases the risk of being targeted.
"Arcana piranhas! Stick to melee!"
Jay brought out a short sword and slowly slashed off the blue-ish piranhas chasing after him.
I sent out another searing blade to assist him. I slowly dodged the other piranhas which took so much effort since it's a battle underwater.
We had to continuously dodge with major effort to the point that we easily get exhausted when fighting.
"Jay, I'm only giving twenty seconds. Clear it up now!"
"Tw-!! Got it!" - Jay
Jay moved quickly while trying to eliminate the piranhas with a searing blade helping him. I continued to fight defensively against these speedy man-eaters without letting anything pass through despite the efforts.
"This is very tricky!" - Jay
"Well, at least we can breathe!"
I slashed a few piranhas that charged within the first five seconds I gave Jay. The numbers finally started dwindling down which gave me some breathing room. However, it was only a short imagination.
"Nevermind Jay, plan c! Come here!"
"G-got it!" - Jay
Jay swam closer to my position which I managed to generate a powerful barrier that will prevent any piranhas from entering. I then showed a mischievous smile which Jay saw and shrunk down.
"R-Robin? It's a terrible idea you know?!" - Jay
I dropped a black rune and let it sunk to the cave floor. It starts absorbing mana at a dangerous rate and lower the water level. We felt the movement of being sucked but we stayed afloat at the same level. After a few seconds, it overloaded and caused a powerful explosion that disrupted mana.
"Kof, that was rough..."
The barrier was instantly dispelled but all the creatures outside the barrier died off. Me and Jay took substantial damage but I simply gave him a potion. The water starts flowing downwards again but it only stopped to the point it's only at the level of halfway to our knees. Worked pretty nicely eh?
"We are not having that again, that was traumatic." - Jay
"Ahaha, my bad. I kinda wanted to have fun with explosions sometimes."
"God, what if you didn't make that barrier?" - Jay
"We would've been obliterated of course."
"....." - Jay
Both of us were on all fours on the ground while coughing out some water. The effect of the potion had disappeared when we drank a nullifying potion in which I gave Jay one.
"Nullification potions will remove all forms of status effects for some time, both positive and negative will be removed so you can't use your mana for a while. But we should drink it because we got EMPed..."
"I see, how prepared are you even?" - Jay
"Prepared for all cases."
Jay looked around to see the aftermath, but he actually found something even more than that.
"Oh, we have some ore near the ground." - Jay
"Really? That's great then..."
"Robin?" - Jay
"Ah, I'm fine... Just a little tired after drinking that potion..."
There's that one annoying side effect where you become lazy whenever you drink this potion. It was meant for resting your body so I would understand if we drunk it to prevent any occurrences, I would at least withstand the side effects. I stood up and grabbed my pickaxe to start mining.
"Jay, I know that you just drank the potion but mind keeping watch?"
"Oh, this potion basically makes people rest but sure." - Jay
I mined off the rest of the ore which got me to about seventy pieces. We needed at least a hundred but we had mined some veins out earlier while traversing through the worst kind of cave.
"Welp, we're close but I think we're guaranteed to need two more veins here."
"Ah damn, really? What time is it?" - Jay
I opened the panel in the inventory and checked the time. Already afternoon? I guess we should have our lunch soon.
"Let's go, we need a suitable place to have lunch."
"Eh? It's already noon?" - Jay
"Nope, it's afternoon."
"Eh?!?! Were we that slow in our travel?!" - Jay
"Can't be helped, if something is flooded then we should expect a crappy time traversing through it."
I walked deeper into the cave which doesn't really have bad things occurring much. Jay often notices the monsters lurking in the dark in which he fires his sniper rifle occasionally.
"I'll rely on you for searching on enemies here, I can't use mana yet and wait for the duration of the potion to go down."
"Got it." - Jay
After some time, we had arrived to a large open cave which has a large vein next to a dark cavern.
"Suspicious..."
We can finally use our mana once again and had ourselves rest after eating lunch. We didn't particularly have any trouble while eating as the monsters only lurked in the darkness without making a move. Sometimes, monsters do have higher IQ than humans.
I started mining the large vein out while Jay moved forward to check through the dark cavern. I was waiting for him to come back after signaling him lightly when he's going for it.
"Dog penis!" - Jay
A large echo passed through the large cavern and made me laugh by a little bit. Bruh, please don't make me laugh like that.
"I guess it is a large hall." - Jay
Jay went in deeper while I was clearing up the vein. After some time, I finished mining and Jay hasn't returned.
"Come on now, Heaven's Beacon."
I lit up the entire cavern and saw Jay at the very end of it. It seemingly leads to an even more open cave system which looks pretty dangerous.
"Robin, check this out!" - Jay
I moved towards Jay's position and saw a large underground town that somehow looks pretty industrial.
"What the hell..."
"Damn, how much ore do you have Robin?" - Jay
"I guess about a hundred and twenty, more than enough actually."
The vein I just mined is actually two veins merged together. Each vein is quite large and provides at least twenty-two ores.
"Well, what are we gonna do here Robin?" - Jay
Jay looks at me while I think about the possible consequences of exploring this huge area underground.
"Are they hostile, or are they neutral?"
"Honestly, even I don't have enough information about them. All I know is that these guys are strong as heck." - Jay
"I see, willing to fight one of their higher ups alone?"
"Nah, I have high chances of dying there but, I'm more worried about Grace right now." - Jay
"I see, let's check it out for a short while then."
This became a choice I will have to reflect on for a while...