Roar!
"Help me!"
It's the girl's voice again…
From the bellowing sound of an angry dragon, the much smaller dragon dipped down again before it's wings stopped flapping and it fell from the sky.
"…"
The smaller dragon crashed into the middle of the lake that sent a tidal wave, swallowing half of the shoreline.
Thankfully, I was far enough inland that the water didn't reach me.
Roar!
I looked up to see the dragon up high, circling around the lake.
What am I doing?
I clutched the handle of the knife in my hand hard.
Wait, what happened to the smaller dragon?
I looked over to the lake and nothing, not even a ripple. The lake isn't that big, where is the dragon's body?
I slowly moved towards the lake, hoping not to draw the dragon's attention to me.
If only I've placed a point in stealth… this would've been so much easier.
Slowly but surely, I inched my way to the lake.
There was no dragon's body to be seen.
Even though the female dragon was much smaller than the male dragon, it's still considerably big, almost the same size as the width of the lake.
Could dragons have a humanoid form?
I entered the water as quietly as I could until it was deep enough for me to submerge myself.
I took a deep breath and then plunged myself into the depths of the lake.
I had subconsciously closed my eyes when I entered the water and when I reopened them, I half expected my vision to be blurry but that wasn't the case. In fact the lake was crystal clear underneath, it was like a tinted window in a car. On the outside you couldn't see anything in the inside but on the inside you could see everything.
With only a gulp of air, I was running out of time before I needed to go back for another breath of air. I looked around the lake until a girl in a maid's uniform slowly sank deeper into the dark depths of the lake.
I couldn't see her clearly, she was already half way down and a lot further away from me. She was in the middle of the lake and I was only a few metres away from the shoreline.
I looked up and the dragon guy was still circling around.
What is he doing? Why not just come down here? If the smaller dragon could turn herself into a humanoid, surely the lord dragon could too.
Bruop…
Oh no… I needed to go back up for another breath of air…
I looked to where the maid was and nearly opened my mouth.
She was nearing the part of the lake where it was pitch black, I have no idea how far it is to the bottom because the pitch blackness covered the whole bottom section of the lake.
If the maid enters the pitch black waters, she would be lost forever and there's no way of retrieving her without any scuba equipment and a flash light.
I slowly lifted my head out of the water for another gulp of air and quickly move my way down the lake.
I wasn't much of a swimmer, I was too poor to swim when I was a child and when I suddenly had money, I invested it into the game above all else, after all the game is my reality.
Thankfully charlotte had given me some quick swimming lessons on our trips together. She had told me that if I ever wanted to swim underwater, I should dig and that's what I did. I looked to where the maid was and then began to dig myself to her.
I brought my arms above my head, one at a time with my fingers closed together to form a shovel and pushed the water away like I was a sea turtle.
I wasn't even close to her when I felt the air inside my mouth slowly dissipating. In times like this, when charlotte would supervise me underwater and noticed that I was running out of air, she would swim to me and then give me the kiss of air.
Charlotte could breath underwater which meant that she could absorb the air from within the water, she would then use that air and transfer it into me via a kiss. She was like my very own scuba tank.
Charlotte wasn't with me and as time ticked on, I was sure I wouldn't even have enough air to reach her and swim us both back up.
Am I also going to drown as well?
"Honey! I believe in you!" Charlotte's voice appeared out of the blue as if she was beside me.
Maybe I was dying because when I turned my head a bit to the side, she was there swimming beside me.
Charlotte? How?
"Honey! Don't give up!" Her voice honey sweet, cheering me on.
Is this a memory? An illusion?
Whatever's the case, Charlotte's motivation spurred me on.
I swam deeper and deeper and as fast as I could, the more time I wasted, not only will I runout of air but my strength too.
As I ventured deeper into the depths, I could feel the pressure of the water pulling me down, the lactic acid burning my muscles as my strength slowly dwindling away.
Push! Push!
I willed myself to swim a bit further, she was so close, if I could reach out my arm another inch, I could grab a hold onto her ankle.
Just a little bit more!
Ah!
With the little strength left, I reached out and grabbed the base of her foot.
Success!
I pushed myself against the force of the water up her body until we we were flushed against each other. I wrapped an arm around her waist and then flipped us 180 degrees until we were the right side up.
Once we were facing upwards, I tried to lift my free arm but it wouldn't move. Nothing moved. Every inch of my body was tired and I had just ran out of air…
I felt my eyes slowly closing as my throat, nose and the air passage way cease up.
The water dragged us down and I had no strength or air to do anything about it.
"Honey! Come back to me!" Charlotte's voice called out to me.
Through the slits of my eyelids I could barely see, Charlotte's tear stricken face.
Even though nothing was working, I felt her love flowing through me.
I still had my free use of a spell when I drank the mana potion and my mana went into overflow.
[You have activated {Ice Spikes} Level 1]
I aimed the ice spikes downwards and fired each ice spike one at a time. Each time I fired an ice spike, the recoil propelled us up inch by inch.
Once's I used up all twenty of the spikes, we were only a quarter way back up. I needed to keep going or the water would drag us back down like quicksand.
Since my mana was full still thanks to the overflow, I still have enough mana to use the ice spike spell three more times and that's exactly what I did.
Sixty ice spikes were used for us to climb back up to the surface and now I'm all out of mana. As we broke out through the surface of the water, my body felt numb, my mouth dry as I tried to open my mouth and nostrils.
As soon as the air came in, I involuntarily went into a coughing frenzy.
After a minute of shear pain and a massive headache, I looked around to try and regain my bearings.
We need to get back on to the shore or we're screwed.
Holding on tight to the dragon maid girl in my arms, I took a deep breath and slowly moved ourselves through the water, hoping not to draw the dragon's attention.
Roar!
Fuck!
I looked up and the dragon came barreling down towards us.
"Oh shit!" I exclaimed out loud.
I started hauling ourselves to the shoreline as fast as I could.
The dragon breathed fire down over the lake and I had to submerge ourselves to avoid the flames. Even though the water protected us from the flames itself, the heat of the flames were so hot that it turned the mildly chilled water into a hot tub.
Fortunately, the water only heated up to hot tub level of hot or otherwise we would been boiled alive.
Unfortunately, the dragon was going for another dive and the shoreline was just too far away for me to swim. The heat had slowed me down considerably.
I needed to refill my mana so I quickly, with my free hand, reached into my inventory and grabbed two more bottles of the mana potions and downed both of them.
After the battle, if I even survive this, will have no more potions left.
My mana bar went into overflow and I used ice spikes to propel us across the water to the shoreline. I had only used fifteen of the twenty ice spikes which allows me to fire the remaining five at the dragon.
I aimed the spikes up high and fired all five of the spikes but before the spikes could even move a few metres in the air, the spikes were intercepted by the second wave of the dragon's breath of fire.
The ice spikes disintegrated upon contact with the flames and turned them into steam almost simultaneously.
The flames bellowed down on top of us, encompassing us in a sea of fire.
[You have activated the skill {Barrier} Level 5]
The barrier broke within a few seconds of activation and I took the full brunt of the damages. The overflow tanked nearly all of the damage, leaving only a sliver of my health left.
"Oh this is definitely impossible," I mumbled to myself as I stared into the eyes of the dragon whom had landed just a few feet away from us and his snake like head loomed over me with his mouth wide open, showing his razor sharp teeth.