It had only taken a few days for a new camp to be set up and the space mage to be made aware of it, now the expedition was receiving parts to build a boat to traverse the floor they were on.
The few attacks from abyssals that could walk on land had not been much of an issue as they were faily sluggish, the only issue was when they managed to make a strategy and started shooting beams from a distance but they were so sluggish that they sometimes knocked themselves over when doing that, so all in all, as long as you didn't walk up to them of your own volition you most likely wouldn't get hurt.
After two weeks, the boat was fully built, the boat did include a sail despite the fact that there was no wind, there were wind mages present in the expedition and they would be the ones moving the boat.
The boat was pushed on the water and the expedition soon found themselves away from the shores, the dirty and dark water didn't let any of them see anything through it, even Imiril with her high senses had difficulty sensing anything through it.
Malmiere was troubled by the fact that he had yet to sense the strange double presence he had falt on every floor and the fact that he was in the middle of an underground ocean filled with monsters was not helping him in settling his mind, after all, if he was not careful enough and were to fall into the water, his mobility would be greatly reduced and he would have to truly fight for his life just to not sink due to his heavy armor.
Imiril moved next to him with a slightly surprised expression on her face, she signaled him to listen closely to her words.
"It's on the side on the boat" she said but a few words but these certainly made the large paladin have a few chills.
She pointed to a certain direction and Malmiere debated whether or not he should try and go check, the fact that she had just called that thing 'it' meant that she was refering to the presence that had been following them since the start, starting a fight on the boat while a monster could attack at any time was dangerous and he had the feeling that if he didn't engage, neither would whatever is latched onto the boat.
This thing truly had no fear to just be hanging off the boat, a few meters above the water.
"Act as if it isn't there" he told her after coming to a conclusion, if he was going to engage it, it would be when they weren't in the middle of the ocean.
Malmiere and Imiril just ignored it but didn't miss any chance to take a glance at the direction it was, in case it decided to climb up but soon their attention was taken elsewhere, as a creature raised out of the water, a deformed mass of pinkish flesh and tentacles with eyes growing all over it, the creature didn't even seem to have any characteristic of an underwater specie.
As expected, one of its eye burned with the orange flame, it focused as many eyes as it could on them, thankfully, it didn't seem to be able to do anything in particula with them.
It kept a certain distance from the boat and didn't attack, only staring at them with its absurd amount of eyes.
"An abyssal watcher" spoke EOTHO-1A.
"As long as someone reciprocate its gaze and look at it, it won't attack" he added afterwards.
"So, we don't attack it?" asked Imiril, already on the verge of shooting an arrow at it.
"I would recommend not attacking it, indeed, its vitals are well protected and usually kept underwater" he answered.
As the boat continued to move forward, the abyssal watcher followed never dropping its gaze or even blinking at all.
"We're lucky, could have been a hadal watcher, they do the opposite, if anyone looks at them they attack" spoke the ruin knight.
As Imiril stopped aiming her bow, she turned back to where the presence had been, only to discover it had disappeared from its spot, she immediately informed Malmiere and even after checking everywhere, found that the presence had truly vanished.
"For it to have completely vanished like that, it must have dropped into the water" she said, not believing that anything or anyone would truly do that.
Barely noticeable from above water, a bright orange light shined from deep underwater, an act reminiscent of another that the members of the expedition had only heard from the space mage and had not witnessed themselves, the water rumbled, shook by the roars of the beasts underwater, all attracted by the brilliant light, despite managing to control the flame and keep some sanity, all of them irrationaly rushed to the source of the light.
Passing without caring an unusual shape in the water, that of a huma, casualy swimming amongst them, the figure grabbed onto a monster that was but an overgrown fish and let itself be carried by it, flashing a small light in its left, burning eye, suddenly after this happened, the fish suddenly changed direction, convinced to have seen the attractive light into the distance.
Malmiere, upon noticing what was happening yelled for the wind mages to accelerate and started focusing intensely on casting a spell, his low prayers showing that this was an incantation.
As the boat shook from the impact of an unknown creature, he neared the end of his incantation, abyssal watchers popped out of the water and joined the first one in staring at them, abyssals started trying to climb the boat but were rapidly cut down and as their bodies dropped back into the water, the incantation was over.
A palm-sized ball of holy magic had formed in his hand, he tossed it away into the water and without a sound it sunk a little bit before stopping and expanding, suddenly emmiting a bright light that burned the creatures under the water.
The orange light had since long disappeared and the monsters found themselves wanting to absolutely destroy that ball of light, completely forgetting about the expedition, the monsters started attacking the mass of holy magic, even the abyss watchers started instead staring at it, their eyes burning and as it happened, they too started attacking it.
Still, Malmiere ordered the wind mages to continued their efforts as if their lives depended on it, there was no telling if his spell would last long or not under these conditions.
Thankfully, they made it to shore before the monsters came back, a good thing since the boat was not long after arriving dragged into the dept by many tentacles.
Vlasfimia, who had arrived on shore a while before them by hitching a ride with a very sympathetic and tasty fish, this little stunt he had pulled had been absolutely fantastic and he would do it again if given the occasion.
Still, he had to admit that they were quite competent, no one had died in this attack! Apparently only one had been injured when he was accidentaly slapped by an abyss watcher's tentacle.