TEOCH 92

For several more hours after that, we swam around in the sea.

My objective was to have my colleagues practice moving underwater, so I moved as carefully as possible to avoid encountering any fish. I planned to avoid any strenuous battles, at least for today. To be honest, I wasn’t entirely without a desire to test Tristan’s new skill, but I had no intention of shortening our lifespans by needlessly picking a fight with a strong monster while we were still unaccustomed to swimming.

Of course, that didn’t mean we could just starve ourselves for dinner. While wandering here and there in search of the easiest possible opponent, we discovered three or four pure white clams settled on the sandy bottom. I call them clams, but they were so large you could barely wrap your arms around one, so it seemed we wouldn’t be able to just pick them up.

‘Let’s see, the distance is about 6 meters… Even underwater, I should be able to hit that distance, right?’

I approached Rehas and made a motion of shooting a bow toward the clams, and then I pointed alternately at Rehas and Damian’s staff. Fortunately, both of them understood my meaning right away. Damian cast ‘Battle Preparation’ magic on Rehas, and Rehas, after making a slightly unconfident expression, finally activated the power of his gauntlets.

Rehas’s arms instantly swelled to an abnormal size. The arrow, imbued with a black aura, cleanly cut through the seawater as if no water existed and struck the clam’s shell precisely. The shell was so tough that the mere touch of the arrowhead seemed to have no effect, but what was important was the fact that the arrow had hit the clam.

Boom! As the ‘curse’ embedded in the arrow activated, the tightly shut clam shell instantly burst apart, and a loud cloud of dust rose from the sandy bottom where the clams had been gathered. I quickly descended to the bottom and tore out the flesh of the clam whose shell had burst.

The clam resisted, writhing fiercely, but when I pierced its body with my left hand, which was infused with the energy of purification, it instantly went limp. I immediately fled before the other clams, which had regenerated their shells, could attack.

‘Good, this will take care of the next meal at least.’

My colleagues stared at the clam with curious eyes. I took a long cord from the backpack at my waist, tied the dead clam firmly to my torso to secure it, and then led them as I swam on.

Since we had managed to sort out both oxygen and food, it meant we were lucky today. As I thought, the Labyrinth Outskirts is a very easy place to play once you get used to it. From the first section of the labyrinth onward, it would feel like hell, but there was no need to worry that far ahead already.

‘And it even gives experience points. What a relief.’

I checked the experience window and my mood brightened. If I had progressed normally and reached this stage, I wouldn’t have been able to get experience points from that clam. Usually, by the time one reaches the second stage, one is between level 25 and 30, and the clam is only about level 23, making it too weak to give us experience. Since we were currently level 19, we could gain about 4 more levels just by hunting these clams.

If Rehas puts in a little more effort, we’ll be able to level up comfortably. With that thought, I swam back to our temporary shelter. It was a place with almost no light, but since I had a map, there was no fear of getting lost. After emerging from the water in a couple of hours, my colleagues gasped for breath as if they had been saved from the brink of drowning, and I leisurely prepared the clam, waiting for them to calm their minds.

“Were you short on oxygen?”

“No, it wasn’t that… You truly have nerves of steel. How can you traverse such a dark sea and remain so unfazed?”

“The density of monsters is sparse in the deep sea. Besides, the monsters here have a habit of waiting for their prey by lurking in one spot rather than actively roaming around, so as long as Damian uses his detection magic properly, you don’t have to worry about being ambushed.”

“I don’t think that’s the issue.”

“That’s right, it was so dark all around that the atmosphere alone felt crushing.”

I gave a light shrug. I suppose I was like that too when I wasn’t used to this place. The barrier dulls your hearing, making it frustratingly feel like you’ve gone deaf; except for the faint light rising from the bottom, it’s dark all around, making it impossible to distinguish objects; and in the murky seawater, it’s hard to see far even if there is light. If one were to live their whole life in a place like this, they would surely go mad.

“You’ll get used to it soon.”

“Do you think so?”

I couldn’t quite judge whether getting used to such a messed-up place was a good thing or a bad thing, but I told my colleagues that anyway. They nodded their heads reluctantly, and I split open the dead clam, scraped out all the sand and mud inside, and then gestured to Damian. He lightly gestured at the ground and summoned a fire.

“Use a strong flame. A mediocre fire won’t cook it.”

“Okay…”

My colleagues stared at the flickering bonfire as if entranced. Seeing their sallow faces, it seemed they were all considerably fatigued. It was unlikely they had accumulated physical fatigue from just a couple of hours in the water, so it must have been mental fatigue.

Come to think of it, how much time have I spent in this pitch-black deep sea? The time I’ve spent on this stage alone would be nearly a fifth of my entire life. It was impossible to estimate the exact number of years, but it was certain that I had spent a duration that was several times a human lifetime. Even if I only counted the time spent swimming in the sea, excluding all the time spent inside the temporary shelter, it would easily exceed 100 years.

If so, has my mind already gone strange? I let such thoughts drift by blankly and began to grill the clam. There was no point in determining whether my mind was strange or not at this point anyway, so I decided to just stare at the bonfire like my colleagues. The smell of grilling seafood stimulated my hungry stomach.

We continued to explore the deep sea like that for several days.

I dragged my dagger down next to the five scratches carved into the cave wall, and the number of scratches became six. It had already been six days since we arrived here. For the past five days, we had been gradually raising our levels by taking on easy-to-catch clams or conches one by one, and thanks to that, we were able to reach level 23 smoothly.

Of course, if I had put my mind to it, I could have finished that much in two to three days, but it took a bit longer because we had to return to the cave every few hours due to my colleagues, who were anxious about being in the water for long periods.

Upon returning to the cave, my colleagues would stare entranced at the bonfire Damian had made and would only manage to compose themselves after about an hour or two. To them, the darkness outside the cave seemed to be a source of unbearable pressure.

‘It can’t be helped, these people still aren’t used to life in the deep sea.’

It would probably take another ten days for them to get used to the second stage. Depending on the person, some never get used to it until the moment they leave the second stage, but on average, that’s how it is. I put the dagger into the scabbard at my waist and glanced to the side. All my colleagues, except for me, were curled up on the ground, asleep.

‘Still, it’s a relief that we can sleep and wake up regularly.’

Ordinarily in the deep sea, you can’t see sunlight, so your life rhythm becomes irregular, but in this playthrough, we were able to return to the cave at a set time to sleep and wake up. A regular lifestyle was a very important factor in preventing the body and mind from breaking down. After all, if you endure a life where you can’t even gauge if it’s time to sleep or be awake for too long, the screws in your head are bound to come loose.

Of course, I couldn’t be purely happy about that fact. The reason we were living so regularly in the first place was because of the ‘curse’ placed on Tristan.

“Umm…”

Tristan was sleeping as if he had fainted, using my lap as a pillow. I looked at his pale face for a moment, then carefully brushed back his sweat-drenched golden hair. The tattoo that had stained his right cheek had fortunately disappeared several dozen minutes ago.

It could be disastrous to be outside when Tristan was under the ‘curse,’ so we absolutely had to return to the cave during the time he was affected by it. After forcibly putting Tristan to sleep with a medicinal herb that had a fainting effect, my colleagues would also lie down on the floor to sleep. Since we couldn’t go outside for three hours anyway, it was a judgment that it would be better to get sufficient sleep.

Of course, in principle, I should have done the same, but even if I fell into a light sleep, I would be startled awake whenever Tristan tossed and turned even slightly. After this repeated several times, I chose to stay wide awake with my eyes open during the time Tristan was affected by the curse. It wasn’t a big problem since I could just take a nap while my colleagues were huddled around the bonfire.

In any case, the decision to put my colleagues to sleep while Tristan was unconscious seemed to be a truly excellent choice. If I hadn’t done at least that, my colleagues would have noticed something strange about my behavior.

I let out another sigh, not knowing how many I had already heaved, and wiped the sweat from Tristan. It seemed he had shaken off the pain from the curse for now, but what if he was having a nightmare while he slept? He wasn’t showing it in the slightest on the outside, but what if, in his dreams, he was suffering, shouldering a pain several times greater than what he had received?

‘It’s okay, I’ll get used to it. I’ll eventually get used to seeing him in pain.’

I whispered to myself over and over that if you tell a lie enough times, it becomes the truth, and this is especially so when it comes to the human heart. Of course, if that bogus maxim were true, I wouldn’t have been unable to discard my feelings for Tristan even now, but I couldn’t bear it otherwise. If I kept harboring these sharp emotions for at least several more months, it felt like venom would pool and rot at the bottom of my throat.

Come to think of it, the medicinal herbs will run out in about three days. As I thought that, I felt my stomach clench even more. If I searched through the seaweed growing in the deep sea, I might be able to find one with a ‘fainting’ effect, but at least for the past five days, I hadn’t found any such seaweed. If I was unlucky, I might not find a substitute before the herbs I have now run out.

‘Damn it.’

I suppressed the urge to vomit and just beat my chest. How am I supposed to get through the nights from then on? If this was a life that could be ended by dying, it might be less painful to just slit my own throat… As I was groaning, preoccupied with the thoughts filling my head and staring only at Tristan, I felt a rustling sound from somewhere. It was different from simply tossing and turning. It seemed someone had woken up.

“Rohan? Were you not sleeping?”

“I just woke up for a moment like you, Sir Rikiel.”

I lifted my head, and my eyes met with Rikiel’s, who was making an expression that said ‘don’t lie to me.’ Even though I hadn’t been caught doing anything in particular, I felt strangely uncomfortable.