Illuminaria [LitRPG Fantasy Healer Adventure]

141/56 - Under the Sea

As the briny water closed over him, Joe didn't panic. This was one problem he knew he had the answer to. Wriggling through the clinging, hairy hide, he worked his hand up to his mouth and sent a mental command to his [Alchemist's Belt]. An instant later, a vial appeared in his grasp, already uncorked.

Joe clamped his jaws closed and let himself bob slowly downward. The magical air in his lungs, which was trying to carry him upward, was being overwhelmed by the fifteen square feet of heavy, sodden pelt. As a bonus, it was easier to think beneath the surface rather than being tossed around and battered by the towering storm-driven waves.

His first target was the broken leg. He numbed the area before letting [Morphic Form] move the broken pieces back into the correct alignment. Using everything he had learned about bone, he created callus, the combination of blood, cartilage, and sinew-like tissue, to glue the breaks together. He then accelerated the curing process by infusing bone into the mix, converting the soft glue into a cement.

When the repair felt strong enough to handle kicking around, Joe turned his thoughts to extricating himself from the mass of the [Hide of the Hunter]. He knew the shin would still be sore for a while; bone stayed sore longer than anything else. If he continued to employ some judicious numbing from [Deaden Flesh], he should be able to swim with it.

He next set his mind to getting the hide back down to a reasonable size. He willed the waterlogged mass to shrink back to its smallest size again, but to his dismay, the pelt remained inert. The huge fur stayed large, heavy, and cumbersome. Joe didn't want to drop the treasure, but he also knew its current weight was far too much for his basic dimbag to hold.

There was also the fact that it was dragging him down into the depths of the ocean.. He had an hour of air, but if he had to drag the rug-sized skin across the ocean floor, he doubted he would make it back to the shore in time. Especially since he had no idea how far out in the bay he was.

Joe thought back to the damage messages. The one for the hide had been very similar to his own. On a whim, he tried to do what he did best.

'Better than nothing,' he thought.

Joe focused on the pelt again, and it sluggishly responded. It shifted enough that he was easily able to slip free of the clinging folds. Once outside the mass, he willed it to shrink again. It did so slightly, not enough. He shoved his hand between the jaws, hoping it would bite down and draw in more health to repair itself. The jaws weakly closed around his arm, not even breaking the skin. Frustrated Joe almost swore out loud, but he stopped himself before he let any of his precious air escape from his mouth.

He worked the math and realized that the hide was not really the problem; it was all that water that would go into the bag with the pelt. He just needed less surface area, not necessarily less hide. With that in mind, Joe willed the morphic item to form itself into a ball instead of a huge sheet. This the damaged pelt was able to do. The hairy ball expelled any ocean water from within it. It would still be heavy, but Joe hoped it was no longer too heavy. Crossing his fingers, he tried to send the wet fur-ball into his dimensional bag. Thankfully, it slipped inside the mystic space. Drying it and the bag later was likely going to be a pain; hopefully, there were charms that worked inside spatial storage items.

With his immediate issues taken care of, Joe now had to get himself back to Fort Coral. The first step was to determine the direction of the shore. His initial thought was to try to sense Mojo. He calmed himself, treading water, and let himself and the wildness seek out his companion. They slowly rotated in a circle, yet he could feel no presence of the shug monkey in any direction. He must be too far away.

He had a communication crystal, but those required him to speak, and that was one thing he couldn't do. The tracker he was wearing was a tool that would tell the guild where he was, not the other way around. He wasn't about to assume they would be able to find him. If a red portal opened up for him, he'd be ecstatic, but between the interference of [Anyone], the legendary tempest, and the distance, he was not going to hold his breath … well, actually, he was, but he knew what he meant.

He would need to swim up to the tumultuous surface. Joe looked at his hands and wondered if he could make modifications at will. Usually, his changes were instinctive, typically prompted by the wildness. Joe hadn't tried consciously to do any major shifting that was not related to repairing his body before. So far, he had invoked plenty of little changes, but nothing on the scale of reshaping his hands and feet.

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Now seemed like as good a time as any.

He pictured the webbed hands of Samshee, the concierge from the Captain's Glass. There were also a number of undine Joe had encountered around Fort Coral. These were the water elemental heritage race, similar to galelings, dunians, and ignins. Undine had webbed feet as well as webbed fingers; maybe selkies did too, but Joe had never seen Samshee without shoes on.

He projected his desired changes towards his extremities, but nothing happened at first, at least until the wild presence moved within Joe. It seemed as though Joe's id had better control over [Morphic Form] for stuff like this than Joe did. He peered through the water, watching his fingers extend. Muscles built up in the first segment of each finger, and a ridge of skin raised itself between the digits. That line of flesh stretched until it connected each finger to the next one. Funnily enough, both his hands and feet were still furry and clawed; they were now just furry, clawed, and webbed.

Joe was tempted to try for gills, but he held off. One, he was not sure it would work, and two, would forming and testing this transformation expend his lifesaving alchemical air bubbles?

Digging into the water, he found his reformed digits worked perfectly. He was able to grab the water and drive himself through it with ease. He felt the wildness adjusting his hips and shoulders a bit as Joe began his ascent toward the surface, empowering his swimming even further. [Hunter's Pursuit] also boosted his swimming speed, just as it did for his running and climbing.

Even before he breached the surface of the water, Joe had to start fighting his way through the water. The waves were more extensive than many castles, and they were perpetually in motion. He wasted at least ten minutes battling the writhing mayhem of towering waves until he was finally able to spot a glowing line far in the distance. The fact that he could see the lights at all was heartening, but they were a long, long way away.

Keeping the location fixed in his mind, Joe dove back down to the smoother waters and started swimming hard for shore. Joe prayed that his constantly terrible sense of direction would not act up. If he got the angle wrong, he was done for. He invoked [Crystal Mind], hoping it would help him stay on target.

He swam deep under the ocean, driving himself forcefully forward with the help of his magic. Between [Hunter's Pursuit] and [Morphic Form], with [Efferous Endurance] backing them up, he figured he was swimming as fast as a normal person could run. That meant, with his remaining bubbled breath, he should be able to cross several miles of ocean in what remained of the hour.

His worries over distance and direction were replaced by a new trepidation when he realized that he was not alone in the ocean.

Large, dark shapes cut through the sea all around him. The normally crystal clear waters were murky with silt and bubbles churned up by the storm. At first, he was certain the lurking forms were sharks. They had rounded noses with large dorsal fins and ended with strong, wide tails. As their numbers increased and the forms started closing in around him, Joe noticed inconsistencies with that theory. The torsos of the monsters were not streamlined, somehow lumpy-looking. Also, their tails were horizontal, not vertical.

When one finally circled close enough for Joe to see it clearly, he almost wished it had been sharks. The creature's rubbery hide was pitch black except for its white belly and a similarly pale patch just behind its eye.

If you asked someone what the most dangerous ocean predators are, more often than not, they'd reply with 'shark' or 'great white shark.' Joe knew this was a misconception. Killer whales tear through great whites with no contest. While these particular creatures were far smaller than the orcas from Earth, any predator based on killer whales was not good news.

Similar to orcas from Joe's birth-world, these were clearly pack hunters, and like wolves, this pack was closing in around Joe, making sure he had no open route to escape. Finally, one cut through the foggy water close enough for him to get a clear look and an assessment.

The lumpy extensions and odd body shape were finally explained. The creature's torso contained powerful legs, shoulders, and hips. These monsters would be able to function on land as well as in the seas. They had a fringe of near-black fur that ran around their neck and down their spine. The pelt lightened to white across its chest.

Oddly enough, Joe knew the myths of the akhlut. A Game Master had thrown these creatures at the party during an arctic campaign. They were from Inuit mythology, a mix of killer whales and wolves. Ravenous hunters who preferred the flesh of humans over anything else. Stories told of how they were just as happy to pull fishermen out of their boats as they were to chase them down on the shore.

These were not quite like the pictures and minis the GM had shared with the table. For one, these guys were chunkier. Their bodies looked more like an amalgamation of orcas and tigers than they did whales and wolves. Also, they seemed out of place here in the tropical waters around Fort Coral instead of the iceflow ocean of the Arctic.

On the other hand, they were hunting him in a very pack-like manner. One would dart past, keeping Joe turning and off-balance, robbing him of his speed. They were toying with him, and there was nothing physically he could do about it. He was swimming as fast as he could, and yet the akhlut were swimming rings around him.

Magically was another story. He had hexes he could use to dissuade them. Joe was also sure he could enthrall one or even dual cast [Mesmeric Command] and control two of them, but he was not sure what would happen if he turned them against each other. Would they go into a frenzy like sharks once there was blood in the water? Maybe he could get one to shield him while he swam.

He was given no more time to debate options. After the closest pass yet, Joe looked not in the direction of the predator who had nearly clipped him. Instead, he spun to what would be his blindside if he had been fooled into following the previous beast's movements. There was the real attack. Another akhlut was bearing down on him. Its mouth slightly parted to reveal a row of long teeth.

As Joe looked into that deadly smile, he gathered his wits to cast.