Primer for the Apocalypse

There was a lot more preparation needed before entering the underwater zone than there was for the others. The most important was ensuring the ability to breathe underwater since, even at Tier Four, humans and most other humanoid races could not hold their breath indefinitely.

I was tempted to craft something to solve the issue myself, but after looking at what was already available, I realized my efforts would be wasted. The natives who made the fourth floor their home had already spent the last eighty-three years figuring out the best ways to explore and survive in each zone. With a plethora of options available, there was no reason for me to recreate the wheel.

The time, effort, and cost associated with designing my own equipment simply wasn’t worth it.

I did manage to upgrade the E3 talisman to escape a Null Field. Doing so would completely drain the talisman, but it was totally worth it if it saved someone’s life.

Hopefully, we wouldn’t need to use it anytime soon – or at all. Even if the floor totally shifted and incorporated such effects, entering a Null Field only meant we were mostly limited to physical attacks instead of being able to use external magic.

And none of my party members were physically helpless.

As we made our way through the low-tier portion of the underwater zone, I tested my new equipment. I didn’t want to wait until we were deep in the zone to ensure everything was working properly, especially since the three of us were still barely Tier Four.

My new, scaled wetsuit fit amazingly, stretching just so to hug my body like a second skin. With the personalized alchemical oil coating the inside, it almost felt like a second layer of skin instead of the thin layer of armor that it was.

The entire set reminded me of scuba gear (including the fins!), except instead of a tank and all the peripherals, I had a ring attached to my collar that created a [Bubble Shield] around my head. The shield kept the air perfectly breathable without impacting my buoyancy, which I was sure took an interesting bit of enchanting to accomplish.

I would have loved to have examined the runes used, but it wasn’t worth the effort of breaching the [Obscuring] effect that hid them. With my training and experience, it wouldn’t be all that difficult to create similar runes if I needed to.

In addition to the armor, I purchased a pair of enchanted underwater guns from a Weaponsmith. I didn’t necessarily need any additional weapons. My wands and other manatech would work fine underwater, or at least, most of them would.

I just wanted a few firearm-type weapons without having to push my Artificing level any higher.

The first was a small pistol that shot flechettes, which were basically finger-sized bolts topped with an arrowhead. The second underwater firearm was a rifle-sized harpoon gun that shot arm-length barbed harpoons.

I didn’t bother paying for pre-enchanted ammunition since I could do that myself – which I did. Basic Enchanting was much simpler than doing the engineering work involved with real Artificing. There was a reason my Artificing had barely reached the intermediate level – I wasn’t a very good engineer.

I also enchanted several of Zavira’s creations to increase their effectiveness. Niall opted to use a variety of polearms, including a trident, which he was currently carrying as we made our way toward the large shipwreck just past the threshold into mid-tier.

Lisa constantly updated our mini-maps with information gathered from Spatial Sense, which made it easy to find new challenges as we navigated our way to our destination.

The change in environments also provided the perfect opportunity for me to field test the Time Distortion Field I’d been training with. Creating multiple small slivers of slowed space was easy enough, but maintaining it while the attacking creatures effectively tore themselves apart was quite a bit harder.

“That’s a scary spell,” Zavira commented as we watched a small swarm of oversized jellyfish shred themselves on blades of frozen Time. Since I was able to adjust where the distortions manifested, I made sure to focus them in a way that would maximize the damage.

“It really is,” Niall agreed. “I saw a Professor at my academy use a similar Void attack. However, she used it as an extended Shield instead of an area of effect attack.”

I considered the possibilities of such an application as the spell turned the attacking mobs into chunks of limp jelly and stringy tentacles.

“Well, that was an interesting test,” I mused aloud when the last jellyfish was reduced to little more than a core and some slowly dissolving bits of membrane.

After collecting what remained of the creatures – which wasn’t much – we continued toward the shipwreck. The mini-dungeon was well-known and often explored, so it took very little time to locate it.

I was a bit worried that the reset might have already impacted the site, but it was sitting exactly where the books said it would be.

As we approached, I noticed movement at the opposite end of the massive structure. It was hard to see because of the sheer size of the sunken ship, but I was almost certain it was a group of dungeoneers leaving from one of the random exits.

From what I’d read, there was only a single entrance to the sunken passenger vessel, and it was in the center of the top deck. It was supposed to lead to an open atrium that held some kind of garden that crossed between several floors.

From the outside, the shipwreck looked like a magical, almost steampunk version of a cruise ship, and I couldn’t wait to explore it.

“Watch out for plant monsters,” I reminded my teammates as we carefully navigated past the shards of glass that stubbornly remained attached to the now-broken dome that presumably once covered the garden below.

Snaking vines of seaweed and other creeping flora weaved along the trellises surrounding the center of the large, open space. I immediately understood the book’s comment about the garden providing access to multiple floors, as there were interior balconies from several lower decks that overlooked the overgrown vertical garden.

The garden did not limit itself to the trellis at the center of the multilevel opening. It had also expanded to include the railings attached to each floor with an open balcony. It wasn’t hard to avoid the vines connecting the central pillar with the balconies, and there were no signs of aggression from the plants as we carefully explored the area.

However, as soon as we attempted to enter one of the open floors, the plants attacked.

“If you would, please?” Niall asked, turning to me.

I knew he didn’t need my help to deal with the plant creatures, but a single Gravity Bomb would do a lot of damage, opening the overgrown space for Niall to attack the plant creatures directly.

I sent the spell forward, detonating it as soon as it was far enough not to pull Niall in.

The nearby flora was immediately unrooted and pulled into the center of the effect. Niall’s Void-covered glaive cut through the remaining tentacled plant creatures in our path with relative ease, carving out an open trail for us to follow.

Zavira used her newly enchanted spinning blades to cut through anything that approached from the sides, leaving me with little to do aside from monitoring our surroundings.

I did catch an octopus creature trying to sneak up behind us, and my new harpoon did a great job of disabling the sneaky creature while I used a mana blade to kill it.

I noticed several potential traps along our route and had Lisa add them to the mini-map. I doubted Niall needed any help identifying them. Most were quite obvious, even more so than the ones in the third-floor Trial I’d challenged.

The hallway eventually led to a large dining room filled with broken pieces of furniture and dishes. It reminded me a little bit of the scene in Titanic when the ship first sank, and the dining room was destroyed.

Or maybe I was remembering it wrong?

Regardless, the room was a mess, and debris was all over the place.

There were a few pieces of unbroken tableware mixed in with shards of broken dishes. One such piece stood out among the others, barely visible beneath the corner of a broken table. I found myself reaching for the item without thinking, wanting to get a closer look at the designs.

“AHHH! Fucking mimics!” I screamed as I stumbled back in shock.

I stared numbly at the stump that used to be my hand before my senses returned, and I cast Restore. Returning the missing appendage took more mana than normal, but that was a small price to pay to be whole again.

“Are you okay?” Zavira asked while Niall took care of the creature that managed to fool Spatial Sense.

This was the second time since entering the floor that my most relied-upon skill had failed me. But at least this time, it somewhat made sense.

The skill could only track things spatially. The mimic had been in the shape of a broken table. There had been nothing to set off any alerts or cause me to suspect it was anything but what it appeared to be.

But it was still embarrassing, and I sincerely hoped Master Kairos wasn’t somehow still watching.

He shouldn’t be since he said he was leaving months ago to deal with some sect business. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be informed of my mistake.

I shook my head at the thought.

“I’m fine. It just surprised me,” I said after taking a deep breath. “I didn’t think mimics were a real thing. The guidebook didn’t say anything about them, either.”

Zavira shook her head. “It might be one of the changes. I have never heard of a mimic, but it’s quite a fitting name for something that can take the appearance of a mundane object.”

“They exist on Gemine,” Niall said as the defeated mimic disappeared into his storage. I was glad he’d been able to dispatch it while I was distracted.

“I learned about them at the Academy,” he said as he carefully examined the rest of the nearby furniture. “I don’t think they’re common, even there. A lot of people lose their lives to the creatures. It is exceedingly difficult to recognize one when they are camouflaged, so you shouldn’t feel bad about it,” he added as he poked an overturned chair with his glaive.

It didn’t move.

Unwilling to risk going deeper into a potentially monster-infested dining room, we cast several large-area spells into the space, revealing several mimics as they lashed out upon taking damage.

“Wow. That might have been a problem,” Zavira said before sending a wave of spinning blades into the closest two mimics. Both were resistant to blade damage, but resistant didn’t mean immune. Spinning blades were something much harder to resist than those wielded normally.

We methodically destroyed anything that moved in the room, even if it wasn’t a mimic. By the time we reached the end of the room, nothing larger than a plate remained. Even those were all broken after the initial salvo we’d unleashed.

Surprisingly, the room itself suffered no damage from our attacks. Even our large area of effect attacks hadn’t left a scratch on the aged-looking walls.

“Should we explore the kitchen or head into the playroom?” Niall asked, eying the two openings.

“The kitchen has some fish creatures in it,” I said after focusing on the room with Spatial Sense. Though the doors were open, nothing was immediately visible from where we stood. Shifting my attention to the playroom, I added, “The playroom has crabs or something like that. Hard exoskeletons with pinchers. I can’t guarantee that’s all we’ll find, though.”

“There are no guarantees in life,” Niall said stoically. “Fish or crustaceans?”

“Fish,” Zavira answered.

“Crabs,” I said at the same time, thinking with my stomach instead of my brain. I looked at my half-dwarf friend and smiled. “Okay, fish.”

Saying nothing, Niall headed toward the door leading to the kitchen. As soon as we stepped through, a school of alligator-mouthed fish darted in our direction from the alcove where they’d been hidden.

I immediately tossed up a limited Time Distortion Field, being careful to keep it far enough away from my teammates to avoid any injuries.

“Distortion field is up. It’s highlighted on your map,” I said , warning them.

The others nodded, and I turned my focus toward the fish that were trying to bite through my [Barrier]. Using mostly Earth and Ice magic cast through a pair of scepters, I fought off the attacking mobs.

I dropped the Distortion Field after half a minute since the mana upkeep was no longer worth the effort. Within a couple of minutes, the last of the swarm was defeated.

“You didn’t mention they had teeth,” Zavira said with a fake huff.

“We’re in a dungeon. Everything has teeth,” I replied.

Wary of mimics, we searched the kitchen for any hidden loot. Kitchens were supposed to be one of the more common places to find hidden treasure within the sunken ship, though I was starting to worry that the guidance we were relying on might be too outdated to be of much use.

“Oh, I found something!” Zavira said, holding up a blue gem. Reinvigorated by the discovery, we continued our search. Looting was the best part of exploring ruins, dungeons, and rifts, as far as I was concerned.