The Primal Hunter

No one could discount the achievements of the Wyrmgod. However, on this fateful day, Jake did feel like he could question the title of apex dungeon master. Or, perhaps, even the greatest of dungeon masters fell victim to the folly of trying to do the impossible:

Make a fun water level.

And a folly it was. Because the third floor was complete shit compared to the two before it. Their group of five found themselves appearing on the dry ground within a cave, but soon it became clear it was but a temporary refuge.

The only way out of this cavern was diving into a large pool of water extending into a vast ocean. As they all appeared in the cavern, the system also popped up with the message for this floor.

Welcome to the third floor of Nevermore: Deep Coral Ocean

Main objective: Defeat Coral Ocean Lord

Bonus objectives: Collect at least 500 Deepsea Pearls to open the Ancient Clam.

Current progress: Coral Ocean Lord (0/1), Deepsea Pearls (0/500)

Note: More hidden events, achievements, or objectives may be hidden on the floor.

Current Nevermore Points: 90

Jake hated the place from the very moment they appeared there, and the description of the place sure didn’t help. Defeat a boss? Sure, but collect five hundred fucking pearls? That sounded like suffering. To make matters worse, his one hope was dispelled when he looked at the Sword Saint shortly after they all realized what they were dealing with.

“I delve into the concept of rain, not water as a whole. While my understanding does assist me, I too find myself heavily impeded while underwater,” the old man shook his head. Jake then looked to the King with hope.

“Water is an obstacle, but it is manageable. It weakens all but my soul magic, and while my force magic still has significant potency, I have to fight the environment itself,”the Fallen King also said.

Dina?

“Water plants… are rare,” Dina said, sounding a bit sad. “I don’t hear anyone nearby here either. I can do okay in water, though. Grandpa made sure I was prepared.”

So, at least they had one combatant. Their support. Jake looked at Sylphie, who he estimated to be the weakest of their group. As a bird using the wind affinity primarily, she would naturally be unable to fly while in water and would have to solely rely on her magic. Her speed would also be reduced, her maneuverability nil… Jake honestly considered if it was best for her to just take up the role of ranged fighter for this floor.

“Sylphie, want me to help carry you?” Jake asked.

“Ree?” Sylphie asked as she tilted her small head in confusion.

“The water,” Jake pointed as he had a realization. Actually… had Sylphie ever really encountered deep water? The thought struck Jake, and he was about to explain what Sylphie would face and even mention she would probably need to acclimate herself to the pressure as she screeched again.

“Ree, ree.”

“No, you can’t fly in the water,” Jake shook his head. “There is no wind there. The pressure and density of the water will also make it so every action is harder. You can’t even properly flap your wings.”

“Ree.”

“I said you can’t.”

“Ree.”

“It doesn’t work like that!”

“Ree.”

“Yes, we can bet on it!”

“Ree.”

Jake had mixed feelings about what happened next. They had all rushed into the water at Jake’s ushering, with Sylphie being the last one to enter. He goaded the bird to please go ahead and show him how she could “totally just fly in water like normal,” and he already had his “I told you so” ready on his lips when the bird dove into the water.

And… yeah.

“I have difficulty comprehending how that works,” the Fallen King asked.

“She is indeed a peculiar creature,” the Sword Saint echoed through telepathy.

“Yeah…” Dina even agreed.

Jake was floating there, surrounded by water and passively fighting off the pressure with the four others, while the hawk was just zooming around them, flying as if she was in the air like normal. She wasn’t even slower than before. Straining himself, Jake tried to see what Sylphie was doing, but no matter what he did, it just looked like Sylphie was flying like normal. As if the pressure just didn’t really matter.

“Ree!” Sylphie screeched, not even using telepathy.

“That makes even less sense!” Jake complained. You couldn’t fucking talk underwater.

“Ree.”

“I… I give up. You win,” Jake surrendered, and Sylphie happily flew over to him and perched on his shoulder as he was swimming just outside the small alcove leading into the vast ocean.

Perhaps he had been foolish to believe Sylphie cared about things such as logic, and he was now paying for his mistake by owing Sylphie “all the scratchies,” with the hawk cashing in right away by forcing Jake to rub her stomach.

Either way… Sylphie’s unexpected prowess proved to be incredibly valuable. They all agreed on not wasting more time than necessary in the damn water level and to just find the boss and the exit as fast as possible. Because of Sylphie, they could explore things a lot easier, and Dina could also summon some aquatic plants to help scout, but she could make far fewer plant summons than above ground. Even if she could have made more, they encountered one more issue.

While the prior floors had been relatively absent of enemies, this one was filled to the brim. Sharks, squids, fish, coral monsters, elementals, giant floating crabs, and even a few undead creatures met them. While none were a challenge to Jake and the others, as they were all weak variants that didn’t even reach level 210, they were more than strong enough to kill Dina’s summons, making their ability to gather information limited. This meant they had to explore the ocean as a group, with Sylphie being the best scout by far, as she was several times faster than anyone else.

Besides water, there were also giant rock formations floating in the water in different areas, their buoyancy somehow allowing them to just float there without being attached to anything. Some of these were utterly huge and allowed their party to enter and even find dry land within, and it had even been within one of these giant floating rocks they had appeared on the floor. These became needed because compared to all prior floors… this one was not a speedrun.

Instead, it became a long and arduous journey of trying to explore an ocean that even Jake didn’t have good visibility in. Finding their target was a huge challenge, and Jake sent out Pulses of Perception so often that he got a headache just in an attempt to find something – anything – of note. Sylphie also took the initiative to try and fly upwards to find the surface while the others tried traveling downwards to the sea floor, but after quite a while, they reached another slightly horrifying conclusion.

The “ocean” had no bottom and no surface but was just a huge bubble of water floating within a massive goddamn fishbowl. They did eventually find some kind of barrier that sealed in all the water, but their hope of discovering some clue as to the location of the final boss was shattered.

Their entire first day was spent just trying to figure out the environment and find clues to locate the final boss. They did find a few pearls, all of which were carried by flying clam monsters, but they had no expectations of collecting all five hundred.

Combat was still piss-easy even when they got ganged up on, meaning the only real challenge was figuring out where the hell to go. Ultimately, they decided to split up and explore different areas of the huge fish bowl while using the King’s markers to stay in communication, with the King also keeping track of their locations and making sure they didn’t have any overlap in the areas they covered.

This was how the first week of the dungeon passed by.

For some reason, the Wyrmgod decided that making the water floor larger than the two before was a great idea. Based on what the King said, the spherical ocean they were in had to be at least twenty thousand kilometers across, making it far larger than the entire planet on the first floor. Considering everyone besides Sylphie was far slower in this environment too… it was hell.

Two weeks into the water level, the Sword Saint had found the giant clam they were supposed to give the pearls for the bonus objective, not that it was any help. Meanwhile, Sylphie had located the gateway leading to the next floor, but before it would unlock, they had to find the final boss and kill it. Something none of them had managed to do yet.

Now, Jake liked to find positives wherever he could. While it was undeniable this floor was complete shit, and everyone hated it, it did force them all to take the time to properly adapt to an underwater environment. If one compared their speeds from the day they entered the ocean to now, they had all gotten significantly faster. Well, besides Sylphie, who was never bothered to begin with. Especially the Sword Saint had managed to leverage the concept of rain to propel himself forward and nearly merge with the water. The Fallen King used his force magic to far more aggressively move around while even shaping a barrier around him to make his entire form have better fluid dynamics.

Dina slightly morphed her own body to almost resemble some ocean plant and swam far faster than before while also simply adapting better to the pressure. Finally, we had Jake.

Jake had spent nearly all of this time not trying to learn how to swim faster but to adapt one skill: One Step, Thousand Miles. Space magic shouldn’t care that much about being underwater or above ground, and the environment should at most lead to increased energy consumption. His primary issue with the skill wasn’t actually the space magic part either, but the activation of the skill – the act of taking a step.

Without any solid ground in the water, taking a step seemed impossible. Even if Jake condensed stable arcane platforms to step on, it was still damn slow. It was unnatural. While the entire concept of One Step was rooted in the natural movement of taking a step, one simply couldn’t walk underwater naturally. However, with so much time just having to explore a damn ocean without much else to do, Jake had time to properly explore the skill.

He considered dozens of ways to improve his useability of the skill. Condensing the water itself to harden it, trying to step on the water itself but just with a hard stomping motion to force himself forward, having constant platforms beneath his feet. He even had one crazy idea of making some spring-like system so whenever he forced his foot downwards, the springs would collapse and make a stable arcane platform hit the sole of his boots. All of these ideas ended up being shit, but the experience alone did allow him to realize some things.

It was all about making it natural. To not make it into some kind of forced movement that Jake would never make if it wasn’t for the skill. That is how he had his breakthrough on the sixteenth day. He slowly moved away from the concept of stepping down normally but turned towards what he considered a “step” while in the water. If he didn’t have a seafloor to walk on, how would he normally move around?

Well… Jake would swim. So, rather than try and force his movements to fit with the skill, Jake changed his perspective to make the skill fit his movements. He also began to break away from some other usual assumptions. Normally, a step would be taken from a horizontal position, but Jake had walked on several vertical surfaces and used the skill like that before, so why would that be an issue while in the water?

This was a true three-dimensional space, and while some odd kind of gravity allowed them to know what was up and down, it wasn’t that impactful. With all his insights and realizations coming together, he finally managed to form a far more effective way of getting through the water.

Swimming forward, Jake naturally moved his legs up and down to propel himself, but rather than simply push against the water to get himself forward, he “stepped” on it as every stroke teleported him several hundred meters in the direction he was facing. Coupled with Unblemished Arrows, using his Wings of the Malefic Viper to swim even faster, and his increased adaptation over time, Jake became far more potent in the water. He estimated he could still fight with nearly seventy-five percent effectiveness while in the water. He could also still do a normal “step” while in combat, but his new swimming-stepping was far faster moving around the vast ocean.

Sadly – or perhaps luckily – he didn’t need these new capabilities much as Jake did not do anything of note on this floor.

On the twenty-second day, Sylphie finally encountered the Floor Boss. Their group had been under the assumption that something called the Coral Ocean Lord was stationary as it was a coral, but they found that to be an entirely wrong assumption. The boss was instead a huge floating rock filled with corals that traveled around the ocean at an impressive speed. This was how they had somehow kept missing it despite feeling like they had explored everywhere.

The only way Sylphie found it was due to the whispers of the wind. While the wind was far more silent under the water, Sylphie eventually did manage to hear them. They began to tell her of the environment, and when the Fallen King found a rock formation filled with seaweed and had Dina come over to talk to them, they managed to narrow down the area the boss was in.

While everyone would have loved to let out some pent-up frustration by teaming up and tearing up the Floor Boss together, Sylphie did it alone as that was just faster. Meanwhile, the rest of the group made it toward the exit.

On the dawn of the twenty-third day, they finally all managed to get there as they promptly entered the gate and finished the god-awful water level.

Third floor completed. 30 Nevermore Points earned.

Nevermore Points: 120

Jake noted that the floor gave 30 Nevermore Points upon completion, which made him believe that each floor gave points based on what numbered floor they were, times ten. They also didn’t get a single achievement, yet no one cared. They were just happy to be done with the third floor.

Sitting in the small in-between room before the fourth floor, they were all regrouped for the first time in weeks and all relaxed as they reflected a bit on the third floor.

“Even if this particular experience was less than pleasant, I do believe it was a valuable one. If we find ourselves in a similar environment on a later floor, we are not entirely powerless, and I almost have a feeling the Wyrmgod placed a level such as this early on to prepare us,” the Sword Saint spoke words of wisdom.

“Doesn’t make water levels like this less shit,” Jake spoke even wiser words.

“While I do agree with that assessment, the Sword Saint is also correct. It is a potentially lethal weakness for our group that only the Sylphian can act unimpeded in the water. Improvements are needed,” the Fallen King also chimed in.

“Yeah, we did all get better at dealing with water, and this will definitely prove beneficial if we encounter a water floor later on. Also, if some monster is capable of summoning a water domain or something, we won’t find ourselves as limited,” Jake nodded.

Dina also seemed in agreement as she looked deep in thought after the water level, having also not enjoyed it much either.

“Ree,” Sylphie shrugged, not understanding why they all cared so much. Jake seriously wanted to figure out how the hell Sylphie did it, but alas.

He sighed and looked towards the next gate as the others went through the lockbox with loot. Once more, the reward was useless, and Jake was more determined than ever to get a move on. They had just wasted over three weeks, so now it was time to pick up the pace and rapidly clear their way to the first city layer.