LIGHTNOVELONLINE Arc 2 | Chapter 64: From the Depths Below
“Come on, Rin! It isn’t that far!”
Rin glared down at her—or, at least, Emilia assumed that was what she must be doing. Not only was the other girl so high above her that Emilia couldn’t barely see her face as she continued psyching herself up to jumping, but her expressions were already so mild! The fact that she could already guess what emotion that girl was probably showing was a testament to how observant she was!
Emilia’s legs cycled under her, keeping her afloat in the water. She hadn’t even bothered to go check her bag, which in hindsight, she should perhaps be taking better care of. Not only did it have multiple blood weapons in it, one of which exploded on contact with things and another that was literally a vial of blood, but it now had snacks! She didn’t want her gifted sweets to be damaged in her tossing around of the bag!
Above her, Rin disappeared from sight. At first, Emilia thought that perhaps she was going to give a running jump, but when nearly a minute had passed and even Emilia’s yelling hadn’t drawn the girl back, she was left to assume her friend had backed out of jumping.
That, or she’d been disappeared again by whatever had taken her the first time.
Eh… better to just assume she was afraid to fall so far, which was fair. It just would have been helpful to know she was that nervous before she herself had jumped.
“So much for being able to do the jump,” she muttered to herself, wondering if she should attempt to climb back up or explore the area. It seemed a waste to have jumped and not explored at all, so explore it was!
Emilia hummed to herself as she swam towards shore, thankful that the water beneath her was so clear. She knew some people would rather not see the depths below, the dark slowly opening up instead of quickly shifting from the murky mist of dirt and debris into darkness, but she liked knowing nothing was lingering just below her feet.
She may have been attacked by a water dwelling monster once, during the war. It had been terrible, and several of her teammates had drowned, been dragged under by a monster they could only catch occasional glimpses of.
Emilia’s eyes shifted away from the edge where her bag had landed to the cavern below her. As far as she could see, there weren’t even any plants lining the walls. Instead, rocks of purple and blue and sea green jutted out, their edges jagged and sharp looking, and she made a note to be careful not to kick them once she got closer to the edge.
She slid easily through the water, her body naturally buoyant—more buoyant than she was used to, and she had once spent her summers living in the water. She could still see her, Rafe and their siblings playing in the pool and the ocean, and especially in the little swimming hole they’d come across in the forest, deep and clear, just like this one. They’d turned it into a little hideout for the five—occasionally six—of them, their sad little structure made of fallen limbs and rocks. Eventually, they’d built a treehouse house after nearly a year of trial and error, before turning it into something far more grand the year Emilia had been assigned a babysitter who had once been an architect.
Later, when they’d reached their 20s and the other kids in the area had finally learned to not be afraid of them, they’d held parties there—designed skills so they could sink into the depths of their sinkhole and breathe where they shouldn’t have been able to. They’d done so many stupid things in that place, the way kids were supposed to.
The land, they’d later discovered, belonged to one of their neighbours who was rarely home—a shame, given the property was wonderful, surrounded by forest on one side and the ocean on the other. Emilia hadn’t thought they’d care much about a bunch of kids playing in a section of the overgrowing forest that covered their property, but one of the last things she’d had Olivier do as her lawyer was approach them with a generous offer to subdivide the property and sell her the portion they had claimed for their own.
Turned out that despite the couple never being home and never saying anything about it, they’d known for a long time what the kids from down the road were doing. Childless and kind, they’d sold the entire property to Emilia, refusing her offers to pay more than her original offer. She’d only lived in the house briefly before the war began, and only visited it a few times during. Now, it existed as a vacation home for any of her former friends who wished to visit. A cleaner and a gardener attended the property every so often, her Censor managing them without much input from her. She didn’t know anything other than no large problems had ever occurred, and she had no idea if any of her friends ever actually made use of the property.
Emilia floated idly on her back as she considered how to get up onto shore. The rocks around the edge had proven to be so sharp that even carefully attempting to manoeuvre them had left her bleeding through the water. Interestingly, the blood hadn’t returned to her, instead dispersing through the clear liquid until it vanished.
Rin still hadn’t reappeared, and Emilia was just beginning to contemplate checking to see how sharp the rocks at the bottom of the climb back to the top were when a rumble startled Emilia upright. She looked around, wondering where the sound had come from and what had caused it. Without conscious thought, her energy surged out of her, splitting into two. One surged upwards, disappearing over the cliff, while the other zigzagged downwards, lighting up the darkness far below and—
Emilia cursed as she began to swim towards shore, hands wrapping around the cutting rocks as she hauled herself out of the water and away from whatever the thing swimming towards her was. Rocks bit into her hands and legs, and she was almost positive she’d left a giant hole in her foot from stepping on a particularly pointy rock, but within moments she was crawling onto shore and getting as far from the water as she could.
The world rumbled again and her energy shot upwards, lurching for her as a giant creature flew out of the water. Barely half of its pasty pink body made it out before it was falling back down, sending a wave of water surging after Emilia.
Emilia was sent hurling onto shore, her back and side dragging over the rough ground, and if she hadn’t already known her clothes were ripped to shreds from her adventure climbing the rocks, she would have known they were in tatters now.
“Fuck,” she breathed out, sprawling backwards before rolling over just in time to avoid something shooting for her. “Ew…” she moaned, catching sight of the disgusting liquid now sprayed over the spot she had just been laying.
She rolled, forcing herself to move and get back to her feet, despite the pain erupting through practically her entire body. Muscle soreness, cuts and bruises, a liable hole in her foot and some water in her lungs.
She needed to get to her bag. Realistically, she should have kept at least one of her long-distance weapons with her, in case she was attacked by something. Although, given she hadn’t seen any monsters in this world so far, she had been expecting anything she came across to be another human. Humans could be reasoned with, distracted, gotten close to so she could blow them up with her {Blood Ring}. Emilia had no desire to get anywhere near the disgusting pink monster—animal?—that was currently trying to spray her with some sickly liquid.
Emilia had also, perhaps stupidly, thought that Rin would be with her! Her so-called friend could use magic! And even if her magic turned out to be useless against this thing, she still could have brought her bag closer!
The monster sprayed another glob of liquid just in front of Emilia, the smelly, sticky looking substance barely missing her, but leaving her trapped between two piles of the stuff.
“Well, shit,” she spit out, bolting back towards the edge of the cavern to avoid another shot. At this rate, she was going to be trapped, so through the yucky liquid it apparently was!
The liquid burned as she ran through it, working straight through her shoes and as Emilia bolted for her bag, diving towards it to avoid being forced to stop when the creature once again shot in front of her, she debated whether losing her burning, melting shoes or grabbing a weapon was the first course of business.
“Weapon,” she muttered to herself, unceremoniously dumping her bag out and grabbing one of her {Blood Needles}. “Always weapon first.”
Once, during the war, there had been an attack while Emilia and her ex had been hooking up. They’d rushed to the front in nothing but their underwear—not exactly the best armour against monsters with toxic blood, but they’d made do. When nightmares came, weapons were the priority over clothing, over injuries, over friends.
The {Blood Needle} shot out of her hand, dragged along its near perfect path by what she could only assume was the system. The creature was preparing to spit at her again, its gaping maw stretched so wide she could see saliva accumulating in its mouth, seeping out from glands across the back of its throat. The {Blood Needle} slid into its mouth, lodging against one of those glands, and Emilia was already throwing the cloak that had fallen out of her bag over as much of herself as she could when it exploded.
Blood and gore and disgusting liquids pressed down over her and Emilia threw the burning cloak away, hissing as it stuck to her skin, and she reached for her shoes. She screamed as she pulled them off, pieces of her flesh peeling off with them.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she groaned, not even sparing a moment to see if these injuries would—or even could—be healed by the system before beginning to strip the rest of her clothing off, smaller drops of the monster’s attack slowly bleeding through the fabric to her skin.
By the time she was bare, Emilia could see dozens of smaller burns and missing sections of skin littering her body. She grimaced, pulling one of her feet closer and breathing a small sigh of relief when she saw the damage was attempting to repair itself. Attempting, but only barely succeeding. The smaller dots across her skin healed far faster, the burns sizzling out of existence while she sat there, catching her breath.
Emilia was just starting to pack her bag again, feeling slightly ridiculous as she sat naked, cross-legged on the hard ground, when something rumbled under her feet.
“Oh… you have got to be kidding me,” she grumbled, praying to the aether that the rumbling wasn’t the result of yet another monster coming out of the depths to dissolve her with its saliva.
A second passed, the rumbling subsided and then another, pink fleshed monster burst from the water. Its flabby body didn’t even get a chance to splash back under, Emilia already sending a {Blood Needle} shooting towards it. It exploded. Thankfully, not only was it further away than the first had been, but it also hadn’t been preparing to attack, and only a small amount of gore sailed back at her.
She wiped the speaks of blood and other liquids off with her forearm, unwilling to risk injuring her hands more than necessary, should the creature’s blood also be toxic. It didn’t appear to be, and she returned to packing her bag.
Another rumble. Another monster. Another {Blood Needle} sent soaring after it. More packing.
Emilia popped one of the sweet snacks V had left her into her mouth. Then another.
More monsters popped up, each alone and attempting the same strategy as the first and exploding as a result of their predictability. They were slowly coming further apart, however, and in her boredom Emilia took to counting the seconds, to gauging how much her feet and larger injuries had healed between each attack.
Eventually, nearly two hours later, neither had Rin returned nor had she seen any monsters in nearly 20 minutes—the longest stretch of time by far.
“Rin~” Emilia whined up into the abyss. “If you’re hiding up there, now would be a really great time to come back~”
Emilia stared upwards, hoping that someone would poke their head over the edge.
Nothing.
No one.
Great.
She sighed, looking down at her mangled clothing.
Out of all the things she had imagined could happen when she jumped, ending up with only the barest scraps to cover herself had not been on her list.
