What Z had said really got Chloe thinking. The fact that the thing below wasn't an angel was kind of a relief since angels were pretty strong opponents. Unfortunately, the good news only created a new problem. If it wasn't an angel, then what exactly was down there?
Chloe glanced toward Liz. "Do you sense anything funny too down there?"
Liz looked out across the water before giving an unhelpful shrug. "Nope. I can't sense anything specific. That said, I also wouldn't be surprised if there was something dangerous hiding under all this water."
Chloe nodded. "Yeah, that tracks."
At this point Chloe would have been more surprised if there wasn't something dangerous lurking down there. Nobody accidentally flooded an entire underground building unless something had gone spectacularly wrong.
Z looked at the dark water. "I am capable of casting a spell that would allow us to breathe underwater. However, I have concerns about relying upon such magic in a potentially hostile environment. Should my concentration be disrupted during combat, or should the spell be forcibly dispelled, we would find ourselves in an extremely dangerous situation."
"By extremely dangerous, you mean we'd drown, right?"
"Yes."
"Okay, just making sure."
Liz nodded in agreement. "I know a water breathing spell too, but I have to agree with Z. They're fine for exploration, but they're not something I'd want to trust while fighting an unknown enemy in the middle of an underwater battlefield."
That made a disturbing amount of sense. The more Chloe thought about it, the less she liked the idea. Fighting a dangerous monster was already risky enough. Fighting a dangerous monster while constantly worrying whether your lungs were about to stop working sounded significantly worse.
But suddenly, Z slowly turned her head towards Chloe. "Which is why it would be tremendously helpful if we happened to have someone present who possesses the unique advantage of not requiring oxygen."
Well, Chloe had honestly suspected this was coming the moment underwater exploration entered the conversation. Being a zombie came with a lot of weird perks, and not needing to breathe was one of them. It was incredibly useful right up until the moment people started volunteering her for dangerous jobs, which was exactly what was happening.
Chloe pouted as she stared out at the massive underground lake, or uh, whatever you call big pools of water trapped in a building. Just because she couldn't drown didn't mean she actually wanted to go swimming through some giant flooded building by herself. There could be a lot of nasty monsters or what have you down there. But...
As much as she hated admitting it, both Z and Liz's weren't the best suited for underwater stuff compared to her. If either of them lost their water breathing spell in the middle of a fight, things could go bad very quickly. So, Chloe figured this was her shot to take one for the team.
"Okay, I'll go in the water, but what are you guys gonna do in the meantime?" Chloe asked, looking at Liz and Z.
"We could just wait out here in case you need help." Liz said.
Z nodded. "I think it's best if we at least make sure nothing is going to come after you, Chloe. And if you do take too long, we'll go in and try to rescue you."
That seemed fair enough to Chloe, and although she still wasn't thrilled about being volunteered for the whole "go investigate the mysterious underwater enemy" job, Z's concerns were pretty reasonable. After saying her goodbyes to Liz and Z, Chloe made her way toward the edge of the flooded floor and slipped beneath the water. The first thing she discovered was that moving underwater was actually kind of annoying.
For some reason, she'd just assumed she'd be able to walk around normally. Looking back, that probably wasn't her smartest assumption.
The moment she tried taking a step, the water lifted her off the ground. Instead of striding heroically into the depths like she'd imagined, Chloe found herself awkwardly drifting upward and flailing around as she tried to remember how to move underwater.
After a few moments of increasingly embarrassing trial and error, Chloe managed to swim her way toward a submerged doorway. Once there, she grabbed hold of the frame and concentrated on her mana. Slowly, she pushed her magic power down into her feet and tried to make them stick to the floor.
The first attempt failed, and the second attempt somehow made things worse. But eventually, after far more effort than she would've liked, her feet finally locked themselves firmly against the submerged floor. Whew, that took way longer than I thought. Kinda embarrassing honestly.
Success was success, although Chloe sincerely hoped neither Liz nor Z had been watching. Once she finally had stable footing, traveling underwater became significantly easier. She could simply walk along the floor while her mana kept her anchored in place, allowing her to move through the flooded building without constantly floating away.
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One of the nicest parts was not having to worry about breathing. Chloe never felt that rising panic that came from needing air. There was no burning in her lungs and no desperate urge to surface.
That alone made the experience considerably less unpleasant than her old swimming lessons. Mom had insisted on those when Chloe was younger, convinced that learning how to swim was an important life skill. Chloe had never gotten anywhere close to drowning thanks to the floatation thingies they'd strapped onto her arms, but that hadn't stopped her from really being scared of pools back then.
***
The deeper parts of the building looked weirdly spooky, all the water wasn't helping of course. Abandoned tables, chairs, and equipment were scattered throughout the flooded corridors. Loose papers drifted lazily through the water, while broken crates rested in corners beneath thick layers of silt.
Occasionally, Chloe had to weave around larger pieces of debris blocking her path. A collapsed shelf forced her to squeeze through a narrow gap between two support columns, while an overturned metal cabinet had somehow become wedged against a doorway.
After that, as Chloe descended through another stairwell, she finally started sensing what Z had been talking about. At first it was just a faint feeling in the back of her mind. But the further down she went, the heavier the sensation became.
Z was totally right, something's bad down here. Chloe thought.
Eventually, Chloe reached what she believed was the stairway that should lead to the lowest floor of the building. Or at least, she hoped so, because she'd been going down way too many stairs so far. The oppressive feeling of danger was almost overwhelming here. Even the water itself seemed strangely still.
As Chloe descended the final staircase, the feeling of danger grew to its peak. And the moment she stepped off the stairs and onto the submerged floor below, her eyes widened as several watery tendrils suddenly burst out of the darkness. They surged through the water before she could even think about reacting, and in the next instant they had wrapped themselves around her arms, legs, and torso, coiling tightly around her body.
There was absolutely no way Chloe was going to let herself get tied up by some weird watery tentacles. She channeled lightning mana through her limbs, racing through the water in every direction. The tendrils convulsed as the lightning tore through them, and a split second later they burst apart into harmless streams of water.
The instant she was free, Chloe pushed off the floor and spun around, searching for whatever had attacked her. The floor was this broad open space that looked like some kind of industrial work area. Most of the furniture and equipment that had once occupied the room had either been swept away by the flooding or buried beneath piles of debris.
Running through the center of the floor was a wide hallway that disappeared into the darkness. Several large doorways branched off from it, leading into rooms Chloe couldn't properly see from where she stood.
Chloe moved toward the center of the hallway, glancing at every shadow and doorway she could see. The water around her remained eerily still, and that somehow made everything feel even more unsettling.
Then, Chloe felt that familiar tingling sensation. The one that always seemed to show up right before something terrible happened. Here it goes!
Almost immediately, she turned her head toward one of the side rooms. A massive shape was rushing toward her through the water.
Apparently, this big shark was made out of water. Its body twisted and flowed as it moved, while rows of jagged liquid teeth filled its open mouth. It surged through the flooded hallway at alarming speed as it charged directly toward her.
Thankfully, Chloe had gotten pretty good at reacting to monsters trying to eat her, and one of the best ways to stay alive was to blast whatever was trying to attack you first. So, she pointed a finger toward the incoming shark and fired a bolt of lightning.
The bolt struck the watery creature head-on, and the entire shark exploded apart in an instant. Water blasted outward in every direction as electricity ripped through its body, tearing the construct to pieces before it could even reach her.
A huge cloud of bubbles erupted through the water, while steam and disturbed currents spread throughout the hallway. Visibility vanished almost immediately as the water became a swirling mess of foam and debris.
Unable to see what was lurking inside the swirling cloud of bubbles and steam, Chloe decided the most reasonable solution was more lightning. She pointed a finger toward the mess in front of her and fired another bolt.
The surge of energy blasted apart much of the lingering bubbles and scattered the steam cloud, restoring her vision almost immediately. A loud crack echoed through the water as the spell struck one of the walls further down the hallway.
A small crater had been blasted into the concrete. Cracks spread outward from the impact point, and chunks of stone drifted away into the surrounding water. Fortunately, the wall was still intact. That would've been a really embarrassing way to flood an already flooded building even more.
Once the bubbles finally cleared, Chloe quickly looked around again, searching for whatever had been controlling the watery monsters. For a few seconds, she saw nothing.
But then, the presence she'd been sensing earlier suddenly grew stronger. Immediately, Chloe turned toward the far end of the hallway.
At first, all Chloe saw was a disturbance in the water. The currents at the end of the corridor suddenly began twisting together, as though some invisible force was gathering them into a single point. Streams of water spiraled through the submerged hallway, spinning faster and faster as they merged into a rough humanoid outline.
Arms formed first, followed by a torso and then a head, while countless ribbons of water continued flowing around the figure's body. In a matter of seconds, the swirling liquid settled and solidified until a man stood where there had previously been nothing but water.
The man wore blue robes, their fabric shifting gently beneath the water despite the complete absence of any current. Most striking of all was the stylized sun emblazoned across his chest, the symbol of Sol.
Honestly, she wasn't entirely sure which part was weirder: the fact that he'd apparently assembled himself out of water, or the fact that he looked completely unfazed by the lightning-wielding zombie standing in front of him. Then the man spoke, somehow managing to project his voice clearly through the water. "You must be the one who killed Sabine."