After waking up, Ithil decided just training wasn’t effective enough. He needed someone, or something, to fight.

‘I can probably find something further away. I just need to stay hidden in case I find something too powerful.’

He left the large sandy area and swam out into the abyss. His internal compass allowed him to find his way back as long as he stayed on the same level. It was quite hard to do that once he got far enough away that he couldn’t see anything except himself.

He focused all of his senses, searching for other living creatures.

‘Why are there so few creatures? What could have driven them away?’

He soon found out why.

He was contemplating whether he should start heading back and just do his ordinary training. That’s when he spotted something, far out in the darkness. It was an abnormally large shark. Though not as big as the centipede, it was still longer than him.

He slowed down and spotted more of them.

‘They must be what’s driving everything away.’

Hundreds of sharks were swimming around, too busy with something else to notice the dragon watching them. At this point, Ithil was tired of not finding anything for hours, he wasn’t quite in his right mind.

‘Maybe I can lure a few of them away to fight with…’

He swam a bit away until he couldn’t see them anymore. He then did some quick movements with his limbs, hoping to alert just a few of them. Nothing happened.

He waited for a few minutes before trying again a bit closer. This time, however, he could feel something coming toward him.

He stared out into the darkness until eventually, three sharks came into view.

At this moment, Ithil didn’t realize how lucky he was. If the sharks weren’t used to easy prey, many more would have come after him.

Ithil started swimming away from the shark, trying to bring them farther away. When he started moving, the sharks spotted him. They were faster than what Ithil had anticipated and started catching up to him.

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Ithil sped up as well, but he quickly lost his stamina. Before getting too tired to fight, he stopped and waited for the sharks.

They quickly caught up to him and surrounded him. Ithil then realized the sharks were very quite intelligent creatures and were used to hunting in groups.

Ithil wanted to first try fighting without using his dragon breath.

He shot himself forward using his wings at the smallest shark, hoping to take it out quickly. However, it dodged to the side at the same time as the other two attacked him. Ithil turned around and barely managed to dodge while clawing the bigger shark's side.

Deep red blood started flowing out of the wound. But before Ithil could launch another attack the small shark, who was still bigger than him, took advantage of the moment. It bit down hard onto his tail. Waves of pain went up his body as Ithil turned around and threw a punch to the shark’s face.

He felt his fist connect and heard the crunching of bones breaking. The smaller shark went limp and released Ithil’s tail as its remaining life flowed out of it.

Ithil turned around to the other sharks to find that they were gone.

Something attacked him from above, tearing into his wings. Ithil, who was starting to get sluggish from the tiredness, used his dragon breath. The extreme sound waves shredded the attacking shark's body, leaving it to die of internal blood loss.

The other shark saw this and retreated to its flock. But before it could escape, Ithil’s sound waves killed it as well.

Ithil barely managed to drag himself back to the sandy area. His right wing was half torn apart, making it very painful and difficult to swim.

He glided down to the sandy floor and fell asleep as soon as he touched it.

--------------------

After the encounter with the three sharks, Ithil continued to lure them away. He also came up with the idea to swim upwards in case there were many in order to make it easier.

As time went by, the sharks started to realize something was hunting them. Ithil noticed this because more and more would come every time. He was actually glad to find out, since as he got stronger from the constant fighting he needed more of a challenge.

He tried to use his dragon breath as little as possible, but it was impossible when getting attacked from multiple angles.

When he felt it was too easy, he went deeper. To his surprise, there were sharks everywhere. No matter how far down he swam, there would be sharks. He had no idea of how they found food for everyone. Maybe everything down there lived on magic somehow?

He felt he was well beyond a kilometer deep when the sharks eventually disappeared. He was back in the empty darkness. The water pressure was enough to make him feel cramped, and he didn’t like it one bit.

He wanted to find an excuse to return to the surface, but he was growing stronger much faster down there compared to when he was sparring with his father.

Eventually, he would just descend until his body couldn’t take it anymore. Then he would just train at that depth for a while before continuing. The training was mostly swimming until he fell asleep from exhaustion, and when he woke up he would repeat.

And before he knew it, he had turned 12. Then 13. Then 14.

He actually started to like it. Dragons were mostly solitary creatures so he had no problems with the loneliness, and he had a lot of time to plan his future for when he would eventually head up.

At a depth of around 15 km, he reached the bottom.