The snake was wildly trashing and flailing sending attacks everywhere. I might have been a bit overzealous thinking I could control the fire. The fire might not be the biggest problem but the thrashing snake surely is. I had to move everyone further away to make sure their bubbles didn’t catch fire. This fire is merciless to anything that even has 1 molecule of oxygen in it. I kept storing the hydrogen that got released from the burning water. It should die out once it had ripped out most of the oxygen available on the snake. It started to grow slightly.

– We might have a problem, it feels as if this snake is putting energy into shedding its skin.- -Slippery bastard, how do we stop it?- -More fire?-

-More fire!- - Is that a good idea?-

Raishin used more fire and I controlled it. The snake thrashed around wilder and harder sending attacks and debris everywhere. Greg and Crissy were doing their best to make sure none of us got knocked out. I had the extra task of extinguishing debris that had caught on fire. This is quite reckless what we’re doing. One hit and we turn into ash, kinda. I might be fine; heat resistance is so OP! Anyways the battle was under control. Woofus ran off into a cave. Crissy wasn’t stupid enough to follow him but the snake saw a free snack. Seriously this dog…

I gathered the water dragons and made them carry us and we chased after the sea snake. The fire died out and its skin seemed completely charred. The water was quite difficult because the heat of this burning snake created violent currents in the otherwise cool ocean water.

Greg was having a bad time. A lot of things remind me of some of the Boshi adventures we had.

Woofus got picked up by a current and got swept away further into the cave. It seemed like Crissy was losing her shit but we luckily couldn’t hear her.

– This dog is something else… how is it not dead yet?- - Maybe an extra sturdy breed?-

I tried to keep us from drowning, the veils intact, moving debris away from us, keeping us somewhat orientated in this rollercoaster and now I also had to babysit a lost dog. We were getting sucked into the cave even deeper and the snake was still thrashing and it knocked rocks loose which made my life harder.

– There are too many rocks, Greg please do something!- - Ugh, I hate water, I will do my best!-

Raishin managed to get on the snake and tried to zap it. It seemed to work but not by much. I guess its defenses got fried. Greg also got on the snake and moved all the rocks away. I pulled the chicks into my bubble and attached some wires to the snake to get a free ride.

Ugh, so exhausted, that dog is a real piece of work.

“Please save…”

“My hero…”

I moved both of them into a separate bubble before they could assault me with whatever bullshit. I can’t deal with this.

It seems we almost were out of this corridor. Keeping these bubbles and veils active for multiple people sure was tiring. I [Flushed] some rocks and stones aside to ensure no bubbles got popped.

We got forcefully ejected into another large space and the snake was extra mad. The chicks tried to tell me something and Greg seemed to had enough of all this water. Why am I always the babysitter? Why can't anyone babysit me from time to time? I moved Greg and the chicks into a big bubble and moved them to the side and let him deal with their shit. It was a strange occurrence but Raishin was very reliable. He was single-handedly keeping the sea snake busy.

He got a bit bolder with the super risky fire and was giving the snake the beating of its life. This is fine right? He doesn’t need my help, right? I looked around and saw something extremely interesting. I sent 4 shadow clones out to investigate.

This space had an ancient city in a huge air bubble! It was in ruins so luckily no strange cultists worshipping a strange root or anything but a lot of interesting ancient texts. And it would so happen that I can read these!

But seriously these things are actually everywhere once you start looking around although the bottom of the ocean is quite inaccessible. How did they even get here? There was the time capsule floating in the sky. What would this place have for us? What was strange is that… the language in this city is vastly different from the ones on the labyrinth walls. Raishin blasted the snake into the wall and I refreshed everyone’s air.

Ah right, Woofus! I sent one clone to find Woofus because the woofer was nowhere to be found. My clone notified me that it found a strange trident. My clone told me what it’s properties were but it also relayed it to Raishin. It seemingly can turn into any size, turn any physical blow into a fire attribute and the user had complete freedom without restrictions to move underwater. This trident seemed to be crafted with ancient technology to deal with this snake. Raishin grinned when my clone relayed this to him with telepathy. My clone threw the spear at Raishin which he caught.

– You can release this bubble thing around me now Agnis! It’s time to turn this guy into a fried noodle! - - Just remember that that only works as long as you’re holding the spear, don’t throw it! - -Give him hell!-

I released the bubble around Raishin and he truly seemed free to move however he wanted in the water and joined Greg and the chicks in the bubble. We watched by as Raishin was singlehandedly and one-sidedly beating the snake up. It seemed so overpowered at first but it was at complete mercy now.

Quite something eh? Yeah, I haven’t seen him had this much fun in a long time.

“What is that sound? Is the snake? Crying?”

“Where is he?! Where is my dog!”

Chill, I will find him if he’s not dead.

“Stop it! My dog isn’t dead!”

Yet. Crissy shot Gregory an angry glare.

“So are things like this normally for you mythical beasts?” Hayley asked while Crissy was still glaring at Greg.

Hmm, so far this has been quite normal.

Unfortunately, he’s correct, this is relatively tame by our standards.

“But aren’t you adventurers?”

Trust me most adventures are boring compared to this, don’t get the wrong idea and think all adventures are like these you will be for a nasty surprise once you become one.

“Hmm, so hey, do you have a spot in your party?” I’m not sure why Hayley wants to join our party. This mess should demonstrate that that’s a bad idea.

Nope sorry, it’s quite full.

Yeah, there is me, Raishin, Agnis and his ego which takes up the other 3 spots.

Hey! My ego isn’t that big! It takes at least 1 spot! Yours takes up the other 2!

Oh, so now I’m the one with a big ego, eh?!

“Hey guys, look Raishin is about to finish the snake off!” Crissy pointed and we looked at Raishin who seemed ready to finish the snake off.

Hey Agnis, didn’t you tell him to not throw his spear? Why does it look like he’s going to throw his spear?

Ugh, because he’s an idiot!

I shifted my stance and created a bubble around Raishin and Greg pinned the shadow of the spear to Raishin’s shadow so that he couldn’t let go of it. The snake tried to use this opportunity to escape but Raishin adapted and used another move and impaled the head of the snake without letting go of the trident.

One day you guys will babysit me, babysitting you guys is so tiring.

“I don’t mind babysitting you!”

Ugh, not you…

Raishin came at us and I used [Counterspin] and [Pressure] to make a large bubble and decided to take a nap. One of my clones returned with Woofus.

“Haroldus!”

Wow look its Drownus Lostus Againus the Wet!

“That’s not his name!”

He’s more a Woofus Boomerangus Doggo the Undead, maybe not even a doggo are you sure he isn’t a cockroach?

“His name is Harold…”

And with this, I’m going to nap!

Is it me or are you taking a lot of naps lately?

This stuff is physically tiring, wake me up when my 4th clone has returned. I sat down and went for a nap.

Another dream, this time clearer, the sky was red and burning, thunder was dropping like it was rain, and I seemed to be in what I recognized as Alledra, it felt familiar, I walked to a restaurant I liked to grab a bite and get shelter, I got my order but when I was about to dig in, the food decayed. I looked around shocked and wondered what happened to my food and saw others' food decay too. And at the entrance was a woman with black hair, dark green glowing eyes in a black feathered dress with a nefarious smile. She asked if we enjoyed our food but I knew she was responsible for this. My instincts told me to run, that this woman is dangerous, but I was pissed, I had helped the citizens gather food in this hellish weather and make the meal in this restaurant possible and this woman made our last several hours of going through hell, undone. I didn't know who she was but I could feel the divinity factor on her.

Great another pain in the ass god I said in my dream.

I felt very annoyed and the anger and disappointed to witness the food that I worked hard for, just disappear. The people in the restaurant cleared out when they heard me say this. The woman slowly approached with a smile on her face, she was quite attractive but everything about her annoyed me, she sat down across me at the table I was sitting at, crossed her legs, and asked me why I didn't flee. I narrowed my eyes and responded with:

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

I can't kick your ass with my back turned to you.

The woman laughed, maybe she found it amusing or was laughing mockingly. She introduced herself as Hablena and she would be delighted to turn me into a decaying pile full of maggots. I finished my carbonated lime soda which didn't decay, crushed the cup, and lit it on fire. I threw it at her. She easily dodged it and stretched out her hand to activate some magic or ability. I felt a pressure on my chest and my face became liquid as if it was melting. My face wasn't becoming liquid but it was wet.

I saw the face of Woofus sitting on my chest and slobbering my face. I dried myself by expelling moisture and air from myself accidentally launching Woofus in the air. Woofus orientated himself in the air like a cat trying to land on his feet. Gregory and Hayley who were awake were looking at this event in amazement. Woofus managed to orientate himself with 2 vertical flips and a horizontal flip and gracefully landed on Raishin’s stomach. The 3 of us held up signs awarding marks of, 9, 10, and 9 for his aerial performance. Raishin, who was sleeping before Woofus landed on him, wasn't happy and flipped off on Woofus for waking him up like that, this woke up Crissy, who was also sleeping and she flipped off on Raishin for flipping off on Woofus.

They sure do get along poorly…

You do know that this was your fault, right?

I shrugged.

So, what have you guys been up to while I was asleep?

Preventing Hayley and Raishin from being creeps.

Ah, thanks.

“Come on, can’t you cut me some slack?”

Agnis, I’m warning you; this chick is like a female Raishin.

That bad eh? I said as I moved away from Hayley.

“Hey! I don’t bite!”

No, you do something that’s probably worse…

Raishin and Crissy were still bickering so I froze both of them. I took food out of my dimensional pocket and started to eat while I looked through the pile of stone tablets my shadow clones had gathered while I was asleep. Greg and Hayley helped themselves to some food too.

Woofus and I slipped away while Greg and Hayley were eating. Luckily for us most of the city was in a large air bubble. We found a temple-lookalike building, there was rubble everywhere and some parts that had collapsed seemed to be the location where a shadow clone found the tablet. I looked around and at the temple, thinking of what ancient civilization this place could be from, I couldn't place it but decided it was a mix of 2 languages that normally shouldn’t be related to each other. I could read it but it seemed like I was reading a heavy dialect. Is it possible that I don’t know one of these languages?

I should know every ancient language on this continent so I either missed one or… this language is from another continent. This struck me odd because the Gcehaio ocean which is the largest ocean in the world, is massive. I looked again at the temple and tried to imagine what the temple would look like again. This seems like an easy obnoxious puzzle; I just need to place the rubble where it originally belonged. After a 2 second examination of the pieces, I recreated the wall by moving the rubble to the approximate spot, with some minor adjustments. There is hardly any erosion for some reason. This language was a bit of a pain to read but I should be able to derive its meaning. The knowledge I picked up at the time capsule is really shining now. Let's see what does it say?

It told the history of 2 groups of fishermen, one on the Kaledonian coast I assume and what’s this? Nesher continent? I guess that’s the name of another continent. Anyways they got stuck in an enormous storm that engulfed the whole ocean.

Talking about a freak storm. Both sank and got swallowed by the whale. What? A whale? How is this related to a whale?

The storm took 3 weeks and the whale was going around the ocean bringing heavy storms and swallowed everything in its path. The 2 civilizations came into contact for the first time, in the belly of the whale.

One civilization was mainly run by warriors while the other civilization had a healthy mix. Normally they would've been digested like other civilizations before did but these fishermen were resourceful and identified quite fast that if they didn't work together, they'd be fish food. The group from Nesher had some scholars under them who were originally on fishing boats to study fish ecology and the odd behavior of the sea, and these scholars contributed to the brainpower of the group.

They moved a lot of swallowed rubble and made an island of rubble and some boats to not get digested by the whale. But about 3 days after they made their island a scouting group discovered that at some point in time the whale swallowed a mountain and that they could hide inside the mountain to be safe for almost forever. At this point in time, they still had air because the whale was swallowing a lot of stuff at the surface or on land so it didn't dive much. The combined group which called themselves the Jectu moved into the mountain and that's where they found a huge cave with an even more ancient structure.

The labyrinth of the breathless was a dungeon swallowed with the mountain! They settled in a branch of the cavern next to the labyrinth since this structure emanated some mysterious power that intrigued them but the area around it was also warmer than the rest of the cave structure. Everything went well. they made basic structures in which they could live. It looked like they could make it work until the whale calmed down.

Wait what, this text is talking about this place being in the belly of a whale. This can’t be right! I activated my Elgards eyes and expanded the scope of my sight. A lot of nothing and then I saw that we were surrounded by a lot of organic stuff. I fell to my knees.

Please let this be another bad dream, I’m too young to end up as fish food!

Woofus barked.

Yes yes, I know a whale isn’t a fish. Ugh, how am I going to tell the others? Hmm, maybe I shouldn’t. Let's keep reading, what other nasty surprises do we have here?

The whale started to dive and the whole place got flooded and submerged. A quarter of their people drowned and they had to find a way to live in a world that would be underwater for an undetermined amount of time. The scholars used magic to create air bubbles and provided everyone with air and also protected against the water pressure. But over time this evolved to everyone just using magic on themselves to withstand the pressure, the buildings they made had air trapped inside which got refreshed by magic, and there were some towers and structures they scattered wherever they went which trapped air. The purpose of these was to act as a safe place to get some air before traveling more underwater.

They evolved to be able to swim really well, also partly aided by equipment and magic, they could hold their breath for 1 hour and be fine but had some small devices that could give them 15 minutes that they could use when they were far from an oxygen tower. These developments all occurred over a time span of 5000 years, the original group didn't benefit from this.

Ooh these texts are dated they seem to use a specific dating system. They use moon cycles. The moon is consistent so it’s easy to calculate back. Finally, a civilization that puts a lot of effort into this!

The original group had to do with air bubbles and clumsy underwater movement. What they did do was build airtight structures and trap air in them. It took a long time because it was really taxing for those casting the magic, some of the Jectu drowned because this magic was hard to keep up for a long time.

Hmm, I recognize this problem, I have a similar problem, this stuff is draining. I wanted to read further but this was all the wall told me. I tried to find another wall that would tell me more but I couldn’t find any useful ones.

I did find a piece of text that described some encounters with the sea snakes. They planned on using their own technology to make a weapon that could be used underwater indefinitely and could kill the water snakes since they were a hazard and were eating quite a lot of fish that they were interested in.

There were other texts about the laws they made, religion, politics, minor events, major breakthroughs but nothing more about the history or anything about the labyrinth. I looked around to find similar structures and restored the walls but these had information of events of a later date.

These were from roughly 2000 years ago when they killed 5 water snakes and sent a small group into the labyrinth for them to never return.

Also, a story of a group trying to get out of the whale and venturing outside the mountain, of the 10, only 2 returned with heavy acid burns but they managed to make a rough map of the whale's stomach and the discovery that a bubble coated in metal protects the people inside for enough time to get from the mountain to the edge of the stomach.

They didn't have much metal in their civilization so the number of times they could use this information was limited. The reason why this worked seemed that the acid prioritized digesting the hard-to-digest materials first, so in close proximity of something hard to digest, you'd be relatively safe, that's how they got acid burns but didn't die, because they were carrying some metal ore they found. They think the reason for the mountain being quite safe is that it’s easy to digest or that something really hard to digest is next to it. Maybe the whale had swallowed 2 mountains but 1 of them is filled with metals and sturdy maternal, or the mountain is close to impossible to digest. The text continued about how they finally managed to consistently get into the labyrinth and made their second city inside close to the entrance, basically where we are now.

Wait where is this other city they were talking about then? Was it in the caves outside the dungeon?

It then talks about the moving and settling process, meh boring what does this say?

Some scouting trips into the labyrinth were mentioned but most didn't seem to return and those that did had a limited map from teams that went before them, just to map the labyrinth, they were in charge of building oxygen towers to make scouting easier. They seemed to run into issues where they had to regularly create different maps.

Oof this seems like another pain in the ass location.

The fact that so many scouting teams never return worries me most, they had 5000 years to explore the labyrinth but the most recent map I see was the one shown here. It only seemed to be about 10% complete and red was used to indicate areas that were probably the most dangerous? Did no team survive passing there? If so, why aren't all paths leading outside the known area red? Why can’t they be clearer in this?

I think I have enough information, I made a mental note of the map of the whale's stomach, the cavern system outside the labyrinth, and the map of the labyrinth which I would probably have to update myself. What a pain in the ass. Can’t these ancients just make a tea house or something? Why a dangerous labyrinth that’s massive? They surely overkilled on this one. The situation was dire but panicking wouldn't help me at all,

I petted Woofus and wondered how to get out of the mess.

Hmm, I need a plan, is there a library here? I still haven’t found out how these guys disappeared. According to the texts this civilization was doing just fine 2000 years ago, and by analyzing the area with Elgards eyes, the most recent objects here were 637 years old, nothing newer than 600 years though.

Something happened that made them disappear and this all unsettled me. Was it the snakes? But they had their nest outside the dungeon and I didn’t spot any snake skeletons here. After failing to find more clues I returned to the camp. Christina and Raishin’s bickering had turned into wrestling and Hayley was taking a nap. Greg seemed to be the only one who noticed that I was gone.

Found anything useful?

I did but promise that you won’t freak out.

I told Greg about that we’re in the belly of a whale and that some civilizations got swallowed and mysteriously disappeared some 600-ish years ago. Gregory didn’t like this information but he took it well.

Out of all things… It is as if fate wants us to die… So, what is the plan? Do we finish the labyrinth or break out of here?

This is a dungeon so as far as I know there is no breaking out, now I think we should clear it, one for the treasure, also the end of a dungeon probably has a teleport device that teleports you to the entrance. I might be able to hack its runic structure and send us to the surface although… we’re quite deep underwater, I don’t know if it has enough juice to reach that far. Might need Raishin to juice it up but we’ll see then.

I guess we’re still the same, getting into the strangest situations, how are we going to tell the others?

We don’t, they will freak out. I looked around.

There was nothing that could help us anymore. No useful text no hints. I sighed.

Greg, do I have permission to go all out when it's needed?

What’s this? Why do you ask? Don’t you normally do it anyways?

I just want you to be on board. The situation might look safe but we’re underwater in the belly of an enormous whale and in a dungeon, we kinda got the most dangerous situations piled on top of each other, the only way this could be worse is if we encountered a god in here. I want to stress that the ocean is merciless. It has kicked my ass many times and even killed me once. Again, we have passengers that are quite mortal, when push comes to shove and I have to tear the place down I want you to be on board. I extended my hand toward Greg.

I thought that you didn’t change after all these years, it seems you grew at least a bit. He shook my hand.

Sure, but I will join you. As you say we’re in a deceptively dangerous situation, this can all be flipped on its head at any moment. I will assist in tearing this place down when needed.

Perfect.