The barrier that separated the depths of the sea in three parts, was surely magical. This was the only way to explain this wide, glowing blanket, that acted as a border at the two-thousand meter depth mark!

In his finite wisdom, George guessed that one of the mana gods had set this specific barrier, as means to restrict the fish kind. He wasn't too far off with his guess.

The sea was massive, it had hundreds of thousands of species in it, billions of inhabitants, and paired with the fact that each living creature bore mana, and therefore magical powers, it was only reasonable for a mana god to set barriers within the sea. With little to no effort, the barriers maintained a certain, peaceful equilibrium across the seas, and that was all there was to it!

For George, and his aspirations to become a greater being, however, these barriers were a direct challenge, rather than a taboo topic. He had to pass through the first barrier, and survive whatever challenges hid within its dungeons, just so he could get to the other side of this massive, purple blanket!

“Dungeons beware… of me!” He tried to be poetic.

Afterwards, he rushed towards the barrier, and hoped to use his fat head to pierce through it! His idea was terrible, because he could get zapped out of existence before he even reached the barrier, but thankfully, the system in his head was more well-informed.

Before George got too close to the barrier, she shot a single dot of pure, blue mana forwards, and she pulled this dot of mana right out of George's body! She used his last, single mana point, but this wasn't for nothing, because she shot the point forwards as an offering of sorts. She offered the barrier a single point of mana, and it worked, the offering was accepted!

The barrier then opened up to accept the stubborn meat-head that was rushing towards it! The system saved his life.

George swam into the barrier, without killing himself in the process, and afterwards, the six-foot wide hole that allowed him to swim into the barrier, closed behind him! He successfully survived the very first task of his attempt to cross to the other side, and now, he was in the purple dungeons of the barrier.

[What happened back there, George? I upgraded your IQ so you wouldn't do stupid things like this, and yet despite the tremendous gifts of evolution that I gave you, you insist on making things harder for yourself! Why did you rush into the barrier?] She scolded, and rightfully so.

“I scared the barrier, that's why it let me swim into its dungeons!” He boasted.

Despite how oblivious he was, the system didn't bother arguing with him, because she didn’t want to distract him. George's life could be threatened any minute now, as the dungeons within the thick, seemingly endless purple barrier, weren't meant to be welcoming. The dungeons were dangerous!

George felt like he was in a fever dream. The dungeons didn't feature anything solid, but rather, he was trapped within these seemingly endless clouds of purple mist! The entire spectrum of shades of the color purple was present here, and this helped him define his surroundings a little bit, but ultimately, he only knew to swim upwards right now, because that was the only direction that made sense!

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After ten minutes of swimming upwards, he felt like he wasn't going anywhere. The purple clouds were endless, and thus, he didn’t see a point in just muscling through them until he saw the light, on the other side of the barrier. Apart from the luminous glow of the purple clouds, there was no other source of light here, as he was two kilometers below the sea surface, after all.

Out of desperation, he asked. “What am I supposed to do now, system? When do I get to fight some more anglerfish?”

As if to answer his question, he then suddenly saw a monstrous fish materializing in front of him! It wasn’t an anglerfish, but it did have horrendous jaws. This monster started out as a mere, puffy cloud, but within seconds, it materialized into a five-foot long, buff, mutant-like fish!

“Amazing what mana can do, right? That fish has to be made out of mana.” He guessed.

This fish was three-feet wide, so its girth, and muscle strength was beyond normal, unprecedented even! George knew right on the spot that he had to fight it, and that was exactly what he did.

Instinctively, he tried to summon his magical ability, and attack this monstrous, dark-purple fish from a distance, but he couldn’t. He just realized that he didn't have any more mana left, and this shocked him beyond measure!

“Where's my mana, system?!” He yelled.

Quick as a flash, she explained. [I offered it as a sacrifice to open the barrier, so you don't have any more mana left. You didn't get here with your fat head, George, I had to make a calculative move, out of your uncalculated move. Speaking of your fat head, it's your best weapon right now, so I recommend that you use it!]

George wanted to argue with the system, and his argument would be harrowingly illogical, but he had been staring the monster down for half a minute now, and he just knew that it was going to attack, so he didn’t have time to argue. This was a dungeon, after all, and however weird this dungeon may be, he didn’t have the option to remain neutral with its guardians, and or inhabitants! He had to fight!

The monster charged forwards a second later, and George decided to do the same, except he didn't have enough of a momentum to collide with the enemy, so he swam forward as fast as he could, and the moment before he, and the monster were about to collide, he swam upwards! This was a great move!

The monster was too big to stop, and turn around in time, so he used this opportunity to make a sharp U-turn, and after that point he really picked up the pace! He had made a sharp turn, and now, he was heading towards the monster at full speed!

Once the monster turned around, George didn't even give it a chance to swim an inch further, because he crashed into it! He hit the monster using his big, pointy, and fat head, thus almost knocking it unconscious!

Initially he hadn't been such an explosive swimmer, but after the couple of bone-altering evolutions that the system gave him, the muscle mass on his body had increased by five kilos! He delivered a nasty blow to the monster, even though in length, he was two feet shorter than it!

“Haha!” He celebrated after the collision.

Before he swam away, he had the infinite wisdom to take a bite off of the monster, and this was when the system started putting in some work. She started harvesting the monster's Blood, Bone, and Mana Essence, thus, killing it almost instantly!

“The monster may have been purple, but I'm pink!” He boasted, and he tried to be poetic again, but he ultimately failed, because his sentence didn't even make any sense.

The important thing was that the battle was over, before it could properly begin. He survived an attack from a monstrous fish!