Getting out of the tunnel back to the golden gate was pretty easy. In fact, I had a sneaking suspicion that the space warped around me to ensure that it was the only way for me to go no matter what direction I picked.

When I tried going back toward the tunnels though, I couldn’t for the life of me find a way. The space just kept bending away from me. It felt so uncanny to be blocked from it now, even though seemingly nothing had changed.

I briefly glanced through the gate and saw a number of swimmer zombies still aimlessly milling around the first floor. I would eventually have to deal with them when I wanted to go back, wouldn’t I?

Not right now, though.

“Well, time for slide number two, chat,” I declared, not having any better ideas.

Unfortunately, to my displeasure, the space in the third floor had changed. I tried following the same path that had led me to the slides last time, but it only led me in circles to completely different spots around the area.

It didn’t help that the pools kept spitting out more zombies. Although I’d pretty much gotten used to all their tricks, and even when a dozen or so of them suddenly jumped me, I had no problem taking them out one by one while kiting them.

They were pretty dumb, after all. Easy to learn how to read. Just like video game mobs. I didn’t even need to worry too much about being snuck up on again once I figured out that if I just kept horizontally slashing with my naginata, it would inevitably smack into any zombies behind me as well, alerting me to any would-be sneak attackers.

Even still, it took way too long for me to finally find the new path to the slides. When I did, I wasted no time in doing the same trick with turning around and walking back, and to my surprise, it still worked.

“Huh, guess this isn’t like the lockers,” I mused as I crouched on the walkway, trying not to look down. “Thank god.”

GeorgeDoshington: lame

Jeofffff: well that’s good

“Shush, you, George.”

I gripped the railing and looked at my choices. Spiral chute or kiddy slide? Which one?

GeorgeDoshington: go for the steep one again lol

I glared at the group chat again.

Why had I invited him into the group chat? Was it really worth it to keep him around when he kept aggravating me and sending me to my doom? I’d kept him around since he tended to lighten up the mood, but…

“...Oh, no! It’s a tragedy! Sorry, George. I think the system glitched or something. It just suddenly kicked you from the group chat!” I said in an exaggeratedly distressed tone. “But don’t worry. I’m sure it will eventually fix itself by… let’s say tomorrow.”

Jeofffff: get owned George

PrestoFive55: should have done that earlier

“Anyway, next slide.” I briefly glanced at the kiddy slide before shrugging and going for the spiral chute instead. After all, if I had to go through all of them eventually, I might as well keep the mild one for last.

So with the naginata stuffed into my backpack, I sat down at the spiral chute slide and pushed myself down without any more preamble.

It started off pretty tame. The twists and turns of the thing made me remember my time at water parks as a kid and I momentarily forgot that I was in a dungeon. I couldn’t help but break out into a grin.

But each turn gradually got harsher and more extreme and the slide itself kept getting steeper as well. Before I knew it, the slide turned from a fun and exciting experience to a nerve-racking roller-coaster.

“Whoaaaaa–?!”

At some point, I felt like I was tumbling down a freaking laundry chute rather than enjoying a water slide.

Once again, I regretted everything.

When the chute finally deigned to release me, it unceremoniously spat me into a body of water. And just like the first time, I automatically breathed in a lungful of water right after hitting the surface.

I immediately took the towel out of my backpack and pressed it against my face while trying to figure out where the surface was. Unfortunately for me, I was all bruised and disoriented from my tumble earlier and couldn’t figure it out.

Luckily, I didn’t need to, because the inflatable sleeves actually did their job and swiftly delivered my scrambling mess of limbs to the surface, finally letting me breathe.

I gasped for breaths and coughed out the water from my lungs into the towel. Once I was fairly certain that I wasn’t drowning anymore, I put the towel away, wiped the water from my eyes with my shaky hands, and took a look at my surroundings.

As expected, it was another water-filled tunnel. Except this one branched in four directions. I was right in the middle of the crossroad.

I took a moment to just breathe, just to make sure that there was no water left in my lungs, before clearing my throat and letting out a groan.

“Why was this one worse than the last one? Ow…” I mumbled while rubbing the bruise on my arm.

Then I remembered that I was a fire healing tank and also had a bucket of regeneration sludge, so I lit up parts of my body that hurt on fire, creating a sizzle of steam all around me.

“Hold on…” I mumbled, looking through the steam nervously.

I stopped and made my way to one of the corners of the crossroads first, where I looked for a recess to perch myself on. I didn’t want to be out in the open where anything could suddenly ambush me.

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

Once I settled in with a decent view of my surroundings, I lit my bruises on fire again to heal.

KaiEbikoOfficial: hey Nana!

KaiEbikoOfficial: you okay?

“Ebi!” I cheered with a smile. “Eugh… I just slid down the spiral chute slide and it was kinda brutal, but other than that, I’m alright.”

KaiEbikoOfficial: oof

Then I perked up, bent in an awkward way, and reached into my backpack to pull out Mr. Gargles.

“Oh, and look, Ebi! I found a turtle plushie in a chest! I call him Mr. Gargles!”

KaiEbikoOfficial: omfg!

KaiEbikoOfficial: adorable!

KaiEbikoOfficial: finally something to hug for you

I giggled.

“Yeah! My sanity is saved!”

The two of us chatted back and forth for a few minutes while my bruises healed. At some point, I put Mr. Gargles back into the backpack, and awkwardly pulled out my bucket to munch on some ooze again to recover all the Ether I was using to heal.

And then, unfortunately…

“Huh?” I mentally prodded the bucket to dispense more ooze but it suddenly stopped listening to me. “Why is it… Oh, hold on. Did I run out of my special juice?!”

That… was actually less surprising in hindsight than I thought at first. Sure, I had picked up a ton of it back at the ooze lake, but I’d also been using it up constantly.

“...Well, that’s not good,” I mumbled while putting the bucket back. “I can’t easily go back right now. Ugh, I hope I don’t get lost in a maze like on floor two.”

I eyed the intersection suspiciously, silently hoping that I hadn’t screwed myself over by being careless. Worst case scenario, I’d find the boss room and accidentally trigger the boss without knowing my way back.

Well, hopefully, that wouldn’t happen.

Once I more or less couldn’t feel the bruises anymore, I slowly swam to the middle of the crossroad again and looked around myself.

“They all look the same, chat. I don’t think there’s even a point in polling this. I’ll just go in a random direction.”

So I did. I swam forward, thankful that I didn’t need to hug the wall again thanks to the swimming sleeves. I still wondered what else they could do, since everything in this dungeon’s chests had some kind of magical function even if it was minor. Maybe something to do with never needing to be inflated manually? Or were they lightning-resistant armor just like the ones the zombies had?

And what about Mr. Gargles? I already loved him, of course, but what else could he do? Could I inject Ether into him to bring him to life or something? That would be amazing!

For the time being, though, I opted not to try anything. I was already limited on Ether and I didn’t want to damage anything. The testing could wait till I got out of here and had Appraisal slotted back in.

My musings were interrupted by two flying fish plushies splashing out of the water in front of me and flying at me at full speed.

I instinctively shot a small Flame Bullet at one of them, shooting it out of the air, before remembering that I was working with a limited amount of Ether now since my bucket was empty. So for the second one, I summoned forth my key sword and managed to slash it in half as it flew at me.

I momentarily blinked in surprise at my accuracy despite my awkward position and then grinned in satisfaction.

From then on, I encountered several more fake fake fish and always tried to use the key blade to take them down, only resorting to using Flameguard or Fire Breath if any of them got too close.

In the meantime, the tunnel in front of me randomly curved around just like the first one and I also had a sneaking suspicion that it was also slowly turning from perfectly horizontal to going down.

“Chat, I swear. If this turns into a bigger version of the spiral chute slide…” I growled under my breath.

Several fish encounters later, the space around me abruptly shifted. One moment I was swimming down at a slightly inclined angle, and the next, the tunnel was perfectly vertical and I was falling.

“What the fuuuuu–?!” I screamed at the change.

The surroundings subtly and slowly shifting was one thing, but this was ridiculous!

I flailed my arms in panic as gravity dragged me down the hole. Millions of thoughts ran in my mind and I instinctively breathed in to use Fire Breath’s knockback to avoid crashing into the tunnel’s walls as it curved and bent.

But then I realized that I was falling much slower than I probably should be.

“Wha– How–?!” I gasped, completely forgetting to adjust my fall’s trajectory using Fire Breath.

“Oh shi–”

But it didn’t matter, because the space continued to warp around me to have me falling through the middle of the tunnel anyway. I was being railroaded into this exact direction for some reason.

Before my brain could catch up with all the unexpected surprises and come up with an appropriate quip, the tunnel finally opened up and I fell inside a large room filled with water with a splash.

“Bwuh!”

Thankfully, I didn’t breathe in any water and it didn’t take me long to find the surface this time to start gasping for breath. The sleeves definitely helped with that as well.

I glanced around, finding myself inside a large circular room with a single tunnel leading out of it besides the one up above. The currents around the room made the entire thing look like a whirlpool and I immediately felt uncomfortable being in the middle. Was it going to pull me under?

But before I could say or do anything, my surroundings rumbled and I yelped on instinct.

“What now?!”

The dungeon’s reply was a pink plush tentacle shooting out of the water behind me and curling around my left wrist before I could react in any way. I had a split second to feel shocked before it jerked my hand down and proceeded to drag the rest of my body underwater again.

My first response was to summon my key sword and slash at it. Despite the resistance of the water, I managed to cut the damn thing off and swim back to the surface.

Unfortunately, that was just the beginning.

The rest of the tentacle rose above the water again and I could visibly see it regenerating the bit I’d cut off. In the meantime, the tentacle remains still wrapped around my wrist suddenly moved, snaked up my arm, and curled around my neck, making me choke.

I lit my neck on fire full force even as I instinctively dropped my key sword and brought my hands up to my neck to try and rip it off.

Luckily, it worked, and the burnt piece of plush tentacle – which smelled like fried calamari now – stopped moving and fell off of me.

Unfortunately, that didn’t help with the root of the problem.

The main tentacle had fully regenerated by now and was about to whip at me again.

I quickly breathed in and spat out a cone of fire to hold it back before scrambling to swim to the exit.

The tentacle was relentless though. It kept swiping at me, trying to grab me and pull me under again. My counter-attacks only pushed it back a little and it quickly regenerated anyway. Worst of all, once I finally made it near the exit, the damn circular currents pulled me to the side and away from the tunnel, making me swear under my breath.

I activated my time-slowing bracelet, hoping to swim through the slowed down currents while it was active. Unfortunately, the currents around me didn’t let up even if the tentacle was clearly moving in slow motion.

“Wha– Why?!” I yelled in outrage.

I turned the skill off and the moment I did, the water around me seemed to stagger in a weird way, causing the currents to momentarily go haywire, tossing me all over the place.

The tentacle hadn’t stopped its assault in the meantime and as soon as the currents went back to normal, I was once again being dragged underwater by my ankle.

I lit my foot on fire, making it burst with steam, which was enough for the tentacle to back off, luckily.

After quickly swimming back to the surface and gasping for breath, my mind scrambled to think of anything else I could do in my situation, and I latched onto the first idea I had.

I lifted my legs up, placed my left hand under myself, tried to position myself so that the tunnel was in front of me, and then I did several things in rapid succession. I created a bubble with my glove, placed my feet on it, and before it could automatically fire off, I lit the glove itself on fire, disturbing the bubble’s surface, and making it pop.

The resulting wave of pressure dazed me a little, but it seemed to have done the task of propelling me forward and into the tunnel.

I splashed into the water there and scrambled to quickly swim away through the tunnel before the tentacle caught up to me.

The currents pushing me back into the room really didn’t help, but I did my best.