I spent the next few days with my friends and family. I did all that I could to prepare – which wasn’t much, considering how little we knew about what lay under the surface of the ocean. I wanted to say goodbye, in case I didn’t return. My mother and father had uneasy expressions on their faces as I talked about what should happen in the case of my death, but seemed to acknowledge the necessity of being prepared in advance.

During that time, the outsiders didn’t keep sailing in the wrong direction. After another day of sailing the wrong way, they had stopped and started circling around. This made everyone even more certain that the outsiders were here for us; they just didn’t know exactly where our islands were. Yet.

On the final day, I spent a few hours with Arne, talking about the days when I had still been an apprentice under him and reminiscing about all I had learned under his guidance. I spent some time with the fishing boat and its members, reminiscing about the times I had spent under Olav learning to fly the boat, and the fish I had caught with Claus and Edel. Sallia, Felix and I also walked the beaches of the island, admiring the view of the island we had spent nearly a decade and a half living on.

Finally, two days after I informed the village chief of my decision, I decided it was time. I took a deep breath, trying to suppress both my fear and my excitement, as I stared at the shore of the island. Beneath the waves of the ocean, I could feel the slight effects of the call of the ocean, making me want to step deeper into the waves and never return to the surface. Sallia, Felix, and my parents watched me, unflinching, as I stared at the ocean. I checked my fish core pouch one more time, making sure it was fastened securely and that the orbs wouldn’t float away while I was underwater.

I took one last look at my parents, as well as the village chief, Olav’s crew, master Arne, and my friends. Everyone had come to see me off. Felix and Sallia both sighed, before they approached me. Felix put his hand on my shoulder, and looked me in the eyes. “Stay safe, Miria. You better not leave me alone to solve Sallia’s keyword Ability problem. I’m still counting on your help for that. You’re not the kind of friend who breaks her promises, right? So I’ll be waiting for you to return.”

“I’ll do my best,” I said.

Then Sallia gave me a hug, her rune-empowered arms squeezing me tightly enough for my ribs to make alarming creaking sounds. “Don’t leave me alone for the rest of this life. You’re my best friend, and I don’t want to live another few decades without you here.”

I smiled, and gave her a tight squeeze. “I’ll do my best to come back.”

“If you don’t, when we get back to the Market I’ll kick your ass and throw you to the skeletons,” she said, leaning closer and dropping her volume so that the non-transmigrators wouldn’t hear her.

I chuckled a bit at that.

“I’ll keep it in mind. Whatever is down there can’t be as scary as you, especially if I don’t have an advantage in rune count.”

“You better keep it in mind.” Sallia gave me a small, nervous grin before she retreated. Her expression looked a bit forced, but she was doing her best to see me off with a smile.

After Sallia and Felix withdrew, my father walked up to me and hugged me. He didn’t say anything, but he hugged me tightly enough to give Sallia a run for her money. Finally, my mother leaned down and gave me a quick peck on the forehead.

“Stay safe. Return home alive, okay? You said you would return within six hours of entering the ocean, at most. So I’ll make dinner for you tonight. Don’t let it go to waste, and come back safe.”

“I will.”

Finally, the village chief gave me a nod. “I hope you find something beneath the waves,” said the village chief. “But if you can’t, come back immediately. The villages are still debating whether we should hope the outsiders don’t find our village, or try to sink them before they find our islands. We’ll probably come to a decision within a week at most, and if they start heading in the right direction we will probably initiate the fight. So find whatever you can as fast as you can, and then return safely or you will have taken this giant risk for nothing. Your safety comes first, little Miria.”

“I’ll keep it in mind, chief.” I gave the village chief a respectful nod.

I took one final look at my friends and family. The people I wanted to protect. Would they be safe while I was beneath the water? Would they worry about me while I was gone?

Would I ever see them again? I knew I would see Sallia and Felix again, but if I died, I would never see my mother and father again. I didn’t want my time in this world to end yet. I loved my time here. I enjoyed the days spent under the hot sun, flying through the air and searching for Great Fish to hunt. I loved spending time with the villagers, laughing and playing in the multicolored sands. Despite the madness-inducing ocean, the horrifying landbeasts, and the occasional creatures of the deep like the Glowing Fish, I was happy in this world.

I took a deep breath, and then stopped thinking about my fears and worries. I stepped into the water.

Then, utilizing both my power to manipulate water and my rune-enhanced muscles, I took another step into the ocean, and another. In seconds, I was submerged in the waves, before I started to swim deeper.

I began to run out of oxygen as the water crushed me, devouring any remnants of warmth or oxygen in my body. The Call of the Ocean began to grow more and more intense as I swam deeper, and I heard crazed murmurings at the edge of my hearing start to fade in and out of existence, whispering of things I couldn’t see or understand. I frowned. I had expected the Call of the Ocean to grow more intense once I was underwater, but the effect was much more severe than I had imagined. I closed my eyes for a moment, and I noticed that the Call of the Ocean didn’t completely disappear this time. Normally, one was completely safe from the Call as long as they broke eye contact, but once I was beneath the water that seemed to be incorrect. Even with my eyes closed, the Call of the Ocean still exerted some influence on my mind, even if it was reduced in strength. I shivered, before I opened my eyes again. For a few moments, I wondered if it had been a mistake to absorb the Fragment of the Ocean’s Heart. Even though it gave me an extra rune ability, making me much stronger, it had also eroded my Willpower, which was making it harder for me to resist the Call now. However, it was still manageable, if barely. I gritted my teeth.

I might need to cut my adventure even shorter than expected. I probably couldn’t last more than two hours under the enhanced Call of the Ocean, or I would never return to the surface. Since I would need to spend time traveling back to the surface and getting away from the ocean, my time in each exploration would be even more limited than I had expected.

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Finished with my initial assessment of my new environment, I began to pour mana into my fourth rune. Water began to turn itself into healing, and after a few moments, my body stopped dying. I was instead kept in a state of constantly drowning, dying and healing myself over and over again as my lungs screamed for me to stop and return to the surface. I ignored the pain of drowning as I swam deeper, determined to make the most of the time I had.

It took less than a minute for the next problem to surface. The water pressure was rapidly increasing. My rune-enhanced body was sufficient to deal with the water pressure at first, but soon, even with my grade 8 Fortitude, I was unable to ward off the crushing pressure. The cost of healing myself each second started to increase as water sought to grind my flesh and bones into dust, leeching away at my mana reserves. I was forced to concentrate extra healing on my eyes, trying to keep them from popping like grapes as the water tried to squeeze me into paste. Finally, the light began to fade, dimming as I sank beneath the monstrosity-infested waves of the ocean.

Five minutes later, I stopped moving downwards and took a few minutes to process my surroundings, as well as my current condition. Since this was my first adventure into the ocean, I prioritized my safety over moving around; I needed to figure out what problems I would face in future explorations, and being too hasty might kill me. The water pressure, as well as the dimming light, was making it harder to see with my regular human vision. However, the distortions I often saw in the space around me were amplified the further I went underwater, providing me with a strange, distorted view of the world around me. Instead of color and depth, I saw shapes and energy, swirling around and through the cracks of reality that underpinned this world’s existence. Each distortion didn’t affect the world around it unless prodded, but with a single poke of my mana, it would easy to rip open a fissure in reality and teleport…

For now, however, I didn’t need to teleport anymore. Instead, I focused on the strange vision my Fragment of the Ocean’s Heart provided me with. Since my regular eyes weren’t able to cope with my current environment, I was suddenly thankful that the Fragment helped me see, even if I wasn’t used to relying on my spatial vision alone. Since space was far more distorted beneath the surface, I began to suspect that exploration would have been impossible with some sort of access to spatial eyesight.

After some debate, I spent several minutes without moving further into the ocean, acclimating myself to my new, warped method of sight. After some acclimation, I was able to see properly again.

Around me was a vast tract of empty water. At least so far, the biggest dangers to me were the water pressure and drowning, and I was still handling those well enough. I took a moment to absorb one of my fish cores, since my mana had started to get too low for my comfort.

Then, I took a moment to revel in the empty space, the sense of stillness and beauty found under the sea as. Just because this place was terrifying didn’t mean it wasn’t also beautiful. Then, finally adjusted to using my sense for spatial distortions as a method of sight, I began swimming down again, keeping an eye on the underwater portion of our island so that I wouldn’t get lost.

At least, that was my intention. I had expected that the island would ultimately connect to the ocean’s floor at some point in time, sort of like a mountain that was simply submerged in water.

This assumption was wrong. The island looked like a giant cube made of stone and sand, jutting into the water like the sheer face of a cliff. And then, when I swam far enough below the island, it just… ended.

Directly underneath the submerged portion of the island was more ocean. Our island was floating on the surface of the ocean. It wasn’t directly connected to the ocean floor at all. And I had no idea where the real ocean floor was.

I swam a little underneath the island, reaching out my hand above me as I tried to figure out what kept the islands afloat. Why didn’t they bob in the waves? What kept all of the islands from drifting apart from each other? As far as I knew, the islands all remained about the same distance from each other. Whatever our islands were, they were… far more odd and unique than I had realized. It wasn’t just the ocean that was weird; the islands themselves were also very different from what I had expected.

When I touched the underside of the island, I felt like I was grasping something even harder than stone. It didn’t feel quite like metal, but I had no idea what I was touching. I ran my hand along the bottom of the island a few more times, and confirmed that the texture remained rough and hard. The material was also rich in mana, so after some thinking, I decided it was probably a material with some sort of magical effect.

Then, I inwardly sighed, and turned away. The strange material lining the bottom of our island was probably some sort of magical material, but it had a good chance of being what kept our island afloat as well. If I removed it, or messed with it too much, I might sink the island, dumping the village into the ocean. That would be a massive catastrophe, so I would need to look elsewhere for useful materials.

I gave up and began swimming further down into the inky abyss.

The water pressure continued to ramp up, getting stronger and stronger. When I could feel a horrifying pain beginning to assault my eyes and ears, I stopped again, trying to figure out if my healing would be able to keep up with any further increases in water pressure. I didn’t want my eyes to pop and leave me blind for the rest of this life. But I hadn’t found anything useful for the islanders yet. I didn’t want to give up this quickly.

Before I could sink further into my thoughts, however, with my distorted vision I saw something massive beneath me.

It was so far away that I could barely see it in the murky light. However, my instincts were screaming at me that whatever I was seeing, it was far more dangerous than the Glowing Fish from years ago. I stopped moving, preparing to teleport upwards the moment it noticed me. I needed to be prepared to flee as fast as possible.

The massive creature swam beneath me, either unaware or uncaring of my existence. As it passed by me, I was able to sense how large the creature was, even with my distorted and imperfect vision. It was probably almost a quarter of the size of the island I had lived on all my life. It had several limbs, though my vision wasn’t precise enough to make out the number or details of each limb in detail. Each limb, however, was dozens of times larger than my house, and the way they twisted and turned in the water made me inexplicably think of a giant underwater spider.

Luckily, it simply kept swimming by, quickly leaving my field of vision.

After it passed by, I shivered, wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into, before I did my best to calm down. I had known that this place would be dangerous. I snatched some mana from the ocean around me, taking a few minutes to refill my mana again, before I started swimming downwards. I was slower and more cautious now, making sure my body could take the punishment I was putting it through and that I retained a clear sense of where my island was.

Ten minutes later, I came across something quite a bit more familiar to me; it was a school of fish.

To be more precise, it was the same species of Great Fish we usually ate on the islands. Here, however, there weren’t just a few dozen scattered across the entirety of the surface of the ocean.

This school of fish contained hundreds, if not thousands of the Great Fish. Each of them was still as massive as the fish on the surface – large enough that killing one could feed the island for days and provide us with almost all of the materials we needed to survive. However, here, I could see dozens of them swimming by every second as I watched, and the number passing me quickly surpassed hundreds.

And they were all swimming as a single unit – a large school of fish so massive that they nearly blotted out my ability to see anything else in the area. After noticing none of them were like the glowing fish, I relaxed. The Great Fish had never been very violent. I stopped for a moment to simply admire the view. It wasn’t often I saw hundreds of mammoth-sized fish swim by.

As I started to swim down again, however, alarm bells started ringing in my mind. I couldn’t see it very well, but I was suddenly certain that far below me, a massive, multifaceted eye was looking straight at me.