As it turned out, being violently dragged deep down underwater was a lot less terrifying when you weren’t afraid of drowning.

Granted, there was nothing to indicate that Zoe didn’t need air, even if she no longer needed food—and with just a single point of mana, she wouldn’t be left with many options. But whether it was a result of her radically altered biology or just the effects of her prior adventures, Zoe didn’t really panic at all.

As the already dim light of the cavern above faded away into complete darkness, a deep crimson glow from below took its place. The pressure massively increased as well—Zoe already had to be far, far deeper than she had been even at the bottom of the deep end of a large swimming pool.

She decided not to struggle. I’ll just tired myself out and probably injure myself even worse. Since neither she nor the paladin seemed capable of dealing with whatever this was, there was no point in resisting at the present moment.

Fortunately, whatever the monster actually was suddenly changed course and yanked Zoe to the side. As they were already likely over several dozen meters deep, Zoe didn’t mind being banged back and forth several times against the rough rocks of the flooded depths. The pressure on her skull—particularly ears, and even chest too—had increased disproportionately. Getting banged and scraped up a little seemed preferable to being completely crushed.

As the submerged tunnels rapidly raced past, Zoe turned inwards, focusing on her {Meditation}. As her mana began to quickly tick up point by point, she tried to get a better view of her surroundings and what else was going on.

The water definitely wasn’t devoid of life. Zoe sensed plenty of creatures flitting through the depths, many of them being swept around and violently brushed away by the turbulence of their passage. Blasting through a large school of faintly bioluminescent somethings that Zoe didn’t get a chance to study, they suddenly veered back down to head deeper.

Zoe’s head was now truly pounding, and her chest was quickly tightening, a constriction squeezing harder and faster. Okay, so I do need to breathe. Maybe. But now that Zoe’s {Meditation} had brought her mana reserves back up to a useable—if still low—level, she could finally begin actively addressing that.

{Corrupt Wound} instantly revived her vigor, but ironically increased the pain. Probably because my head is clearing and my nerves can actually feel things again. It was still slow, as she could only match the rate at which active meditation increased her recovery—but it was still a remarkable rate of regeneration given her battered state.

It’ll still take a while.

Zoe was under no illusions that she’d be in proper fighting shape quickly. Her body was still far more broken than it was healed, and the process left her unable to save up any reasonable amount of mana.

Fortunately, the invisible bindings constricting around her chest rapidly relaxed and slipped away. Well that’s handy. I guess fixing suffocation counts as healing. Unfortunately, the pounding in her skull was only amplifying further. It felt like something deep in her ears was about to rupture. Not good!

Briefly withdrawing her attention from the entire rest of her body, Zoe directed all of her corruption to her skull and ear canals. At the same time, she reinforced her head with {Kinetic Enhancement} and even activated {Morph} to try to temporarily seal off her ears.

It worked like a charm. Not only did the pounding recede completely, but the physical sensation of crushing pressure almost vanished completely as well. The only problem was that the parallel use of different abilities dropped her mana all the way back down to zero before she had even completely finished.

{Corrupt Wound has leveled up! Corrupt Wound is now level 3.}

{Kinetic Enhancement has leveled up! Kinetic Enhancement is now level 9.}

{Morph has leveled up! Morph is now level 6.}

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Thanks! Zoe was pleased. Might as well take my wins where I can get them. While her gut reaction was to be annoyed at the temporary setback, she quickly forced herself to acknowledge that it was actually progress. Fixing your body and stopping your skull from imploding is kind of important.

Now forced to maintain the balance of healing and physical protection with the rate at which her mana recovered, Zoe watched as her reserves chaotically oscillated between around one and two points. Stop watching it! Tearing her mental gaze away, Zoe focused on just maintaining it by feel.

It worked, and before long she had gotten it down to a perfect balance. In fact, when she finally checked again, it had risen up to a grand total of six. I bet if it weren’t already max, my {Meditation} would have leveled up from that. Zoe paused as a dim flare of pale golden light streamed through the dark water from somewhere ahead in the distance—followed by a pulse of crimson.

Oh yeah, she’s probably still alive too. That’s gonna still be a problem.

Zoe quickly went back to ignoring it. Should I go ahead and rank up {Meditation}?

Instead of coming to a decision immediately, Zoe procrastinated by adding in yet another task of trying to draw extra mana from her surroundings with {Arcane Manipulation}. Thinking back to the horrible trip on Lily’s flying sword, Zoe tried to replicate her process. The main difference was that the relative speed of the mana was a lot slower but it was also a lot thinner. Oh well.

What Zoe recognized as water mana began flooding into her channels, significantly supplementing her use of {Meditation}. After about half a minute, Zoe’s mana had climbed all the way up to fifty. A few more flashes of opposing lights struck through the dark. Zoe didn’t pay much attention to them.

For a moment, she eyed the pulsating, red and purple-black tentacle dragging her along. That’s got to have a shit ton of mana. She resisted the urge to bite it. Probably not worth angering this thing. So far it’s not actually hurting me.

In any case, she suddenly realized that there was a subtle inefficiency in her combination of {Meditation} and {Arcane Manipulation}. While using both did increase her net regeneration, the two abilities were actually subtly interfering with each other and reducing the effectiveness of each.

Maybe if— Zoe tried switching the water mana she gathered from her own core to the new, artificial cavity formed by {Arcane Reservoir}. Not only did it work—but she came to find that the chamber was now seemingly twice as large.

{Arcane Reservoir - 2, Gold}

Reservoir: 8 / 700

Woah! Zoe did a double-take. It really did double, and it’s level two… does that mean it will keep increasing like that until level twenty?!

If that ended up being true, her effective maximum mana would grow by a literal order of magnitude. So what’s the catch…

Now more interested in exploring her abilities than in the paladin, the un-analyzable tentacle monster, or the threat of drowning—really, the situation wasn’t that dire now—Zoe experimented with drawing on the bit of mana she had steadily been accumulating in the expanded cavity.

The water mana burst out of her spirit far faster than she had anticipated. Trying to stem the flow, Zoe attempted to cut it off—but it absolutely did not work. The mana she had steadily worked to collect poured out back into the water until the reservoir was completely empty.

So it lets me store massive amounts of mana, but then I have to use it all at once? That was still pretty good, all things considered. Also, while Zoe hadn’t really been paying any attention to the effects that her collected water mana had on the actual water, evidently the System had been.

{You have learned Water Manipulation!}

Oh, cool.

A strong tremor thrummed through the coiling appendage which had been groping her. It twitched, jerking her violently, and then the water seemed to grow far, far colder. A strange, violet light shimmered ahead. Huh. That might be something important.

Zoe glanced over her abilities. While her body was now about halfway repaired, her mana was still in quite poor shape. She also had a feeling that things were about to get exciting again. By which I mean incredibly violent.

Narrowing her eyes, Zoe looked one more time at her level twenty meditation. Well, I got a new ability and I haven’t even leveled it yet. Also, water sounds meditative, right? Zoe flicked her eyes around. I’m also surrounded by water.

{Rank up Meditation and consume Water Manipulation?}

Yes.

{You have learned Water Meditation!}

{Water Meditation - 1, Silver}

Zoe stared. Well that’s a little anticlimactic. Still, it didn’t seem like she had made a horrible choice. Or at least it doesn’t SOUND that way. She didn’t waste any time activating the new ability. The difference was immediately obvious—she was far, far more aware of the flow of mana throughout her channels. She couldn’t ignore the currents—and it was embarrassingly obvious now that there was far too much wasteful turbulence. Not bad!

But even as Zoe began the arduous task of streamlining her magic—all while still trying to heal and fight the crushing pressure—she was suddenly rising, violet magic raged around her, the water rushed by so fast that she was almost torn away.

She didn’t even realize she broke the surface until she started falling back down out of the air.