"Master! I have made a discovery which may be useful to you." Venilia bursts out of the swamp water, yet the water still seemed completely unaffected.

"Hmm? What discovery is that?"

"That is, the water here may seem shallow, but there are certain sections which lead underground."

"That is correct. A world tree occupied this swamp centuries ago. After it's roots retracted they could have left tunnels." The swamp tree seems to confirm Venilia's discovery.

"This is good. As I was brought here Tarin must be here as well. It would make a lot of sense if he is somewhere underground." I nod at my conjecture. "Excuse us swamp tree, Venilia and I shall be taking our leave."

"Goodbye human." The swamp tree closes it's eyes and the face retracts back into the tree.

Looking towards Venilia I nod my head and she leads the way to the entrance of the waterway. After tredging carefully through the muddy swamp we arrived at a pool of clean, yet dark water. The darkness is msot likely due to depth rather than anything else.

"Venilia, while I may be able to manipulate the water to a certain extent, I do not believe I could survive underwater." I make a worried expression hoping that Venilia did not overlook that I am human.

"Do not worry, it is easily within my power to allow you to breath underwater in a number of ways. There is equipment you can wear, a spell that temporarily gives you gills, but it is probably easiest to just create a bubble to travel in." Venilia begins to list off all of our options.

"I think I would just prefer the bubble, but won't we run out of oxygen?" Venilia really must explain stuff right at once without doing so I will of course become worried.

"That is not a problem, the bubble has a membrane on the outside which acts similar to gills allowing only what you can breath inside. It's not only limited to use in the water as well."

"I see, that's fine then. Let's go!" Heading the party Venilia dives into the water. I follow after confirming the bubble is there.

It gets harder and harder to see as we progress ever further down into the watery hole. The first few dozen meters down was rather pleasant to the eyes as beautiful stones lined the walls and lightly lit the tunnel. I've honestly had enough of tunnels to last me a few decades… I could never be a miner. Though it seems crystals have grown on me.

"Venilia, how much further until we get to the actual underground area?"

"Not very far at all. The lighting gets much brighter right before the exit from this water. I didn't explore outside of the water, so I can't be sure to expect." She makes an apologetic face towards me. Hopefully she doesn't feel responsible if anything dangerous happens.

After finally arriving at a branch of the tunnel I am astounded by the sight before my eyes. Unlike the glowing rocks closer to the surface this area was lit completely by bioluminescent mushrooms. The bright pale green light mushrooms grow all around the circular tunnel entrance and also spread much further down into the water.

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"This place is so pretty..." I stand in the water staring at the light for a while before heading down the tunnel.

The tunnel is nearly the same as the previous one except being horizontal instead of vertical. After a few minutes of travel we reach the end of a tunnel and find an exit above us.

"This is the underground area, I'm not sure how far it goes, but I was able to breath inside." Venilia follows me up as I climb out of the water.

"It's bright?" The room we entered into was lit relatively brightly and it takes my eyes a moment to adjust.

"Ahh!" I nearly have a heart attack and fall over on my butt. Venilia also covers her mouth in shock, but she seems much more calm than I am.

What startled me were the tens of skeletons lining the walls carrying lanterns. The bullseye lanterns emit a warm orange glow and cover the walls, floor, and ceiling down the tunnel as far as I can see. Each skeleton is the same height as the other and the light reflects dully off of their bodies. Each skeleton somehow stands up completely straight without any sort of mechanism holding them up, so I go closer to investigate them.

Rather than the off-white color that clean bones usually are these are all a dark grey with a slight shine. Instead of being bones they are actually some sort of metal!

"What kind of prank..." I quietly grumble in embarassment after I displayed such a side of myself to Venilia. "Venilia, do you know what kind of metal it is?" I had studied basic metals in between magic and alchemy studies. Of course I might not be able to identify a metal with a hundred percent certainty, but I should at least be able to gain a basic understanding on what it is.

"It does not seem to be any metal I recognize, of course my knowledge on surface use metals is limited. This metal is not one that I have seen myself, or if it is then it has been combined with something else."

"I see, are metals used underwater different than on the surface? I guess you can't use iron or iron alloys due to oxidation right?" My basic understanding of rust lets me know that the underwater world must use metals that aren't used as regularly on the surface.

"Ahh that is not quite the case. If necesary we tend to use bronze due to it's stronger recistance against salt water, and what you said about iron is true. However, our weapons are often made from bone, stone, and similar more natural materials. Forging metals is particularly awkward underwater as you could imagine. There are a number of powerful sea beasts that can be killed for their bones and scales."

"I see, it might seem primitive to those of us who use metals, but if it's not possible to easily refine metals then learning to use natural stuff more efficiently is the best." I nod my head in understand while filing away the information in my head.