Splashing into the cold water headfirst, I quickly swam downward with my illuminated skin lighting the way. I was kind of lighting myself up like a beacon to everything that might be ahead, but it was the only way I’d be able to see currently in the lightless underwater tunnels. I was hoping that most of the things that lived in these dark caves wouldn’t even be able to see light, so even though I was lighting myself up like a lighthouse, it was an acceptable risk.
The gray stone cave was barren and without any life. As I navigated through its bends and twists, going mostly in a downward direction, the tunnel opened up into a wide open area big enough to fit at least a few houses inside of it, with many different stalactite and stalagmite filled tunnels branching out of the room.
When my shining skin lit up the dark area, I heard deep, almost rumbling, noises vibrate through my skull more than my eardrums. I couldn’t tell what direction the sound had come from, so I looked all around above and below me, and then I saw some movement. My light seemed to have woken up a group of 4 serpentine monsters laying on the floor of the cavern on a patch of colorful moss. Their pointed faces were stone-like with small holes for nostrils and six eyes running along its face. Their mouths opened in a viscous sneer with many rows of needle like teeth that were bared in my direction. They had triangular scales and many different fins down the length of their bodies.
The long creatures darted in my direction giving me almost no time to observe them. I pulled out a long spear I had obtained from the Dragon’s hoard and got ready for action.
I had never really used any weapons before, but I figured that a long sharp spear would at least allow me to keep the serpentine creatures at bay while I casted my magic. I swam towards the side of the tunnel I was in and placed my back to it, the less directions I had to keep track of while fighting the better.
The 4 creatures had already closed half the distance between us while it took me the same amount of time to move a few meters, the difference between our speeds in the water was not even close. Seeing their speed I knew that I would have to incapacitate them somehow if I wanted to have any chance of killing them. The best method I had was to use a mind link spell like I had on the Raijū, so I used my minds to prepare not only a wide area mind link spell, but also to augment my body to be tough enough to withstand those sharp needle like teeth.
Just like when I fought the Raijū my mind link spell took about half of my max mana but was quick to form. Though even with its quick formation the spell didn’t finish before the creatures arrived before me.
They swarmed me like moths to a flame and I had to wildly swish my spear around to keep them at bay before my mental link spell finished and expanded outwards in a shell away from me, linking me to each of the 4 creatures' alien minds.
Normally the best I could do at this point would be to send a mental scream, because the minds of these creatures were too alien for me to accurately target them in any specific manner. However in the past I had actually had the unfortunate experience of being on the receiving end (although indirectly) of an ancient Kraken adept at mental magic. It was a horrible experience that I tried not to recall too often, but on the plus side it did give me something that I was able to use in my current situation.
A certain sealed packet of memories that I took care to never open was sent down the 4 mental connections I had with the creatures. Upon receiving this packet of memories the serpentine-like creatures, which were as lively as electricity, suddenly froze like they had witnessed their greatest fear, and that wasn’t far off the truth. If I were more powerful the creature's hearts would likely have stopped beating at this point.
Reacting quickly to their frozen state, I slashed off each of their heads as fast as I could before they could move again. But I needn't have worried about them moving again, because even as I went to cut off the last creature’s head it was unmoving and without reaction to the death around it, its eyes wide with fear.
Wow, I guess that the mental attack the Kraken gave me is much more effective on sea creatures than it is on Humans. Though I guess that even when it was used on me it was enough to give me a lasting fear of tentacles, and I was even able to isolate the memory entirely. I couldn’t imagine what kind of mental damage it would cause to these serpent-like creatures if they had been allowed to live, and I wasn’t even able to send even one percent of the entire memory.
The thought sent shivers down my spine, but I pushed those thoughts aside. With the battle over I hurriedly stored away the scaly corpses of the 4 monsters. I didn’t want any more dark red blood than was already in the water to seep out and attract other predators.
With that out of the way I took another look around the cave room to see where I should go next. Some of the pathways leading out of the room were filled with various forms of plant life and even some tiny fishes and crabs. Another few were the same as the one I came from, plain and barren. There was one other type of pathway that looked like a swirling vortex that got more violent and turbulent the further into the tunnel it went, it seemed to be pulling in water from all of the different pathways leading into this room but the pull wasn’t significant unless nearby.
The vortex tunnel was very intriguing, and I would definitely have to come back to it sometime, but for now I decided to follow the signs of life to try and find a Colossal Medousa to get the collection of materials over with as soon as possible. So I swam into the tunnel with the most abundant signs of life.
While moving along the tunnel I was ambushed by many different forms of life ranging from small swarms of fish to large crabs and crustaceans. I threw all of the things I killed into a pool of water inside of my Internal World that I had thrown in a few ice veins to keep everything chilled and preserved for later.
After 3 hours following along the path with the most abundant signs of life, and passing multiple different offshoots, the tunnel opened up into a wide open cavern. The tunnel opened up on one side of the enormous cavern giving a magnificent view of the place. The cavern was many kilometers across to the opposite side, and even wider than that in the other direction. There were pillars, caves, and a pocketwork of rocks and tunnels decorating the bottom of the cavern along with a magnificent variety of sea creatures and plant life.
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And floating around in the open area within the cavern were the things I was looking for, Colossal Medousas, with a variety of vibrant glowing colors floating all around in the vast cavern, with each one looking like its own moving island of vibrant life. Each Medousa had many different types of fish swimming in and around it, either guarding their home from other creatures or just living their life within and on the surface of the jellyfish. The largest Medousa I could see had to be at least as large as a hill, taking up a good amount of open area.
Looking upwards I could make out the rippling surface of the water far above me. Shining down into the water was the gentle blue and white light of a large watery moon with a smattering of clouds, giving me the ability to clearly see the entire cavern. The cavern walls shot up out of the surface of the water and curved into themselves, leading to a dome like structure with many different stalactites hanging off of it and occasionally sending droplets of water falling to strike the surface of the water. The dome didn’t curve too far inwards, leaving a lot of open space for the blue moonlight to shine through, but it would definitely make the process of getting to the surface a pointless endeavor.
The sight was beautiful enough that I just floated there, at the entrance where I entered the cavern from, speechless. Though I was speechless more because I couldn’t actually talk at the moment, I had put the portal too far down my windpipe and couldn’t pass any air through my vocal cords to make sound, I couldn’t even hum and the beautiful scene.
The fantastical sight reminded me of how excited I had been when I had first come to know I would be reincarnated into a fantasy world filled with magic and mystery. I was finally able to experience something like this without other things occupying my mind and getting in the way. My eyes even started to water a little bit.
In my daze I forgot to stop my shining skin, and a few nearby predators started to swim towards me like the beacon I was. I blinked the forming tears out of my eyes and swam back into the tunnel I had come from to wait for the things that were following me. After my period of fighting other things on my way through the caves I had refined my method of dealing with these creatures, and I had come to guess that the difficulty of this floor was around level 6 based on the difficulty of killing the creatures I had come across.
After taking care of the comparatively weak creatures, compared to the previous level, I turned off my glowing skin and swam back to the cavern, in the dark, with a concealment spell activated instead.
Once again emerging into the vast open cavern, I surveyed the scene and locked onto the biggest Colossal Medousa. With its abundance of tentacles I could at least pretend that it was just yellow glowing seaweed instead of tentacles. Thinking so I swam off towards the Medousa eager to be done with the forced task I had been given.
After half an hour of swimming through the moonlit waters I finally drew near the giant glowing creature and was currently directly beneath it looking up into its ‘mouth’ or opening, with a forest of gently swaying yellow glowing tentacles hanging down from its underside. This particular Medousa had a yellow, almost golden, luminescent glow, and I tried to imagine the tentacles to be golden hair instead of what they were.
Hooo, pull yourself together Radiant. All you have to do is swim into the jellyfish and everything will be behind you. Well until I have to come back out, but that’s future me’s problem. Just focus on reaching the hole.
I closed my eyes and focused on my (Space-Time Sense) to guide me instead of my sight. The tentacles looked more like one big mass to my (Space-Time Sense) rather than individual tentacles, which made it much easier to ignore them and focus on my goal of reaching the inside of the Medousa. I would’ve been sweating up a storm if I wasn’t in the water, but eventually my nervous self made it through the mouth of the Medousa and I was able to open my eyes and take in the sight.
Arriving inside of the Medousa I could make out the glowing pool of luminescent gel that flowed from the center of the jellyfish to its bell, almost like blood. This luminescent gel was used by the jellyfish to form a hard crystalized protective shell along the outside of its metaphysical organ and the surface of its bell, and it had a lot of extra gel that it could use to repair any damage that might occur to its outer protective shell.
At the center of the jellyfish was the glowing metaphysical organ that created the luminous gel and also acted as a storage for its accumulated luminous gel.
With how large this Medousa is there shouldn’t be any problem if I were to take most of its luminous gel. With all of the things defending it, it probably hasn’t had to repair its shell for years at this point. I’m sure the Medousa will get along just fine.
Swimming up next to the metaphysical organ I rubbed my hand against the hard surface of crystalized illuminated gel. Pulling out a large tool from my Internal World, I used some magic to stick one end of the tool to the hard surface of the organ and loaded the tool with a large hollow spike. This particular tool was usually used to shoot this hollow spike through the tough hide of some monsters so that its blood could be drained, but now I was using it to drain the luminous gel out of this Medousa’s metaphysical organ.
After I loaded in the hollow spike I hit the release button and the spring loaded machine sent the spike through the hard surface of the crystalized luminous gel, sending a few small fractures through the hard surface. Seeing that the device had worked I placed my hand over the end of the hollow spike and opened a small portal into my Internal world. Using my control over my Internal World I created a separate pocket of space without any air or anything in it and sent the honey like luminous gel into this container. It took quite a long time to drain the metaphysical organ of almost all of its gel, but because the container in my Internal World acted kind of like a vacuum with its low pressure the draining process was just a little bit faster than letting gravity do its work.
Whew, with this much luminous gel I could sell it for like 200,000 GC*. It’s usually extremely dangerous to harvest Colossal Medousas because of where they usually live, so the price of the luminous gel is insane. With that much GC I’d be able to buy a large mansion with only 20% of that much GC, though most of that cost comes from the land rather than the actual house…
In any case I’ve definitely struck it rich with this one. However I’m not going to be collecting any more from the other Medousas, it’s just not happening no matter how much GC I’d make.
*AN: GC stands for Guild Credits, though it could also stand for Gold Credits because before digital currency came around the Guild used gold for the coins.*
I took one last look around the inside of the Medousa and the alien environment, and the swimming creatures inhabiting the inside of it, before closing my eyes and swimming out and away from the Colossal Medousa.
After I got far enough away from the Medousa to open my eyes, I could see dozens more throughout the cavern, but my focus was pointed towards the floor of the cavern with its multitude of tunnels and caves snaking down into the depths. There was even one particularly large ravine that cut diagonally into the floor and into one of the walls of the cavern. There were so many places for me to explore, and with my Forced Task complete I can explore to my heart's content.