The ocean was raging. As if filled with anger, it was on the verge of exploding from boiling emotions. Shaking inability to the harassment on itself from multiple lightning, it could only meaningly send another huge wave in a futile attempt to reach annoying clouds, who didn’t will to stop their doings. Of course, those mosquito bites were harmless for the enormous water surface. However, the fact that the sky dared to attack it, was already enough for the ocean to continue its trembling until the thunderstorm would cease to exist. Being almost endless, it had a patience of the same size. It would endure everything. It would outlast any enemy. But right now, it was not the time as it was better to focus on another wave. Maybe exactly this one would finally hit its bully. Or the next one.
Oh, God damn it! When will it end?
Cursing his pitiful luck, Robert quickly conjured a huge hollow ball with air before diving once again deep down with the help of another set of metal bars, created directly on his back. Sticking to him as they were glued, they had enough weight to pull him down, before new wave would try to drown him. After short descending, Rob pressed his lips to the spherical construction. A few seconds of concentrated effort led to a small tube, which started to protrude from the ball and ended in his mouth.
Finally making the wanted breath, Robert looked up to see the constant movement of water above his head. Fortunately, here, ten meters (33ft) below, everything was calm. Moreover, crystal-clear water gave enough visibility, despite even dark clouds. That gave him some time to relax and wait, while keep focusing on his steel creation in the background of his mind. For him, after directly controlling hundreds of pieces of war equipment simultaneously, it was quite an easy task. On the other hand, Rob still had some problems in the visualization part as it was hard to imagine needed things completely and in detail, but the danger appeared to be a great motivation to improve fast.
In mere minutes after the storm's appearance, Robert managed to come up with this plan – the creation of an improvised variant of aqualung. The ball acted as a reservoir and additional buoyancy, while bars balanced them, so he wouldn’t be pulled up. It still took some effort to constantly adjust the weight of loading to stay on the same level and not go too deep, but it was within his capabilities – to keep clear pictures of three different objects in his mind, while periodically changing one of them and continuing to swim. The hardest part was the conjuration of everything in the beginning as he lacked both precision usage of his ability and enough level imagination to do it immediately.
Maybe in a few hours, I will manage to create a proper aqualung. And how things are ongoing, I guess, I will have plenty of time to experiment… Crap, where is my fast-forward? In all movies I’ve seen, when there is a storm, the scene ends quickly to place the unconscious hero on the island, lying with tattered clothes right on the sandy beach. Where the fuck is my island? I don’t want to stay here for hours! However, losing consciousness during the storm in real life, quite frankly, is an easy way to die. Not every corpse floats. Well, I take it back. Let’s train then.
In the end, Robert indeed spent hours patiently waiting before the weather would calm down. Even then, nothing really had changed. The ocean was everywhere. The sun was still scorching as ever, not moving even a single bit from its place. Therefore, Rob focused on his next need – to sleep. The constant physical action exhausted him by a huge margin. His passive restoration helped, prolonging his ability to stay just by refilling his muscles with energy, but it still couldn’t replace the need for sleep completely. It was as in the description of his Avatar’s Body trait – the needs of the body were lessened by a degree, but not disappeared completely.
His self-created buoys were able to hold his floating body on the surface. The problem was that in his deep sleep, his mind stopped supporting the conjuration, thus unsummoning his improvised swimming bed. It was another challenge that Robert had to overcome unwillingly after an unknown number of tries. Unfortunately for him, even after doing it and gaining the desired sleep, he woke up only to feel completely broken as he didn’t have any rest at all.
Again, I already hate this shitty world!
At least he managed to learn how to sleep without completely losing his awareness. Of course, it could be just tiredness that made him wake up constantly, but he would know it after the next attempt to have a rest. As he could see his situation, Rob had more than enough time for it. Not changing scenery didn’t leave him many options for entertainment, so he focused on experimentation and tests.
The first thing he figured out was that he needed around from an hour to two not to use any mana to strain his body to the level of being barely tolerable. Moreover, immediate measures after that period only led to a slow lessening of the pressure on him but didn’t fix everything straight away. The reason for approximations in time was simple – the absence of a watch, reliance on counting in his head, and ethereal feelings of where the real dangerous edge of strain was. Rob didn’t risk testing it to the limits of damaging himself as it was a stupid idea to do it in such conditions.
Still, he had got confirmations of his previous assumptions. Indeed, his regeneration was constant and included not only wounds but even stamina. However, it couldn’t work on fullness when he was in an energy overflown state as these excesses interfered with the flow somehow. The further observations made him understand another limitation. The restoration ability seemed to have a maximum level of energy usage. Even being boosted by additional mana, it was used for both wounds and stamina simultaneously by default. So, if he didn’t have any injuries from burns, then he had more to spare on the restoration of his strength. Or vice-versa.
Therefore, the best speed of healing could be achieved if he wasn’t moving at all, so all mana would be used there, not wasting anything. On the other hand, taking into account his need to spend the mana constantly, just moving would help him as a recovery of stamina would take it part of the flow. Still, the greater his trained physique was, the more intensive actions he had to do for the same effect. At least, skillful usage of conjuring steel seemed to grant a real possibility to forget about the issues with his mana flow.
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Robert’s next test included his ability to hold his breath. He hadn’t any prior training, but the lessened needs of his newly made body helped him to understand that he could do for a long. The result might have been much better if there was no need to move or keep his heavy body afloat, but it still easily exceeded fifteen minutes, which was ten times more than an average person without training could achieve and might be on par with specialist’s time.
The follow-up project was the recreation of aqualung for better usage. Not only it could help with mobility and cover his back from the sun, but it also helped to raise his skill in creating steel constructs. Robert didn’t know how long it took him to master it, but the hunger was insane by this point. Luckily, the damage from drinking salty ocean water to his inner organs appeared to be healed passively. The more he drank, the more he wanted, but the counter-effect made the feeling disappear after a short time, leaving only the hunger as a main problem. Again, fortunately, he had more time to find the solution, with which the aqualung could help.
The reasoning was obvious – he was here to kill the beast. The beast meant life, and not seeing any land, it was easy to think that it could be deep under the water. It couldn’t be just a single species as animals always form food chains. Therefore, Rob only needed to reach the places of their habitation. Thus, any breath devices for diving were absolutely needed in such conditions. A new clear goal helped once more time to keep his mental state in check.
All his tries were boring, with tiny, barely noticeable results of improvement after each time. Never-ending cycles had put him in some kind of trance, where all that was left from the whole world was that damn aqualung, which he wanted to create. The task appeared to be too hard, as not seeing the construction with complex geometry with his own eyes made it multiple times harder to imagine. Moreover, Robert couldn’t forget the thickness of the walls. It felt like he was banging the closed door with his head in an attempt to open it. Everything became much harder when he had a genius idea to put air in the reservoir, and then move the wall, thus creating pressure inside and in this way increasing the sheer volume of oxygen after a few repetitions of adding new layers and deleting the barriers between them.
He slept at least twice before he managed to achieve what he aimed for. The rough construction of aqualung was holding on his back without any straps, while additional weight was in the form of a metal belt. The non-flexible tube decreased his ability to freely move his head, but it was better than nothing. He could still create the plug with mental effort at any moment if he needed to. By this point, it was much easier to manipulate with his ability. The single found self-restriction was that it was hard for him to create anything complex without looking at it. On the other hand, following upkeeping was not that hard. That’s why he created the approximate form of what he aimed for right from his hands before moving it to the back and completing the last part of feeling it with the air. The feeling of transportation of the conjuration directly over the surface of his own skin was odd, if not insane, but it worked and that was enough for Rob.
Now let’s finally see what you are hiding there!
Filled with anxiety after a long period of preparation that was fueled by nascent optimism, which was almost whispering right into his ears – it couldn’t be a continuous series of difficulties. There had to be light. The bright gap in these hardships. It just couldn’t last forever. That’s why, when Robert dove into the deep of the ocean, he was actively searching for anything – a spot of movement, a shade from an unknown creature, or at least for the bottom of this endless water bowl.
He had to make an effort to stop his boosting imagination from clouding his mind with underwater fields of seaweed, colorful corals, or sunken ships with goods from ancient times. To clear the picture of a school of fishes, moving along a strange trajectory as if dancing together, praising the local God of Water. To wipe out the image of hiding in sand predators that were ready to attack any possible target in proximity. To kill his growing expectations not to brake under cruel reality.
Because there was nothing at all. Just water from all sides in all directions. Moreover, the deeper he went, the less light there was, decreasing his ability to see by a huge margin. In one moment, Robert found himself frozen in one place right in the middle of nothingness. It was the very same feeling that he got after his death. No sound. No objects around. Nothing. Only light barely made it up to this point, but it was only a tiny part of the enormous force from before. To Rob, all his surroundings were the same. For a moment, the panic from the past experience took over him, killing his sense of direction. His conjured aqualung with no oxygen left had disappeared without him noticing, while his mind was in a disorder.
He felt he was lost. Again alone, in the world of giant ocean, with dubious chances to find the land or even local creatures. Only his unwillingness to give up had kept him alive, but for what? Just to prolong his struggles? The future of constant floating seemed quite unpleasant to say the least. New whispers from the back of his mind emerged, trying to convince him to stop resisting the inevitable. To relax and get his final rest. He had to be dead long ago. With his current circumstances, he would be in the near future, despite all his efforts to fight. Why would he need to suffer more, when everything could end right now. Without any pain. Without any additional need to move. On the contrary, he did not do anything to get into a well-known state of non-existence, where nothing mattered.
Eternal sleep… To hell with it! No stops before I am eating my fucking hamburger!
The burst of emotions made Robert almost explode from action. Rotating his body, he pushed himself up to the surface, already feeling the lack of air inside his lungs. In his mindless state, he managed to dive quite deep because of his grown weight, and that was a problem. At least the light gave him a clear hint of where to swim if he paid proper attention to it. Using all available force from his muscles, Rob focused on speeding the process as much as he could, disregarding everything else. Even when he saw out of the corner of his vision a strange shadow that was quickly approaching, Robert didn’t even have a thought to check it as time was certainly running out. Moreover, it most likely was just a play of his imagination because of lack of oxygen, exhaustion, and mental stress.
Therefore, the moment he surfaced and made the first so wanted breath, almost getting a portion of water directly into his mouth as the storm had never ended, the shadow was already underneath him. It took him a few seconds to realize an incoming danger. One more was spent to recognize the shape of a huge maw. Another - to start conjuring a spear in an attempt to protect himself, but it was already too late. Robert didn’t have time even to curse before teeth closed over his legs, and his body was dragged down, again under the water. He managed to take one more breath, before disappearing.
All signs of his existence were washed away with the next wave, while the thunderstorm continued his doing of angering the ocean with constant lighting strikes. The sun was watching this brawl with stoic indifference. It kept sending its heat and light as if it wasn’t willing to take part in this childish act. It was there even before the ocean was born. It would be even after this overgrown lake would dry out completely. Nothing could shake it, especially some fleeting changes that were hard to notice in the first place. Moreover, when talking about tiny dots on an enormous water surface.