It happened when I was about elbow’s length in the wall.

I felt something on the other side.

Did I find the passage?

Well… yes and no.

I did find an open space. But it was not any passage.

I found ocean.

As soon as I felt something, a sudden rush of water pushed my hand away and shot right at my face.

-Pfeh! What the fu…

I didn’t get to even finish cursing, before I heard a crack.

Then another.

And then, a flood came.

The crack was the wall breaking right in front of me.

The pressure of water above us was apparently large enough for the small hole to turn into an opening the size of a person in a span of a second.

Of course, it came with a deluge of water that almost swept me off my feet. I don’t need to add that I lost focus on my spell almost immediately. Maybe that’s better, before I was able to make things even worse.

Il wasn’t that lucky, though.

Her body was anything but heavy. A large stream would be enough for her to be hard to keep balance, and the water we’ve been hit by was closer to a large waterfall, not some lazy river.

-IL!

I barely managed to notice her being flung backwards. I wasn’t able to help her.

She wasn’t able to react either. No spells came out of her. I can tell she had a hard time to even think straight, not to mention try and focus on gathering mana for a spell.

The water was not letting up.

Even though the hole it opened was pretty large, that was not enough for the rushing current.

I tried looking forward, to see the damage, but that was a bad idea. I only managed to get hit by a large rock that apparently got chipped away by the stream, forcing me to stumble backwards, away from the hole.

There was no time to think, I had to quickly seal that hole, or the whole place was going to be flooded.

While I wasn’t really worried about myself, or Il for that matter; we already knew water was not an obstacle to us; there was still a matter of the machines we found before.

Sure, those were in a sealed room after all, but I am not sure that was made to be waterproof…

Better safe than sorry.

-Visu, lsio tvupi.

A solid piece of rock formed right in front of me.

It wasn’t really the same thing that the walls were made of, but I guess it should be good enough to seal the…

Before I even finished my thought, the cluster of rock that I created got flung away and barely missed me, flying, or rather, swimming somewhere far behind me.

Damn. Another one then.

I slammed my hand against a wall.

-Visu, nuwo!

Instead of creating the seal out of thin air, I decided to use the material I had on hand: the walls themselves.

Or well… I attempted to.

My spell did not work.

Wait… No, that’s not it. It did work, but the flow of water was unmaking any progress I was making.

I intended to meld the rock I had access to and to direct it to the hole in the wall.

Too bad that when I was directing the rock to move, it was turning into a more malleable substance, which was promptly getting swept away by the water flow.

Instead of helping, the last spell actually made the issue worse. The hole was already the size of the whole stairway.

Good thing that it couldn’t get any worse.

Or at least I thought so.

Sure, there wasn’t any more space for the water to flow through, but that didn’t mean something else wasn’t able to pass through the opening that got created.

-Fucking sharks?! - yelped For, still looking through my eyes. - Are you serious?! Those live in this sea?!

Well, she was half-right.

I don’t know where she learned how sharks looked, but what I saw right in front of my face wasn’t anything I’ve seen in my life.

Sure, it was shark-shaped, but it was smaller, more of the size of large fish.

It was also of a different color, vibrant blue, almost purple. Clearly magical. I guess living in proximity to this strange infused place had to influence it…

The small size of the creature made me underestimate it. And besides that, I was mostly impervious to physical attacks, so I didn’t even bother trying to protect myself when about ten of those tried chomping on my body.

Yeah… it didn’t go well for them.

Even in the rush of water, I saw a cloud of blood suddenly form right in front of me, along with some pieces of broken teeth flowing right by me.

Bad luck for you, guys.

Stolen novel; please report.

But the sudden hard to bite pray did not change their minds. The whole gaggle swam back a few meters, just to launch themselves back at me a moment later.

Wait.

Swam back?

Yeah, that was weird.

Water was still going strong, there was no way something would be able to brush the strength of the water like that…

I mean, sure there exist some fish that can swim upstream and jump up waterfalls… but those aren’t sharks! And even if they would be, there’s no way they’d do this with this little effort. It almost seemed like they were defying physics.

I didn’t have time to wonder for much longer, because the attack repeated.

And this time, they had reinforcements. The swarm was already about thirty strong and seemed to only grow in size.

Where the fuck were they even coming from? How many of those are here anyway?!

They were still adamant on biting me. Sure, they weren’t having much success, but also I wasn’t getting any progress made towards getting them off me.

After the first unsuccessful attack, I thought I could just wait them out. I mean, they were literally breaking their teeth on me, it’s not like they have an infinite amount of those, right?

Wrong.

The swarm was not getting smaller, and the ones that already attacked, that I thought would run away, were biting me again moments later.

Were they… regrowing their teeth?! In that short span of time?!

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, but that’s definitely what was happening.

It was abundantly clear when I noticed that along with water, I was also bombarded by more broken and unbroken teeth.

After each attack, it looked like every “shark” that managed to break their teeth was spitting out the remaining ones right at me. Hell, even those that still had most of them remaining were also doing that, just for the full mouthful of teeth to be back a second later.

What the fuck.

Not sure what I should do, I tried moving forward, to maybe get closer to the hole despite the avalanche of teeth and water, but that was not possible.

The pressure was enough to barely let me move, and if I was to add the attacking sharks, that was making it counterproductive: it was making me back up.

Eh… whatever. Time for a bit more… broad approach.

-Hmedou.

One word.

Ice.

I went ahead and used the simplest solution. I guess I got inspired by a certain someone…

It was over in a blink of an eye.

The water around me froze, in a flash stopping the flow along with the sharks that got caught in it.

I did catch a bit too much of everything in the spell, but that was a given: having an avalanche pounding you in your face will do that to you. And besides, to seal the hole I had to pull out some stops: flowing water is not that easy to flash-freeze.

But, those sharks were more resistant than I thought.

While sure, they got caught in the freeze, that did not mean I killed them. Still flailing around, trying to get out and bite me.

-What the hell am I supposed to do with you…

But, before I was able to finish my thought, I realized that this was not the end.

Sure, the layer of ice was thick enough that I managed to block the water flow, but the animals weren’t going to just stop moving and it meant only one thing: the ice started cracking.

I wanted to toss more ice towards them, but before I was able to, the plug was shattered and on the floor spilled about ten sharks that freed themselves from the trap.

I braced myself for the inevitable flood…

But it did not come.

I apparently used enough ice that even though the surface was shattered, the remaining ice was still holding still.

Lucky me. There was only some fauna to get rid of remaining, and out of the water they surely wouldn’t prove problematic.

Right…?

Of course not.

The moment I stepped out of the ice block I created, and that took me a good moment, I got battered by a salve of teeth.

-You fucking serious?! - I yelped, surprised.

Of course, sharks did not reply… I mean, I want to say “it’s not like they could”, but one look at them was enough to say that I should shut up.

They weren’t just flailing angrily at me and shooting pointessly. No. They were standing up. On their feet.

Yeah. They had feet. Or, more like fin-feet.

I couldn’t believe my eyes, but it looked like their tails had split in half, letting them stand up on the ground. Honestly, I was amazed that they were able to keep balance, still having the upper body of a shark.

The look had made me completely stunned, just staring at those abominations of… I don’t know, magic? Because that was definitely nothing natural at this point.

-Okay. I am back. This torrent of water was something else. Good thing you managed to stop that or…

It was Il.

Apparently she managed to get back on her feet after that avalanche of water and came back to see what’s happening, but, just like me, she froze seeing what was right in front of us.

We probably would’ve been standing like that in stunned silence for a long while if not for bewildered For in our ears.

-I take that back. Those are not sharks.

-You don’t fucking say? - I replied, finally realizing that I’ve been just staring at them pounding me with their teeth for a good moment. - I need to get rid of those…

-Y-yeah… - flinched Il, also waking from the trance.

-Hmedou tehu - I started a spell, focusing my mana.

-How do you even… how something like that happens? - asked Kon, watching as I was conjuring a large spike made out of ice in my hand.

-It’s not that hard… I am more intrigued about the amount of those… - I replied, shooting a spike towards the first creature.

It struck well.

Even though I used a pretty easy and basic spell, it easily pierced the creature, making it fall over.

But it did not die.

It only started shaking more angrily and soon stood up again, this time with remains of the spike wedged into their torso.

-Those fucks are resilient… - pointed out For.

-I guess I was holding back too much.

-Yeah, why use ice? It’s not like you can’t use something more destructive.

She had a fair point.

I only used ice because that was the first thing that came to my mind. Also, I was worried about melting the plug that was stopping the flood of this place…

Nah, what I am talking about. It should be fine.

-Right. Gymnu moho.

I created a net out of lightning that appeared right above the group of not-fish.

Even if they saw it, they wouldn’t be able to react.

-Lupfipto lek gmyo.

Lightning cracked, the net got a lot thinner, and the room got filled with the smell of fried fish.

-That’s the end of that… - I said, releasing the spell.

-What the hell were those things even? I…

Before For managed to finish the sentence, we realized that it was actually not the end of that.

We heard a loud noise, almost like beeping, I want to say? Really, not something I expected to hear.

And, on top of that, it was coming from the charred pile of fish right in front of me.

-What in the hell…

The beeping started getting louder and faster, to the point where it turned into just a singular static beep.

And then…

They exploded.