As the Dauntless rocketed off into the deeper waters beyond the continental sea bed, I looked into both the fully active radar and sonar. Checking for any disturbances that might signify that we were being chased, I sat myself down on the Captain's chair, slightly creaking due to how Charlotte tried to break it yesterday.

I saw myself staring at the window, now filled with bubbles due to how fast the ship was when it moved through the waters. I took the time to plan out our course, after we have moved a good distance away from Meruem, of course. I sighed to myself as I waited, the doubts still fresh in my mind.

I felt a hand on my shoulders, and turned to see my sister standing beside me. She stared at the waters as well, however, she had a very distant look in her eyes. As if she is remembering something. They felt bland.

She shook her head and just like that, their colors came soon after. She looked thoughtful before staring at me with a questioning look. I stared back, my eyes scrunched up as I asked her what she wanted. "What is it? Do you need anything?" I said as I put a hand on hers

"Not necessarily, I just wanted permission to take control of the navigation." She says while pointing at the control panel. She then scrunched her lips together and looked down on the floor with a slightly embarrassed face.

I laughed a bit at how childishly she was acting, whilst partly understanding why she would want to do so. There hasn't been alot that we were able to do after we got out of our position back then. And since we cannot really explore the ship again, given how the ship was rocking wildly as of now, we were stuck inside of the bridge.

"Feel free to command the ship, Captain." I smiled at her, waving my arms towards the panel. She quickly heads over to the control panel, stopping to look at all the buttons. She stared at them for about 10 seconds, before slowly turning towards me with an exasperated look on her face.

"Uhh, I'm not necessarily the best at this… Can you help me?" She smiles with an embarrassed expression. Grinning, I stood up from my chair, arranging my cast for a bit whilst I walked over to the panels. I stood right next to her and pointed at the screens first before the actual controls.

After a bit of explaining the different screens, what they show and what they can do, albeit with some difficulty due to how inexperienced my sister was when it came to actual ship controls. To be fair, i really only knew about these because I had a warship obsession phase back in my early days.

"Hey Kurt, why is the speed control up here in the bridge? Didn't the Titanic show it down at the engine room?" She asked while pointing at the obnoxious lever sticking out from the side of the panels. To be honest, even I wondered why it was like that at first, then I learnt that sometimes, electricity is just not available at certain days of sailing the seas.

"The ship's navigation and speed control tools are generally found over at the navigation screen. However, when power is down, the manual controls for such has to be implemented. Can't really do much at the middle of the sea. As for your other question." I said while pointing my hand at the speed control, "This is not really as big of a ship as the most beautiful ship in the world, isn't it?" I said, while showing off the interior of the vessel.

"I suppose you're right about that. So, what do these buttons do? Are they similar to the whole manual operations that you talked about?" She said whilst pointing at the one that releases the anchor. I grabbed her hands just in case, surprising her for a bit.

"Yeah, just as you said. Also, please to drop the anchor right now. It would be terrible." I stated blandly as he brought her hands back, smiling sheepishly.

I watched her look around the controls for a bit, staring at the screens both on panel and above the ceiling. The entire ship had both the new and old ways of controlling the vessel, quite a surprising change from all the modern gizmos on new vessels from the last decade. I looked back at the navigation screen and saw that we were about to exit the sea bed, so I took my attention to the windows.

(Kurtis decides that they have gone far enough and stops at the edge of the continental plate)

As I looked at the window, the waters began to change from a nice blue cyan, to a darker shade of navy. The one that the ocean is far more know for. I headed over to the lever and pulled it up, dropping the speed every second.

"Why are you stopping now? Isn't that a bad thing?" My sister asked as she fumbled around with the telephone that is supposed to connect to the engine room. I stared back at her, glancing at the speed of the ship from time to time.

"Well, we are about to reach the continental drop off. I think its better for us to stop before we plunge into the deep, dark abyss, right?" I said, smiling as I looked at the navigation screen. As fast at the Dauntless was, it's not the fastest thing in the world.

My sister nodded as she continued to look around the bridge. I put my attention towards the ever encroaching ocean, carefully dropping the speed further. Once we got to the edge of the sea, I stopped, and dropped the ship back down onto the sands.

As the ship sunk deep into the ground, I stopped to think of where we should go. The nearest country that we could possibly reach as of right now, was the Netherlands. I was thinking that we could've gone to England, but there was too much risk in the option, given how the basin between Iceland and the UK were far deeper. There is also the problem with food, and while we had food, the water supply is an entirely different story. There were some bottles, but aside from that, there wasn't anything else.

"I suppose the Netherlands is a good place to go. You know any Dutch?" I asked my sister as I headed over to the depth control. I lifted the ship off of the sea, bringing it over the deep abyss while waiting for my sister to answer.

"Yeah. I know the basics. How about you? Do YOU know any Dutch? You're just an ordinary marine." She tested back as she adjusted the navigation system, clumsily if I may add. Her inexperience is visible through her hand's movements across the screen, seeming looking for something.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Do you think? Like you said, I'm just an 'ordinary marine'. Also, far right side, the one that says adjust." I said as I stopped the vessel far beyond the drop off. Below us was thousands of psi, which I am really hoping the ship can hold. I mean, it should, but I'm still doubtful.

"Thanks, asshat." She said while tapping even more buttons. Once she actually reached the navigation screen, I told her the necessary inputs that she needed to write into system. After an entire minute of failing to do basic writing, she finally succeeded in bringing the ship in the general direction of the Netherlands. "There! We are on course!" She beams happily.

"Yeah, about three kilometers deep into the mainland." I snarked back as I saw the position of our destination on the map. She looked at me with annoyance and smacked my good arm. I laughed it off and apologized.

"Alright, we are about to head down into the abyss. Can you turn on the front lights? Even if only a little bit. Try not to make it too bright." I said, angling the ship downwards, waving to the direction of the lighting. Charlotte went over to the controls and raised the brightness by a little bit.

"Thanks. Now, hold on. This is gonna be a very bumpy trip down." I said, clutching a hand on the lever. Charlotte then ran over to the chair and put the seatbelts on, I glowered at her for taking my spot in the bridge, which she replied with a the biggest shit eating grin I've ever seen her do.

I turned the dial for the depth control all the way down, and suddenly, we were beginning to drop. I turned the speed up little by little, and soon we we're heading straight into the void. The lights from the surface began to fade every passing minute, and the only thing I was able to see clearly was the blackness that was being illuminated dimly by the front lights.

As we were passing through multiple layers of horrible that no normal person should ever encounter, I grew increasingly anxious. I have watched a fair amount of YouTube videos and read a good number of encyclopedias, but none of them have really made an example of what you should do when dropping to the bottom of the ocean, so I was literally and figuratively, doing this blind.

We continued to drop down, and after a good twenty minutes, the lights from the surface had fully dimmed down, and we we're surrounded by the darkness. We continued to go down for another thirty or so minutes, waiting for the lights to hit something of note. We also have yet to see any of the scary fishes that were supposed to live at these depths.

Once twenty one minutes had passed, we were frightened that we may have had entered some deep sea trench, but after passing by an undersea mountain, our thoughts were cleared. I slowed down our descent and we we're able to find the very bottom of the ocean three minutes in.

We went over to a nearby valley and began navigating our way far beneath the waves. The entire time we spent inside of the cold dark was incredibly silent, with nothing but the occasional lava vent making some noise underneath. However, I noticed something moving in the undersea sonar. All hell went loose.

"Charlotte! Bring the lights down, quickly! There's something on the radar!" I shouted over to my sister as she quickly got out of the chair and straight to the lighting system. She brought down both the front and inner lights down by a massive degree, and once more, we were subjected to a lot of darkness.

"I'm gonna go and surveil the area! You take care of the navigation!" She stated as she ran over to the radar systems. She looked intently at the screen, which was showing a significantly large ping on the map. It was about 10 kilometer away from us, far too close for comfort. I just hope that we weren't spotted.

I went over to another screen and opened the undersea mapping. There wasn't anything I can base my sailing on, so I have to rely on the latest mapping of the ocean floor. This was going to be a horribly frustrating ride.

"The vessel seems to have yet to notice us. It's not heading in our general direction, but I think that we should continue to lower the lights, just to make sure." My sister looked at me as I stared at the undersea map. Thank god this little ship had this in the system, but I kind of already knew that a few hours back. I turned towards her and nodded, following the safe path the we can take through the valley, in the lowest speed possible.

She headed over to the lights again and slowly dimmed them down even further. Soon, the only thing we could see was specks of light flittering about the area. Fish, I presume. Sadly, we didn't have time to look at them, and went back to navigating the ocean floor.

About six or so hours had passed while we were continuously chased by the vessel, although it really hasn't got a lead on us. There were a huge number of close calls with the walls of the valley, and it was very terrifying to have to squeeze through a narrowing gap in the walls of the canyon. The vessel has yet to give up chase, and we were forced to continue sailing like this.

Charlotte was getting pretty tired having to watch the sonar continuously, and even I was getting sick of having to be responsible for our continued existence. We waited for a bit, with Charlotte needing to take a quick break, forcing me to both navigate the oceans and keep watch on the vessel, which was a horrible work to keep up.

Thankfully, my sister was only away for about twenty minutes, taking the time to grab half of the remaining food stock and some water that was left over. I wanted to glower at her, but I was occupied with having to sail through the waters.

She went back to her job of surveiling the thing chasing us, while I kept going through the pathways that were leading us in the general direction of our destination. The chase was kept up for far longer, and we were barely a mile of the way towards the Netherlands.

(The vessel finally heads away, and after about 3 hours, they continue to navigate the rocky sea floor)

After a while, the vessel stopped chasing after us, and began to head in the opposite direction. Not one to hope, we kept going forwards, just in case it was a mere decoy. We kept sailing for an untold amount of time, still keeping our eyes on our respective screens, before deciding that we are finally safe.

Once an hour had passed, we finally let go of our suspicions and allowed the lights back on, if only a little bit. Finally, I didn't have to rely on only the incredibly outdated information regarding the bottom of the ocean, and actually rely on both the map and my sights. I still kept us at under 3 knots, because sonar.

We continued to go over the day and laugh about the chase, but we continued to keep our guards up when it came to outside dangers like the unknown vessel, now that we now knew that it was possible that we were being chased.

After a while, we found a nearby sea mound that looked like it had a cavern cut into it. It was spewing out some gas, but otherwise, the cave was clear of debris. I looked at my sister if she wanted to continue or not. "Hey, want to stop for now?" I ask as I held my hands on the lever. She proceeded to yawn, before turning to me.

"Yeah. I think I could use some rest." She said as smiled at me. I turned the dial of the depth control up by a bit, and the ship rocked for a second, before rising slowly. It took about 20 seconds for us to get out of the valley, before I set the dial to hover above the sandy floor.

We made our way to the mouth of the cavern and turned around, so that the front of the ship was turned to the entrance way. We lowered the ship again, and found that the floor was quite soft. It wasn't really hot as well, since there were no bubbles that would signify it, so it was safe to stay in for now.

We settled the ship down on the sands and turned everything down to the lowest possible power, before we went ahead and got some rest.

I hope that this luck keeps us alive for a little while longer.