“Aye, captain. Standby for emergency ballast blow,” I muttered, pretending like I was an operator onboard a real sub. Not to sound cool, but to calm my nerves. Talking to myself helped sometimes. Some might’ve called it a bad habit, but hey—if it works, it works, right?

I followed Aerion’s lead out of the tunnel, this time for real. Once Aerion had cleared the castle, she slowed her sub. I watched as the ballast weights fell from the side, and reached for my own lever and yanked.

There was a muffled thump and the small sub lurched, then began rising as well.

Both of our subs began to rise. Slowly at first, then faster. The sub shuddered and groaned as water rushed past.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t a passive affair. My hand flew across the levers, ensuring the sub stayed level and didn’t roll over on the journey up.

Our ascent rates were surprisingly identical, so Aerion’s sub remained only slightly above mine as we rose through the darkness.

It was weird—the only sign that we were rising was the whooshing of the water and the bits of sediment illuminated by our subs’ lights.

Which was why Aerion had no warning when our subs collided with the ceiling.

Her sub bounced off the unknown object and went tumbling. I saw it all happen, and realistically, there was little I could do in the split-second I had, other than grasping onto my seat’s armrests for dear life.

Turned out, that did little good.

The sub impacted like a gong, and I went flying—right into the hard metal roof.

----------------------------------------

When I came to, the world was spinning and wet. My head hurt and it felt like no matter what I did, I couldn’t regain my balance. It took everything I had just to stop myself from hurling.

A flash of bright white light blossomed in front of me and disappeared almost immediately—traveling rapidly from left to right.

That was when I knew it wasn’t my inner ear that was the problem. The whole damned sub was spinning.

Crawling to the pilot’s chair, I grabbed what I hoped was the right lever, and yanked.

The sub lurched, and the spinning slowed. That allowed me to sit back in the chair. I once again forced down the bile building up in my throat and focused on what my sub’s one functional light was showing me.

I adjusted a few of the other levers, but it took almost an entire minute of wrangling for the dang sub to come to a stop.

The problem was that my roll control was broken, and since the sub used the same dive planes for controlling pitch, so was that.

Only by manipulating both controls at once could I get the sub to do what I wanted, and even then, the only reason I could was because it’d stuck itself right-side up under the massive whatever-it-was that blocked our ascent.

I shivered. For the first time, I realized something was off. A loud hiss resounded from somewhere behind me.

Whirling in panic, I located the source of the leak—about head height, and jetting water at high pressure.

Oh fuck. Fuck fuck fuck!

Water had already pooled on the floor, and my sneakers were soaked. If I didn’t take care of this immediately, I was fucking dead. My feet throbbed in pain at the biting cold.

Trying desperately to work fast, I looked for anything that could plug the hole… but with that insane pressure, what could possibly work?

I looked around, desperate for something—anything. I began to panic.

I was going to die down here, wasn’t I? Both of us were. Here in this dark abyss.

A blinding light forced me to cover my face. The light flicked off, and when my eyes readjusted, I saw Aerion, her hands pressed against the glass of her sub.

She looked stricken. My eyes traveled to her feet and found water. Just like mine.

Her sub was leaking, too.

She pointed to the floor intently.

My jaw clenched. I know. We’re doomed.

Aerion kept pointing, her actions growing more frantic.

I… didn’t know what she was trying to say. My eyes followed hers to the floor. It’d flooded, just like mine. There was water. It was filling.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

No. No, it wasn’t filling. It was emptying, ever so slowly.

Unlike my own sub. The water was up to my ankles now, and my feet had gone numb from the biting cold.

That was when I saw it. An object sitting on the floor of her sub.

“A pump! She’s got a pump! Of course!”

Boats had bilge pumps to purge water—why wouldn’t subs?

I found it immediately. A cylindrical object on the ground, about two feet tall, with a giant hose sticking out one end.

“Alright. You got this, Greg. C’mon. Come on,” I muttered, willing my hands to move, teeth chattering from the cold. It was just my feet, but I felt soaked to the bone.

I searched for the hose socket. It wasn’t hard to find. I jammed the hose into its receptacle, wondering how the hell I was going to turn it on… when the sub lurched.

The water surged forward, pooling on the glass, and I hit the ground hard.

I didn’t feel the pain, even though it felt like I should’ve. I clawed my way back to the pilot’s seat, only to find Aerion’s sub was missing.

Not only that—the ceiling we’d rammed into was… moving?

“Oh, holy fucking hell…” I breathed.

Understanding dawned upon me.

This wasn’t a ceiling at all.

We’d crashed into the belly of a sea creature so large it dwarfed comprehension.

A dorsal fin the size of a football field came rushing towards me at alarming speed. I braced, but I may as well have prayed to Cosmo, for all the good it did. The fin smashed into the sub, sending me careening.

I was once again thrown from my chair, and at that moment, I truly, genuinely believed I was about to die. A glance at my HUD showed mostly yellow, with my feet in orange-red. And my sub had just sprung another leak.

The world spun, but I hardly even noticed. The sounds faded away, a backdrop that seemingly had nothing to do with me.

The odds had always been stacked against me, in retrospect. Ever since I’d picked that damned starter dungeon penalty.

I’d been greedy, reaching for a class that I had no right to possess. And now, I paid the price.

Except it wasn’t just my life. Aerion would die too. Because of my recklessness. Because I’d convinced her this plan was better.

Maybe it was. Braving eight castles was a long shot at best. But maybe we’d have lived. Maybe we’d—

A dull thump broke me out of my reverie. The sub jerked, its spin slowing.

Another thump, and Aerion’s sub came into view for an instant.

A few thumps later, and the sub finally stabilized enough for me to climb back to the pilot’s seat.

Aerion had stopped my sub’s spin using her own. She’d just saved my life.

Working the controls, I found that only the thrust worked—everything else was broken.

Our buoyant subs rose briefly before colliding with the colossal whale again. The monster was still passing by and ironically, its belly stabilized my sub. Metal grated against chitin, or whatever its skin was made of, but I ignored all that.

The water was now to my knees, and whatever buoyancy this sub had would soon be gone unless I found a way of turning that damn pump on.

I waded to the pump, each step feeling like mud and forcing me to dredge deep into my dwindling energy. I was certain my feet were frostbitten, and I doubted I was very far from going hypothermic.

The lever wasn’t hard to find—levers tended not to be. I yanked it, prayed to Cosmo, and shoved.

Nothing happened. I cursed. I cursed every god I knew. Most of all, I cursed Cosmo.

Apparently, that worked. The bilge belched, throwing a massive bubble to the water’s surface, then began to suck. The hose expanded, rushing full of raging water.

I trudged back to the chair, kicked off my waterlogged sneakers, and slowly, painfully, brought my feet up onto the cushion, awaiting the end of this monstrous beast’s body.

I couldn’t be sure, but if I had to guess, I’d say it was at least a mile long.

The end finally came, and I was ready for it. Aerion’s sub rolled, diving deftly out of the way of the oncoming fin.

With my controls broken, I had no such luck. It was headed for me, and I knew.

I knew that if that thing hit me, I was done for. I already had two leaks, and this time, the fin would smash into the glass canopy. Fragile glass that would shatter.

Not today.

I reached for the rightmost lever and pulled.

There was a whoosh as the [Aural Siege Bolt] shot out of the starboard torpedo tube, darted through the water, and impacted against the fin.

I braced once more for impact… but it never came. Where the torpedo had struck, the creature’s tail simply ceased to exist. Like a shark had taken a perfectly circular bite out of it, leaving the surrounding water red with watery blood.

Congratulations! [Aural Siege Bolt]’s ability [Detonation] has leveled from Foundation - 0 to Foundation - 2.

Aural Siege Bolt [Uncommon] has been destroyed. 8 Essence Reclaimed.

My sub passed through the opening… And then I was clear.

Aerion’s sub was in front of me, and we both began to rise. With less flooding to drag her down, hers rose faster.

I sat in my chair in a daze as I watched the water lighten above us.

The bilge pump continued to work, slowly purging the water from my own sub.

The sub rose faster and faster as we ascended.

I braced myself. The sea creature would return, seeking vengeance. Or maybe another one would see us as food. It’d swallow us whole, just before we reached the surface.

Black turned to dark, murky green, then bluer, and brighter.

The creature never came. I wondered if it’d even noticed us—the bomb would’ve been like an insect bite to something of such colossal size.

Finally, our subs reached the surface and surged into the air, climbing some fifteen feet before crashing back down and settling on the ocean.

We’d done it. We’d survived that insane ordeal.

Except, I was frostbitten, likely hypothermic, and there wasn’t a single spit of land anywhere in sight.