Chapter 8 Silly watch

Lucius

I've never seen a whole map of the world. I'd seen maps of the whole of the veil and the huge 13 floors, but here standing in front of a mural of the world I realized how small we really were.

The past few days have been nothing but hectic with everyone scrambling to get their affairs in order for this week long 9 people deep trip. Lizzy called in me, Paimon, and Pallas to somehow get her new boyfriend to come. A tall muscle bound dude none of us had really talked to, but Lizzy had helped out a lot these past 2 years so we all relentlessly campaigned to Father and finally after days he gave in and let him come.

I hadn't been able to sleep last night so the second I heard Pallas sneaking out I jumped up racing to beat him into the shower which I easily did blocking him out with a wall of hands. Though it was all for nothing, I guess father figured we wouldn't be in the house for a week so why pay the heating bill so I was forced awake by the freezing cold water not touched by an ounce of alchemical heat. After that it was a madhouse, everyone fighting over the shower with Leon and Paimon both getting into a serious brawl over who had next. The house was the most packed it had been since the funeral with Ahlecks and nix reprising their rooms from Jordis last night and Lizzy's boyfriend sleeping on the couch. Neither me, Paimon, or Pallas did any prep when it came to packing, focusing all our efforts on the last bit of training while turning Freddy into a captain to look over our duties in the family. We didn't have any suitcases and had 2 backpacks between the 3 of us. So making a smart decision we put a tv and the devi 64 in one bag along with our combined net worth, and in the other we jammed in as many clothes as we could fit putting a somewhat even assortment of outfits in there.

While everyone was fighting and hurrying in the house I snuck out the back and into the cemetery. It has been a couple of days since I said anything to Jordis and I wanted to tell him goodbye and all that, but I had been beaten to the punch. Leon fresh out the shower still soaking wet hair was crying on Jordis’s tombstone telling him about how he wishes he could leave with us. Hearing that I decided i'm sure Jordis wouldn't want to deal with 2 blabbering people today so I let them be, going back inside and sat on the couch while waiting for everyone.

After everyone was ready we all ran out through the graveyard district and through the swerving streets of the inner city in a mad dash as we had to catch the departing east side train. 2 trains took you out of the city, but each led to a different side of the Veil mountain range so if we couldn't catch this one then we'd have to wait 12 hours for the night trolley.

Luckily, we made it just in time. There were 15 cars all 3 stories tall all at a steep 80 degree angle. The whole of the Veil was inside a steep valley between the twin mountain ranges so to move between floors there needed to be a steep elevated lift. We all by the grace of the gods made it onto the same car, but everyone else was divided into different floors, and I was unlucky enough to get stuck with Lizzy and muscle boy who were propally suffocating from how little they come up from air with each other. That bothered me, but the worst part was I was stuck with the clothes backpack forced into a seat that if I leaned over I could see Paimon and Pallas playing the Devi 64 having the time of their lives without me.

All that stopped mattering though once the ride started. It was pretty uncomfortable being at such a steep angle, but you got used to, and the views shortly eclipsed any negative. as we slowly rose we were hit with awe inspiring visuals. At best I'd seen these places on the low res super old Tvs that trickled down to us, but looking at them with my eyes was breathtaking. Suddenly no one was focusing on how freakish I looked. Instead they were captivated by the beautiful landscapes that sprawled through our shifting horizons as we shifted from one innate domain to another as we slowly rose. Each floor had a vastly different architectural style with each floor looking progressively more well built. Along with it gradually getting brighter and brighter until after a long 10 hour ride we finally arrived on the first floor. The city of Lumos as it was called up here was the only part of the Veil not made into an innate domain so it actually had to bend to the flow of the valley. It was beautiful, the whole mountain had been gutted and filled with a large variety of beautiful buildings all a gleaming white looking as if each was made of marble. As we were walking out of the station, we stopped and looked back to the trains following the crowd. Other than Father who just smiled and said watch none of us had any idea what was about to happen. We sat watching waiting for something to happen, Then all the cars filled with a new batch of people dropped flying down the tracks making a loud whistle as they sped violently fast down the Valley quickly disappearing into the innate domains. Everyone had a huge uneasy smile with a minor look of concern as we were going to have to take the trains back down.

Once we walked out the station we were greeted with a blinding light, and a vibrant array of colors that took us by surprise as our bare eyes touched unfiltered sunlight for the first time. The grass was soft and prickly, but not crunchy. Everyone but father figured this out as the 8 of us all dove onto the grass outside the station rolling around as everyone around stared at us. After a tactical 5 minutes of horseplay we all got up acting like nothing happened. The objective was to make it to the east port before sunrise to try and catch a bargain ride that needed to fill space.Following Fathers shawdy directions we made our way through the dense vibrant bright white alleys stopping at every instance to smell the roses and take pictures of cool stuff we saw as we hurried passed it with Lizzies camera. The walk wasn't that long though the station was on the side of the mountain so all we had to do was walk through a couple neighborhoods and through the mountains to end up on the east port.

Walking through the large tunnel then emerging on the east port was wonderful. A small dense section of various industries and ships eclipsed by the unending sea. Everyone was at a loss. It was so grand and imposing. I could only think how wonderful the gods were to create such a vast and beautiful world. Pallas was so lost in the sight he dropped the bag with the Devi 64 and tv in it. which he promptly jumped for, with us confiscating the bag from him somehow leaving me carrying both bags. As we descended down the huge steep staircase, struggling to lug down these 2 heavy bags Paimon stopped abruptly in his tracks. Making me run straight into him, but he didn't react so i yelled “move dipshit this stuff heavy.” unfazed he pointed “look at that.” A bird, A live black crow was picking at a bag of food someone dropped on the stairs. It was alive, it moved so weird in a jerky fashion constantly pecking with its beak waddling around with its little legs. Paimon turned around and with a shit eating grin saying the plan out loud “we got to catch it.” which I instantly nodded in agreement, putting down the stuff we started making plans. “Alright Pallas you act as a distraction Paimon you hold it with your ability and my hands will grab it.” a simple plan executed flawlessly. We sent Pallas after the bird and just as expected it started attacking him, while running away Paimon caught it in an outline and in that split second my hands came from the ground seizing our target. We all huddled around it, carefully we each petted at it while it tried its best to peck at us. Joining in on the line Ahlecks, nix, and Lizzy also joined in with Leon and Lizzys boyfriend acting like they were too cool to join in despite them both not so subtly watching with excitement and curiosity. Paimon took an especially keen interest in the little guy studying and noting just how detailed the real thing was compared to his crow style. Finally after everyone got a turn to pet the little guy Father made me free him and we all got to watch in wonder as he flew off. It was awesome. One day I hope I'll be able to fly as I strained down the never ending staircase down.

We all burst into the largest skyscraper in the port a huge cube tower with Danderos corp on the side neon lit lighting up the foggy early morning. On the 6th floor Father strolled straight to the counter leaving us all to watch from the seating area as he yelled out “that's way to much. get me something cheaper.” at the uninterested receptionist. for the next 10 minutes we watched as he went through their various forms of transportation each time exclaiming “that's too expensive get me something cheaper.” Finally he reached the last option, the cruise ships not expecting much, but trying to bargain hunt he decided to look through the catalog when he found it “This is it I found it!” as he pointed to something. We then all watched as the lady offered a warning saying “Just so you know that ship will be transporting the 6th most wanted man in the world Ryuk of the bloody sand to his execution in front of the Tribunal in Dantes.”Father asked “will it be safe.” “yes it was urgent to move him right away so the Bureau of internal defense will be heavily watching over the ship so it should be safe.” At that moment father ripped the ticket out out of the book leaving noticeably small amount of money saying in a stoic voice“someone has to be brave enough to go on life's journey even if there's risks ” as we all watch wide mouth stunned as he tried to flick a cool grin at us acting like we all didn't just witness his extreme penny pinching tactics. Before he dropped the swagger growing a grim face saying “we have 15 minutes to make it.” which we all then bolted out.

The Danderos Silly Watch A gargantuan ship that we didn't get to appreciate its towering size as we ran onto it. There was supposed to be a boarding tour going over the history of the ship and 2 families it got its name from, but Father brushed past the guide going “I hate the Danderos and Sillywatch families theres noway im going to listen to 30 minutes of company propagandized dick sucking of those fucks.” After that everyone was too embarrassed to take the tour. As we walked away everyone theorized why he hated them so much, missing all the key information I knew, with them ultimately coming to the conclusion that he must hate them because he lost all his money gambling on the last cruise he went on which probably wasn't a stretch.

Walking through this behemoth it was easy to tell it was made cheap probably from one person with them just rolling with it not adding anything even spatial condensation to make it feel more luxury, but to us this was the most bourjois thing ever with us running to check out our rooms. 3 rooms for the 9 of us with father getting his own room. Me, Pallas, Paimon, Leon, and Lizzy were all put in the same room. The sleeping arrangements were Lizzy forcefully asserting her dominion over a whole bed and Leon trying the same, but with no reason to pay homage to Leons tyrannical assertion, me and Paimon made a tag team easily whooping him, stealing the bed from him. forcing him to share the couch with a pullout bed with Pallas who didn't want to fight for a spot. Just 10 minutes after we divided up our sleeping arrangements the boat left the port. With us all sharing 1 small window watching as the coast got smaller into the horizon. The game plan was for us to take advantage of the free power to play the Devi 64 the whole trip, but Lizzy, mad with power from us fancying her demands as repayment for her help, demanded the 4 of us leave so she could hang out with her boyfriend alone. This was the start of our misery, She saw how excited we were to play on the Devi 64 so she challenged us all in a match best of 3 in whatever game we chose. She did this all the time and like always it wasn't in our nature to back down. That does not mean however it wasn't hard to watch our plans get ruined as she beat us all going down the line not dropping a single round much less match. eventually It all came down to me, we got through 1 and ¾ games before I paused the game. We shook hands and we all walked out with swagger because “we had better things to do than play games the next few days when the power was free” we were all trying not to cope too hard.

The cabin was Like a city. There were rows of units as we walked out onto the deck. From there we wandered around aimlessly with no goals.The First place we found ourselves at was an outdoor tropical bar filled with a bunch of old demons piss drunk for the middle of the day. It felt like home. Leon was old enough to buy us all alcohol, but all the drinks were super expensive so using his ability of pocket portal he reached behind the bar and stole a whole crate of bottles for us, all super expensive gold flaked from the island of Eldorado . in a random corner, After downing the whole case right away we were all way too drunk with all rational thinking leaving our heads not to be seen for the rest of the night. From there the next couple hours are a blur as we did whatever we felt like not caring. We got kicked out of the pool for us all going down the slide at once along with a couple girls Leon picked up on the way. There was a zip line but we also got kicked off that after kicking Pallas off. The worst thing we did was when we saw a huge Yokai fish floating by Leon and Paimon told me to catch it and being too drunk to say no I had hundreds of hands coalesce into two huge hands that I used to catch it and try to bring it onboard. I dont think Ive ever been yelled at with such intensity before as a whole cabal of people screamed in our face about how stupid that was. Not caring Leon stole one of the guards keys for “later use.” before he drunkenly walked off with a couple of girls he had been hitting it off with leaving us on our own.

Devi basketball was next I learned that the guy who I got my dashing haircut from played this and with my ability and height I'm a natural. The rules were you had to bounce the ball on the ground every half second with the ball teleporting into the other team's hands if you broke the rule. It's relatively simple and despite us never playing it before we picked it up right away. Normally it would be 5vs5 but there was only a 2v2 going on, forcing our way in we turned it into a 4vs3. It didn't matter that we'd never played before we knew the basics and with our abilities it was easy. I had infinite pass options as my hands bounced passed the ball back and forth to each other while also getting them in the perfect position for Paimon to switch with one of them to conserve his mana. Even Pallas with his almost completely defensive ability could dominate these randos based solely on his superior physicality. 80-15 was the final score and per the rules of the court the winner stays on. We played around by ourselves for like 30 minutes when this dude showed up. He had a slim fit physique and a beautiful face with 2 super model level girls on each one of his arms. Waking up with just pure arrogance the guy goes “oh back in Walprugis this used to be my shit. You guys look pretty good, want to money match.” he said as his luscious blonde hair flowed with the wind. Wanting to crush this arrogant dude and high on our last victory we easily agreed to a play for half our combined money. He got the ball first since it was 1vs3. Which was a huge mistake for the next 5 minutes he slaughtered us. The whole while smiling with his huge grin and talking shit. He was the fastest person I'd ever seen, his ivory white horns acted as the only way to spot him like an aftercast. I knew we lost on that first point even if I didn't want to admit it. He snatched the ball in between passes from my hand and with a laugh would just appear dunking the ball on Pallas making it look effortless. It was impossible to keep track if he didn't want us to see him. Slowing down to talk to us “ what's with those creepy as hands and that shitty music you think thats gonna stop me I haven't even used my ability yet.” he said while taunting, dribbling the ball so fast that it looked like there were 60 of them, before he pulled up and shot a three in my face. I had to know who this guy was so mid-dripple I asked “what's your name by the way.” he laughed a little “there's a chance you might have heard of me the names Lisbon Clover.” scratching my head I couldn't think of anything “nope never heard of you, you famous or something.” he laughed a little as he threw up a swoosh “that's good you don't know about me, and maybe a little.” This pissed me off a little. He already had those 2 beautiful girls but he was still trying to act all cool in mysterious while beating our asses. After that shot though I heard him whisper under his breath “Don't worry iggy no one on this ship could do anything.” which I just ignored cause I was furious we were about to lose half our funds to this asshole. he stomped us 21-0, normally we would have ran away and stiffed him but you could feel this guys power in how he dominated the game so the last thing we wanted to do was make enemies with this speed demon so begrudgingly Paimon handed half the play money we brought for this trip with us all having a little tear as he took it. Leaving with a laugh and a “that was fun let me know if you want to play again.” as he walked up putting the money in the bra of one of the girls he brought with him before leaving with them all giggling.

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Despite what I said about us not wanting to mess with him we were all fuming, so after he left we did a group huddle where we pledged to take revenge on him. Before that though we saw Lizzy and whatever that guys name was walking across the courtyard. Now more than ever in need of a win and still all around very drunk we challenged her in whatever game she chose betting the other half of our vacation fund. She accepted right away choosing volleyball, a game she apparently played for the school despite me never seeing her, but she refused to play 2 vs 3 for that kind of money so we had to go track down someone to play for them. Stumbling around the whole ship we eventually found a paradise. An all you could fit buffet, the whole family apparently got the memo before us as everyone besides Lizzy and her boyfriend were all here at a table scrunching down on massive trays filled with almost every cheap meat they had to offer. So like the great competitors we were, we made a group decision to play the game later and eat all we wanted while we were here. The aim was to beat the house and to do that we needed to fit alot of expensive food on one plate. The plan was that my hands would act as the base and structural pillars for the tower with Paimon using his ability to stabilize the tower if it started to fall and put any falling food back on the trey as we checked out. Pallas like usual job was to be there, his ability was almost strictly defensive so he has to sit out of most of our schemes. Like a team of construction workers we were carefully planning out our plates, the whole staff watching as the tower grew with most of them already having a confrontation with us about something. We diligently stacked the 8 foot towers for each plate, my hands being tactfully impeded inside the tower and Paimon music playing at a subtle low volume to keep us in the game. Finally we sat down with everyone else as celebrated heroes for bringing this much food. As we ate and chatted having a good time we honestly forgot why we had come here in the first place when LIzzy walked in annoyedly going “if you were too scared to lose you could have just told me, but if you put a bet up you still got to pay it out.” as her huge boyfriend stood awkwardly behind her. Before we could say anything Leon jumped in on the opportunity rallying everyone for one big money match. With even Father joining in, for once looking in place with his attire. After negotiating it would be a best of 3 with father being the person who switches every round.

There aren't too many rules for volleyball with the main one being that no abilities can cross the rope and abilities cant hold up the ball except at the start to set.

The first round started off with me, Pallas, Paimon, and Leon facing Lizzy, her boyfriend, nix, Ahlecks, and Father. They had more players and the more experienced team captain, but through a long electoral process with intense debate we appointed that we would switch team captains every round. With us all having too much pride to vote for any but ourselves like good followers of Sol. I was captain first. The strategy was simple: my hands and skeleton would act as the main defensive barrier and the striker {the person who would hit the ball at the ground} while Paimon would slow or hit up the ball with fight edit. Pallas had the highest raw physicality on our side so his job was to save it, and Leon would act as the setter moving the ball around with his pocket portal ability. I put a lot of thought into this. The other half of our money was on the line and unlike father who already gambled all of his spare money away I knew living that life couldn't be for us. Lizzy tried to explain the complicated rules on scoring and how to actually win the game but no one really felt like learning how to do that so we decided each round would end at 10 points.

We started off with the ball and with a devious set from Leon to me where I used the strength of 5 arms to slam the ball down to get an easy first point, but from there it wouldn't be nearly as easy. Ahlecks was the ultimate saver on their team, able to make his hands 10x bigger working wonders to keep the ball in play for them. Father would also spike the ball with such ferocity using his bloodline ability of living fire to have the things kick the ball in random directions before it crossed that halfway mark. Our side was also crumbling on defense. It didn't take long before we realized Paimons main ability was practically useless for this game. The way the detection system worked ruled any time his ability touched the ball as it was holding, getting us a penalty and giving them the ball taking away what we thought would be one of our ace abilities. Leon's ability wasn't much better, also triggering the holding detector leaving just Pallas and me. My hands acted as the main defense popping the ball up before it could hit the ground. i almost hitting the craziest spike with my arms throwing me up before I summoned the skeleton to spike it down, but Nix blocked it. out of all our bloodline abilities I always thought of Nix’s to be the weakest. It was simple shadow manipulation common on the 13th floor but for this one instance his shadow saved the ball popping it up enough for Lizzy to brutally spike it into my face and for us to lose round one.

I was hesitantly optimistic about round 2. We had Father which should provide us with a new set of abilities to work around, but this also meant Lizzy would have to actually try. The scariest person in any competitive game was Lizzy. We all have known this our whole lives, countless bets have been lost because we overestimate ourselves thinking that would be the time. Despite how much we've grown stronger Lizzy still loomed over us like a Devil. The reason Lizzy was almost unbeatable was her bloodline ability which coupled perfectly with her natural physique, Opponent surpass. This ability lets her slow down time around her while enhancing her body's natural movement speed and reaction time to surpass her opponent in any game with set rules. It worked for team sports by matching the fastest thing on the court and surpassing it by 25%. The type of ability a pro player would have. maybe if we were born on a higher floor she might be pro right now, But for now she stood like a tyrant waging a bloody ruthless campaign against us.

The extra moves from father gave us more room to work with but being forced to hand over my leadership position to Pallas left this round in his hands. Pallas took charge leading in an analytical slow way following my original plan just tweaking positions a little. In the end the second round was close but with a clutch play from Leon and incredible save from Pallas we were able to etch out a win. Though Lizzy didn't even look like she was sweating yet; she stood like a monster 6 '2 ripped with a look in her eyes like we were food about to be devoured.

In the 3rd round our defense completely crumbled, missing Fathers added abilities and Paimon trying and failing to use his abilities we were washed losing 2-10. It was first to 3 so we had to win the next 2 or else we would be left destitute on possibly the only vacation of our lives. I took back control over the court demanding to keep my position to no objections. Leon didn't even fight for his right to the court. I rearranged the court. I moved myself to the back so I could get better visualization of the court. swapping with Pallas who would now act as the first line of defense. I also came up with a new game plan. I called it deviated speed, Lizzies ability worked by going off what the fastest thing in the arena was so when we had the ball in our possession if we kept switching between various speeds she would be unable to match our movement tempo.

These plans worked, whenever we slowed down to a crawl she returned to her baseline physical ability which was still great but slightly worse than Pallas who now acted as the main striker dictating the speed of the game. This round we had Father but he was not factored into the plan heavily on account of us missing him the next round, but he still helped out heavily from the back with me. This round was a sweep in our direction. We did one last huddle,and I gave one of Fathers bad motivational speeches “the 4 of us versus the 5 of them not ideal for a final showdown, but did Mandy Hanibal back down against a 1000 humans when he was all by himself. no he sacrificed half his life to win. so walk out there and I expect the same from you all, leave everything on the court!” We ended it with a break. Honestly it felt really corny, but we needed it to come into this round with a positive mindset.

Lizzy for the first time had a grin, I didn't like it. She only smiles before she wins, however This was no time to get discouraged. We started off with the ball and executed our strategy flawlessly. Leon set it and Pallas who hit it with a slow accurate hit. Sadly It got Kept in by father who popped it up with a simple dive.the next second, in an instant the ball spiked to the ground by Lizzy with insane speed. It didn't make sense, how she shouldnt be able to move like that with us going so slow. I thought this as I looked at the court trying to anaylize what went wrong when it clicked. Lizzy had gotten father to make a small living fire that was darting around the back of the court. It was moving far faster than us so switching to him allowed her to once again have a steady fast speed. I yelled out stop but we had already lobbed up the ball for another ruthlessly fast spike by Lizzy. I could see it in her muscle twitches and how shaky her eyes were just how fast she was moving compared to us.I didnt know how to move past this when It hit me. Giving the ball once again to Leon I whispered into Paimons ear the plan and with a grin he agreed. Leaving Pallas and Leon in the dark as they went through the motions. Right as Pallas was jumping up to spike the ball Paimon activated fight edit forcibly drawing Lizzy’s attention to him while he made faces making use of his force point of view change ability. Still though having seen where the ball would go, unable to see, she was still in perfect position to hit Pallas' ball, but not mine. I had extended in arm from the floor milliseconds before Pallas would hit it the ball tipping it, sending it in the opposite direction hard enough to shatter the floor, completely blowing past Nix’s defense. We got our first point but we were now lacking the element of surprise and out of all of Paimons abilities the ones that directly interfere with his opponents senses are by far the most mana deficient. Paimon could only do that about 5 times and in the next 2 points he was forced use 3 with me telling him to wait for the last one. We had brought the score to 5-7 down by 2. This left us with one final option that we had put off till now.

Against Pallas’ will we made him turn on his ability and just stand there with Paimon also turning his on. For the next 4 hits Pallas would take exclusively Lizzy’s floor breaking hits to the face. By having Paimon move Pallas instinctively to the ball he could block it, this worked because that split second of fear before blocking her hits were gone. no longer slowed down Pallas though unwilling was a blocking machine moving faster than my ability allowed. teeth , black eyes, and broken noses were easy for his Weird Fish to fix, but at a tied game 9-9 Pallas walked out claiming “just because it heals doesnt mean it doesnt hurt alot.”as he walked off a mix of angry and sad. A response everyone saw coming. Reading through Pallas Grimoire it was instantly apparent how powerful of a defensive tool it was along with the natural physical benefits it gave him. The only downside was the enhanced senses. Everything is about a 100 times more powerful feeling when his abilities are activated so any pain he feels is unbearable making him unable to use his ability for long in a fight despite how little mana it uses and how quick he is healed. Infact in the years of training Pallas has never once ran out of mana. I could only do it a couple times with hours of persistent use but him no never once did his massive mana reserve ever come close to running low.

We had calculated his forfeit, it was for the greater good and honestly we were surprised he lasted this long. We would dedicate our victory to him it had been several points since Paimon had used his ability and Lizzy likely suspecting he had ran out of mana was caught in our final trap another forced perspective shift followed by my hands slamming it full speed, but like a psychic she somehow got into the perfect position to block it despite her impaired visuals. If she hit it we would have lost. Paimon could only hold her vision for a few seconds so if she hit it that was it. A split second before it crossed over to their court though Leon seeing what was happening jumped up to hit from his setting position and with the tips of his fingers he hit it to the left.

It was priceless the look on Lizzy’s face as she lost a game for the first time, everyone was ecstatic even Pallas who had walked off mad ran in and jumped up and down with us as we took turns hoisting Leon and him into the air. It was glorious seeing Lizzy wide mouth reach in her wallet to hand us the money she rightfully owed us, and having to go shake down Nix and Ahlecks who thought they were going to get an easy pay day from Leon. After that with our new found winnings we generously sponsored another round at the all you could eat buffet including the losers before calling it a night.

The next day

It was an early morning for me and Paimon. Pallas was out like a light for some reason and considering how little he normally sleeps we decided that we'd let him sleep in for today. Me and Paimon were on a mission to track down that bastard with all the hot women who so confidently took half our money. Lisbon, something was his name and we were gonna get him. Our first step was to steal the security guards keys off Leon's extremely hungover corpse, then head to the banquet hall. We spent a little too much last night treating everyone to the all you could eat so we settled on having my hands steal food for us this morning. The range of my abilities quite big so we did it from a comfortable distance away and had them slowly hand it to each one down in a line like how ants pass food down. After we ate we then walked around the whole upper deck scouting looking for anyone with that annoying blonde hair. We stayed on the hunt for around 2 hours until we got bored, and went to have fun at the pool reasoning we could spot him while there, and just like I thought out of the corner of my eye I saw him when we were going down the slide. I forced Paimon out of the water who had considered it a lost cause till now and made him chase this man down with me. He was going into what looked like the staff quarters of the ship. Using that key we opened up the thick metal door and went into the area. as we were walking down the stairs we saw him at the end of the long metal hallway looking like he was going down. We quietly wondered what this dude was doing down here as he looked like every other guest as we quietly sprinted to him trying our hardest not to alert him. We had talked about what we were gonna do and decided that stalking him and breaking into his room to steal the money was the best option. We caught him at the end of the long metal hallways a couple more times as we were going deeper and deeper into the ship making our way further down only catching small glimpses of him as we tried to stay on his tail. Eventually we made it to the point where there stopped being stares going down. We had just lost track of him, but determined not to lose him we pushed aside the weird feeling we got down here and went further in. It was damp with water soaking the floor. It had been loud the whole way down here with the sound of the huge amount of staff rummaging around on each floor, but here it was deathly silent with each lift of our foot letting out a loud echoing sound from the water. It was also dark. It seemed like 3 out of 4 light bulbs were broken or severely dimmed, leading us to feel our way through here more than anything. We walked through trying our best to be silent, but we eventually grew cold and sick of this with Paimon saying “you know what it's not worth it we made our money back from Lizzy lets get out of here.” normally I wouldn't agree but he was right, our money was made whole. There's really no need for us to go through this so I agreed to give up on this. There was only one problem however we were now lost. We wandered around aimlessly to no avail till eventually we heard people talking. After a small talk we agreed that getting in trouble from the staff was way better than staying stuck down here so we started making our way towards the talking. As we got closer the water started to mix with sand. My first thought was that there had to be a hole somewhere in the ship and we needed to get out of here quickly.

At some point we stepped on something that felt fleshy and gross but there were no lights for miles ,so we just kept moving, being optimistic that it wasn't something too bad. Finally at the next light we could see a little, the water had a strange tent of red to it and by this point the horrendous smell couldnt be ignored. We thought that the boat had to have caved in somewhere, the water was getting progressively higher and we were certain there was something off about whatever was in the water. So throwing away being quiet we started slugging through the thigh high water, with the talking growing ever closer till we made it to the corner.

The lights were working and the sight that laid before us was a sight so appalling and unnatural I'd never seen such a brutal wicked death. 3 men all dressed in the same uniform all sprawled out in various positions missing limbs and with large chunks of them missing seemingly smeared against the wall. There was a stairway, 2 sets of stairs leading in what looked like opposite directions. At this point fear started to take over me and Paimon who silently agreed to go up the right staircase. We knew we couldn't move back as the water kept rising. moved as slow as possible cringing at every minor splash made by us walking through the water. As quiet as we could we crawled our ways up the opposing stairs. We didn't know what was happening and we didn't want to find out. Once we crept up the stairs it ended with the next flight up being down the halls. We moved slowly then once we felt whatever it was couldn't hear us we both started sprinting faster than we ever have in our lives just hoping to make it out from the depths of this ship onto the surface. As we ran, we saw another man in the same outfit as before slouched over with a huge hole in his concaved head. All we could do was keep sprinting and hope it had passed, but we weren't so lucky. Turning into the next stairwell we slammed into two men dressed same as the others holding guns on guard. “What are you kids doing down here, don't you know this is a restricted area?” they were clueless. that meant whatever was happening was close. We needed to get by. We tried to pass them but they held onto us not letting us move past screaming at us. The whole time I thought stop stop your going to draw its attention, but they didnt stop. I heard it before I saw him long slow steps as he walked down the stairs. I tried to go back the other way but they held onto me. His face was obfuscated by some type of spell pixelating and blurring any detail. I watched as just one eye opened piercing through the veil it made. His eye was a dark spiral that spun inwards from the outskirts of his eye leaving him with no pupil. Suddenly the man that was holding me loosened his tight grip, until he let go completely. For a second he stood there looking off towards something with tears in his eyes. Everyone was staring silent, trying to figure out why he just stopped. When,out of nowhere {CRACK} his body started to unnaturally bend and fold into itself, before it began to spiral out.we all watched as his eyes looked on in plead for help as his body started imploding outward like a balloon, then pop.