The shield glimmered and shone in the dark depths, surrounded by the undersea boats at a loss for how to properly collect it. Usually, when treasure was lost at the bottom of the ocean, it was considered to be lost forever, or at least near impossible to retrieve. To have such an object just leisurely lying around and in front of their eyes was not to be expected by any means.

‘How do we collect this, though?’

It was common sense that water became heavier the deeper one ventured, at least for those who learned about it in books or lived on the coast. Even if one didn’t know about this, the fact that they were this deep underwater was a sign that it was impossible to simply dive, retrieve the shield and surface back up.

Sofis stared at the shield. It still had bits of a coating of blue paint on its surface, though the pattern wasn’t clear after so many years of erosion. The ground had a lack of any life, being only made of sand and pebbles. The water, albeit murky, was not because of algae. Amongst this dead landscape, the shield stood out more than ever, its golden radiance so bright compared to everything else.

Now as for how to retrieve it…

‘Why not use the claws on the boat?’ she suggested.

‘What claws?’ Gennai asked in confusion.

She pressed a button, and the familiar claws extended out, softly landing on the sand.

‘Wow…’

She just didn’t know how the claws would manage to store the shield somewhere inside the boat.

After some testing and fiddling, Gennai seemed to understand the mechanisms and began reaching towards the shield.

The claws firmly grabbed onto the shield’s edge and began pulling it out of the sand. Resistance was surprisingly tough, however, and the boat itself rocked a bit when Gennai attempted to pull harder by rising up. The shield simply slid off and the boat steadied itself, defeated.

‘Just dig up the area around the shield,’ Temia said.

The claws were then used as shovels, pushing away the sand to expose more of the shield to the waters. However, even the sand seemed exceedingly heavy and progress soon became painstakingly slow. Added with the limited visibility, it became even more of a difficult chore. There was little they could do but to desperately keep shovelling, bit by bit, until they deemed the work was done.

Finally, with a second grab,the shield was promptly removed and now dangled in the water with the claws desperately holding on. They could only stare at their prize, so close yet so far, with no way to deposit it inside the boat.

‘So… What now?’ Temia said.

‘Do we just hold onto it until we find the next door?’ Jorn wondered.

‘I have a slightly better idea,’ Gennai replied.

With some lever pulling, button pressing and steering, the boat quickly resurfaced, much to the confusion of the other still-submerged boats. The shield nearly slipped off on more than one occasion, but was desperately supported and held on by the other boats.

‘Sofis, control the claws for me,’ Gennai ordered. ‘Just try to raise the shield above the surface.’

She understood the task immediately. Without any other form of entrance, there was realistically one way to transport the shield into the boat: the entry hatch.

As Gennai climbed up and opened the hatches, Sofis carefully raised the claws up until the shield was out of sight beyond the surface of the water. She moved it a bit closer towards the hatch for ease of access, though she was unsure just how much closer was enough. She finally released the claws, and a satisfying clang resounded inside the boat. The shield had landed.

Once her job was complete, she waited.

Jorn was called up after a short while, and after a while of more waiting, the two returned with the damp shield, the gold still clean as new.

‘This is absolutely beautiful,’ Gennai praised.

At a glance, there was nothing that could indicate the shield’s age. Despite patterned indents on its edges, the surface was too smooth to really tell anything at first. The paint might’ve had some clues, but Sofis noticed that it was already all gone, likely scratched away with the rough handling of the claws.

‘How much do you think this is worth?’ Temia asked.

‘Probably in the hundreds of thousands,’ Gennai grinned. ‘Enough money to last us a lifetime.’

He wasn’t exaggerating. The shield was made of pretty much solid gold and was preserved in extremely good condition. Smaller objects might’ve survived like this, but certainly nothing close to the shield’s size. It was worth a fortune at the very least.

Finally, a ‘proper’ piece of treasure.

Excitedly, Gennai returned to the helm and directed the boat to sink once more. ‘Search the area, everyone!’

It was almost as if he forgot the aim to find a way out and was now back to simply searching for valuable treasure.

Of course, such a search ended up being futile. For what seemed to be a whole day they searched, but all they found was sand everywhere they went. There wasn’t even a shiny piece of sand to fool them, only disappointments all around. Sofis even opted to take a brief nap, and when she woke up, they were still searching the ground.

She sighed. She would’ve nearly forgotten their jobs as treasure hunters if not for this blatant example of their greed.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

‘I think we should stop, Gennai,’ one of the treasure hunters finally said. ‘We should probably resurface as well to see where we are.’

‘... Fine,’ Gennai relented.

Sofis was just glad this random search was over.

As the boats resurfaced and floated on the water, the band all climbed up for a bit of fresher air. What welcomed them, instead, was a sea of total darkness save for the lights on their boats. There was nothing to reference their location from. Even the barrier that originally blocked their way was nowhere to be seen.

Sofis raised her arms, only to immediately bump her hand against a hard stone ceiling a little above her. That, at least, told her something compared to the endless darkness around her.

‘I think we’re lost,’ Gennai concluded.

Groans could be heard everywhere around him.

The next few dives were similar. They’d traverse for an unknown period of time and resurface. Once they realised they were still in the middle of nowhere, they dived down again, and the same process repeated. Gradually, the initial excitement was worn down, until the only noises that sounded were the constant whirring of the boats and the occasional complaint from a treasure hunter.

It was frankly boring.

‘How big is this space?’ Gennai groaned as they dove down into the depths again.

His question certainly echoed inside Sofis as well. Theoretically, the more they ascended, the smaller the spaces should be in the structure. Yet this lake was increasingly feeling like a sea, boundless, swallowing them whole with its existence alone. Devoid of life, loneliness was beginning to creep into each of their hearts, much like the heavy air that drowned out their thoughts in the hall of silver.

She was beginning to even hate water itself.

Gennai no longer chose to surface, instead cruising along the bottom of the lake in one direction. For how long no one really knew, only that there must be an end somewhere in the direction they were heading. If there wasn’t a door welcoming them once they reached the edge, they’d simply follow the edge until they found one.

And if they still couldn’t find a door… Well, that would be the end of the journey. A very boring end to the journey.

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

Sofis woke up from her sleep after feeling a slight thud. She drowsily walked to the helm, and unsurprisingly, Gennai was asleep, lying dormant on the floor. He had given up on doing anything else other than monitoring their continued movement. No one kept track for how long they’d been travelling, only that they were still travelling.

But they’d finally stopped. Not because they reached an edge or anything, but that they had crashed into a mountain of sand, the only interesting thing in the landscape at this point.

There was no sign of any of the other boats. Sofis couldn’t hear anything from them. Were they all gone? She had no idea. None of the boats really bothered to keep contact after travelling together for so long, assuming they’d just cruise into eternity.

Maybe the others have already gone far ahead, leaving the four of them behind.

‘Gennai, wake up,’ she whispered, shaking his body a little. He only groaned and soon went back to his slumber.

It was Temia instead that had woken up, entering the helm with groggy eyes and dishevelled hair. She too had become far less vigilant over the past while, instead just spending her days in the cabin resting, unbothered by anything around her. It was disappointing, really, but nothing that Sofis could blame. For after all, she had been doing pretty much the same thing until this moment.

‘Oh, Sofis… Have we arrived?’

‘No, at least I don’t think so.’

‘Then why did we stop?’

Sofis just lazily gestured to the mountain of sand before them.

It was then that Temia’s eyes lit up. She noticed something. She ran towards the window and pointed at what seemed to just be a collapsed bit of sand. Sofis didn’t understand her excitement. What was she—

‘Sofis, look.’

And indeed Sofis looked. She saw it as well. Stone.

Sofis quickly went to extend the claws out. The stone didn’t necessarily mean anything, but the fact that it was there suggested something unusual to her instinct already.

She brushed away the sand as quickly as she could, dragging the claws and mildly damaging their components in her haste. An alarm blared for a moment, just enough to wake Gennai and Jorn from their sleep.

‘What’s going on?’

Both of them immediately jolted awake as soon as they saw the scene before them.

‘How did we…’

A metal hatch surrounded by stone stood in front of them, the iron only slightly rusted and the stone appearing practically untouched. It was exceedingly large, enough for the boat to enter easily without any intricate manoeuvring. It was practically designed for them to enter.

‘Everyone, stop!’ Gennai shouted supposedly to the other boats. ‘We’ve arrived!’

‘Uh, Gennai…’ Sofis said carefully. ‘I think we’re the only ones that stopped.’

‘What do you mean?’

The silence answered his question.

He took a deep breath, taking over the controls of the claws from Sofis.

‘Let me focus on opening this hatch.’

The door slammed behind them. Jorn had returned to the cabin. The sign was clear. The cabin was now off-limits.

Gennai’s hands shook a bit as he used the claws to slowly turn the hatch. Though Sofis thought of assisting, her hand quickly shrunk back after noticing Temia’s brief glare. It was Gennai’s way of distracting himself. Though Sofis knew them little better than strangers, the treasure hunters were Gennai’s companions for years. She felt nothing, but it didn’t mean everyone else felt the same way.

But it was true that, at some point, separation was inevitable in the endless sea of time.

The hatch opened. Immediately, the water rushed in, dragging the entire boat with the current. The underside of the boat screeched as it bumped against the wide tube. The claws broke under the pressure, the navigation mechanisms completely useless as the boat tossed about at the mercy of the water. At some point, Sofis felt they were being violently pushed upwards, the entire chamber feeling far heavier than before, her legs briefly unable to support her own weight.

The boat rocked about like a barrel in a thunderstorm, the group inside tossed around in random directions. Sofis nearly vomited, Gennai desperately clung onto a lever, while Temia just allowed herself to crash against a wall.

After a while, everything calmed down. The boat had rammed headfirst into the ground, the window cracked with a piece of stone lodged inside. It was impossible to grab the chests as the door to the storage room had been damaged and unable to be opened. Only the golden shield was able to be retrieved, which Gennai did after some struggle. Somehow, the four of them were all safe, and after regaining their senses, they began to climb out of the boat. Jorn had to be dragged out, but after some stern scolding from Gennai and Temia, he seemed to be more compliant, at least from Sofis’ perspective.

The view outside the boat was not especially impressive, but far more than whatever they had been experiencing in the boat before. It was another hall, the floor cracked and broken to various degrees. Below it was complete, empty space, the darkness all-consuming like the sea they traversed in. Luminescent vines illuminated their way, decorating the otherwise dull environment with dashes of green. Despite the dangers below, the path towards the door was actually relatively straightforward.

There was just one problem.

Four moving stone golems stood in a line, directly blocking their way. The moment the four of them were noticed, the golems began steadily advancing, their steps slow but deliberate, their flexible arms like whips as they extended and dragged across the ground. On the ground before the group were four sets of swords and shields. It was obvious what they had to do.

Sofis looked back. There was no retreat.

The only way now was forward.