Chapter 197: Underground Ocean

Splash~!Diving into the water and making full use of the opportunity while the fish were panicking and not paying attention to her, Scaly managed to use her swimming ability effectively for the first time to escape from the fish who were still trying to escape- At least that was what she thought would happen, but reality was different, as she found herself in the middle of a massive school of fish. Orıginal content can be found at novel•fire.net

However, just when she thought she would get attacked from all directions by the large number of fish that now surrounded her on all sides, a violent force tugged at her and the rest of the fish. Dragging them all forward without giving them any way to resist... And a few seconds later, Scaly found herself back out of the water plummeting downwards at a terrifying speed.

Whoosh-!

Barely managing to unfurl her wet wings to float instead of plummet downwards towards the darkness below, Scaly could not help but look around at her new surroundings filled with confusion. Not understanding what had just happened or how she had ended up back out of the water again so suddenly after diving down in the water to avoid crashing into the ceiling of the underground river.

Only after her eye managed to adjust to the pitch-black darkness, did she realize that she now found herself inside a massive underground space and the reason why she was now out of the water was because the underground river had turned into an underground waterfall shortly after the point where she had dived into the water.

On the bright side, she was now back out of the water that was filled with far more fish than she had first expected, while on the bad side, it seemed like the underground space was a massive underground ocean. Meaning that if she couldn’t find anywhere to land, she would still end up in the water.

Even worse, given the size of this underground ocean, she had a feeling that the fish hidden in there were far larger than the ones she had encountered so far.

Given that her original goal in coming here was to hunt down the heavenly lake serpents, she had a feeling that they might also be present in the water below.

Although her goal was to hunt to heavenly lake serpents, she had no plans of facing off against them in the water, as they would almost certainly have an advantage against her.

Not to mention, she had a feeling that other heavenly lake serpents would come after her if she fought one of them in the water. After all, they did seem like they worked together most of the time, rarely appearing alone.

I need to find somewhere safe to land...

Narrowing both of her eyes as she thought about her earlier experience in the water surrounded by fish that would want nothing more than to team up on her and eat her, Scaly scanned the surroundings below for any piece of land that might be present inside the massive underground ocean.

Even if it was just a little island formed from a few rocks sticking out from the ocean, it would be more than enough, as it would at least give her a chance to determine the danger of the water before starting her search for the heavenly lake serpents, her original goal for entering this underground river and now underground ocean.

Scanning through the seemingly endless dark ocean that now appeared beneath, Scaly soon spotted several small islands made out of rock sticking out of the water.

The only problem was that these small islands were far too small for her to even stand on top of. No, it would be more accurate to describe them as spikes sticking up from the water instead of islands. At most she would be able to cling to these rocks a few meters above the water.

If possible, she really wanted to avoid that kind of situation and wanted to find somewhere where she could relax and recover her strength after the situation she had gone through since entering the underground river.

Although she still had more than enough strength left to fight in her current state, she had used quite a bit of her mana earlier when attacking the fish that had been ready to jump up and attack her when she was about to reach the water.

Luckily, she didn’t have to search through the dark waters for long, as she soon spotted an island that was fully in line with her current needs in the distance. Not only because it was rather large, but also because she could clearly see that there were several large pillars on the island that connected to the ceiling above. Making her guess that this island was one the main supporting pillars of the underground ocean.

The bit of land that was present should have been shaped out over time, either due to monsters intentionally carving away at the rocks over time to create a living space out of the water where they could avoid the fish there or because of the dungeon itself shaping the pillar in that kind of way to create an island for monsters to stay.

No matter what reason there was for the island to appear, she was certain of one thing... And that was that the current island didn’t seem to have any monsters present on it at the current moment. Making it perfect to serve as a home or base during her time hunting down the heavenly lake serpents.

After all, she had still not found any trace of the heavenly lake serpents. Making her think that they were either somewhere further away from where she had ended up in the underground ocean or hidden somewhere underwater.

In the end, it didn’t really matter what the answer was, as she would need somewhere to recover after fighting with the heavenly lake serpents. Especially considering that she had a feeling killing the heavenly lake serpents wouldn’t be easy to accomplish in the water.

Even if she did end up killing a heavenly lake serpent, it would be dangerous for her to move around in the water with her current strength.

Not because she was weak so to speak, but more so because she couldn’t really make full use of her strength underwater. More so now that her strongest attack was lighting magic... And lightning magic didn’t really fare well when it came to underwater attacks.

Thinking about it, she had a feeling that her water magic wouldn’t work that well when confronting water-based monsters like the heavenly lake serpents. Not just water magic, the rest of her magic also seemed like it would be significantly weakened underwater.

The only thing she could think of, that wouldn’t end up being affected underwater, was her normal claw attacks and other attacks that relied on her own body.

With that in mind, fighting the heavenly lake serpents underwater, it looked like it would be best for her to rely on her own claws and other attacks using her body.

The problem with this was that she didn’t feel confident in killing the heavenly lake serpents with the strength of her claws alone. Reason being their large bodies making them extremely resilient unless she managed to land a deadly blow on their head or other weak spots on their bodies.

Shaking her head as she thought about all of the problems that would come with hunting the heavenly lake serpents in the water, Scaly focused her attention back on the important matter at hand and began to turn around and change her direction. Floating down towards the island in the distance.

At the very least, even though it was rather far away from her current location, she was still over a hundred meters up in the sky and still had some mana left for wind magic. Allowing her to glide for at least another five or so minutes without any problems and move rather far.

Thump~

Soon enough, she landed on top of one of the many large stones that dotted the parts of the island where the pillars stretching into the ceiling above were not located.

Hm? That is...

However, when she landed on one of the large rocks that covered the empty space of the island, she suddenly discovered that this large rock seemed to be moving.

Even more surprisingly, she discovered that all of the other rocks that should have been motionless were similarly moving around.

The reason she had not discovered this beforehand was not because the rocks had been laying still, but instead because all of the rocks were moving incredibly slowly. So slow that she wouldn’t be able to detect that they were even moving in the first place unless she experienced it and focused her attention on the rocks themselves.

That and they were also leaving behind a trail of slime of some sort as they moved...