Chapter 85: Sinking Sensation (1/2)
Mike started kicking his way to the surface, until one of the tentacles wrapped around his waist and started dragging him even further down. Evidently the creature was trying to take him down with it.
[This thing is pretty presumptuous for calamari.]
He struggled against the rubbery mass, but couldn't get good leverage against the slippery surface. Now, starting to run out of air, he began to panic a little, trying desperately to come up with a plan to escape.
Being submerged in water was having a serious effect on his magic. Fire and Air Magic were almost completely unusable. The former merely heating the surrounding liquid, while the latter could only really be used to form air bubbles. Earth Magic was mildly useful, but he was having trouble making something solid enough to penetrate the Kraken;s skin, as his earthen structures tended to soften and disintegrate after a while.
Water Magic was of course usable, and indeed even easier than normal, but he was having trouble applying it in a manner that would help him.
While he was trying to work through the issue, he was clipped by another of the swirling tentacles, knocking the wind out of him. As the last of his air escaped his lungs, Mike couldn't help but take a reflexive breath, inhaling a mouthful of cold, lake water.
[OH CRAP! I'm drowning! I'm...]
He was able to breathe normally, even underwater. With only a little extra effort he could draw the water into his lungs and expel it without any of the pain he associated with drowning. It was a bizarre feeling.
After a few moments spent exploring this new form of respiration, he recalled one of his titles, Undinekath, actually granted him the ability to breathe underwater. Apparently it also helped compensated for the issue of pressure and temperature, since he was fairly comfortable in his current situation, minus the tenticular death grip. Now that death was no longer immanent, he had some time to work out a solution to his problem.
Feeling a little embarrassed about freaking out now, he noticed that the Kraken had pulled him very deep. It had gotten to the point that what little light had initially filtered through from above, was almost completely obscured, leaving him in increasing darkness. If he wanted to escape, he would need a means of generating light or seeing in the dark.
[This would be a great time to gain a night vision skill. Right, System?]
He continued to sink into the darkness.
[Alright, fine! I'll figure something else out. I wonder how light magic works.]
He tried summoning his mana and directing it to crate light, but all he achieved was some weak Fire Magic that was promptly extinguished. Trying to recall everything he knew about electromagnetic physics and the interaction of photons with matter, he sought to approach the situation scientifically.
[So fire is basically kinetic energy caused by vibrating molecules, so obviously, Fire Magic works by creating those vibrations...except when I use it create semi-material fire I suppose. Although that could be some kind of electromagnetic field acting like matter when it interacts with an object...]
Mike gave himself a headache trying to apply his world's physics to the way magic worked in Ea. He finally concluded that the laws of physics themselves were probably pretty similar, but that mana, and by extension magic, were somehow able to override them.
By this point he was floating through inky blackness, and was unable to see his hand in front of his face. The Kraken seemed to have died somewhere in the intervening time, but the tentacle maintained its hard grip.
[Aren't these things supposed to float when they die? Did I hit some kind of buoyancy sac? Also, how deep is this lake? I feel like I've been sinking for hours.]
Desperate to see something, or anything of what was going on, he tried creating light once more.
[Alright, just imagine it. Excited electrons move to a higher energy state, releasing electromagnetic radiation as photons. It can't be that hard.]
The water instantly quenched the ball of fire he summoned into his hand.
[Damn it! Alright, I got to keep trying. What else can I try? I mean, it can't be as easy as flipping a light switch. That would be silly.]
As soon as he imagined the light switch going on, a steadily glowing ball of white light formed in his hand, illuminating his surroundings.
While he was busy cursing the fickle nature of the System, he took a moment to check his surroundings.
He found himself sinking through clear water. The Kraken, now clearly dead, was still clinging gamely onto him as they sunk ever deeper. The light in his hand did travel far enough to illuminate much else, but he could vaguely make out some sort of pale color wall to one side of himself.
It looked a little strange to him, so he added mana to the ball of light, expanding the radius of the revealed water. What he saw there was mind-boggling.
A wall of cream colored material seemed to stretch as far as he could see in almost every direction. It was seemingly carved in an odd rippling pattern with slightly irregular shapes. After a few more minutes of examination, he began to feel that there was something familiar about the structure, it almost looked like a set of....teeth.
With a start he realized he was looking at the skull of a phenomenally large creature. The sheer size of it beggared his imagination. Each of the teeth was easily dozens of meters in length. If the rest of the creature was proportional it would be truly gargantuan. A monster that would dwarf even the titanic beasts that popped up in the movies and TV shows of Mike's old world.