Rhen held two of the fish cores in his hand and stared at the mastery node, unsure what to ask for. He didn’t think Aki would be able to maintain every air bubble for everyone in the raid party, so perhaps long-breath or water-breathing would be good choices. What other abilities that would work well under water?

Ranged attacks would be good. Having to get up in a fishes business every time they wanted to kill one wasn’t going to work for the gigaprisma… no that just didn’t roll off the tongue well. Gigafish.

What kind of underwater ranged attacks might there be other than the water jet? Rhen was sure he wouldn’t be able to get that due to his primordial breath, but it may be useful to the others. No, that was still too weak. He needed a game changer.

Think!

Tremor blast was essentially useless, the vibrations went everywhere and dispersed into harmless slaps by the time it reached the target, so anything vibration related was out. Speed and water breathing would be necessary, but not yet while the diving team was still small enough for Aki to manage. Ranged attacks…

Maybe he was overthinking it. Maybe he should just keep it simple.

Rhen sucked down a deep breath and placed his hand on the node. “We need to effectively fight underwater.”

[Syntial Additions and Expansion]

Available Options: 16 {Expand? Y | N}

Recommended Options: 6

{Amphibian Lung}

Prima I | Active:Persistent | Kinse | Life | Cost: 10% anima to transition

Water, air, as long as it has oxygen, it’s all the same to you. You may transition your breathing style between aquatic and atmospheric for ten percent of your current anima capacity. You will retain your selected breathing style until changed.

*Warning, attempting to switch styles without a five-minute cooldown between may cause permanent respiratory damage.

{Hydromirage}

Prima I | Passive | Mana | Light | Cost: 1.5% anima/minute

You’re here… No, you’re over there! WHERE ARE YOU? While underwater, it will not be possible for friends and foes alike to visually determine your exact location. Creatures using sonar and other non-visual methods will not be fooled by your distortion projections.

{Sea-Shell}

Prima I | Active:Persistent | Mana | Death | Cost: 12% anima

The ocean holds you tight and keeps you safe. While underwater, you surround your body in a protective shell once every ten minutes built from the sediment of the sea floor. This shell is flexible at the joints, and resistant to both magical and melee damage, but varying amounts based on the materials used. Shell can be double stacked to increase resistance but reduce flexibility.

*Shells constructed of magical materials will damage attackers on hit.

**Warning, shell layers reduce buoyancy.

{Toxink}

Prima I | Active | Mana | Death | Cost: 5% anima

When you get spooked, they get splooged. While underwater, release a {2} cubic foot cloud of toxic black ink that causes varying levels of blindness, asphyxiation, and reduced anima efficiency. Cloud will persist for up to ten minutes in still water.

*Used on land, the effect will take a gaseous form.

**Warning, Toxink does not differentiate between friend and foe.

{Cephaloshifter}

Prima I | Active | Kinse | Chaos | Cost: 40% anima

Ever wanted between five and two hundred tentacly limbs? Now’s your chance! Transform your body into a giant cephalopod for up to {5} minutes. Retain all the abilities of your syntials and gain any innate abilities of the selected cephalopod. Transformation is made at random, pulling genome from any connected realm.

*Cooldown: This ability can only be used once per {2} hours.

{Compbomb}

Prima I | Active | Enon | Chaos | Cost: 5% Anima

What happens when you compress matter really fast? Who knows! The material compressed will cause varying outcomes—super heating, gaseous transformation, solid transformations, etc. But what happens when that compression is quickly released? Usually an explosion.

Select any target material in line of sight within {100} feet that is {5} cubic feet to compress. Compression can be held for up to {10} seconds. Holding compression may cause different results.

*Waring, this is an expert level syntial. Experimentation is required, and death is likely.

-----

That was a lot for just two little cores. Rhen was happy with all the dungeon had been able to find, but none of it really struck his fancy—except maybe transforming into a giant squid. Maybe then Rhen could read Aki’s mind…

“What are you going to pick?” Olliat grinned, her eyes pinned on Celphaloshifter.

“Amphibian Lung for now. Swift twitch already helps me move quickly through the water, but I’m sure Aki can only support so many air bubbles at once. You?”

“Cephaloshifter, for sure. What an incredible ability!”

“You think a lot of people are going to like it?”

“Oh, yes. I mean, just think about it. Five minutes of being the biggest, multi-armed monster in the lake.”

An idea was taking shape in his mind. Rotating squid-tanks with sea-shell against the boss. They would only need four or five people to take up the mantle, and they would have gigafish in the bag.

But Rhen couldn’t force anyone to get syntials they didn’t want. Still, he could ask for tank volunteers. He had no doubt Jakira would step up in a heartbeat.

And he couldn’t discount Compbomb. While the outcome would be hard to perfect, if they could learn to create explosions around the gigafish, or on it… but five cubic feet of gigafish was like a fingernail to Rhen. No matter, all the abilities presented would make up a good raid team.

“Okay, I’d like Amphibian Lung, please,” Rhen said to the node.

Anima flowed up his arm and traveled to his neck. On either side, Rhen could feel the pinpricks of the anima tattooing itself into his flesh. The blue light faded, and the pain vanished from his neck.

Olliat practically pushed Rhen aside to get to the node. “Cephaloshifter, please!”

Blue power surged up her arm to the top of her head, making her hair glow. She winced and gritted her teeth, but held out through the process until it finished.

She rubbed the top of her head. “That was the most painful yet.”

They made their way back to the inn. Without the sun, it was difficult to know what time it was. Was it time to rest? Rhen didn’t feel tired, but he also knew that his anima siphoning boots helped keep him energized for long raids.

“I’m going to check in with Wyland. I’ll be back at the lake in a few.”

“Okay.” Olliat waved and headed toward the steep tunnel down to the aquatic chamber.

Wyland was already well set up in his workshop in just a few hours, and already plugging away at… something. He was in the middle of welding two pieces of metal together, so Rhen waited.

“Oh, hello. Can I help you?” Wyland asked with a kind but absent smile.

Rhen scowled. “Wyland, it’s me, Rhen?”

Understanding dawned on his face and he waved Rhen’s concern way. “Yes, I knew that, of course I knew that! Whaddya need, sonny?”

“I just wanted to see if you want to come take a look at the aquatic zone to get more ideas?”

“More ideas…”

“For the crystal farming?”

“Oh yes, that’d be a good idea.”

Rhen helped him down, since the tunnel was quite steep.

“Wow, wouldya look at all that anima.” Wyland whistled. “Why, that’s gotta be enough to fuel an army!”

“And we’re going to need a small, but ruthless army to take down the gigafish.”

“The gigawha?”

“Step back to the tunnel.” Aki summoned his aurora spell and flitted the light over the deepest part of the lake. Everyone climbed the rocks up to the tunnel entrance and waited. After a moment, the gigafish breached, chomping at the glittering spell. It hit the water with an ear-splitting crack, sending a huge wave up to the sands and crashing into the wall. The lake water sprayed up into the tunnel, misting them.

The walls of the cavern trembled, and the glowing crystals twinkled. Some of the longer ones cracked at the base and plummeted toward the lake. Some were snatched out of the air by enterprising silvish, but the others hit the water with a smack.

“I see. That’s one big fluffer!”

“It is, which is why we’ll need all the firepower we can get to go up against it. I think I have a good plan forming, though, now we just need the anima for everyone’s syntials.”

“Well, I can definitely getcha something to get those things out. Gimme three days.”

“Isn’t that what he said yesterday?” Olliat asked.

“I didn’t make no promises yesterday, girly. Mind yourself.”

“No problem, Wyland, everything’s fine. One more thing if you could work on in your spare time; a clock.”

“Ha, spare time for a clock. Sure, sonny, whatever you want.” Wyland hobbled his way back up the tunnel to his workshop.

Another day down… What the heck had Wyland been working on?

Eli cringed. “Is something wrong with him?”

“He’s just a bit kooky,” Rhen said, but he felt worry growing in him. There was definitely something wrong with his memory. Rhen had heard of diseases eating the mind. What a tragedy for such a brilliant mind.

Rhen patted Eli on the shoulder. “C’mon, let’s get you some abilities to help hunt these fish.”

They went up to the mastery node for another round of upgrades. There wasn’t a lot of anima left in the node, so just Eli grabbed Amphibious Lung, despite wanting Cephaloshifter badly. Rhen guessed he wouldn’t have to ask for volunteers to tank, everyone was going to want a shot at a kraken kaiju battle—and maybe that was the plan.

They returned to the shallows where Aki projected a luminescent map of the area just beyond the precipice. There were openings along the rock face all the way down what looked like a mile. Rhen’s jaw dropped as the light projection kept going, and going, zooming out and making the shallows area smaller and smaller until he hit the bottom.

“It does continue to get deeper farther into the lake, but this was as far as I felt comfortable going. There are very large fish, some nearly comparable to gigafish. There is plant life hanging from the walls and along the floor, and few of the crab-creatures we had seen before, but much larger.

“The openings in the rock face are mostly shallow, but some are deep enough to hide in. I believe a strong tactic will be to lure enemies close to these pockets where several others lie in wait to ambush the monster.”

“No time like the present to test that tactic.”

“I speak only to you now, Rhen. You seemed apprehensive about the depths. Are you afraid?”

“Nothing I can’t get over for the sake of the nexus.”

Eli pulled out his dagger, grinning. ~Let’s fluff some fins up.

With that, they got to work hunting silvish and prismageyser—which proved effective at stamping out the “hide in holes” tactic by blowing their water right into the dimples and pushing the hiding ambusher out. Olliat came within a few feet of getting chomped when she activated her cephaloshifter ability.

The prismageyser’s jaw was ripped straight off when she morphed into a ten-tentacled monster. Her skin shimmered, but was translucent, revealing all kinds of guts inside, as well as the massive sharp beak nestled under her tentacles. She rammed the beak into the fish’s eye and ripped it out, then wrapped her tentacles tight around its body, crushing it.

She brought the fish up to the surface and chucked it at the beach where Bort waited to harvest it.

~By far the coolest thing you’ve ever done in your life. Eli said, the snark thick in his nasally pubescent voice.

She wrapped a tentacle around him and pulled him close to her eye. ~Watch yourself, kiddo. I’m the boss-monster, now.

They hunted down several more fish in the five minutes, each one larger as Olliat tested her strength. Rhen and Eli sat back and watched for the most part. She was a wonder for those five minutes, using her new body as if she’d had it her whole life.

And that was how the days went on. With each core, Rhen rotated the raid party up to the mastery node for abilities. His plan unfolded without any prompting as nearly everyone selected cephaloshifter. Now, they’d just have to get enough anima for the other abilities to make this whole crazy scheme work.

Gods, he hoped it would work.