Aaron dove down towards the group and said in a hushed tone.

  “Turn down the lights and be quiet. There is something big out there.”

  The group did as he asked them, although with some reluctance. They dimmed the lights by extinguishing some and covering the last one up, so that the entire ocean fell into a murky darkness they could barely see through. Aaron shot up into the darkness away from the group and kept still in the water. Waiting, observing. Looking for the thing in the dark. It was quiet besides a rush of water now and then. Something was moving slowly and it was coming closer. It took a minute or two of tense waiting until the creature was close enough. Aaron heard the rush of water and shot forward with Wind Steps.

  He accelerated his speed and concentrated on reinforcing his arms with Qi. His ears guided him and it took all his concentration to accelerate, reinforce and get into the right position to where his senses told him the creature would be. But that also meant he had no capacity left to care for what he was hitting in a few moments. His core straightened and he drew back his fists before he punched at the disturbance in the water.

  The ocean was dark around him, pitch black even for his senses and only a bit of light came from below and above. Only enough to show him the outline of something long and big in the darkness, before they collided.

  Aaron’s fist shot forward carrying all the momentum of his rush with it along with his reinforced Qi and his superhuman bodily strength. The crash was terrible and at the same time much much less violent than he had expected. Aaron shot through the creature like a bullet, blood and viscera spraying around him into the ocean. A deep undulated roar shook the ocean around him, but even without it, Aaron had known he had missed its vitals. The roar hurt his ears more than the crash had to be honest.

  The dark shape in the ocean loomed behind him as he turned in the water, his momentum barely slowed by the terrible collision. But he quickly realized the shape was not just behind him, but around him. Giant limbs descended on him, suction cups as big as his head lashing the water as the creature, the giant kraken to be specific, tried to capture him. Aaron burst into its squishy body with another crash, his fist turning the gray gooey meat into bloody pulp. The tentacles moved around him as the creature pushed out a giant stream of water and ink that turned the surroundings to Aaron not just pitch black but also toxic. He quickly realized the spell over his mouth could not filter oxygen out of the ink filled water and he leapt out of the cloud of ink as quickly as he could.

  Aaron dodged lashing tentacles, but there were too many and the force they carried was too much to parry them. With no other way out, he burst through one tentacle with a measured punch. The crash was like being hit by a car. His whole body ached as he came out on the other side of the tentacle. Luckily his body, especially reinforced with Qi was sturdy enough to get out of that crash with only a few bruises. Not losing any time or momentum in the fight he shot forward towards the base of the tentacles and the body attached to it. He left the disturbed water behind and in the darkness he could barely make out his enemy. The creature was fast, really fast when it moved away. But not fast enough for Aaron’s new way of using his movement technique. Aaron overtook it in a heartbeat and saw a glossy dark eye stare at him with baleful malevolence. He could feel its gaze like a physical touch before Aaron changed direction and burst into the eyeball with all the accumulated momentum carrying him into the creature.

  The kraken was massive and it shook in pain and rage as Aaron found himself inside of the creatures body. The eyeball had burst and he was left behind in a bleeding wound. The cry of the beast shook him to his core, but he did not relent. He used the rejuvenating fist kata as he bashed his way deeper into the creatures eye and even deeper after that following its nerves towards its brain. The creature shook and bucked, the sound of it coming from all around him, but it was luckily muffled so that he was not debilitated by the sound. Aaron had no issue keeping up the assault. His fists were tearing through the meat with almost no resistance, the blunt force acting like small explosions in the creatures body. The sheer kinetic force he put behind each blow carried him forward until he reached its nervous system or brain and the creature finally stopped after Aaron had done enough damage to kill it.

  Aaron shot out of the creatures corpse, following the hole he had made In it and took a deep breath through the spell as he took stock. He had to hold his breath inside of the creature and now that he could breathe again and his ears were had stopped ringing from the creatures bellows he felt much better. The kraken had been much more dangerous than what he had expected for this floor. If it had used its ink and tentacles correctly it could have trapped and suffocated him in there. Hell he was sure it would be able to kill whole groups with that alone.

  But in the end its body had proven too fragile to withstand his assault and he had felt calm and in control the entire time. Which was good, if he had panicked he might have died right here. Aaron reveled in the cold brutal logic that had flowed through him. It was a familiar feeling. Fighting for his life always had that affect on him. The fight had not lasted long, a few minutes at most, but it felt like much longer. He should have felt tired, but the fiend-god art had made him tireless. He felt just as good as when he had started, just a lot dirtier. Aaron tried to get the leftover blood, ink and viscera out of his clothes and hair before he dove towards the light of the group. When he came into the area of light the group flinched and raised their weapons before calming down.

  “What the fuck happened?” Shia asked, her eyes wearily scanning first him, covered in dark blood and ink, before she checked out the dark waters behind him.

  “Giant octopus, like house size. It should be floating somewhere over there.” Aaron pointed into the direction he had come from.

  “You killed it?” Roger asked and Aaron nodded.

  “Are there more of it?” he asked next and Aaron paused and listened into the void. He heard silence and maybe in the distance some sound of life, but it was far away and difficult to discern from the rest of the water flowing in underwater currents.

  “Hard to say, probably nothing close.”

  “Alright, show us.”

  Aaron led the group on the ocean floor towards the direction of the corpse and the group illuminated the darkness with their light spheres. The deep ocean was not as lifeless as he had first expected. There were bottom feeders here, processing all that fell from above and the small fish meant there were bigger fish hunting them. The problem was that Aaron doubted these fish could sustain a kraken like the one he had fought. It would have to kill and eat tens of thousands of these fish. Maybe it went up and hunted in more shallow waters. It had been strong and fast enough to be an apex predator for sure. Still in the end magic was also a possibility.

  They reached the dead kraken after a minute or so and the group paused as one of its giant tentacle came into view. But when Aaron carried on they followed until they reached the giant corpse that was torn into shreds at one side. The water was filled with fish that were feeding on the bloody leftovers of Aaron’s fight. The group stopped as they could see the sheer size of the thing.

  “Lord above, you killed that?!” Mortimer exclaimed more like a curse or prayer as he hefted his greatsword in front of him like it could protect him from the monstrous thing.

  “Yes, it was strong and fast, but not very sturdy, you can probably tear into that tentacle right there and cut it to pieces if you so wished.”

  Aaron turned to Roger who was as stunned as the rest of the group.

  “Is this normal for this floor? I don’t think this is really a challenge for the third floor. Groups of you guys would die to this thing.”

  “No...But…” Roger cleared his throat and continued calmer.

  “There are reports of giant octopuses and giant sharks or whales or whatever. Big fish with lots of teeth. But none of them get this big. Then again nobody really goes this deep. People stay where they can see things usually when they run the gauntlet.”

  “And I would assume few people go the underwater route for this floor in the first place.” Aaron mused.

  “Correct. We did, but that is because Mars insists on us being ready for anything and it was good XP at the time to murder some fish while we swam towards the center of the floor.” Robin said and carefully poked the tentacle close by with his spear.

  “Most teams just try to fight some of the sharks, fail terribly and then take a boat up the whirlpool to the fourth floor.” Shia said with a sneer.

  “It is possible this octopus is what happens when the floor is rarely fought in.” Roger said and nodded to himself.

  “This thing is big enough to wipe out most groups, but the army usually goes through the water section. So there must have been some people fighting here. Either way this is not a challenge for the third floor. You are right about that...Aaron.”

  “I would have had problems fighting this thing too if I had not turned out to be uniquely suited for fighting under water.” Aaron said and then shrugged.

  “Lets continue, unless you want to take some of the octopus with you.”

  “Yes, we will. Mortimer cut off the tip of that tentacle if you will. Robin you can keep it steady with that spear of yours.”

  The two warriors went to work. Mortimer’s sword cutting through the dead flesh with ease, while Robin kept it steady. Then they deposited the monstrous tip of the tentacle into the nets they dragged with them. Aaron looked around and studied the ocean floor. It was flat, sandy and little lived in. Deep sea creatures were everywhere around here because of the feeding frenzy ensuing around the octopus corpse. But it seemed way too little food regardless.

  “So how do you navigate this floor? Feels like we would get lost pretty easily here.” he asked as he looked up towards the little light that reached them down here.

  Roger answered while studying the corpse.

  “Usually you follow the currents. Everything drags you towards that giant maelstrom. But I can’t feel any currents down here. When we fought on this floor before we kept almost to the surface so we could take a peek and because the currents are the strongest up there. Less time wasted.”

  Aaron frowned. He could probably not just go up and take a look where they were at the moment. The distance to the surface seemed to be quite a lot and finding the group in these dark depths would strain even his senses. So what was he supposed to do? If he was correct and this was part of the ocean was part of the floors design, then there had to be some sort of way to navigate it. Then again the second floor did not have that either besides some vague directions. Aaron followed his senses in the pause in conversation and ignored the sound of Mortimer hacking through the tentacle with more trouble than Aaron would have guessed. He listened to the sound of water and felt into the water with all of his senses. There was nothing moving down here, still, dead water was all there was down here. Enough bottom feeders, true, but no indicator on where to go. But above he could sense the moving water. He reached out with his mana sense and tried to get a different picture of it, when he paused in surprise. The ocean current he could barely make out with his ears he could feel almost instantly with his mana sense. The maelstrom and all under water currents were mostly magical. He sensed the magic flow in one direction which was probably towards the maelstrom itself.

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  “Huh.” he said and suddenly knew how to navigate on this floor. Follow the magic. Made sense when you wanted a mage to be the most important thing in the tower.

  “I can sense a current above us flowing that way.” he told Roger who raised his eyebrows, but then nodded and took him by his word.

  “So do you plan on traveling to the maelstrom on the ocean floor?” Roger asked Aaron.

  “Why not? There might be more monsters lurking in the dark. Its quite a nice change of pace to fight them.” Aaron answered.

  “Boss, remember we got that hint for a rare monster from Mars?” Shia asked and Roger nodded.

  “A rare monster?”

  “Yeah, they are stronger than the usual monsters. Like boss monsters. They guard precious resources apparently.”

  “Well I would not mind fighting something like that.”

  “Well, fine. Lets see if we can find it. In which way does the current flow?”

  Aaron pointed in one direction and Roger frowned and then turned slightly to the right from the point where all magic flowed towards.

  “I will have to rely on you to steady our course. But we need to go in that direction for quite a while until we find some under water rock the size of a house.”

  “Alright.”

  They made their way through the absolute darkness of the ocean floor. Aaron floating above and in front while the rest of the group stuck closer to the ocean floor and walked or swam in the safety of their group. But there were no predators down here that threatened them for quite a while. Only small fish in different shapes, some flat, some almost transparent, as well as different kind of crustaceans turning the ocean floor into a buffet for some small predators. Still most creatures living down here ate mostly dead material or scavenged the ocean floor, while other fish hunted them in return. Aaron spotted some angler fish for example suited to hunting in the darkness of the ocean floor. But nothing bigger than that. No sharks, no smaller octopuses. The whole time Aaron kept his senses sharp for any large creatures in the dark, but it was quiet for quite a while.

  Eventually though Aaron felt the difference in the water. Less creatures were openly moving around, life was more subdued here, than in the waters they had just left. Aaron stretched out his senses and finally found something large.

  “I can hear another one.” Aaron said to the group and they dimmed their lights immediately and formed up in a protective circle. Their net with the samples was dragged downwards to the ocean floor and then they waited. Aaron shot forward into the darkness and listened for the creature. It was coming this way. It too must have really good senses. Aaron held still in the water, floating without making any noise, his breath slow and even, barely moving a centimeter. Then he spotted the shape, it was another giant kraken, this one smaller than the first one, but still gigantic. It swam head first in slow movements as it eyed the darkness with its giant dark eyes.

  Aaron waited for it to come closer and then moved. He accelerated, his feet pushing and pushing the water behind him as he soared through the water. The octopus flared up, its tentacles spreading out. But Aaron was too fast. He aimed carefully and bashed into the creature with all his might, his fist moving with the full momentum as he burst into the creatures head. It’s roar was deafening and if Aaron had not made himself a hole inside of the octopus he would have stumbled away. Instead he moved to punch again and again. The octopus lashed at him with its tentacles, trying to get him out, but then Aaron was deep enough in its head. After a minute of bloody work he finally killed the kraken with a single strike demolishing its brain.

  When the creature had stopped thrashing he got out of the corpse and went back to the group. He had given up on getting really clean. The water he moved through washed away a lot of the icky stuff he was covered in, but the ink had been terrible. Most of his clothes were still covered in the stuff. Luckily he had not been covered in ink this time. He had exerted less force with his opening attack, instead he had been more precise and once he had punched a hole into the creature he was more than capable of killing it before it could defend itself properly. All in all, he thought this fought had gone significantly better than the last one.

  The group moved on, no less impressed by Aaron’s kill, but also slightly fearful. The existence of two of these giant things meant they were more common than they had hoped for. To Aaron it did not really matter. This was all just training. Fighting giant beasts was going to be very different from anything he had done before. So him getting better at that was a good thing. So far the ‘tunnel yourself into the creatures head and pulverize its brain.’ strategy had worked well. But that was only the case because they were so damn soft and big. There was a lot of mass and muscle on these things, but they could not withstand any real punishment.

  After swimming for what felt like an hour in the direction Roger led them, interrupted only by his questions where the maelstrom was, they finally spotted their target. A giant lonely rock that was a bit bigger than a house. More like a small skyscraper. Its dark rock looked almost molten and Aaron was not surprised to spot some volcanic geysers spouting lava into the environment. Many creatures lived around the vent that shone some light into the darkness. It was its own little ecosystem, but they were not here for that. They moved around the base of the rock searching for an entrance apparently. Halfway around the rock they found it. A crack in the rock that looked entirely natural.

  “You sure this is it?” Aaron asked with raised eyebrows.

  “If I remember the description correctly we were given, yes.” Roger answered.

  Aaron peered into the crack, but even to his senses it was dark.

  “Hand me one of those glowstones, please.”

  Shia gave him an activated one and he threw it into the crack, illuminating the darkness. It was a thin tunnel leading deeper into the rock that took a turn upwards. It looked barely big enough for Aaron to swim through. Mortimer would have trouble at some parts he thought, although Aaron never really had gone spelunking before. It was not really his thing to go into small caves where you could be buried alive and unable to free yourself. He had lived a dangerous enough life as it was, he did not have to have that kind of danger.

  Aaron gave the group a look, but they were waiting on him. Well that was what he got for wanting to fight everything by himself.

  “And you are sure there is a boss in there?”

  “There should be, we don’t know for certain but yes.”

  Aaron sighed and then swam into the tunnel, he dove to pick up the glowstone and headed upwards deeper into the cave. It got very narrow immediately and Aaron had serious second thoughts, before he passed through without much issue in the end. It was still a tight and dangerous corridor. He hoped he would not be buried alive as he pushed himself through a particularly narrow gap. A bend in the tunnel came and Aaron frowned. There was another light source down here. He let the glowstone drop to the tunnel floor and swam closer.

  The tunnel widened here a bit and evened out, light shone around a bend in the tunnel and Aaron peeked around it, moving slowly and carefully. Beyond the bend was a cave filled with air, a cave that was illuminated. A bunch of conspiracies came to his mind. The group could have lured him in here. But no, there was no way. He doubted anything could sneak past the two krakens in their domain. So this was some magic bullshit. No doubt about it.

  Aaron surfaced slowly, making sure not to disturb the water too much and peered into the cave. Above him was a stone that glowed with white light, filling the cave with light and it was warm in here. Probably because of the volcanic origins of this rock. Underneath the glowing rock was a mushroom, purple with white edges and it glowed softly in a purple light. In front of it sat a creature. It was vaguely humanoid looking, it had two arms a head, but no legs. Instead it had a long fish tail that hung into the water. It was hideously ugly. Pustules and rivulets of infected flesh covered its body. Its skin was pale and blueish gray and its head was covered in ugly irregular scales. The whole thing was gray and blue and it did not look particularly dangerous. It was only the size of a man and it sat there patiently looking at the mushroom. It looked a bit like a mermaid if it had died and reanimated after being left to rot for a few weeks.

  Aaron activated his mana sense and felt the immense mana concentration in the mushroom and the beast alike. It must be eating that thing to survive. Or maybe it was just another test from the tower. Either way this was for sure the rare monster and it had to die.

  He tensed in the water and reinforced himself with Qi. When he was satisfied he moved silently closer. The cave was not quiet, water dripped down from the walls and there was steam rising from some walls it was that hot in here. Aaron balled his fist and activated Wind Steps. He moved out of the water with a mighty leap, trying to close the distance with the thing and him and smash its head in. The mermaid looking monster turned its head and Aaron stared in huge dark eyes, too huge for human proportions, a misshaped hole for a nose and a mouth with way too many teeth and way too wide. It reminded him strangely of the moray eels, just humanoid.

  The scaly monster opened its mouth and let out a surprised screech. But it was so loud and horrifically discordant it made Aaron stumble mid jump as he barreled into the thing without punching it. He knocked the breath out of the beast and landed on top of it. His ears rang and hurt, but he could still fight. It took a deep breath while its claws tried to rake his face. Aaron barely fended the claws off with his palms, still shocked by the sudden noise. He raised his fist to finally shut the damned thing up. But it was too late the creature finished its breath, opened its horrible, stinking mouth and screamed.

  Aaron felt like someone had shot him in both ears as his eardrums ruptured. Pain so horrible, so absolute, it robbed his mind. His whole world was reduced to a pain that was threatening to squish his brain, to break his mind in half and kill him by pure shock. Aaron instinctively rushed backwards. His dagger thrown in an attempt to fend it off. Blindly and without any thought but to get away and get it away form him. His cultivator body was strong and he was not injured anywhere but his ears. He was just in pain, so much pain. Nothing in his life, not even dying had been this bad.

  His whole sensory input just stopped as he crashed back into the water. The water soothed his bleeding ears and his whole body was still shocked by the sudden sound. The screech like vibrations increased again, even in the water and Aaron tried to get away. Tried to move away from the thing, blind as his eyes gave way to pain, deafened and hurt more completely than ever before. The pain was all consuming and it did not stop. He swam against the closest wall. He could not activate Wind Steps, his whole body contorted in agony. His ears hurt so much.

  'Make it stop, make it stop, MAKE IT STOP!' That was the only thought in his mind before blissful oblivion took him and he lost consciousness.

  Roger waited outside of the dark crevasse and looked up into the now again dark tunnel. After a few minutes there was a dull sound, a sort of whump like from an explosion and then the entire rock he was leaning on started to vibrate. Shocked he took a step back and then heard a sound through the water that was more horrible and terrifying than most things he had encountered in his life. Shia screamed and held her hands to her ears as the sound washed over the group.

  “What the fuck?” he shouted and then a second, even harsher sound washed over him, making him tumble backwards. The fish hiding on and around the rock took flight like a flock of birds being startled and the whole group took a few steps back. Stab was next to Shia and helped her back as she groaned in pain.

  “What was that?” Robin called out as the explosion of noise ended and the world became quiet again.

  “No idea. Some sort of sound attack?” Roger guessed, but Shia was still cursing. Eventually she uncorked a health potion and poured a bit in both of her ears before she drank a sip.

  “Fuck that hurt.” she complained when she had cleared her ears.

  “Enhanced senses are a bit vulnerable to things like that.” Roger mused and then looked back to the cave. The Cultivator had better senses than all of them combined and he had been in that cave. He frowned deeply and stepped forward.

  “Lets have a look.” he said.

  “Wait what? Are you serious? After that noise you want to go in there?” Shia asked and looked actually scared at the entrance of the tunnel.

  “Lets see how the Cultivator is doing. We are here to assist him after all.” Roger said.

  “He is right.” Mortimer said and shouldered his blade.

  “Fiiine, but the moment we hear that kind of noise again we are out of there, okay?”

  The group assembled and Roger lead them into the narrow tunnel. They left glowstones on their path in case the tunnel split and they had to find their way back again, but it turned out not to be necessary. The tunnel was very narrow at some points and Mortimer, who was the widest and largest of them in his armor had some trouble to get through. In the end the reached the bend in the tunnel and spotted the light coming from in front of them. Quietly Roger told them to stay back in sign language. It was an old trick they had perfected and they did not want to give their position away just yet.

  Roger took Robin with his spear with him, followed by Stab and Shia stayed in the back with Mortimer, who would follow after they had assessed the situation.

  Roger slowly swam closer and as soon as he was around the bend he spotted the form of the Cultivator floating still in one corner of the cave. Light came from above, but otherwise it was silent and nothing moved. Quickly Roger swam closer and gestured Robin to cover him. He checked the Cultivator, but he was still breathing and had a strong even pulse. Roger had no idea how cultivator physiques worked, but he guessed this was a good sign. He seemed to be just unconscious. He checked on him and the only thing wrong about him seemed to be his ears that were bleeding. No doubt he had taken the full blast of that noise.

  Roger gave a thumbs-up to signal everything was okay before he surfaced and studied the cave. The first thing he spotted was the glowing stone and the mushroom, but then he saw the prone form of something scaley and still. Carefully, his speargun leveled he moved closer. His group all emerging from the water silently like ghosts. The warriors up front, Roger behind them and Stab and Shia moving around the creature. It was laying on its side and had a fishtail. The humanoid upper body was hideously rotten and deformed.

  Shia let out a gasp and knelt down. Everyone crowded around her, although Robin gave the creature a kick.

  “Its dead.” Shia said and pointed at the hilt of a dagger that stuck out of the creatures chest. She removed the dagger and made an appreciative noise.

  “Enchanted too. Aaron’s backup weapon I think.”

  “Lets get back to the water, I hate breathing air with this spell on.” Robin complained and they all went back to the water and took a deep breath.

  “What do you think happened?”

  “No idea, but I believe that mushroom at the other end of the cave is what we came for.”

  “Yeah, it looks positively magical.” Shia joked.

  “What about Aaron?”

  “Give him some healing potion. He seems fine, but then again he is different from us.”

  Roger studied Aaron’s unconscious form and took note of it. It seemed the Cultivator did have a glaring weakness. His senses were incredibly good, but that also meant any over stimulation could be very dangerous. Mars had asked him to find out the man’s weaknesses and it seemed he found some. But for now they were still on the same side and he would feel much better if he was okay.