The Martial Unity

It was only a few days before they cleaned almost all of the esoteric ore deposits on the nineteenth floor. The two of them duly took their time making sure to get as much as they could before finally leaving the dungeon floor.

It turned out that Rui was right, to a certain degree. The insects were the first to begin leaving the dungeon and were probably leaving the entire place. The rodents and other smaller creatures would probably follow suit soon enough.

Rui wasn't sure about how the big birds would fair, they were too big to fit into the tunnels and the fact that they relied on flight meant that they were probably doomed.

Rui shrugged. He was pro-evolution and survival of the fittest.

The two of them immediately set out for more dungeon floors in the Shionel Dungeon, they traveled further down the Shionel Dungeon. They still hadn't reached the full depths of the dungeon, which extended sixty kilometers below the surface.

Who knew what kind of strange sights they would see?

Rui for one, was curious about what was there at the bottom of the dungeon, even if the path there was long and annoying. The tunnels wound about so much that even with Riemannian Echo it was extremely difficult to track down a path downwards.

The two of them treaded around for half a day before they came across something interesting.

"What is that?" Rui's eyes widened as something strange entered his field of senses.

"Finally, another floor?"

"Is…" He stuttered for a second. "Is that water?!"

"What?" Kane turned to him with widened eyes.

"There's no mistaking it," Rui murmured, as he strode forward to get a closer look at the new dungeon floor. "It's a floor that has a huge body of water in it. A gigantic lake."

Rui couldn't help but be incredibly surprised. He didn't understand how a lake could form inside the dungeon, it made no sense!

"Where could water even come from?" Kane frowned. "There's no rain, there's no influx of water, right?"

Rui had some suspicions, but he wasn't sure.

It took a while before the two of them finally managed to reach the floor by picking the right tunnel. When they reached, their eyes widened as came across a startlingly beautiful sight.

The lake was glowing.

"No… to be more precise, the esoteric ore deposits at the bottom of the lake are glowing," Rui murmured as he ran his senses through the water.

His senses detected rich and diverse life flourishing in the lake. He quickly noted that this too was a floor with a developed ecosystem. His senses extended to the very bottom of the lake as he examined the sheer amount of esoteric ore deposits there were at the bottom.

"This is definitely another big find," Rui told him.

"I'm just curious as to how this lake came here, honestly," Kane replied. "As for actually clearing this floor, I don't know Rui, maybe we should sit this one out."

Rui understood his sentiment.

Neither of them was particularly adept in water, they didn't have almost any experience in it. Rui had once hunted down a beast hiding in underwater back when he was a Martial Apprentice, but that was it.

They were completely out of their element, literally.

His senses could tell him that these waters weren't safe, either. He could sense a ton of creatures that he would rather not tangle with. From piranha-like fish to crocodilian creatures, none of these creatures looked like they were fun to hand out with underwater.

Rui personally would be extremely hampered underwater, his attacks would be much weaker, and he wouldn't even be able to use his hot air pipe underwater. They would also be much slower in extracting esoteric ore deposits.

Then there was the matter of Kane. Maintaining Void Step underwater was going to be a nightmare of a problem. Rui truly did not think that he could pull this off without making a single mistake.

Although he didn't enjoy the fact that he didn't trust Kane's ability in this regard, it couldn't be helped. The probability that Kane would fail was simply too high. Fighting underwater was an entirely different art compared to fighting on land or in the air.

The difference between fighting on land and in the air was substantial, but the medium of the two remained the same: gas.

The same could not be said for fighting underwater. The medium was fundamentally different, the inability to breathe, the increased pressure, as well as the vastly greater resistive force to motion that the medium provided made it far too different.

A technique as delicate like Void Step required far too much precision and accuracy, there was a reason it was a grade-ten Martial Art technique. Trying to fulfill the highly demanding requirements and thresholds of the technique in a medium that he had no experience in was extraordinarily difficult.

On top of that, Rui couldn't even imagine how long it would take to extract all the esoteric ore deposits even if they didn't end up becoming food for the sea creatures. How many days, if not weeks or months would they need to spend diving to the bottom of the lake grabbing as many esoteric ore deposits as they could before eventually needing to get back to the surface.

Martial Squires could hold their breaths for longer than humans, but not by too much, their need for oxygen was greater than humans, after all.

And none of them had a single aquatic technique on top of all of that. Rui could not imagine handling this the normal way.

It would most likely lead to their collective demise.

"Still, I'm not in the habit of quitting that easily," Rui said out loud. "I came here to this nation to challenge myself."

"You're not actually thinking of going, are you?" Kane looked queasy at the very thought of it.

"No," Rui shook his head. "But I do have another idea in mind."