“Do you see a door or perhaps a staircase?” Vorin asked Dancer knowing she had superior sight while using her Star Sight skill.

  “No. Just the anomaly.”

  “We may not be on the right side of the planet. Or perhaps it hasn’t spawned yet, Captain.”

  “You’re right, Zuls. We may need to wait until completing the main objective before the exit spawns. Let’s hope we aren’t on the other side of the planet, however. How long did you say the fungus will last, Synexus?”

  “Twenty minutes maximum in space, although that’s pushing it. Let’s say fifteen minutes to be safe.”

  Vorin nodded then turned to the other people in the bubble.

  “Be prepared. When we breech it looks like there is very little atmosphere between us and space. We will be enveloped in fungus suits. While inside, you won’t be able to see, but they will keep you alive. Dancer has the unique ability to survive without a suit, and she will be our eyes along with the pathfinders. They know we are looking for some kind of spatial exit.”

  Murmurs filled the crowd. Vorin opened his mouth to speak once more when out of the corner of his eye he saw the scaled tail.

  The bubble popped immediately and water rushed in on everyone inside. Blood poured from wounds mixing with the salt water to form a cloud of red.

  People were thrown from their pathfinders and scrambled the few feet to the air above the ocean. When they emerged, they saw pathfinders flapping their wings in the air with riders on their backs. Around them heads bobbed up and people swallowed air. Pathfinders would occasionally shoot from the water to join their brethren above.

  When they were hit, Vorin grabbed his pathfinder refusing to be thrown off. The animal was clever and immediately darted to the surface and then into the air. After sucking in breaths, he looked around. Shell was spitting out water on the back of her pathfinder. Kumo was standing in the air like she was unscathed. Dancer was helping people out of the water and onto waiting pathfinders even though they were skittish of getting close to the water. Gene was flapping above them shedding water from his feathers furiously. Dozens of prisoners were on the back of the animals with them hanging in the air. Still, nearly thirty people were missing including Synexus, Zuls, and Prith.

  Prith had seen the attack right before it hit and he angled his blade to block some of the damage. Scales met steel and he was sent flying back without even causing a scratch. He tumbled through the water until he ran into something or rather someone. One of the prisoners was floating there with a nasty wound. Blood was leaking out into the water and the man was unconscious. Prith grabbed onto him and swung his sword beneath them launching a mana blade to push them up and out of the water. Above them were survivors organized in trying to get others to safety. A scared pathfinder flew down, and he got the injured prisoner onto its back before getting on himself. People around him were still emerging. More blood was rising to the surface. It was clear they had lost people.

  Zuls felt the blow to the bubble, and she felt Pioneer slip from below her. She instantly recalled Snowfall not knowing her condition. When she stopped falling through the water, she felt a slight connection to Pioneer. He was still beneath the water. She feared the worst, but her connection meant the animal was still alive. Her hope bloomed once more, and she looked around desperately trying to get her bearings when she felt a tug on her leg.

  Synexus didn’t even register getting hit. Fortunately, Soul was always protecting him and had hardened enough that the scales didn’t lacerate him when the blow landed. Unfortunately, his pathfinder was torn to bloody shreds. He watched it in slow motion and then through the red he saw his friends get scattered. Kumo, Shell, Vorin, and Gene went towards the surface. Prith had somehow turned and reacted to the blow at the last second, so he was sure that he had made it. Zuls, however, had been taken by surprise. Pioneer had turned slightly to avoid the shaper scales, but the pathfinder was smacked down into the depths. Soul shifted once again to create a suit for him keeping the air in and water out. It was even better than his fungus suit because the part on his face turned clear to let him see. He swam as fast as he could towards his friend.

  When he found her, she looked panicked and her gaze flittered around frantically. He was under her and placed his hand on her leg to let her know he was there. She immediately kicked him in the face.

  Zuls was surprised when her foot met something hard, so she looked down to see Synexus looking baffled inside a sleek metal suit with a clear visor. That’s when her lungs started to burn. She had forgotten she couldn’t breathe.

  Synexus couldn’t believe she kicked him. If Soul hadn’t been there, she would have broken his nose. He tried to make arm gestures towards her when he realized she was freaking out again. She had sucked in too much water. He acted quickly and poured his mana into growing a simple box from one of his water-resistant trees. Once it was fully grown around them, he transported all the sea water into his Progress Garden and summoned air he had stored. She immediately spit out water onto the floor of the cube and continued to suck in air for nearly a full minute. Synexus kept storing more ocean water in his garden since the seal wasn’t perfect.

  “We don’t have long, Zuls. You need to get to the surface.”

  “Can’t. Pioneer.”

  “He was hit, I’m sorry. I saw him get pushed down by the tail.”

  “Still alive. Connection.”

  “Fine. You go up, I’ll go get him.”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “No. I can lead.”

  “Alright. I’ll grow your spores. It’ll give you less time once we get out to the water, but it’s the only way for you to breathe.”

  She only nodded and he poured mana into her spores that grew rapidly. Soon she looked like a humanoid mushroom, and he stored his impromptu underwater box. He grabbed onto her back, and she started to lead them down. He could see her mana connection with Pioneer and knew the poor pathfinder had fallen quite far.

  Vorin held Kumo back with his superior stats, but wind raged violently threatening to knock everyone back in the water.

  “Kumo, please. We aren’t leaving them. We will wait a bit longer to see if they surface, but they have been down there for a long time.”

  “That’s why we need to go down there and help them!”

  “We can’t risk everyone. Dancer, do you see anything?”

  “Bodies. Smaller fish feast on the corpses. I see nothing from the two you’re concerned with."

  "I’m concerned for them all. We lost twenty. Twenty people who were stuck in a hell for countless years only to be set free and killed.”

  Vorin looked around at the people who had survived. Many were still catching their breaths. Some were wounded and getting help from others. Then he looked down with a somber expression at those that never surfaced.

  “We wait ten minutes, and then we go.”

  Wind raged once more, but with a glare from him to Kumo, it settled back down.

  Synexus was guided down into the darkness by Zuls. He kept mana perception on but wasn’t picking up much from the wildlife. He was hoping to see if the reptilian predator would come back to finish what it started. Instead, most of the mana was coming from himself and his friend. Beyond that it was dark with murky ocean water mixing with the blood from the fallen people.

  Zuls couldn’t see anything. She barely felt that Synexus had his hand on her shoulder. She was terrified in the fungus suit. All her senses were consumed by the one connection she felt—her connection to Pioneer. It was almost blinding without her other sensory input, but she kept following it. The pathfinder had become her friend in such a short time. Besides, being a weaker class chosen independently, it was the biggest weakness of a bond forger. Using a bond to connect to another life form made for more intense feelings and losing that bond completely was detrimental. She knew she had to save him.

  The connection grew and she felt the strong pull from the pathfinder growing stronger by the second. Soon they would be where he was even if that meant the middle of a battle.

  Synexus felt Zuls body tense up and knew it meant they were close. He could see the mana thread grow brighter and then he finally saw Pioneer. He was gravely injured with a deep cut running along his back pouring out blood. Even with the injury he was fighting for his life against strange beings that looked to be sharks merged with eels. Terrifying jaws were snapping shut to take bites out of the pathfinder while their sleek snake-like bodies were attempting to bind the pincers from snapping them in two. He activated one of his flowers to shine extremely brightly, which did the trick to scare them off. Pioneer immediately turned on the pair with his pincers ready to attack. When he realized who it was, he lowered his pincers and nudged Zuls.

  Zuls felt the pain that Pioneer was in and wept, but she sent mana through the connection saying it was going to be okay. They needed to get up. She felt the acknowledgement and then felt the feeling of being dragged.

  Synexus clung onto Zuls being dragged through the water back towards the surface. Pioneer had her in one of his pincers and they were flying through the water. His wound was clearly slowing the pathfinder down and Synexus could feel how weak he was getting, but he wanted to save Zuls. A trail of pathfinder blood was marking their path towards the surface and attracting more of the shark eels. His tail was flashing out to scare them off, but Synexus couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if the bigger fish came back. He didn’t have to wonder for long.

  Colossal jaws of the scaled predator followed the trail of blood from straight below at an unprecedented speed. Synexus looked on in terror at how one tooth could barely have fit inside the trunk of the world tree. His grip on Zuls tensed, knowing she couldn’t see what he did. Pioneer saw and with all he had, he picked up the speed dragging the two through the water towards their friends on the surface.

  “Kumo, I’m sorry, but we must go. Once we get these people through the portal to safety or we determine the door is certainly in space, we can come back and search.”

  Kumo was about to argue when Dancer stopped the two.

  “Everyone, fly up now!”

  Without question the whole group took the warning and the pathfinders flew straight up nearly losing their passengers. Just as they did, Pioneer broke the surface and flapped his wings into the sky. Blood fell off him in globs, and he wobbled before forcing himself up further with Zuls and Synexus hanging from his pincers.

  Kumo watched the pathfinder breach the surface holding a mushroom-clad Zuls and Synexus wrapped in some strange metal then she realized why Dancer had warned them. A massive shadow grew larger right below the last survivors before a titanic set of jaws followed them up and out of the water. She didn’t even hesitate to reverse her course and dart through the fleeing pathfinders. Her mana built up as she continued to launch herself off clouds forming under her feet. She grew faster and faster until she flew past Pioneer. Her voice thundered out as she shouted a primal scream and put all the built up mana into a cloud blade that met the titanic jaws and matched them.

  The cloud blade met the jaws at a perpendicular angle hitting right at the hinge completely stopping the momentum of the beast below. Its jaws instantly closed and the cloud blade bit deep into the scales before dissipating proving just how monstrous the scaled predator was.

  Kumo used the launch of her cloud blade to stop her descent, and she watched as the great predator scampered away to lick the wound she had made. She was surprised her attack didn’t completely cut the monster in two or at least shear off the bottom jaw, but she was fine with letting it leave. Her feet met clouds as she turned around just in time to catch a falling Pioneer with a burst of wind. Zuls and Synexus were still holding on, but the pathfinder was unconscious.

  A few more pathfinders came down and took over for Kumo’s wind. Pioneer was nearly dead, but Shell started to play her song of healing. None of them were sure if they could do enough to bring the poor pathfinder back from the brink of death.

  Main Objective: Escape the Bubble is completed!

  Reward will be awarded once Peak Knowledge is reached!

  Above them in empty space a door shimmered into existence.

  “Let’s get everyone through that door before taking stock of where we stand. Synexus, we need to activate your spores.”

  Synexus nodded and started to activate Instant Growth on the spores covering all the humanoids. Once they were covered, the pathfinders would fly them through the door, and they could put the floor behind them.

  Vorin watched as the fungus grew over his body starting from his feet. Just as it reached his neck he looked up and saw a bright red-light flash from the empty space that Dancer saw earlier. The fungus closed him in, cutting off his senses. He still heard a muffled Dancer scream.

  “Scatter!”