With no Assassin’s Guild to go after, and no truthseekers to worry about, Asher didn’t really know what he should do to kill two days’ worth of time before the caravan continued on to Abingdon. Samantha and Brian had decided to continue their swimming lessons and Water element practice with Mags, but Asher’s sparring partner was nowhere to be found. From what Mags had told them, rather than return to the city, Sefta had headed straight for the capital after flying off.

  Mags thought her daughter’s sudden disappearance was in retaliation for her finally finding her again, but Asher had no doubt her intention was to meet up with her father and try to do something about the greater demon threatening their kingdom.

  After Mags took off with Samantha and Brian, Asher lounged about in the tavern for a bit, people watching as he contemplated what to do with himself. At the moment, his biggest concern was shards. Both Spatial Lock and Incorporate were sitting at level 19, and he had just shy of eighty thousand shards. Ideally, he’d want to evolve both of those skills the moment they finally hit the level 20 cap, which meant he needed to come up with a way to earn another one hundred and twenty thousand shards before then.

  How to make shards quickly… he thought, balancing his chair on its hind legs as he carefully rocked it back and forth.

  Without an Assassin’s Guild, his first method of earning shards was a bit shot at the moment. He supposed he could always swing back to Whikoga and start hunting down gang members, but even the so-called elites of the different gangs tended to only have around ten or so thousand shards on them, if that. That was no small number by any means, but after having battled so many deadly assassins back to back, the thought of going after simple gang members was honestly just boring to think about.

  Asher didn’t just want shards. He wanted a way to earn shards that would simultaneously satisfy his growing hunger for battle. If only the city of Poltar had their own nearby monster spawning zone. While taking down heavy boars wasn’t exactly all that exciting, going after a new type of monster would probably be a fun way to kill a few days.

  Even as the thought struck him, Asher blinked, letting his chair finally land back on all four legs. The simplest solution had been right in front of him all this time, and he hadn’t even noticed. There was a way he could earn shards while still experiencing the thrill of unknown battle.

  Sefta had shown him that the first time they’d met.

  The entire lake this city floats on is a monster spawning zone! He grinned, getting up and heading outside, just to gaze down at the pristine waters bordering each of the city-fragments. If Sefta could take down a sea serpent, I don’t see why I couldn’t.

  Even from his position on the edge of the city, he’d spotted the glowing orb of shards that had spawned when the sea serpent had finally fallen at Sefta’s hand. While one couldn’t tell the exact number of shards that was held in an orb without absorbing it, they could get a rather vague sense once they laid eyes on it. Even at that distance, Asher had been able to tell that the shards gained from killing a sea serpent were far more than what he’d been collecting hunting heavy boars, and for good reason.

  He was pretty certain a single one of these serpents would easily eat their way through an entire zone of heavy boars, even while wriggling around on dry land.

  “Excuse me,” he said, walking up to one of the fishermen relaxing by the edge of the city-fragment. “If I wanted to go swimming in the lake, could you tell me if there are any spots I should stay away from? You know, if I wanted to avoid being attacked by sea serpents, for example.”

  “Ah, a tourist,” the fisherman chuckled. “You’ve got nothing to worry about. Sea serpents live down in the depths. So long as you stay near the surface of the water, you should be fine.”

  “About how far down would you say they live? Out of curiosity.”

  “Perhaps a quarter mile down?” the fisherman said, scratching the top of his head. “Their nests are far lower than that of course, but their hunting grounds are pretty wide. Unless you’re bleeding something fierce, you don’t have anything to worry about.”

  “Great, thank you!” Asher said, pulling out his Water Breathing potion and downing it in a single gulp. Shuddering at the taste of raw kelp, he nodded at the confused fisherman before diving into the water.

  Water Breathing (Tier 1) - Breathe water as if it were air.

  I suppose that’s about as simple as skills get, Asher thought, dismissing the notification as he allowed himself to sink into the depths of the lake. The water near the surface was a pretty neutral temperature, but the further down he sank, the colder the temperature got. If it weren’t for Complete Resilience, he was pretty certain his plan would have failed before it even began as he gave himself hypothermia.

  The lake was shockingly clear, which meant the light from the sun managed to illuminate the top few hundred feet of water without issue. Naturally, there weren’t any serpents that high up, however, so Asher let himself sink down further into the darkness. His evolved darkness resistance allowed him to see pretty far in the water at the very least, which did wonders to help combat the growing unease he felt as he continued downward.

  The pressure pushing in on his body soon became noticeable, but it was more of an annoyance than anything, again thanks to Complete Resilience. He let himself drift downward for a good few minutes, peering at the schools of fish swimming by or the occasional animal that he scared off with his presence before deciding he’d probably gone deep enough.

  Activating Spatial Lock, he conjured a bubble around himself that blocked most physical things while still letting the water through, giving him something to stand on while he waited for the first sea serpent to appear. While waiting, he finally dismissed the Awareness skill he still had active on himself, instead using Permanence to lock in the Water Breathing skill the potion had given him.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Permanence - Lvl 14

  No longer at risk of drowning when the potion wore off, Asher continued on to step two of his hastily thrown together master plan. Pulling out one of his daggers, he cut deep into the flesh of his arm, spilling his blood out into the water all around him and making sure blood would phase through his barrier just fine. He was careful to ensure he didn’t hit anything important when he cut himself, as his intention was for the wound to be fully healed by the time his prey finally showed up.

  Welp, now we wait.

  Despite knowing he’d probably be waiting for a while, Asher quickly grew bored simply standing there in the water. To kill time, he tried swimming about here and there within his barrier and quickly discovered something important. While his water-logged clothing had been remarkably useful for helping him sink into the lake so quickly, it made swimming incredibly difficult. He only now recalled his earlier mental note to try picking up one of the skin-tight leather outfits he’d seen plenty of Poltar’s citizens wearing while he was in the city, but it was a little late for that.

  Seeing as he was about a quarter of a mile underwater, further than even light could reach, Asher shrugged and stripped off his heavy clothing, shoving everything into his Personal Rift. He couldn’t say he’d ever had ‘fight a giant sea serpent to the death while entirely in the nude’ on his bingo card, but it wouldn’t exactly be the weirdest thing he’d ever done.

  That done, he just-

  Something smashed into his Spatial Lock from behind, snapping him to attention as he spun around. The impact alone had drained a decent chunk of his energy, which meant whatever had collided with the barrier had to be quite large and moving at a rather impressive speed.

  Sure enough, on the other side of his nearly invisible barrier was a monstrous sea serpent, thrashing about in the water as it desperately tried to get to him. Up close and in its natural habitat, the monster was even more terrifying than before.

  At least a hundred feet long and with a head large enough to swallow him in a single gulp, the serpent showed off fangs the size of his entire forearm as it dragged them across his Spatial Lock, trying again and again to penetrate his barrier. It had thick scales running down its entire body that looked tough enough to take a beating, and its powerful, muscular body propelled it through the water with shocking speed. Asher took a moment to simply admire the apex predator of the lake, before deciding it was draining his energy too quickly for him to continue to simply sit back and do nothing.

  Waiting for the serpent to bounce off his barrier once more, Asher finally let it drop, surprising the monster by bending space between them and slashing his elongated mithral dagger across its flesh. The serpent didn’t exactly have a neck for him to aim at, and its body was too large for him to cut completely through in a single strike, but that didn’t seem to matter. Crescent sliced through the serpent’s hard scales like he was deboning a fish, and the serpent let out a low-pitched cry that seemed to shake the very water around them as it flinched back.

  Asher attempted to use Distortion to swim around to the other side of the monster’s neck and cut into it again, but the monster thrashed sideways faster than he could react, slamming into him and cracking at least a few ribs while sending him tumbling through the water. Before Asher could right himself, the serpent was upon him. Panicking, Asher barely managed to reactivate Spatial Lock in a tiny bubble around himself, narrowly avoiding being bitten in half as the serpent’s jaws snapped closed on his barrier. As his energy reserves officially drained past the halfway mark, he was reminded that using Spatial Lock as a magical shield to stop powerful blows was not the best use of his skill.

  After arriving in Poltar, while they’d searched for their tavern, he’d finally taken the time to test and see if he could use Astral Dip while underwater, or if the water would erase him just like a physical object would. Unfortunately, while it seemed as though a handful of solid drops or a fine mist could be ignored, returning to the material realm with any part of his body truly submerged completely erased it from existence, which meant Astral Dip was off the table during this fight.

  Asher grit his teeth as the serpent tried gnashing down on his Spatial Lock again. Seeing how effective his attack had been, he decided to utilize the same plan as before, with a simple improvement. He continued to keep the serpent locked out of the space immediately around him, while allowing himself to freely strike through the barrier. When the serpent’s mouth attempted to close on him, he slashed out, jabbing his elongated blade up into the roof of its mouth again and again. Using his skills like this was effective, but extremely draining, as every single time the serpent bit down or gnawed against the barrier he lost another chunk of energy. Just as he was getting to the point where he was going to have to give up the battle and Recall back to the tavern before he was run completely dry, the battle changed.

  The serpent grew noticeably sluggish, as though it were incredibly sleepy all of a sudden. It continued trying to gnaw through his barrier, but it was almost like it wasn’t putting all that much effort into its attacks anymore. Seeing as the water surrounding them was practically infused with the monster's blood at this point from all the different wounds Asher had given it, he didn’t have to wonder all that hard as to what was causing the sudden lethargy.

  Sure enough, not even a minute later, the serpent finally slowed to a stop and simply floated there, dead in the water. The large, glowing orb of shards was proof enough that the monster had finally fallen to a death of a thousand cuts, and Asher let out a relieved breath of water.

  That was closer than I expected, he admitted to himself, finally dropping his barrier and grabbing the shards with a compressed tunnel of space. Using Spatial Lock in combat like that is definitely a last-case resort. If the serpent had been smart enough to try just repeatedly slamming into the barrier rather than continuing to try gnawing its way through and giving me an easy target, I would have run out of energy in seconds.

  But despite the fact that he wasn’t fighting his usual intelligent opponents, hunting giant sea serpents within the depths of the lake was still crazy enough to get his heart racing.

  And the shards certainly didn’t hurt either.

  Shards: 109,478

  Just shy of 30,000 shards, he noted, nodding his approval. That seemed fair enough, seeing as that was getting close to the number of shards one could make in an entire year of working in Whikoga. The glowing orb taken care of, Asher looked at the floating corpse of the serpent, frowning at the waste. Despite knowing that monsters simply appeared in this world out of nowhere, he still felt bad leaving behind so many resources. The heavy boars had been one thing, but the sea serpent was utterly massive. Unfortunately, its gigantic size also meant he couldn’t shove the whole thing in his Personal Rift either, which meant he was going to have to leave a lot of it behind.

  Even so, he didn’t exactly have anything else to do while he waited for his energy to replenish and for the next serpent to come to him, so he shrugged and got to work.

  There was a lot of serpent to work through, and only one of him, after all.

  Patreon

  Discord