Unable to move his legs, Wade lunged forward with his hands, trying to grab anything he could.

  He had more stamina again, the water mastery boon increasing the regeneration and his empowered lungs cycling liquid mana in and out faster gave him a good amount of room to work with.

  Was there even oxygen in liquid mana? Probably not. Wade guessed it was more a thing where the System said he'd have water breathing - as in being able to breathe and live in water - and so he wasn't going to suffocate in any kind of liquid.

  That didn't mean he wasn't going to die here, the mana pressure was very much ramping up every inch he sank.

  He reached a hand out, brushed against the crystal spike, and saw he'd hit it too hard. It broke apart, brittle.

  The second attempt fumbled, as if he were trying to control his hands more like a drunk puppeteer.

  Wade realized straightaway what was causing that: His legs.

  Specifically the debuff the System hit him with. Which reduced his agility by 90%.

  And agility touched on everything, including the dexterity in his hands.

  This was a case where the game system was being a double edged sword against him.

  Fuck.

  He tried again, with more intention and focus even as he slowly sunk further down. This time his fingers grabbed hold of a larger spike and somewhat held firm.

  His fall was arrested, and he now hung off the side of a cliff using only his weak noodle arms.

  If he hadn't been underwater with his weight reduced, he would have been completely screwed.

  Felt like old times. As in just yesterday. At least his hips and legs weren't broken from tumbling down.

  Well. Hips were fine this time. Legs once more the issue. Maybe he should see if the storefront had any kind of insta-heal item for broken unworking legs. Once is bad luck. Twice is a pattern.

  And also bad luck.

  Wade grunted to himself, and stretched a hand up, slowly scaling.

  Seventeen minutes to go. And then he was dead.

  And at the rate he was climbing up, he probably wasn't going to make it.

  Wade started desperately thinking on what he could do.

  Dodge roll upwards? That would get him a few feet for free, but at the cost of all his stamina. The climb up was long though. If he dodge rolled every now and then upwards, it would add up.

  No. He should save them for emergency recovery.

  Minus 90% agility. That was going to bite him in the ass soon enough.

  Plus the Mana Crystals here were large and thick, and despite that, one had snapped clean off just from being struck hard. They were brittle things clearly. Pure luck had saved him earlier when his pack caught on a solid enough spike.

  His backpack. Weight. Gear.

  Duh.

  One strap was cut free, but the other one remained over his shoulder, half holding the entire thing on his back.

  It would be trivial to just lower his arm down, and let the whole thing slide off.

  That's a lot of gear though.

  Loot too.

  Wade ran the numbers.

  If he died, no loot.

  If he ditched the loot, he'd possibly not-die.

  But also end up with no loot.

  Thus, the calculus said both results ended with no loot, but one result had a chance of him surviving.

  On the other hand. Loot.

  It's been three goddamn rounds so far and he hadn't been able to bring home a single thing yet.

  He looked back at his backpack. Most of it was loot from Earth. The important stuff he'd pilfered from the demonic supply crate had been weapons, armor, a mana crystal and the mithril collar.

  Which he looked up and could see the small golden halo floating at the very top of the lake. Like a tiny sun.

  It was absolutely overheating now and probably going to melt down. Wade had no idea what happened to mithril after that. He also hadn't known mithril had buoyancy in liquid mana, so he added that to the stockpile of facts he knew so far.

  The armor he was currently wearing, so he'd be able to keep that even if he gave up the backpack. And weapons… he looked down at the blade stuck in his gut.

  That'll do.

  He knew he shouldn't remove it from his gut until he was ready to pack the wound and stem the bleeding. Another way to think of it: Free high-quality sword, just stored in a less traditional manner compared to a nice sheath on his belt.

  He lowered his arm and let the remaining backpack loop slide off and hang over a crystal spike.

  Mana wasn't actually damaging anything inside it. It wasn't like salt water, or regular water. No rust was going to build up. And it was so toxic to life in general that nothing was going to grow there either.

  So he could technically come back here next round and loot his stuff back, right?

  Right.

  Plus, there was a golden lootbox compass further below so he was coming back here to loot something one way or another.

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  Mind set, Wade reached a hand up and pulled himself again, groaning silently in the water with each movement. The lack of a heavy backpack was immediately felt.

  Another hand up. And another. He slipped the next handhold, but he didn't lose his spot.

  The fourth attempt saw him puke out blood and start hacking away into the water. He saw clumps of brown in the water that looked like thin worms and realized that was his hair.

  Cool and normal. He turned and tried climbing further up.

  And he could tell at this rate, he was going to get near the surface right as he was about to die.

  Wade reached into his body and felt for loose mana. In for a penny, out for a pound. Or something like that, he'd spent too much time around Illy already.

  It'll be nice to see her and complain about all this bullshit. He had a lot to vent about from this goddamn round and how stupid this world was.

  He took a deep breath of liquid mana, and launched himself up with both hands, cycling mana through the arms in moderate safe amounts. It shot him up a foot, and he grabbed hold of the crystals here.

  Slow and steady. Keep the spell going at low volumes so that he didn't rupture his arms. His legs were completely useless right now, if his arms got knocked out, he was done for.

  Stamina was steadily coming back second by second. He was likely past three fourths, the recovery going faster than what he was spending with each leap forward.

  Then the racking spasms hit him.

  His body flinched in place, hands and fingers shuddering uncontrollably. He started floating downwards, still wracked with pains. Dizzy about which direction was up or down.

  When he got his senses back, he was two or three feet away from the cliffside, once more sinking downwards. He needed to act fast and fix this or he was dead.

  So he did the only emergency action he could think to do: He dodge rolled in the water, at the cliff.

  Physics once more turned off for a moment. His movement was halted and he rolled like he was in the air again.

  He didn't make it to the cliffside, but a flailing arm managed to grab hold of a crystal and yank him the rest of the way.

  Wade took a few breaths, and tried to jump up again.

  Pain was now starting to punch through his adrenaline fog. Coming from his gut.

  He realizes the spasms had just made the sword start slicing inside his gut some more.

  It's like every little thing in this round was conspiring to kill him.

  He needed more advantages. Wade racked his brain for how to get another one up somewhere.

  A perfect idea came to him. Featherfall. That spell Eri had used to reduce his weight. It was a spell. And it was an internal one.

  Likely free magic. Which meant it was just about putting his will down on it. It didn't matter if the cost was seven hundred percent more than an experienced mage would, he just needed it cast.

  Maybe he could go all the way into the negatives? Make him weigh less than zero, so he'd float upwards?

  As he focused the spell he realized an issue: It was a logarithmic function of some kind. The closer he reduced his weight to zero, the more mana it required. And given what Wade knew about math, it probably meant hitting zero weight would cost a theoretical infinite amount of mana, or a division by zero error type thing.

  It was a moot point, he managed to get his weight down by half before he felt he was going through way too much mana.

  Half his weight gone, plus the backpack far under him was extremely effective, especially with mana empowered lunges upwards.

  Now it was less about power and more that the liquid itself would slow his speed upwards and possibly push him off the cliff if he messed up. Wade swapped handhold after handhold, rapidly climbing back up. Today, he was this world's greatest cockroach, skittering on the walls upwards for life.

  Screw that asshole earlier, Wade was going to live. And then sell his loot for profit.

  Play had once told him mania wasn't a debuff, it was his personal buff. She was right. It certainly would be a ridiculous idea to anyone else, but right now, all he needed was something to hyperfocus on instead of the pain. And boy was it basically perfectly tailored at doing exactly that.

  He was getting out of here alive because there were things to do and sell back home.

  Fifteen minutes left according to the debuff.

  The spasms came again, and Wade tried his best to stay flush to the wall, using his arms to lock himself around a crystal as the weakness flared through and past him.

  Gritting his teeth, he continued up.

  Were Medy and Bael even there? Bael could be still stuck fighting the beast off the tunnels, possibly holding off more.

  Medy was currently raising the bridge out of the lake.

  Wait, the bridge. That'll tell him if they were still there or had left.

  When he looked up, he couldn't see it at all. Either it was already suspended over the lake properly now, or he was too far down to spot it.

  He gritted his teeth and continued up. Handhold after handhold.

  Twelve minutes to death. The pain was really starting to ramp up. Chronic pain management in his past was kicking into gear now, except the pain was starting to show up everywhere.

  His hands were also having a harder time moving. Muscles cramping up. Or maybe the black veins spreading all over the fingers now? That also didn't look super healthy.

  If his body was shutting down, that would include his hands. Which he currently really needed.

  Another spasm came over him and Wade tried to hold on.

  The debuff said ninety percent of his agility. But it didn't say jack squat about his intelligence stat points. He'd paid a lot of points into that.

  Time for them to pay the piper.

  He flushed mana through his fingers, using his System-given instincts on how to manipulate and use magic empowering spells. He used that as a stepping stone into the next kind of spell: Moving his muscles like a puppeteer would.

  It didn't work.

  His fingers were way too delicate for his fumbling attempt. But his arms were good enough, so he leaped upwards with mana, and then used mana to force his arms into grabbing the cliffside crystals by looping his entire arm around.

  Eight minutes left.

  Not even halfway up.

  There was a splash up ahead, by the surface. Wade couldn't quite tell what it was, he was still too deep. Another spasm came over him, and his grip loosened up, but somehow he held on.

  Keep going up. Don't look at the timer. Keep climbing. Mania could shield his head, he just needed to keep the right motivation in mind.

  And then the world once more flicked him the middle finger.

  The crystals. They were growing smaller and smaller the higher he went. The less pressure there was, the more brittle and dusty the crystals became.

  Soon, there wasn't anything at all but bone to grab hold of. Smooth, perfectly uniform organically sloping bone downwards.

  Without handholds.

  Wade opened his mouth to start screaming in frustration. Because his next few lunges forward ended with him scrabbling against the bone, while he slide back down until his hands had something more solid to pinch.

  All right. Thinking mode. How was he getting out of this one?

  He'd need to make handholds. He had a sword in his gut he could potentially pull out and stab handholds into.

  Way too slow. Plus he'd bleed out right away.

  When he looked down there was still a thin cloud of blood leaking out of the wound now from all his prior spasms giving the blade more chances to slice each time.

  No, bad idea to take that out. Maybe he could cut some of his shirt and pack the wound right after he pulled the blade out?

  No again, he wasn't strong enough to rip a shirt right now. He could hardly move his arms.

  Also everything hurt.

  Wait, he had magic. Maybe he could fire arcane bolts into the bone and make handholds like that?

  Worth the try, he didn't have time to come up with another plan. Wade held a hand up to the smoother surface and executed a minor low powered arcane blast.

  It worked. Chunks of white broke off, floating away. He grabbed the inside firmly, then lifted. And blasted the sides of the next spot.

  Again. And again. Pulling himself up.

  He wasn't going to die here. He had things to sell. People to heal. CEO's to bankrupt. Companies to outcompete. A trade empire to build.

  Up, one blast after another.

  Seven minutes left.

  He looked up.

  A skull was leering back at him, rapidly descending, skeletal feet first.

  Eri.

  Medy and Bael couldn't dive this deep. The liquid mana would crush them. And they needed to breathe.

  But Eri? Eri was immune to mana necrosis. He could dive all the way down here without a scratch. And he didn't need to breathe either.

  The skeleton drifted down in slightly slow motion, then stabbed a dagger into the bone, halting his movements smoothly. His other free hand reached out, and grabbed Wade, lifting him up and over his back.

  The skeletal hand wrapped around Wade's own hand and forced him to grab hold of his ribcage, before he reached down and drew out another knife.

  Eri looked up, clicked his jaws, and began to rapidly scale upwards, double daggers making quick handholds. Feet and arms working in tandem as Wade held tight on his back.

  Up the bleach white underwater cliffside, Eri tirelessly climbed without pause or error. Empowering his bones with strength, making the climb up look effortless.

  Stab. Stab. Stab. Stab.

  The surface glittered with light, getting closer and closer.

  Until Wade's head finally broke through to the surface.