I leaned against the rump of the dead ox, watching the solitary Mosas chew on an ammonite like it was a dog toy. I took a moment to make sure that I was still relatively human. No horns, tails or extra patches of fur. After Ash explained what genetic propagation was referring to, I even checked downstairs. Everything was in proper order.

  I wasn't really concerned. The notification didn't say I was sterile, and fertility ran in my family. It would not be the first thing I’d bring up on a date, but the [Poison Resistance] was a little more relevant to my day-to-day right now.

  The giant Mosas's teeth clawed at the shell as the ammonite tucked into its circular home like a turtle. I could almost hear the crack as the sea monster moved the ammonite to its rear teeth and bore down with force.

  With a burst, the shell broke apart like a nut cracked on solstice eve. The Mosas's eyes widened as it clamped down with leathery lips to suck out its tender morsels.

  The ammonites must have been a delicacy to the underwater wildlife. As the Mosas enjoyed its feast, and chunks of grease and mollusk floated off, fish swarmed the scene, nabbing tiny scraps that were sinking to the sandy bottom.

  A new predator emerged from the waving kelp forest.

  When I hit [Analyze], I received more information.

  [Plesio - This long-necked agile swimmer is a carnivore that specializes in—]

  I blinked as the creature's head burst through the shimmering barrier, its wet, green-blue neck extending ten feet into our enclosure to snap at Richard drying out on a rock.

  Richard, moving quicker than a slug should, flipped over, leaving a pile of creamy, foul-smelling slime right in the path of the monster’s snapping teeth.

  The beast cried, foaming at the mouth as it quickly retreated into the water. It swam towards the kelp as it angled its neck at a flipper trying to paw the thick slime out of its mouth.

  Unfortunately for us, our enclosure wasn't so lucky. The acrid, sulfurous stench hung around, having nowhere to dissipate. It was as though Richard had saved up every bit of digestive gas and expelled it like a panicked skunk all at once.

  I walked over to the rock, gagging as I held my shredded sleeve up to my hand.

  "You okay?" I kneeled, trying to get a look at the quivering slug under the rock. It always surprised me he feared anything since he claimed to be [Immortal].

  I'm fine, just embarrassed. An eyestalk poked out from under the rock. Inking isn’t something I’m proud of. You might want to toss this rock into the ocean. The smell will only get worse.

  Under his mental breath, he muttered. Might as well toss me in the ocean too. Makes a slug want a shell to hide in.

  He moved out from under the three-foot diameter rock. I looked at the pile of bubbling slime soaking into the pores of the crusty rock and agreed. If this smell kept increasing, the enclosure would be uninhabitable in no time.

  "Ash, can you give me a hand?" Richard was sliming towards the center of the enclosure, leaving a normal slime trail in his wake.

  Squatting down, we both prepared for the worst only to have the offending rock fly in the air as though it was made of feathers. Ash overcompensated and almost ended up with a face full of slime. Retching, he got a giant whiff of the rotten egg smell right in his face.

  "I got this," I told him as he stumbled off to the side to evacuate his stomach. The wagon wheel-sized rock weighed a little more than my old hammer. I could have carried it with one hand. With one eye on the Mosas, who seemed very pleased with its ammonite meal, I shoved the stone through the barrier.

  The effect was instantaneous. All the shimmering fish fled, running back towards the kelp. Even the Mosas eyed me, teeth clenching its kill as it swam away towards the surface.

  That fucking [System] put the Plesio in here on purpose. They're worse than bogquackers, Cole. They love slugs.

  Smell-wise, our enclosure wasn't great, but it was getting better. I walked a few yards away from the newly submerged rock and stuck my hands in to wash them. The salty brine of the water helped ease the roil in my stomach.

  Ignoring Richard, I finished reading the [Analyze] notification from the [System].

  [—snatching prey in the open pools from the seaweed forests it inhabits. While an omnivore, this sea creature loves mollusks of all varieties, squid, ammonites, snails, sea slugs and will focus on them almost exclusively.]

  I already knew the [System] hated Richard, but this seemed extreme.

  Walking back to the group, I found everyone was in a shitty mood.

  "Well, we've wasted Cole's [Cheat Death] ability, and for what? A front-row seat at an escargot buffet?" Tandy's voice uncharacteristically cut through the others’ muttering. Pops sat, the bandages bloody on his broken foot as he'd refilled his margarita glass, looking for all the world like he was enjoying a beach vacation. Argin leaned against his back, head down as though she was waiting for death to find them. Leyla was bickering with Meredeath about whether they should eat the ox.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  Ash was standing with Tandy, holding a shivering ball of Richard, who'd curled up in the fetal position, his foot wrapped around his body with tentacles tucked.

  "I'm just saying, we need to do something soon," Ash insisted.

  "Why?" I asked, joining the conversation. They both looked at me, faces giving me identical grimaces.

  "Cole, how do you smell worse than Richard?" Tandy asked, covering her nose.

  I—I didn't know. Looking down, I didn't see any of the sulfurous cream on my shirt. Sniffing, I brought my hands to my face, realizing my mistake. My hands smelled bad. I must not have moved far enough away from the rock when I'd 'washed' them. Crap.

  I took a couple of steps back, frowning.

  "Look, sorry. I'll try to wash them again, but what's the problem, Ash? Why do we need to hurry?"

  Ash gave me a grateful smile. Whether it was for the distance between us or my question, I wasn't sure.

  "We're losing air. Look, I know you maybe don't have the best understanding of the science of breathing, but we have a limited air supply and that failed attempt has made things worse. We need to figure out the puzzle of this dungeon fast, or we're all going to suffocate." I exchanged a look with Tandy. This sounded like off-worlder nonsense. I was about to tell him so when the princess entered the conversation.

  "He's right, incredibly." The three of us turned to her. I took another step away as she looked at me as though I were a dog that'd just taken a shit on her carpet.

  "How would you know?" I couldn't help but challenge her. She didn't seem like she'd know anything that would be helpful in a dungeon, or in life.

  "My family," her haughty expression softened a moment, ears turning red. "My family owns a lot of mines around Cersapil." Quickly before we could ask questions she rushed to finish her statement. "We've had incidents, whether by cave-in or poor planning, where a miner or a team gets stuck deep with no channel to fresh air. Sometimes by the time we get a [Geomancer] to help dig them out, we'll find them dead. Their faces..." She swallowed, as though the memory haunted her. "... bloated and purple. Their eyes bloodshot."

  She closed her eyes at the end of her description, shaking her head to banish the image.

  "We don't want to end up like that. That death is hard."

  I was shocked. The vision of this grotesque underground death was not something I expected the princess to be intimately familiar with. Silence hung between us as we all contemplated a different sort of death than being eaten by toothy fish.

  “So you’re not really nobility, are you, girl?” The old pops said what we were all thinking as he shifted in his makeshift sand chair.

  “I would have been if I’d found the right suitor,” she said, lips pinched as she gave the old man a sour expression.

  “You’re lucky then.” He tipped a gold, ruby-encrusted ring over his cup and a stream of wine poured into his empty cup. “Your life is what you make of it.” He sighed as he took a deep sip of the wine as though it alone was holding back the horror of our predicament.

  Leyla didn’t seem to know what to say more than the rest of us.

  "Well, I gained a [Poison Resistance] on that last death," I shared, trying to break the tension. We needed solutions.

  "Is that how it killed you?" Meredeath walked up. The dark circles under her eyes made them look sunken, adding to her sharp cheekbones and white makeup. She looked skeletal. She tossed her teal hair over her shoulder, and the illusion broke. My pale, very human friend stood next to me, giving her normal bored expression. "I was wondering how a snail got you. No offense, Richard, but mollusks are not known for their deadly qualities."

  I'll have you know, many of us are poisonous. He teamspoke, and to his chagrin, we collectively ignored him.

  "I'm surprised the Mosas didn't attack Cole once he was incapacitated. They must really love those snails." Ash rubbed at the wispy beard he was trying to grow in.

  "The ammonite? Yeah, I used [Analyze] on the monster that went after Richard, even it prefers mollusks," I added helpfully, looking back out into the ocean surrounding us, there were several more ammonites floating by. "It's crazy to me that they float."

  "You were probably dead, but when the Mosas crushed the one that killed you, the shell must have had an air pocket because it bubbled everywhere. Ash and I stared at Tandy, ideas catching.

  "What'd I say?" she asked, confused as the two of us started grinning. We had a plan.

  The second time I entered the deep, I was more prepared. I regained the [Chilled] debuff immediately, but I was ready for it. This time I left the spear in the enclosure. Ash was, at this exact moment, working on an upgrade for it. The man was a lifesaver of a crafter.

  Immediately as the salt water stung at my gills, all I could feel was relief from the lingering stench in the bubble. The current had diluted Richard's defense mechanism, the fish and ammonites returning to the space around our bubble. Whether curious or hungry, they seemed to circle our small cadre of humans like we were on display at a menagerie. The 'human' exhibit with 'dead ox.'

  I swam toward the nearest ammonite. Its tentacles waved lazily in the current as two tiny eyes watched my approach. I felt helpless. If the Mosas targeted me, I'd be dead in a heartbeat. Not that the spear would have done much, but its rough bark was comforting. I'd taken down the elderly tidemaw with a stick.

  The flickering light played off the shell of the ammonite, reflecting on the mossy ochre. Feet kicking gently, I reached out a hand towards the cluster of tentacles, and as predicted, the creature attacked, wrapping itself around my hand, tentacles injecting their poison into me.

  I shrieked into the void, a cluster of bubbles released as I swam desperately back to our enclosure. Dimly aware that my health had not dropped due to the poison, I was miserable as the resistance did nothing to blunt the tiny barbs on the tentacles digging into my hand. With a pop, I rejoined my friends, taking great gasps of air as the creature clenched my hand harder in the atmosphere.

  Meredeath was ready, her wicked green daggers flying into action as I staggered towards the middle of the room, my hand outstretched. The ammonite, for all its advantages in the water, was nearly helpless in the atmosphere. It inked my hand as Meredeath stabbed at the soft underbelly. Retracting its tentacles as a sickly yellow-green ooze bled.

  Quick, kill it before it turtles under its operculum.

  I did not know what Richard was talking about, but I grabbed Meredeath's dagger as she looked down at the large sea snail and stabbed through the mass of tentacles, taking out my rage at the pain in my blackened hand. The snail stopped struggling after that.

  “Alright Cole, go get us another one.” I stared at Tandy, the nerves in my hand flaring in time with my ragged breathing. For a brief moment, I wanted to stab Tandy with the knife, as she'd just coolly ordered me to go back into the abyss and stick my hand in the fire.

  I dropped Meredeath's dagger. With a snap of her hand, she caught it.

  Resolutely, I stomped back to the barrier, taking a deep breath before I plunged back into my own personal hell.

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