Deep in the waters of the Umbra Forest, Hidden Pond.

  Light barely reached the bottom of the pond. It was deep enough that the temperature hardly changed, no matter the time of day. A creature rested on the floor below—its body smooth in some pces and jagged with scales in others. Shaped like a shark, it had a long, pointed snout reminiscent of a swordfish.

  “Spsh!”

  ‘Grr…’ It was still spring, and it could feel some movements in the water. Perhaps it was just leaves and branches, but what stirred it awake was the heavy spsh. The monster, a colossal fish, stirred, its fins moving as it sensed the disturbance.

  Its hunger propelled it, the only motivation it had at all ever since it understood its existence— it was to consume perpetually. Excitement surged through it as a new prey entered its domain.

  It began to glide through the water, as subtle as a drifting shadow. It was time to hunt.

  Simon was enjoying the water, free diving, and searching for any aquatic foods. He had been swimming around for some time now, but not even a single fish was found.

  ‘Weird… and bad,’ he thought. Then his spine shivered as he felt slow vibrations in the water; there was a movement from below him. He turned and stared, but it was only darkness; the light worked differently underwater.

  He kept on staring, following his instinct as he clenched his swords. ‘There!’ he spotted a rge swordfish-like creature darting towards him.

  Reacting swiftly, he timed his movements, sliding his feet on its sword-like appendage, but ‘Ouch!’ he sustained a few cuts from its protruding scales.

  He couldn’t help but smile. ‘Of course,’ it all made sense now. ‘A monster lives here.’ Simon didn't feel startled once he realized this fact, though it was his first time fighting underwater.

  ‘If I could pull it out of the water, then it would be easy… huh?’ But as he contempted, the creature descended again.

  It was using the darkness of the ke to its full effect. ‘It’s thinking,’ Simon was now sure of it; he and the old man had encountered this type of monster before.

  ‘Like the Kaveron… It must be thinking that I’m blinded and at its mercy… hah, just one chance and I will get out of here.’ His sensitivity to the water movements was enough.

  ‘It would rush again.’ He could tell that he would be in a very disadvantageous fight if he forced it. His instincts were screaming, too.

  As he predicted, the monstrous fish rushed up from below.

  Simon slid his sword along the fish’s snout. The bde snagged on a scale, allowing him to ride the upward motion. ‘Success.’ The moment he felt the surge weaken, he twisted the bde free.

  Riding the momentum, he began to swim up to the surface of the ke. He was wary of the monster, but the fish didn’t follow him.

  He jumped out of the water, and as he did, he felt the water moving strangely. Simon pnted his feet on the ground and turned his head to have a look as the water continued to be pulled. ‘Using the water in the ke… That’s Agus!’

  Water was slowly flowing into the air and forming a rge bubble at the center of the pond.

  ‘Need to escape!’

  Finally understanding its intention, he swiftly gathered his belongings and dashed away, even grazing his hand on the hot pot in his haste.

  ‘Hot!’ Simon glinted his eyes but wasn’t repelled by the burn on his hands as long as he saved his pot.

  He jumped on a tree and watched the magic unfold.

  The water dropped with a “Spsh,” sending ripples across the rge ke. The water overflowed out of the ke, and anything near the ke's edge was drawn back into the pond as the water receded.

  Its magic and intelligence showed how dangerous the monster was.

  ‘So even if I pull it out, it’s still a disadvantage fighting that fish near the ke! ’ So Simon decided it was much better to retreat. But then “Oh... it fell…” Now that he had calmed down, he instantly noticed his bag's weight had changed. After jumping off the tree, he opened his bag. ‘Old man’s sword is gone.’

  He closed his eyes. The sword’s hilt carried a unique magical signature—faint, but unmistakable. Simon couldn’t use magic, but he could still feel it.

  ‘Of course... It’s in the ke,’ he thought, knowing the monstrous fish was still lurking below.

  ‘No air. Can’t see. Hard to move. Fighting a fish underwater... impossible.’ He mentally ticked off every reason why diving for the old man's memento would only lead to defeat.

  Simon disappointingly sighed. ‘Should I take it? Just leave it?’ The boy stared at the dark waters; it was there waiting for him… waiting for him to come back. Annoying as it seemed, his whole being was calling for him not to go back, but he wanted to.

  ‘No one is immune to their own magic.’ That was the old man’s words.‘Agus is more exhausting too.’He looked around, gauging the range of the magic the monster fish had just used.

  “Ugh!” It was a sound of compint and resignation. He jumped down the tree, pced his backpack somewhere the water won’t reach. He took out the strings he had harvested from the mantis wings. Darting around, he found a suitable rock and began tying the strings to it, but it was still missing something. From his bag, he took out the reddish stone he had obtained from the dungeon.

  Normally, objects would crack or break whenever he fed his power into them. This one felt different. Even without testing it, he could tell it already held fire magic.

  ‘Just glow a little when I call for it.’

  He tightened his grip. For a brief moment, the stone fred—bright and sharp—before dimming back to a dull red. The ke wasn’t rge; he was certain it would remain within his reach.

  ‘There!’

  With a practiced throw, he sent the stone over a high-hanging branch.

  ‘This should be long enough… probably,’ Simon thought.

  He climbed a nearby tree and cut off a rge section of branch, then tied the other end of the string to it. Returning to where the stone hung over the branch, he began pulling, lifting the heavy limb. He was confident the branch outweighed him.

  ‘The string is holding… good.’

  He twisted the string, forming a loose loop and setting the knot so it would slip apart when tugged. Once that happened, the rge branch would fall, yanking the stone free on the other end.

  Still, Simon wasn’t sure how deep the ke was.

  With the string and stone in one hand and another stone in the other, he tossed the decoy first. As expected, the water stirred. That was his chance. He threw another stone to draw attention away, then carefully lowered the string with the weighted end into the ke.

  ‘This will be my escape if I survive,’ he thought.

  He watched the water and waited. The fish monster seemed to have missed the string entirely.

  With a nod, took the second Mantis Bde and went to the edge of the ke. He stared at the dark abyss of a ke, and he felt that it was staring back at him. Chills ran down his spine, but it was a welcome feeling, the danger he had always embraced.

  ‘Nope, usually the old man forced it on me! And even in death!’

  He then took a few deep breaths. He had plenty of experience in swimming around the isnd where he came from. ‘I should have tried harder to practice magic,’ he thought before running and plunging into the water.

  “SPLASH!”

  Of course, the fish monster was waiting for him. It surged forward through the murky water, its bded snout aimed straight at him. Simon crossed his Mantis Bdes, bracing for impact.

  But instead of meeting the strike, he was sent spinning—thrown back by the sheer force of the monster’s wake. It hadn’t even aimed for his swords. The rush was a feint, meant to unbance him.

  ‘I’ll eat you!’ Simon cursed in his mind—the only kind of defiance he knew.

  Even while spinning, he kept his eyes locked on the creature. It breached the water, and from underwater, he saw it twist midair—its silhouette warping the light at the surface.

  Simon spread his bdes wide, using them like fins to regain control. The fish dived again, its snout re-angled directly at him.

  “Ugh!” The strike wasn’t meant to injure—it rammed into him, driving him deeper into the pond as air escaped his mouth into bubbles.

  Darkness thickened. The light from the surface faded.

  The boy tumbled downward, nearly blind in the bck.

  ‘Urgh!’ The pressure changed, squeezing his chest—air shifted uncomfortably in his lungs.