Chapter 2348 Into the Lake

--- Lily ---

The boat adventure was, in many ways, just killing time. Appoline didn’t seem interested enough in the ingredients here to dive into the water herself and Lily wasn’t going to make the offer without some sort of commitment from Appoline’s side. She’d been dunked quite enough... and the temptation to bite into those fish was already strong from up here on the surface. She’d pick a fight with far too many if she was diving.

Wiggles seemed to be enjoying the boat ride for what it was. Lily had been expecting the little guy to be far less calm about the whole thing but he was happily bouncing around from side to side, watching the fish. For a bit there Lily thought he was worried about them, but his body movements were all wrong for that. He was having a good time the crazy rabbit.

So that’s how the group ended up floating around doing not much of anything. They kept their eyes pealed for portals but didn’t see any at the time. The waterfalls were interesting bits of the scenery but behind them tended to be more lake so there wasn’t really space to hide anything.

It wasn’t until they’d reached the outer edge a long time later that Appoline noticed something. Just barely sticking out of the ground, at the edge of what Appoline could see properly, she spotted what looked like a little glass shard. Hovering just above the grass. "Lily, are there any portals around here?"

Lily made an obvious show of looking around before glancing up at Appoline, having missed the space shard in her scanning of the area, partly due to her height, but also her lack of practice with the little details like this. "No, focus on your space senses you supposedly have. I can see indications of a portal here. Just the one shard over there... but that likely means something."

Lily felt a bit silly for not doing that the first time and sent her senses out to find... Appoline was right. Just there at the edge of her perception was the clear ’shape’ of a portal. Of course, before she could really take that in, Lily was reminded of why she hadn’t done this originally. Why she wasn’t scanning constantly as they explored the area. It was because this took a good deal of concentration. That same concentration that was meant to be maintaining the boat.

Lily felt her stomach drop out beneath her as the boat lost cohesion and they started to sink. Spinning her mind up to full speed, Lily moved to catch everyone, shadows wrapping around Appoline and Wiggles, missing the rabbit because apparently he was smart enough to jump up into the air as soon as her concentration wavered. Pivoting, she sent that shadow hand off to the nearby shore. It was fast, but not quite fast enough to avoid Appoline getting dunked a bit.

The rain-proof potions had run out by this time, so it was a very wet Lily and a half wet Appoline that were dragged up to the shore. Wiggles landed lightly and then started to... laugh? Sort of? He wasn’t really making laughing noises but he was rolling around and banging his paws against the dirt as if he found the whole thing hilarious. Lily transformed, and apologised. "Sorry you two. I wasn’t really thinking, or I guess I had an idea of why I was just looking but... yeah."

"I’ll accept some responsibility for that as well," commented Appoline as she started to ring out her robes. "I should have considered the fact that it clearly takes you some effort to use those senses. I had assumed it would be more like listening to your ears more or looking harder at a specific spot. I didn’t think it would take all that much concentration. If I had I might have said something else."

"Yes well... I can confirm there’s a portal there. Though I’m not entirely sure how you’re meant to get there. It’s possible there’s some sort of hidden underwater cave, or maybe there’s an aboveground one. I’d guess underwater, considering, but I could be wrong. I suppose we could also just dig down... but that will take us a while without Kat," Lily outlined.

Appoline nodded, "I’m not quite sure we have enough potion to get through to it. We’re only seeing a little bit of the space shards peaking out of the ground here, and literally just the one so I imagine it’s quite low down... hmmm... do you want something to keep you dry underwater or perhaps a water breathing potion? Considering we found one in that hut just before arriving here, I’d guess it’s necessary."

Lily gave her a side eye, wondering if perhaps that was toeing the line of recognising this was a tournament... but still, it wasn’t a bad idea. Though, she was already wet in her Memphis form so whatever. "I’ll... probably be fine? Hmm... I can hold my breath for quite a while and I can use some tricks to hold it longer... I don’t need to keep myself dry anymore that ship has sailed but... you think that potion will work for me?"

Appoline nodded, "It should. It seems like one of the basic ones that just has its own air supply essentially. It’s not really letting you breathe underwater so much as it’s preventing water from entering your mouth and nose while providing air for you."

"Is one better than the other?" asked Lily.

"Unlike the transformation ones that wear off slowly in a way you can feel quite obviously... if you run out of air with this one? You’re out of air. It can also just break if you’re attacked sometimes, and of course it has a time limit. I can’t really tell you what the time or oxygen limit IS though as I didn’t make it. Based on observation it’s at least twenty minutes, but not more than an hour," offered Appoline with a shrug.

"Let me check around the area a bit first. If it might not last too long let me find he cave before drinking it, just in case," stated Lily before transforming.

Appoline nodded behind her and said, "Alright, I’ll be brewing a bit while you’re exploring. Wiggles and I should be safe, there’s no monsters on land that we’ve seen so far."

Lily gave a thumbs up with her shadow and dived into the water and it really was cold. Even with her rank 3 resistance Lily found herself shivering. Though Appoline had been fine to dip a finger inside it... perhaps there was some magic at play? Carefully opening her eyes, Lily found that at the very least it wasn’t burning her retinas. Looking around Lily ignored the tasty fish and started to swim downwards to get a better look at the side of the lake.

The shore they were resting on turned out to be an outcropping, and while it was decently think, the lake continued underneath it for a good while. What was going to make her search hard was that various plants had taken to growing along the wall and ground. Some of these were rather ’bushy’ taking up a lot of space and blocking a direct view to the back wall.

There was also quite a lot of fish around. More than there was out in the open. They all seemed to be huddled together somewhat... and some of these fish were rather small. That triggered an idea in Lily’s mind she did not like. *Are these... baby fish? Or at least juvenile ones? Shit. The bigger fish here might be guards for the eggs or just for the younger ones! How am I meant to get through this?

Unless I want to turn this place into a bloodbath, and I am NOT looking forward to fighting the lake... then I think I’m going to have to be careful. Can’t just send my shadows out to brush through all of that... I want to call it kelp but it looks a bit too fancy for that. Then again I’ve never deeply investigated the types of kelp that exist and this is magic kelp. Once again, assuming it IS kelp.*

What Lily did notice was the lack of coral, or other more ’solid’ types of... plants? Was coral a plant? No right? They were... not fungus either but animals or something? They’re very plant like though so it was probably fine to think of them that way. The point was that the stuff here was very leafy... and maybe poisonous? Was there an anemone around?

*Ok this is going to be annoying. I don’t know anything about the stuff down here and we’re not really at an angle I can ask Appoline about what they are without dragging her into the water... I could be worrying about perfectly basic leaves and not know it. Hmmm... alright I’ll do a scan first and then come back and think more about... other options. Hopefully I can find something.*