Aura Sense wasn’t anything new to Sorin, though he hadn’t experienced this exact form of sensory input before. It was close enough to a few other methods he was familiar with, however, that it didn’t take him long to get used to it. Once he was comfortable feeling out and translating what the soulprint told him into something he could actually use, he started feeding loose anima into the soulprint until it grew to rank D.
That dramatically expanded the range, and though things became clearer, he still didn’t quite get the fidelity he was looking for from it. That was a shame, because lack of fine detail was one of Blind Sense’s biggest drawbacks, and Aura Sense wasn’t looking like it was going to fix that deficit in his build.
For the moment, it was fine. Combining the two would overcome Blind Sense’s hard stop against underwater motion, something he was happy to acquire just in time to put it to good use, but he needed to fix that issue soon if he wanted a true omnidirectional sensory soulprint.
The merged soulprint was called Horizon Watcher. It wasn’t a sleek, efficient soulprint, especially not at D-rank, but Sorin hadn’t been willing to lose any of Blind Sense’s utility in the process, so he’d accepted the soulprint taking up more than its fair share of space. It was still a net gain, and he kept Aura Sense’s ability to let him judge someone’s soulspace size independent of what he could perceive their true rank at.
For the most part, everyone he’d encountered at the resort and the Telpike estate had measured accurately. There were always variations, of course, and someone who’d just reached a rank felt different than someone who’d maxed it out, but there was surprisingly little difference outside that. It was only when he looked at his own team that he could really feel a difference in what he felt their rank as compared to what Aura Sense showed him.
The rest of his acquisitions were modest by comparison. For his first C-rank soulprint, Sorin had decided he wanted something with flexibility for both offense and defense. To that end, he’d absolutely glutted himself on force soulprints. Force Edge was joined by Force Drill, Force Wave, Force Spear, Force Punch, and half a dozen other F- and E-ranked abilities.
Then he mashed them all together, tearing everything into component pieces and creating what should have been a huge, ugly, ungainly monster of a soulprint. The only reason this didn’t happen was that Sorin had already known precisely what he was trying to build. Force Weaver was something he’d used extensively in his previous life, the C-rank version of Water Bond or Living Earth, but for kinetic energy.
While he could free cast all of those spells normally, Force Weaver gave him unparalleled control and efficiency. Plus it helped free up his concentration to focus on creating an offense or defense as needed with one soulprint while he free cast whatever specific magic he felt was most beneficial in the moment.
He decided to hold off on anything else until he was a higher rank, not wanting to lose his ability to free cast D-rank abilities. C was already off the table again, at least until he hit rank 15. The rest of the team, not having the need to leave empty space in their builds, filled the blank spots they’d gained by achieving rank 10 with their own augmentations.
Nemari claimed the rare Aqua Fiend soulprint, which wasn’t at all useful on its own, but which enhanced all water-based abilities. With Water Bond already in her arsenal, she saw her anima costs go down and her fine control shoot up.
Rue finally got the capstone to her Bend Light and Shadows soulprints: Fade. It was a psionic attack of a sort, one which encouraged the target to focus their attention elsewhere. The trio of soulprints working together effectively rendered her invisible for about five seconds, which allowed her to make devastating ambush strikes against monsters.
Yoru and Vendis filled their soulspace with more mundane soulprints designed to increase their survivability in various scenarios on the assumption that no one knew what surprises lay in store on Floor 10 once they used the Lion’s Fang Key. It wasn’t exciting, but Sorin couldn’t blame them for that choice.
It was Odric alone who made the choice to forgo filling his soulspace. While the others were still working hard at mastering merging, Odric’s build had meandered all over the place. He was looking to consolidate soulprints, especially his earth-based Stone Skin, Earth Spike, and Earth Shaping, along with Strength of the Blood and Sentinel’s Vigilance, into one powerful C-ranked soulprint.
Sorin privately thought the project was a bit too ambitious for Odric’s skill level, but he did nothing to discourage their former healer from trying. In the worst case, Sorin figured Odric would still manage to bring five soulprints down to two or three, freeing up a considerable amount of space. Having the empty space in there now would make it easier for him to experiment and practice, and it wasn’t like they were struggling at the moment.
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Once everyone was used to their upgrades—and Rue had given up trying and failing to surprise Sorin after succeeding on sneaking up on everyone else—they gathered on a rocky beach still cast in shadows on the west side of the island.
“The sea floor drops away five hundred feet out,” Sorin said. “We go down a quarter of a mile. That’s deep enough for the bigger monsters to use as a hunting ground, and visibility is limited, so be on your guard and ready to react. You’re probably not going to get more than a few seconds’ warning. The goal is a circular cave opening in the shelf itself.”
The route was well-mapped, but that still didn’t stop people from getting lost. A pitch-black underwater three-dimensional labyrinth was not something smart climbers took lightly, especially with how easy it was to get turned around while fending off a monster attack. They had tools to mark the path, but most of their supplies had been left back at the Telpike estate, being unsuitable to use underwater.
The final hurdle was their relative inability to communicate, which had necessitated a series of hand signs that meant things like ‘Go left,’ or ‘Look up.’ Sorin honestly wasn’t that confident in the rest of the team’s ability to master anything complicated on a short basis, but he hoped it wouldn’t prove necessary.
“Alright, everyone in the water,” he said after they finished reviewing the plans. “Let’s get this over with.”
* * *
Sorin tried not to let amusement bleed through the telepathic link. Apparently, no one on the team had ever done any deep diving before now because he was being bombarded from all sides with what could best be translated as, “Holy shit, that’s cold!”
Just think how bad it would be without Thermal Insulation.
The water wasn’t so bad up near the surface, though Sorin wouldn’t go so far as to say it was warm. But a few hundred feet down was a whole different experience, and another thousand past that had some of them actively shivering.
Nemari was watching for monsters, but no one else was helping. Or rather, no one else could beat Nemari’s range. By the time Rue spotted something, Nemari had already warned everyone. Sorin’s own Horizon Watcher couldn’t beat Water Bond either, so he couldn’t hold it against Rue.
What it could do was find the cave opening, and he relayed a feeling of minor satisfaction at accomplishing that served to let the rest of the team know. They were barely fifty feet in the tunnel, though, when the first monsters struck.
Sorin almost thought it had to be coordinated. Other than a few fish out in the open sea, nothing had bothered to get too close. The second they were pinched together, monsters hit them from both sides. They were some sort of merfolk, complete with scaly, green skin and sharp-edged fins growing from their forearms and down their backs. None of them had hair, and their faces were dominated by overly large black eyes and mouths full of jagged teeth.
Nemari took the back with Vendis, while Sorin held the front. Force Weaver created an intricate web of razor-edged lines, practically invisible underwater. The leading merfolk swam right into it and shredded themselves, but the blood they released seemed to tell the rest of their kin something. Sorin couldn’t see a difference, but the remaining merfolk swam unerringly through the gaps in the webs.
Annoyed, Sorin spent more anima weaving new lines, but that only caught a few more before they started doing something to take control of the water and snap through the force trap. It wasn’t exactly a bad trade-off, but with more than thirty of the monsters facing him, he needed better solutions than killing two or three at a time.
Water Bond would be nice. Too bad that one’s too complicated to really free cast in combat, otherwise I’d use that.
Nemari was proving exactly how powerful it was in an underwater fight, having literally torn four different merfolk in half in as many seconds. Vendis had then taken the blood in the water and sharpened it into lashing tendrils. Between the two of them, they were making short work of the backside of the ambush.
Rue, meanwhile, was projecting impatient feelings into Sorin’s brain while he tried to hold her back. The force wires wouldn’t differentiate between friend and foe, and while they weren’t killing as many targets as he’d hoped, having to navigate through or snap them was slowing the rest of the horde down enough to break the timing on their assault.
He gestured toward the leading edge, a single merfolk with a broad, scarred chest who was bleeding from one shoulder where it had scraped against a wire as it swam through. That would be a good opportunity for Rue to test her abilities in this new environment, and hopefully it would get her out of Sorin’s head so he could focus on the rest.
Leave it to Rue to turn a telepathic bond into a weapon and then use it on her allies.
Yoru and Odric fired off earth spikes, which were little better than distractions underwater, but they helped keep Rue from being overwhelmed as more merfolk caught up to the first one. Sorin wanted to scold them to save their anima, but it wasn’t worth the effort. Instead, he focused on more targeted force attacks.
In the end, there was no clean, elegant solution. Each merfolk had to be pounded down one at a time while dodging swiping attacks from their fins as the monsters swam by. Dark Vision also lost a lot of its effectiveness as the water grew shrouded in more and more blood, but that did little to stop Sorin. It was the other people on his side that had to retreat to avoid friendly fire.
After a minute, Nemari and Vendis finished up their pack and came to help. At that point, the water cleared up both from her manipulation and from Vendis claiming the loose blood to use as weapons, and soon enough, the fight was over.
Not a bad amount of anima, but still not worth the hassle, Sorin thought to himself. More importantly, this was a good opportunity to reveal some of the weaknesses in our team. Yoru and Odric are practically worthless down here, and Rue isn’t able to do much more than keep herself alive. Maybe if we had a few days to practice, it’d be a different story. That just leaves Nemari, Vendis, and me. That should be fine for what we can expect to find down here.
So long as there isn’t another kraken.
Or something worse.
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