At the moment, Zack didn't have eyelids, but if he did they would be half closed "I think after another few hours of this, my mind is going to snap."

Akma said "Push the lefternmost plate down by three feet."

"Ya, ya I know." then he used the water he controlled from his Hydrokinesis skill to press the pressure plate downward. Somewhere miles away a door opened or one of the conditions got met to activate something. Zack didn't know and ten hours pressing plates was leaving a gnawing irritation on him.

One of his recently connected Okwargs said through the link "You've been down here for but a few hours..."

Meryuik said "And we've lost track of the time we've spent in this featureless ocean."

Zack said "Don't worry. Your time will be up soon. Just continue to do as Akma directs you. After the mission is over then you can enter the spiritual ether and follow me back through the portal."

Zack looked at the endless blue and thought 'To spend so long in something so featureless. I'd go insane.'

Another hour of pressing plates passed uneventfully. Then Zack heard a sizzling sound.

So he asked the Okwargs in his network about what he was hearing.

An alarmed answer screamed at him "FLEE FROM IT!"

Zack used his pressure movement Hydrokinesis technique to move away from the direction of the sound at a rapid speed. Then it started getting brighter behind him. He changed his direction slightly. Sheets of white energy past him by and the sizzling sound became deafening.

Zack exclaimed "Akma, what was that!?"

The little blue guy appeared and said "Most likely the column was designed to transfer energy. Did you see how all of the electricity went through the water in a straight line? That's quite the feat in engineering."

Meryuik spoke through the Eidolan network "Many have thrown themselves into it just to escape this place."

Zack asked "Suicide?"

"Our existence here is beneath us. So there are those who took the path of death prematurely."

Zack said "Suicide is never an acceptable path."

Akma, who had been monitoring the link said "A consciousness requires new experiences in order to maintain sanity."

"And I've just had my consciousness linked to them. Terrific."

Akma left a hint for his growth as an Eidolan contractor "Yes, and there are benefits to opening the link wider than the tiny dribble of what you have already done."

A great deal of time later, Zack decided to sleep on the ocean floor in his Okwarg form. He had been up for twenty hours and couldn't push himself to work any longer. Awhile back his E-sport coach told him that pushing himself to remain awake for even an extra hour was brain damaging. Strangely enough, sleeping with his lidless eyes open wasn't too difficult.

"WAKE UP!"

Zack jolted awake to see Akma standing over him "What the...?"

Akma said "You're needed on the frontlines."

He violently shook his head to get lucid "Where to?"

"Back up that spinning sphere from earlier."

"Could you set the path for me? It's easy to get lost down here."

A series of lights lit up, almost like an airport's runway.

Zack commented "It's a bit more horizontal than I'd expected."

Akma said "You've traveled far. It's gonna take awhile to get there."

Zack moved the water around him in a spiral as he climbed "Tell me. What's so important that you had drag me out of a dead sleep for?"

"All eight conditions that needed to be met to open the doorway that leads to a cluster of innovative minds have been achieved. Unfortunately, all of the androids remaining has decided to take up position directly in front of it. They've also decided to field a capital sized unit. This is the final battle and we need to bring all forces to bear."

Zack spinned himself forward using the water twenty minutes before getting dizzy and changing his mode of movement to the air bubble slide. It could only be used for downward motion but it was fast enough. When he reached his destination by alternating between the two techniques, he floated on the surface of the water underneath the rotating sphere.

He called out to his newly acquired Okwargs "All of you come to me. I have a task that requires your abilities."

Meryuik said "What do you need?"

"I need to flood that sphere with water. I don't think that the androids residing in it will fair very well underwater."

Meryuik said "I alone will be sufficient."

"Really?"

"You wil soon see the capabilities of a tidemaster." Then Meryuik left the spiritual ether in a green flash. The massive Okwarg leader immediatly used his Hydrokinesis to apply pressure on himself as the pressure of the surface was much less than what his body needed.

Zack said "Hold up a minute. I gotta change forms."

"To think that your species is capable of such a thing. I've never seen anything transform to the extent that you do. Especially in such a short amount of time."

"As far as I know not many humans have such a transformative ability. Eidolan Symbiosis is a modification that Akmadouric gave to me so I could serve in his army better. Although some politicians have been known to shed their human skin to reveal green scales underneath. That's why they're called the lizard people."

Meryuik was a little blundered "Interesting. I will have to inquire about how a society with two different species functions later on. Wait... Why am I sensing humor coming through this link of ours. What's so funny?"

"Oh...nothing."

Zack took a deep breath and activated Eidolan Symbiosis: Poiraud. His rubbery skin slowly turned green and grew out inch long magnetic tendrils. His arms and legs remained split as he transformed but grew long tendrils like the Poirauds themselves. His eyes remained the same bulbous size but grew ridges around them.

'Something is wrong' He tried slowing down the transformation, then everything went black again.

Zack woke up and said "Uh...What? What happened?" and with a quick check he found out his feet grew back

"You passed out. What you attempted was beyond what your body could handle. A long range medical unit had to cleanse you of all foreign spiritual ether essences."

"Seriously? This shouldn't have happened. I shifted slowly as I normally do."

"No you didn't. You need to go from Okwarg to human to Poiraud, not directly from Okwarg to Poiraud. You were in an Okwarg-Poiraud-Human state."

He looked over himself to find he was back to fully human "But I change from Hroyd form to Poiraud form all the time."

"And they are both mammals while Okwargs are cepholopods."

Zack's brow scrunched "I thought they were Eidolans. Now I'm confused."

"They are mammals that became Eidolans when you set off the chain reaction within them by infusing them with a type of life energy called spiritual ether. In Hroyd's case, his people strengthened their spirits by devouting themselves to martial arts and meditation across countless generations. The Poirauds on the other hand, lived within a highly advanced ecosystem teeming with life and part of their adaptations to it including a life energy that could turned into spiritual ether. As for the Okwargs, they are old and practically immortal, so their aged spirits easily fused with the spiritual ether."

Zack let out a sigh "So are they Eidolans or are they mammals?"

"Technically Eidolans but it's just as accurate to say that they are both."

"Fine. I'll just have to research the complexities of this later on."

"I wish you the best of luck on that, you'll need it."

After shifting to Eidolan Symbiosis: Poiraud and Zack quickly flew into the sphere during the brief moment the hole opened up. Then shifted back to human form before finally activating Eidolan Symbiosis: Okwarg in order to enact the next phase of his hastily made plan. The Hydrokinesis ability may allow Zack to generate water but that didn't mean that he had to be in control of it, at least if he relinquished control. Meryuik flooded the tunnels of the sphere using the water Zack created and what was left of his facial muscles curled upwards when he heard a drowned whirring sound. A quadpod advanced up the steadily coming river but it seemed to have water globules sticking to it.

Zack said across the link "Find a seam within it, we need to destroy it's interior."

Meryuik mentally scoffed at his ignorance and crushed the Quadpod with the same force that the Marianna's Trench would use to crush a tin can.

"That works too."

The water flooded up and down all the tunnels of the sphere with a mind of it's own. Short circuiting or even crushing any and all Quadpods that became enveloped by the water under the tidemaster's control. Zack followed the map to the exit point as quickly as he could while riding the waves and generating water.

Zack said to Akma as he moved "I need an update on the situation"

A screen showing the battlefield, he took one look at it and muttered in dismay "I've been wondering this whole time when we were going to have to take on a giant death robot."