When the giant eel snapped its mouth shut, everything went dark. I could feel myself being thrown around, a rough tongue trying to force me further down the eel's throat. I was completely disoriented as I tumbled around and smacked into various things. I’d activated both of my defensive abilities as soon as I’d realized what was happening and they were the only reason I hadn’t been smushed to a pulp by now.

I was just about to do something about my current situation when a large amount of water swept past me, dragging me further down toward the eel’s stomach. I flipped around several times until I extended both my leg and arm tentacles, trying to get some grip. I eventually managed to grab hold of something and held on for dear life as tons of water rushed by. I finally had a second to sort my thoughts, and the first emotion that went through my head was anger. I was pissed.

This stupid fucking eel just hit me with the old one-two combo from out of nowhere, and I was angry that I didn’t even entertain the thought of it being able to do that. If the eel wasn’t so keen on swallowing its prey whole, I probably would have kicked the bucked here. But here I was, halfway down the eel's throat, drenched in questionable fluids, beyond annoyed, in total darkness, and probably holding onto something disgusting.

I had seen enough TV to know what to do when something was stupid enough to swallow you whole without instantly killing you: Go nuclear!

I had the presence of mind that blowing shit up was probably a bad idea right now, since I’d just blow myself up as well. Of course, I could probably use a void jump to teleport out, but the stupid eel probably had weaker defenses on the inside. I quickly re-applied my poison debuffs and then started charging up a wind-imbued magic bolt. During my testing, I found that the wind bolt, while mostly used for blowing stuff away and dealing blunt force damage, at a certain charge level added some wind blades to the equation.

I pumped about a thousand mana into the spell and sent it down the eel’s throat, and soon after I sent another one upwards toward the head. The eel did not enjoy what I was doing, thrashing around violently, which threatened to squish me flat and made me lose my grip. Not to be deterred I shot another wind bolt, and then three more until the violent movements slowed down.

Good news: It was dying and I was winning. Bad News: My poison got to it and I was launched back out the mouth, accompanied by copious amounts of bile and questionable solid parts.

You have killed a T5 Lv.20 Fake Water Dragon

You have been awarded 320’000 XP

You have been awarded 150 Data Points

You have leveled up!

You have completed a bonus objective!

Defeat the island guardians of three different islands. (3/3)

Congratulations!

I didn’t pay too much attention to the victory notification, too distracted by the fact that it was still completely dark around me after having left the eel’s stomach. I looked around, but it was just more darkness in every direction. It took me a few moments to realize that I was underwater. Deep, deep, underwater. The guardian must have swam down into the depths after it swallowed me.

The fact that I was seemingly floating in a void would be terrifying, but I was somewhat used to it from visiting the literal void. I was a bit worried about the fact that I had no source of light, though. I gingerly summoned a void javelin, having it hover above me. The spell emitted a soft, purple glow, which lit up my surroundings somewhat, but it didn’t help all that much. I got a bit of a jumpscare when it illuminated the giant eel head right next to me, but I quickly realized that it was the one I killed, deftly pulling it into my inventory.

I suddenly was really glad that I’d purchased the gills mutation. I bought it more on a whim than having a real plan, but it was really paying dividends right now. My wing tentacles extended and I tried using them to swim for the first time, really wishing I’d experimented a bit with it beforehand. I knew more or less knew what I needed to do to swim, a kind of wave-like movement that would propel me forwards or backward. The way I did it was a bit clunky, the water fighting my relatively weak wing tentacles, but it worked.

At least I thought it was working, but I really had no frame of reference to tell me if I was really moving. Everything around me was black, and only a tiny section of the water was illuminated by my javelin. I tried figuring out which way was up, but I couldn’t tell. My first instinct was to just float upward, but I felt like I wasn’t moving at all. Was there even any air left in me that could provide buoyancy? I actually had no clue how my gills worked, all I knew was that they somehow filtered oxygen out of the water… or something.

Fuck.

I eventually figured out a way to tell whether I was moving or not, which was by letting my eye stalks go limp. If I was moving, they were light enough to sway with the flow, giving me at least an idea of what was going on. I was floating there in the darkness, trying to figure out this whole swimming and diving thing on the fly, when I remembered that I was in an ocean full of monsters.

Suddenly, the dark expanse didn’t feel so safe anymore. Was there something watching me right now? I was reminded of that time I took a wrong turn in the void and got half of my attributes stolen. This probably wouldn’t happen here, but there were plenty of monsters down here that could rip me a new one. I summoned a few more javelins, arranging them so that they formed a ring around me. It got a little brighter, but the water was still empty. The realization struck me that I was essentially broadcasting my location to the entire ocean by doing this, but I’d rather know if an attack was coming, so I took the risk.

I was looking around frantically when I remembered that I was pretty banged up and started using my restoration spell. My health had dropped significantly during my time in the eel, which made healing almost a necessity. My MP had dipped below thirty percent, but I still had over half of my VMP which was good.

Just when I was calming down a little, my little voidling heart working overtime, the fact that nothing was happening freaked me out all over again. Why wasn’t anything happening? I was in the water, I knew there were huge and scary monsters in here, I was sitting here like a goddamn flare telling everyone where I was, but nothing was happening. All of a sudden every swirling shadow caused by my unstable light source felt like an enemy lying in wait.

My eyes darted around frantically, trying to make out anything, but there was just nothing in every direction. My gill-supported breathing became faster as I became more and more paranoid. What was that? Did something move over there? Holy shit is that a giant whale? Everything I imagined to be there turned out to be nothing, but I couldn’t calm down for some reason.

Eventually, it got so bad that I shot one of my javelins at a perceived monster, only to watch it sail into the distance. It moved sluggishly through the water, going further and further away before vanishing into the darkness. No explosion came, and no other beings could be seen on its path. I was alone.

HOLY FUCK SOMEBODY GET ME OUT OF HERE!

I started wildly moving my wings in an attempt to move, go literally anywhere else. My eye-stalks were swaying wildly, indicating that I was definitely moving, I just had no idea where I was going. I had a mouth but couldn’t scream. I really, really wanted to, though. I shot another javelin at another phantom and it disappeared into the void just like the one before it. Something about the fact that there was just nothing rubbed me the wrong way and I started firing off javelin after javelin like a madman, trying to find the monster that was DEFINITELY around here somewhere and mocking me!

After a while, I had to stop, not because I wasn’t freaking out anymore, but because I kind of shut down. I was mentally exhausted and couldn’t form a coherent thought for the life of me, floating in the dark.

Floating.

Drifting.

Silently panicking.

I wasn’t paying attention at all, which is why it came all the more as a surprise when something touched me from below. My whole being was jumpstarted into action as I flailed about wildly, in my surprise forgetting to shoot at whatever was finally going for the tasty, defenseless snack in the water.

My vision was suddenly blocked by a screen of swirling dirt, most definitely a dastardly attempt at taking what little I could see. I finally remembered that I was a strong mage, and shot out several javelins in all directions. One of them exploded almost immediately, sending me twirling away. HA! Take that! Whatever you are!

Once I stopped spinning, some more javelins already forming around me, I came to a startling realization. It wasn’t a monster that touched me, but rather me touching the seabed. My frantic movement had thrown up the mud, sand, or whatever it was, which blocked my vision. It wasn’t a monster attacking me after all.

I breathed a massive sigh of relief at the realization, slowly letting myself sink to the bottom. Turns out I was slowly descending this whole time and I’d finally arrived at the ground. It felt good to have solid ground under me, and even more so to have an idea which way up and down was. I slowly moved my body, digging into the muck below me until only a small part of my upper body was above ground, as well as three javelins that illuminated the bottom of the ocean.

I took a few minutes to calm down, safely ensconced in my dirt.

Now what?