Underwater Voyage

Achilles' eyes flashed bright red as he scanned his surroundings carefully, trying to look for any sign of the soul.

But everywhere he looked at, all that were present were just water and rocks.

He sighed a little, then noticed that his body was slowly adapting to the enormous pressure:

'It's getting a little easier to move my muscles...If my calculation is correct then I can swim around now.'

Achilles assumed that since he had gotten gills and the ability to adapt to underwater pressure, he should have the swimming ability that was akin to water creatures as well.

'This is a hell of a bet but...I'm going to die anyway so who the hell cares?' He thought sarcastically and turned his head to a certain direction.

BOOM!

A moment later, his body shot through the water at an extremely fast speed. Even though he felt it was hard to move around, he was still surprised at the speed he was moving at.

Of course, he didn't get a chance to enjoy this feeling for long since just as he had expected...he had company!

Behind the veil of dark water, a pair of yellow eyes suddenly appeared, they traced Achilles' position a little before swimming right after him.

'...Shit.'

In just mere seconds, the Indohyus was already so close behind him that he could see how gigantic the thing was.

It was similar to what the whales' ancestors looked like in the prehistoric era, but thousands of times larger than that!

'Crap, crap, crap!!' Achilles tried to enhance his body with essences to increase his speed further but the water was making it extremely hard to move his body around.

The Corrupted got closer to him and the distance between them was now only less than 50 meters.

Compared to the monster, Achilles was like a helpless little shrimp running away from the inevitable.

He was beginning to panic but quickly collected himself since in a deadly game of cat and mouse like this, if one loses his/her composure, that person is good as dead!

'I can't use soul artifact in a Mindscape! Gods why does this rule exist?!'

The abomination was getting closer and closer and eventually...Achilles noticed a slight change in the water current.

He turned his head back a little and his pupils shrunk to the size of a needle.

The indohyus had opened its mouth wide and a small sphere of white light was forming inside it, making the surrounding water revolve around it.

It didn't take a genius to understand what was about to happen.

'Hydro Cannon!!!'

BOOOOOOMMMM!!!!

A blast of water flew at Achilles like a cannonball, its speed was simply out of this realm!

The whole lake seemed to be shaken by such a violent attack that would decimate anything in its path.

The indohyus didn't check whether Achilles was still alive or not and immediately dashed to a certain direction.

It wasn't anything surprising since this was its territory, it could easily sense whether the intruder was dead yet since it had already marked Achilles when he moved for the first time in here.

'FUCK LAKE!!!!' The poor dude screamed in his mind before desperately swimming away again.

The two continued chasing each other throughout the large lake for nearly 8 minutes.

Normally, with the Corrupted's speed, it should have caught up to him long ago. But Achilles wasn't a moron to run in a straight line, which thanks to that he had evaded this crazy thing for 8 minutes somehow.

Of course, as usual, his stamina was running out and he would soon be empty of gas at this rate.

'What is it with souls hiding in plain sight???'

The water pressure was really taking a toll on his body, he needed to exert much more strength than what he regularly required just to avoid being eaten by this thing.

Achilles dodged another bite coming from the indohyus by a close margin then continued swimming away.

'Fuck...my lungs are burning...'

He kept running away while searching for the soul but was unable to find it anywhere. His head was spinning from all the stress he had accumulated trying to multitask.

Eventually, his spirit body could not keep doing two tasks at the same time...and his body was worn out.

'Crap...not again...' His body froze itself from the exhaustion piled up for a split second.

The indohyus utilized this hard-to-come-by chance and reached for his tiny figure. It opened its fearsome mouth wide...then swallowed him whole.

'...Everything is black like ink, where the hell am I?' Achilles pondered to himself as he regained some strength to move his body.

'Bucket list of things I want to do before die: 1) Jumping inside a sea creature like Pinnochio — check.'