A Lich's Guide to Dungeon Mastery

She was certain her feet would be aching by now if she were still a mortal, regardless of how many Reinforcements she had.

The pull on her spirit has grown since she'd first began her traveling, and she could sense that she was getting closer to her target.

There was only one problem.

She'd run out of land to walk on. Worse still, she couldn't swim.

Also, her senses were warning her of some BIG creatures out in the sea, and she knew that she'd have some difficulty fighting and learning to swim at the same time.

Staring into the shores of the water, the blademage let a bit of her personal energy of Absence spark into her blade, then closed her eyes and stepped into the ocean.

Azrael’s armored form slowly trudged its way through the wet sand, rocks, and seaweed, unbothered by the sharp chill of the waters that were slowly engulfing her, step by step.

Her boot landed on a particular red weed, and it quickly snapped around her leg and squeezed with enough force to easily shatter a weaker mortal’s leg.

Azrael’s armor held firm, and she ripped the murderous plant in half with a tug of her leg.

It seemed that the effects of the Dead Belt stretched even this far out, corrupting plants and killing animals, twisting them into undead and otherwise unnatural forms.

Not allowing for any further delays, Azrael marched into the depths, the weight of her armor helping keep her pressed against the sand. Her legs were consumed by the water, then her torso, and finally her head was completely encompassed. Heedless of her situation, Azrael continued to press on, keeping an eye on the creatures her natural senses as an undead had highlighted for her.

Slowly, the pressure began to mount, and she began to strain against it. Her armor, durable though it was, did nothing to fight back against the weight of an entire ocean, and her speed slowed, then halted entirely.

Azrael enveloped herself in a thin layer of Absiete, commanding the pressure to cease. While it wasn’t exactly in line with what her element wanted to do, it was close enough, and the massive weight on her shoulders vanished, consuming a bit of her mental energy every second.

Extremely aware of the time limit she was working on, Azrael squeezed every ounce of speed she could get out of her body, rocketing forward like a charging bull. After all, if she couldn’t get to land before her Mentum ran out, there was a real chance that she’d never get there.

Running like there was an inquisition chasing her, the undead hardly even noticed the portal she passed through, only sensing that the distance between herself and her target had been cut down significantly.

Something hard and sharp pinged off Azrael’s armor, and she rapidly turned to face an odd beast that she’d never seen before. Its head appeared to be made out of a large, semi-transparent sack, with a single massive eye and a number of tendrils that she almost instantly gave up on counting sticking out of where a human’s neck would be.

Azrael leapt backwards, resisted slightly but otherwise unhindered by the mountain of water surrounding her.

The creature shot out with one of its tendrils, and she dodged out of the way of its barbed hook, responding by dashing forward to close the distance.

Another pair of tendrils swished towards her, and Azrael was forced to dodge one and parry the other with her blade, following up by chopping at the tentacles and managing to fully remove the one she’d managed to avoid, causing a cloud of black blood to spray from the bisected protuberance.

She knew the armor was tough– Ambrose had made it, after all– but she’d rather avoid testing how far that durability went if at all possible.

Yet another one of the odd limbs aimed for her, but this time she empowered her blade with a small trickle of Absiete, applying her Detonate rune at the last second to delete the attack before it could reach her. The ability was less effective against this creature, showing that its body was somewhat reinforced by magic, but the dangerous part of the appendage was removed nonetheless.

The odd bag monster swept away from her to recover, but she chased after and pressured it, swinging at its feelers whenever she got within range. Her attacks all seemed to miss just barely, causing Azrael no small amount of frustration, but she kept up the pressure and channeled some power into her blade once more.

The beast pulled all of its tendrils to its sides, and the undead readied herself for another attack.

Each of the tentacles shot forward on each side of her, seeming to miss Azrael completely. Just as she was beginning to relax, however, the limbs snaked around her torso and began to squeeze.

Sadly for the bag monster, it wasn’t quite strong enough to destroy plate armor made of magically-empowered and layered carbon fiber.

Azrael tried to snort, but instead just inhaled a lungful of water.

The Detonate rune on her blade went off, and pieces of the appendages that had tried to wrap themselves around it all briefly vanished, reappearing a second later as nothing more than chunks of meat in the water.

The tendrils withdrew, and the bag monster began to float up. With no way of chasing it, Azrael returned to her sprint through the depths.