“Well? What do you think?” I asked. “Workable?”

Aerion shrugged, climbing down from one of the minisubs that had been berthed in the harbor with the pool where we’d killed the whales. With how down she’d been, I was hoping a distraction might take her mind off things.

While the red water had thankfully turned back to its normal blue after our whaling exploits from earlier, I wish I could’ve said the same for the railings and floor. The blood that had splashed onto those had dried out and caked, giving the area a distinctly hellish vibe.

I did my best to ignore it. The smell of copper was a little harder to forget.

“I don’t see anything wrong with this one, unlike that other one.”

One of the subs had unfortunately fallen victim to the phenomenon known as Falling Whale Carcass, leaving two intact for our use.

The idea struck me when Aerion said that most floors had shortcuts that allowed you to bypass a floor’s boss battle. Apparently, the dungeons were designed to allow you to target a particular floor or floor guardian, if you were in search of a specific matchup.

Awfully considerate of the gods, but who was I to question our good fortune? On this floor, the subs were the obvious bet. I didn’t know if it applied to the floors beneath five, but there was a distinct ‘rise up through the ocean’ theme going on with five, six, and seven. We started below the ocean floor on five, then rose to the floor with six. Seven was at the surface.

So instead of delving into a bunch of castles, we were taking the fast way up—hopefully avoiding the Trial Guardian, if possible. As much as pumping out levels appealed to me, our equipment was in a pitiful state and we were both mentally at the end of our rope. The dungeon would be here. We could always come back later when we were better prepared.

“Why do you want two, anyway?” Aerion asked. “We fit in one. I feel it makes more sense for me to be the pilot.”

“Yeah, well,” I said, looking up at the elevated catwalk two stories above us. The one with the Siege Launcher. “Assuming we do make it up, there’s still a dungeon guardian waiting for us on the surface, yeah?”

Aerion nodded.

“Well, I’ve got a bent sword. You have a dagger, and my shield is about to kick the can. You really think we’re cut out for a final boss battle?”

“I’d hoped you would come up with a plan.”

“I’m flattered that you think so highly of my strategic skills. I really am,” I replied with a smirk. “But not even I can pull miracles out of my ass.”

“Out of your—” Aerion’s cheeks turned beet red, and she turned away. “How vulgar!”

“Says the Reaver,” I muttered wryly. Aerion somehow heard me anyway and huffed away, and I immediately regretted my words.

That was a sore point for her. Despite her words, she clearly had reservations about her new class, and honestly? I couldn’t blame her. I’d never heard of an elf with powers like hers. Well, not in any game, at least. Despite how amazing her class was, I bet she thought it crude and, well, vulgar.

Looking back up at the sub, I ran some mental calculations. The thing was about fifteen feet long and about eight in diameter. That sounded like a lot, but as I climbed the access ladder and plopped down into it, I realized there was a lot less real estate to work with. Levers, gauges, and all sorts of weird contraptions filled the thing, leaving it a bit cramped for two people.

“Listen,” I called, popping my head out of the hatch. “Is there any way to get rid of some of this junk?”

“That junk makes the sub work!” Aerion said from below.

“Well sure, but we just need it to clear the sub pen and then go straight up, right?”

Aerion tapped her chin. “I suppose we could purge the internal ballast tanks and rig up an external weight instead. If I cut open the tanks from the inside, that would give us more space. I’d have to disable the ballast flood controls, though. Otherwise, water would flood the sub.”

“Right. And then we would ditch the external ballast tanks to get it to rise,” I said, catching on. “Yeah, That’d clear up a lot of space, wouldn’t it?”

I wasn’t an expert on sub design or anything, but even I knew they flooded compartments with water to achieve neutral buoyancy, using the dive planes and engine to then rise and lower. To surface, they purged the ballast compartments with air. We needed that ability because the sub had to sink to clear the castle before rising to the surface. With Aerion’s approach, we could ditch the external weights the moment we’d cleared it.

It was like scuba divers dropped their diving weights for emergency ascents. We’d ascend like corks.

“I still don’t understand what you intend to put in the empty ballast tanks,” Aerion replied.

“Well, you know how the Siege Launcher threw those Aural bolts? You know how there’s about a thousand of them in those crates up above? They’re lightweight, so they won’t bring down our buoyancy too much, and those tanks are big enough to carry a lot.”

“Yes—oh!”

“Mhmm. We might not be able to take the launcher with us, but I’ll be damned if we’re getting anywhere near the Trial Guardian without cramming in as many of those bad boys as we can.”

“Bad… boys? Wait,” Aerion said, blanching. “You do realize we’ll be riding in the same subs as those bolts, yes?”

“Uh, huh?”

“Bolts that are capable of ripping those enormous whales in half?” she added.

“Yep.”

“And you see no problem with this…”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s like extra motivation. Y’know? To get to the surface as fast as possible.”

Aerion blinked.

“You’re not right in the head. Has anyone told you that before?”

“Only when it matters,” I replied heavily. “Only when it matters…”

It took Aerion several hours to make the modifications. It amazed me how quickly she was able to learn the ins and outs of new systems, adapting as she went, crafting clever workarounds to seemingly unsolvable issues. She applied herself with an almost deranged fervor, which made me worry. Still, it was an improvement over her prior mental state.

While I’d scraped by until now with my knowledge of combat strategy and tactics, Aerion’s problem-solving skills—especially with mechanical stuff—were in a class of their own. It was a sight just to watch her work.

As much as I wanted to watch, though, I had other work to do. Manual labor, in the form of hauling those bolts down two floors. Each bolt was light, but with so many of them, I had to take as many as I could manage down the stairs, so moving the crates to the stairwell made the most sense.

I looked over my inventory to occupy my mind while I worked. The first thing that jumped out to me was how oversubscribed I was, at 94/100 Essence Utilization. Way over my 15% buffer, but I’d decided that having an Initialized [Aural Siege Bolt] was worth both the pain of failed Initializations and the Essence it took up. The more firepower we had on the way up, the better.

I was also starting to notice a pattern with my Initialized gear. While the abilities I’d gotten thus far seemed completely random, all of my clothing had given me stats. No abilities, just stats. My armor and weaponry had given me abilities.

I’d have to do a lot of experimenting once I got out, but this was promising, and I honestly couldn’t wait. If I could direct my enchantments, even to a degree, I’d have to go through a lot fewer duds to curate the kind of armor and weapon sets I had in mind. Even with my relatively low level, if I could build sets that synergized not only with stats, but abilities too… I could easily magnify my effective capabilities. Punch above my weight class, as it were.

The possibilities helped take my mind off the grueling task of dragging the heavy crates to the stairwell—a process that took hours. While the bolts were actually pretty light, they added up fast.

Even with dragging the crates to the stairwell, it took me hours to get the bombs down, leaving me exhausted. Apparently the act of carrying delicate explosives counted as a dextrous action, because my Grace stat went up by 1.

It took some time, but we managed to load all the Aural Siege Bolts into Aerion’s modified subs without issue. With the ballast tanks ejected from both subs, we’d crammed in over a hundred. The best part? Turned out the subs had torpedo tubes that took those very same bolts.

If we encountered any trouble on the way up, at least we wouldn’t be defenseless.

There was just one obstacle preventing us from leaving.

Aerion cast a doubtful expression at me. “Are you sure you’ll be able to do this?”

I spit on my palms and smacked them together. “Ready as ever. Aerion? Teach me how to pilot a sub.”