Once I find us another perfectly good spot to fish. We're able to get out lines cast out for the wait again. This time, I'll be the one to handle reeling duties for the both of us. At least if I mess up, I still have a change of clothes.

Speaking of, Saffron has now gotten into a pair of dry clothes. Unlike her usual attire, of which there is only one of, she's now wearing a sundress to counter this heat. Just with anything she wears, she's absolutely stunning, even in something simple like this.

Looks like we're in for a long wait, since nothing seems to have taken the bait yet. A bit of a shame, since I hear the cheers of other competitors. From the sounds of it, winning is far from likely to happen for us. I'm not going to give up though, and it's not like winning is the biggest deal anyway. It's just nice to spend some time with Saffron with something that doesn't involve working.

Too bad for her, that fishing does feels like work.

“Come on, there's got to be some way to get them to bite.” She complains to me, while hanging over the side of the boat and brushing her hand across the water.

“Well how do you normally fish?” Obviously we wouldn't do whatever she does to catch fish, since that would be against the rules. That said, I am pretty curious as to what she considers to be a better process.

“That's easy.” She puts up her hands to show me a demonstration. Using the water that surrounds us, she creates multiple ice shards, about the size of her hands. “I just take these, and shoot them at the fish.” That explains the reason why we only ever have ground fish at home. I swear, this girl has no sense of finesse when it comes to the finer details.

“I think that maybe I should take care of fishing duties from now on.” I tell her, then get back to checking the lines. Still nothing, it seems.

“You know.” She giggles, which draws my attention. “No one else can see us here.” From the tone of her voice, I can tell what she’s getting at. Her next action also showcases that, as she slightly lifts up her dress. It reveals her light pink panties that she just put on after her last pair got soaked.

“We can’t do that here.” I put my hand over her, bring things back down a peg. “What if someone comes up to us, you know kids are taking part of this too.”

“Come on, anything would be funner than just sitting around.” She continues her whining. “Hey you fish! Why don’t you come out and take our bait?!” She yells out in frustration. I’m certain that scared off a lot that might've been curious.

“Look, just be quiet.” I command her, to which she listens. “I hope magic’s to look isn’t against the rules.” It’s not like I’m going to cheat myself and catch them with my own magic. But this lake is really dark, and I can hardly see anything past the surface. I wonder how deep it is?

So I’m going to use my light magic, in its own namesake. Focusing myself on the darkness, I produce a glow from hand. Slowly, I place it under the water, to try and see what’s under us.

At first, I was confident of this spot, because no one else seemed to want to go here. If I went where everyone was, then chances are the fish would’ve been too spooked with how many boats there were. But now I was thinking that maybe the people understood this place better than me, and they were aware of where fish usually congregated at.

“I’m not seeing much.” My light wasn’t that bright, so I wouldn’t say that it illuminated the place the waters. However, it did allow me to see some shadows here and there of fish. So it wasn’t a complete waste of time, I guess we just need to wait a little longer.

“When did you learn that?” She asked me, because this was a move that I had been keeping secret from her.

“I figured it out on my own.” Part of the reason I tried to see if this was possible, was because of the lack of lighting in town during the night. I just wanted a spell that could help me out, and it was working right now. Maybe I could’ve asked her, because fire can light the way. But then again, it wouldn’t work underwater, now would it? “Maybe, if you wanted to go out at night, we could…” I was about to offer a date idea, but something caught my eye as I looked deep into the water.

What was that? It looked like the shadow of a fish, but something about it seemed off. Like it was distant, yet somehow still cast shade of massive size. Not only that, but it was growing, larger and larger under my lit hand. As it got close, I saw a shimmer of gold from it.

Suddenly, I felt water being pushed up towards my hand. That’s when I realized this was no ordinary fish, it was a monster fish.

“Hang on!” I yelled to her, but it was too late. The beast shot up through our boat, sending the two of us into the cold, dark waters. In desperation, I thrashed my arms about, searching for anything to grab onto. I felt a small stick, and grabbed tight. It was one of the fishing rods, so a little useless in the grand scheme of things. Looking around, I saw saffron floating next to me, she had her eyes closed, but it wasn’t from being knocked out.

As to be expected from someone who’s been in countless battles, she was calm and composed. She was focusing her energy onto creating a spell, one that formed the water under her to create a type of board.

“Grab on.” She called to me, but as I reached for her hand, I was pulled away.

Unbelievable, I don’t feel the beast grabbing my body. Then, I noticed it was coming from the hand holding onto the fishing rod. With one swift motion, I was sent into the air, rod in hand. The giant monster had grabbed our bait, and me along with it.

Quickly, I fell back onto the water. Pulled by this massive creature with my little stick. A part of me wanted to let go, but something kept me from doing it. Perhaps it could be the rational idea that if I let go, it could turn around and take me out like a sitting duck. After all, I was way too far from Saffron for her to save me at this point.

However, I think the real reason is my own arrogance. This was… Kind of fun.