From Player To Npc

After they finished their rest and were ready to move on to the next floor, before going down the stairs, Shingi started drawing a special Enchantment on the footwear of everyone.

The same Enchantment that Varic had drawn to Ameanum's boots when he went to have a meeting with Lucy.

The next level would not follow the desert theme but instead was a water level.

The entire floor would be a vast ocean with islands of different sizes, but none would be large enough to hold over fifty people on it, while the smallest ones could barely hold two.

When a group got to that level, they could start at any point on the floor, including at a place with no land.

He made the Enchantment with the help of Little Phoenix, being more potent than the one Varic had done back then since he wasn't an official ENCHANTER by the System. It would allow them to walk on water as long as they didn't stay still. Its duration would be almost an hour, which hopefully would be enough to find a way down to the next floor, or at least a place to rest.

They couldn't use this Enchantment many times as they did not make their boots to handle Enchantments multiple times. An also helped them as she had some   Skills but still had no profession.

He thought it would be great if she also became an ENCHANTER, as he and Little Phoenix could use some extra hands as they had prepared materials for some special Enchantments for future floors. Her class also was Enchantments related so that it could strengthen her fighting abilities too.

Little Phoenix was still a RUNEMASTER at Apprentice State and could update some Shaped-based Enchantments to their better version of Runes, but nothing fancy yet.

Shingi shared with her everything he read from the books he saw during SCRY MODE while checking on Annoue, as he couldn't use them.

Her Enchanting Skills were faster than his, but she still lacked at a few places but was better at others than him.

He couldn't anymore learn this way since Annoue wasn't available as a target of his SCRY MODE, but maybe it was a temporary thing.

They moved to the next floor, and they appeared on land, fortunately.

Looking around, there was just water and no sign of any other land for as far as they could see.

This floor was tricky as there were no clues of where the stair would be, and one needed luck.

Shingi, Hineko, Mizuneko, and Little Phoenix used their detection skills for any signs of creatures, as the stairs would have monsters around them most likely.

Other than blindly looking for it, they could look around the islands for pieces of a magical compass that, if completed, would point towards the whereabouts of the stairs.

In the ocean lived mutated sea creatures as merefolks, partial fish people, who also had a chance to drop materials to create a magical compass.

Fortunately, there were multiple versions of the same piece making it easier to gather them all, but still, it took a long time as most creatures wanted to fight underwater, and not a lot of Players could fight there.

Of course, one could luck out and find the stairs while looking around, but the chances were relatively small.

They started moving around looking for any merefolks, as only they could have a piece of the compass of all the monsters.

They found a few that even tried to ambush them, but Shingi and the rest had enough time to prepare.

It was tricky to fight them as they kept diving into the water to avoid some of their attacks or ran away, which a few had succeeded at, but they successfully killed a few. But no pieces of compass to the ones they killed.

The merefolks even had tamed some of the mutated sea creatures, one of them being huge as a whale but having blue scaled all over its body, and had the general structure of a whale's body except its mouth, which was closer to a crocodile's mouth.

There were some smaller versions of those creatures and some seahorses who had air and water mana but hadn't developed it to Ice like Mizuneko. They were throwing Water Bullets that contained Air Element Mana to increase their speed, making them cause more damage if hit and harder to avoid.

There were some sharks that could shoot them towards their target and regrow them at a visible rate. Their bite was severe as if they hit one of their limbs, it would be as good as gone and would be nothing a potion could fix.

They would need Healing Magic for this, which they unfortunately lacked, but regrowing a limb or fixing one that damaged would need a pretty powerful one.

Only Shingi could learn any healing magic, as it got based on Light mana, which only he had in their Party.

But fortunately, they were careful enough, and even if they got damaged a few times, it wasn't something potions or rest couldn't heal.

Shingi wanted to learn Healing Magic, but those spells were specific Classes Restricted, and not just any Mage could learn them. He still didn't have his class, so he couldn't even try to unlock them, but he could use some of his Light Mana to help others naturally heal faster.

As they got close to the hour that their special Enchantment would come at an end, they found an island big enough for them to rest.

They had more boots stored on their Spatial Rings or Spatial Bags that they could do the Enchantment on. But they rested for a few hours.

Until now, they had found only one of the four parts of the compass they needed. They could have more if they stopped all merefolks from escaping, but they had got used to how they fought and to prevent them from running away.

This place was great for Mizuneko's development of his Mana Tree, as the Air and Water mana here got strengthened.

The forest area's strengthened Earth mana didn't have high compatibility with Shingi's Mana Pool, and it didn't seem to be the case for Little Phoenix either. As for the Earth mana in the desert, this was also useless for developing one's Mana Tree.

But the Air and Water mana seemed to be of somewhat high compatibility with Mizuneko. However, they were getting that information by how Mizuneko felt it, as his MANA SENSE didn't show compatibility level. This was available for NPCs when reaching Master Rank and for after level 90 from what Shingi had learned during one of his research.

Since they would spend some time here, either way, they should benefit as much as they let Mizuneko work on his Mana Tree and use the mana to create some Water and Air mana-embedded silver since the mana was of excellent quality.

Some merefolks seemed to keep a watch on them, while others left in a hurry, probably to report on their higher-ups.

Shingi knew that there was an entire city of merefolks underwater.

Fortunately, merefolks were one of the few creatures in the Tower that couldn't evolve but could earn classes in the usual way, but their power wouldn't be the same as of evolved ones.

Some Players had made raids to the city if they found it, but the sources needed to fight there were costly.

It was deep in the Sea, so a special potion would allow the Players to become like a merefolk entity themselves to fight almost at full power.

Finding the recipe for the potion wasn't hard, but it had some rare and costly materials to make it. If lucky, one would profit from that raid, as not always the treasury of the underwater city was full or contained that many treasures.

The mereforks had a more challenging time fighting on land, so they kept their distance while watching Shingi and the rest.

Shingi didn't mind them calling for backup, as that way, it would increase their chance of facing one with the rest of the compass pieces. But he reminded everyone, including himself, to be on guard, not to repeat another accident like what happened on the last floor, by underestimating their enemies.

They send some mutated creatures on them that had the body of an alligator but the head of a shark, making their bite nastier and also could move on land.

Those creatures weren't too strong, but Shingi knew that they just wanted to test them and see what they could do.

Shingi let others know, and they acted like they had a problem dealing with them, and they barely did.

Merefolks couldn't understand their languages to speak during combat without a worry, but still, Shingi was careful of how loud he spoke and what he said.

Even if they usually couldn't understand them, there was always the chance of one trying to learn their language over time, and the Tower had created most of them some time ago; the chance wasn't too low. They couldn't Evolve, but still, they could develop themselves.

He had noticed a few tactics of theirs to be more advanced versions of what usually used, meaning they had developed some more intelligence than usual.

There was some silence after a few more battles.

Then Shingi detected a gigantic figure getting closer to them.

Shingi let everyone know and be on guard as giant tentacles started appearing one after the other from into the water.

A gigantic octopus appeared, and on top of its head, there was a merefolk, sitting on a throne that had been tied to be held in place on the octopus head.

The merefolk was physically larger than the rest they had faced, as most of them were almost the same height as Shingi, while he was closer to Volig's average height. It heard a trident with both hands but changed to keep it with only his left, as he pointed towards Shingi and his Party with it.

Huges tentacles got raised and came down towards them, but everyone was ready and avoided them even if its speed was faster from one of this size.

They couldn't see it all, but Shingi could tell that it was probably a little smaller or the same size as the Fire Dragon he had faced as his Player self.

Merefolks started getting out the water with bows at hand, which was weird for them to have them as they were unusable underwater.

They started shooting arrows towards them, but they made them out of the water, which seemed to be part of an Enchantment on the bow to form these special arrows. Shingi could clearly see the Enchantments on them.

This was a new tactic of theirs, as they weren't using weapons in the past.