Kyle looked around the shore for a hint.
How was he supposed to swim through this fucking lake?!
Sure, one fish could only draw some blood, but 50 of them would make him bleed out!
After a bit of looking around, Kyle spotted something interesting.
A book.
There was a book lying near the shore.
He walked over and inspected it.
‘Minor Frost?’ he read in confusion.
He opened the book and started to read it.
‘It’s a fucking Spell Book, and Minor Frost is the name of the Spell!’ Kyle thought as he became more anxious.
‘Am I supposed to freeze the lake and walk across it?’
‘I have no idea if I’m smart enough to cast Spells!’
Kyle attempted to read the book, but just the first three pages confused him.
‘Moving Ether? Transforming Ether? How am I supposed to do that?!’
‘I don’t know how to transform my Ether!’
‘And this fucking book just keeps saying that I should transform it without telling me how to do it!’
Kyle realized that the book was not for beginners.
Understanding this book required a basic understanding of Spell Casting.
He read further, and the following pages just became even more confusing.
He was assaulted with words he didn’t know.
Sure, he knew how to speak Sandspeak, but these were specific phrases referring to the process of Spell Casting.
He understood the words, but he didn’t know what they meant.
He tried to understand the book for about an hour.
Then, for another hour.
And another one.
‘Nope,’ he thought, slamming the book shut. ‘I don’t even understand the first three pages.’
‘This is not going to work.’
Helplessly, he looked at the lake.
‘How am I supposed to cross this? There are no materials to make a raft, and there’s also no ore around that I can use.’
‘Maybe I should try fishing.’
Kyle carefully held his hammer in the water.
Some fish arrived and circled it.
BANG!
Kyle tried to hit one of the fish, but they quickly evaded.
When he held his hammer into the water again, they didn’t approach.
He narrowed his eyes.
Then, he used the pick of his hammer to create a small wound in his finger.
Kyle let the blood drip into the water, and the fish immediately arrived.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Kyle managed to squash three of them, but the others immediately retreated when they noticed the danger.
The three corpses of the fish floated near the shore.
None of the other fish dared to eat them.
Kyle grabbed the three corpses and ate one of them.
‘Tastes pretty good,’ he thought, swallowing the fish. ‘I get why they eat each other.’
With just one fish, Kyle’s hunger was satiated.
‘They have quite a lot of Ether.’
For a while, Kyle just looked at the lake with annoyance.
‘I’ve lived in California all my life. I’m not good at fishing. What would my redneck brothers do?’
Then, Kyle blinked a couple of times as an idea came to him.
He ran into the tunnel he had just come from.
A minute later, he returned with the smallest piece of black ore he could find.
With a smirk, he grabbed one of the squashed corpses and shoved the black ore into it.
The piece was still quite big, and the fish broke in a couple of places.
“Supper’s served!” Kyle shouted as he threw the fish into the middle of the lake.
In an instant, all the fish gathered to consume the corpse.
BOOOOOOM!
A fountain of water exploded into the air, and Kyle laughed loudly.
“Yeah, that’s what you get! Fuck you!”
The next moment, he saw pieces of about twenty corpses rising to the surface.
Kyle wasn’t sure if he had ever been this proud of himself.
‘Yeah, fuck them fish!’
He grabbed another piece of ore and put it into the other corpse he had available.
He threw it into the pile of corpses and sat down near the shore.
Nothing moved for a long time.
After around 30 minutes, some fish gathered in the pile and started to carefully consume them.
When nothing happened, all the fish came out of their hiding spots to partake in the feast.
Most of the corpses had sunk to the ground already, but the fish focused on the floating ones.
When all the floating ones were gone, the fish rapidly moved to the corpses on the bottom of the lake.
Kyle grinned and waited.
Silence.
The lake shook.
‘Time to go!’ Kyle thought as he jumped into the lake.
He had culled the population quite a bit, and he had noticed that these fish were also very careful.
Whenever anything happened, they fled.
Kyle was sure that he hadn’t gotten all of them, but they were most likely intimidated.
As soon as he hit the water, Kyle started to sink rapidly.
‘Fuck! I’m too heavy!’
He paddled crazily, trying to keep himself afloat despite the hefty weight of his hammer.
He kicked the water below him and created immense splashes with his powerful body.
Sadly, the swim progressed slowly since the majority of his power was focused downward.
Yet, for the entire minute the swim took, not a single fish bothered him.
When he reached the other side, he breathed heavily and looked back.
He saw several more corpses swimming on the surface now.
In the end, Kyle just grinned.
‘I don’t need no Spells!’
‘This was original redneck dynamite fishing!’
Kyle stood up and dried himself as much as he could before he continued.
‘Let’s see what comes next.’
He walked through the tunnel for quite a while before he saw another deep hole.
He jumped into it and landed on the ground.
Then, another hole.
And another one.
And another one.
After nearly 20 holes, Kyle started to suspect that these holes would never end.
‘How far down am I?’
Yet, after the 30th hole, he saw a shining exit.
He walked out, and when he saw the scenery in front of him, his eyes widened in shock.
He was inside a gigantic cave, which was several kilometers wide.
And in the middle of the cave…
Was a city!
Or, more precisely, the ruins of a former city.
‘What the hell?’