'Wait, I'm Supposed to Become a Goddess?! But I'm a Guy!'

The two descended into the gaping maw of darkness like nervous explorers poking their heads into a dragon’s lair.

The deeper they swam, the heavier the water became, dense, pressurized, almost resentful of their intrusion.

Despite the breathing spell wrapped around his body like a second skin, Klein felt as if he were trying to swim through thick soup.

Every stroke of his arm felt wrong.

Every kick of his foot brought a fresh wave of goosebumps crawling up his back.

Slap!

He smacked the back of his neck hard, twisting around. “Damn it, old man! This place is creepy as hell! I swear this isn’t just a hole, it’s a huge freakin’ mouth waiting to chomp us into digestible chunks!”

The old man hovered beside him, unimpressed. “Stop overthinking everything. It’s just a hole in a lake. And what we’re looking for might be at the bottom.”

“Tch,” Klein muttered, rolling his eyes as he swam faster, teeth clenched.

Then, after ten grueling minutes of eerie silence and darkness, the scenery abruptly shifted.

“What the—!?”

“What the hell is this?!”

“Ohhh?”

Their voices overlapped as they reached the edge of the abyss and stared down into something utterly impossible.

The void beneath them had opened up to reveal a hidden world.

The water cut off in a razor-sharp line, revealing a sprawling underground realm beyond it.

Giant trees, far larger than anything on the surface, towered over mist-laced mountains.

A strange, watery glow from the ceiling, formed by the very layer they were in, lit the entire space below in an eerie, gentle luminescence.

Klein’s jaw slackened.

Even the old man, whom had travelled the world for hundred of years, looked like someone had just slapped the soul out of him.

“Brat…” the old man whispered, voice barely audible, “I think we should go back, now"

“Now? You are saying this now?” Klein murmured, awestruck. “This is insane… An entire underground world inside the dungeon? And it’s only accessible through this stupid lake?”

“And the aura here,” the old man added, eyes narrowing, “It’s several times thicker than the surface layer. Hundreds, maybe. The monsters down there… would eat the surface ones for breakfast.”

Gulp.

Klein swallowed hard, neck visibly twitching. “Y-yeah. No thanks. I barely handled the surface mobs. If I go down there, I’m going to be the loot.”

“Well, I’m not going to stop you,” the old man said casually, as if they hadn’t just discovered a lost world teeming with death. “Whether we stay or not is up to you.”

“I vote live,” Klein said immediately, spinning on the spot. “Back we go.”

He started kicking upward with all the urgency of a man fleeing a burning brothel.

But just as he made it a few meters back toward the tunnel above, a flicker of movement, faint and silent, caught the front of his vision.

Something... was falling down from the top?

Then he saw it.

Then he screamed.

“AAAAAHHHHHHH!!”

Above them, descending like the vengeful spirit of an angler god, came the ugliest damn fish Klein had ever seen.

Its head was massive, its mouth wide enough to comfortably fit a wagon, and from its brow extended a thin stalk with a glowing bulb that pulsed like a dying star.

A lantern fish. Huge. And deeply offended by their presence.

“WHY IS IT ABOVE US?!”

“IT CAME FROM THE LAKE?!”

“IT CAME FROM HEAVEN, KLEIN, TO KILL US PERSONALLY!!”

“WHY DIDN’T YOU SENSE IT WITH YOUR FANCY DIVINE SENSE?!”

“MY DIVINE SENSE IS JAMMED! IT’S LIKE TRYING TO LISTEN TO A WHISPER DURING A ROCK CONCERT IN HERE!”

The fish opened its mouth, revealing rows of teeth that gleamed like polished daggers.

“AAAAAAAHHHHH!!!”

“DOWN!! DOWN!! BACK INTO THE CURSED WORLD!!”

The two turned tail and bolted downward in the most ungraceful retreat known to cultivation history.

Klein was flailing like a drowning frog, limbs pinwheeling with reckless abandon.

The old man, who was supposed to be an ancient immortal-like entity, was now swimming beside him in pure panic, his illusory robe flapping wildly like a jellyfish in a blender.

“STOP PUSHING ME, YOU DAMNED OLD GHOST!”

“I’M NOT PUSHING YOU! YOU’RE KICKING ME IN THE FACE!”

“I SWEAR IF WE DIE, I’M COMING BACK JUST TO HAUNT YOU!”

“YOU THINK I WON’T HAUNT YOU FIRST?!”

Behind them, the lantern fish swam in eerie silence, its massive body gliding effortlessly through the water like a living battleship, bulb casting shadows that danced around the wall.

“IS IT STILL CHASING US?!”

“I DON’T KNOW, I’M TOO SCARED TO LOOK!”

Klein glanced back.

It was closer.

“IT’S CLOSER!!”

“HOW?! IT’S NOT EVEN MOVING FAST!!”

“STOP YELLING AND SWIM, YOU STUPID OLD GHOST!”

“YOUR FORM IS AWFUL, YOU KICK LIKE A THREE-LEGGED DUCK!”

They spiraled downward, screaming the entire way, crashing through the surface of the water like torpedoes launched by fear itself.

And immediately, wind caught into their eyes, falling from the sky.

"Arghhh!!!!"

"Don't hug me, Old man!"

"We are going to die!"

"You are already dead!!!"

Klein smacked into a massive vine and spun like a top, while the old man went through a glowing bush and came out wearing half of it like a seaweed wig.

They collapsed into the underbrush, gasping, wheezing, soaking wet, and tangled in plant life.

Silence.

Klein blinked blearily up at the strange, glowing water above high above the sky.

“…Never again,” he muttered, face-first in the dirt, butt in the air, legs twitching. “I don’t care if there’s a kingdom down here. I’m not doing that again.”

The old man groaned beside him, half-buried in a luminous bush. “My spine… my dignity…”

Klein didn’t lift his head. “Good. You didn’t have any.”

And somewhere behind them, deep in the dim, hidden world under the lake, the monster fish swam away in peace, having sufficiently traumatized two generations of explorers.

The two stood there in dead silence, their expressions frozen in a perfect mirror of blank exasperation.

Klein’s arms dangled by his sides, soaked sleeves dripping steadily onto the mossy undergrowth.

Across from him, the old man’s illusory figure stood stiff as a popsicle, arms awkwardly wrapped around his own shimmering shoulders.

His translucent fingers rubbed up and down his biceps, and then.

Sniff.

“Huhuuu... it’s cold,” he whimpered, trembling just a little too dramatically for a millennia-old soul wisp.

“…”

Klein blinked slowly. His gaze, utterly flat, drifted toward the old man’s face as if trying to comprehend whether this was an actual reaction or just his mind finally cracking from the day’s nonsense.

He stared a moment longer.

Then squinted.

Then sighed, long and tired. “You’re literally a disembodied soul. How the hell can you even feel cold?”

“…”

“Seriously, explain that to me. Use diagrams if you must.”

The old man squinted up at the glowing water curtain high above the ceiling of this buried biome, face contemplative.

“Ah… yah, that is strange.”

“You think?”

“But I really am cold!”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not!” he snapped, insulted. “There’s definitely something weird about this place! I don’t know how to describe it, but I’m shivering on a soul-deep level!”

Klein deadpanned harder, if that was even possible.

He raised a brow as the old man’s ethereal hands rubbed at his non-existent upper arms with all the urgency of someone caught in a snowy blizzard. “You’re basically fog with a face. There’s no skin to get goosebumps on.”

The old man ignored the jab, instead staring upward again, eyes narrowing as faint, sluggish ripples continued to disturb the glassy surface of the inverted lake high above.

The luminescent curtain shifted ever so subtly, unsettling in the way only still water could be unsettling.

“That bastard’s gone,” he muttered, voice dropping low. “That lake… there’s definitely a suppressive effect. A strange one. It messes with divine sense and soul-based abilities. I couldn’t use a damn thing up there.”

“Checks out,” Klein said, casually stripping off his soaked hoodie and cloak.

He wrung them out with a tired grunt, sending thin rivulets of water splashing onto the mossy stone beneath their feet. “You getting chilly as a ghost sort of confirms it.”

The old man sighed as if he'd just finished paying taxes.

He tentatively extended his divine sense once more.

This time, it bloomed out like a proper scan, tendrils of spiritual awareness gently combing the terrain around them.

A small smile curled on his lips.

“It’s working again,” he said, sounding immensely relieved. “Yup, that lake’s messed up. I couldn’t feel a pebble five feet away while we were swimming. Thought I was gonna die again. Spiritually.”

He gave a half-hearted chuckle, then cleared his throat, clearly still rattled.

Not being able to use his divine sense had terrified him far more than he cared to admit.

Had he tried to cast spells in that crippled state, he would've triggered a catastrophic backlash, one bad enough to knock his soul into hibernation for who-knows-how-long.

Centuries, maybe.

“Anyway,” he said, shaking it off and resuming a casual tone. “No monsters nearby. We’re good. For now.”

Klein forced a smile, damp hair clinging to his forehead as he gave a half-hearted thumbs up. “Yay, not immediately dead.”

He pulled off his boots and flipped them upside down.

Water poured out in a continuous stream that lasted way too long for comfort.

“So,” he muttered, wiggling one foot free of a squelching sock, “do you have any kind of flying spell to get us out of this hellhole?”

The old man gave him a look.

A very smug one. “What do you think?”

Klein’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t, do you?”

The old man shrugged innocently. “Do you?”

“Not even a wind spell.”

“Ah.”

“So…”

“We’re stuck here?”

“Seems like it.”

“…”

The silence between them hung so heavy it could’ve crushed a rock.

Then Klein twitched.

Then the old man narrowed his eyes.

And then, without warning, both lunged like rabid cats.

“You good-for-nothing ancient fraud!!”

“You miserable brat, I told you to train wind spells!!”

“I thought you were the support class!!”

“I’M DEAD, KLEIN! I’M NOT A CLASS!”

They grappled like two toddlers fighting over a stuffed toy.

Klein grabbed the old man’s illusory collar, somehow managing to hold onto a non-physical object, and flung him sideways.

The old man bounced off a bush like a wobbly balloon and retaliated by latching onto Klein’s head like a glowing octopus.

“LET GO OF MY HAIR!!”

“MAKE ME, YOU UNGRATEFUL LITTLE!”

They rolled across the ground, limbs flying, curses echoing, moss flying into the air like confetti.

A nearby squirrel peeked out of a tree hole, blinked twice, and promptly retreated into its home, disturbed beyond belief.

“THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!”

“MY FAULT?! YOU JUMPED IN FIRST!”

“YOU SAID THERE WAS TREASURE!!”

“I SAID ‘MAYBE,’ YOU MORON!!”

Somehow, Klein ended up sitting on top of the old man’s chest, both of them breathing hard, one with lungs and the other purely out of force of habit.

“…We done?” Klein asked, wiping sweat off his brow.

“…Yeah,” the old man wheezed, flopped out like a ghost pancake. “I think I sprained my aura.”

Klein slowly rolled off and sprawled beside him, staring up at the glowing ceiling with a tired grin. “Let’s… just not do that again.”

The old man muttered something incoherent, probably a curse, and stared up as well.

They both lay there in silence, soaked, bruised (somehow), and absolutely no closer to leaving.

But at least they had their friendship.

And joint stupidity.

And possibly pneumonia.