Free The Dragon's Wrath: Shadows in the Flame by Brent Roth

one bar or 14.7 pounds per square inch, at thirty-three feet down the increase to two bar or 29.4 pounds per square inch was excessive.
    Twice the pressure.
    The next marker at three bar or 44.1 pounds per square inch at roughly sixty-six feet below the water’s surface was a much smaller increase. As long as I controlled my ascent there wouldn’t be any issues. Bubbles go first, not the other way around.
    Looking around the bottom, the entire pool was covered with loose rocks that appeared to have been placed rather than being naturally occurring. Though with so many rocks I wasn’t sure where to start.
    Thus, I waited for the pulse.
    With a tug much stronger than the one previously felt, my outstretched hand was sucked towards the center of the deepest part of the pool with a small cluster of rocks barely visible under the light of my dissipating lightning. Grasping at the rocks, I quickly lifted them and moved them to the side one after the other until I caught a glimpse of something wholly unnatural.
    A radiating dark sphere… awash with a purple glow barely visible at the bottom of a pool, hidden underneath rocks accessible only by a maddening free dive through pitch black darkness and ice-cold water… all behind a crack in the wall of a dark pathway in a cave filled with dirty rats at the base of a mountain, fifty some miles from civilization.
    How was anyone supposed to find this?
    Reaching out to grab the Relic, I was soon rebuffed and repelled as a system message appeared on my screen.
     
    [INTERACTION DENIED]
     
    [Access for the User is currently denied due to possession of conflicting {Wondrous Legendary Ancient Relic}, User is unable to interact with the following: {Legendary Ancient Relic}]
     
    Horse shit , I thought to myself as I sat at the bottom of the pool and tried to grab the item again. Repelled once more, the same system message appeared in front of me as I punched at the invisible wall that kept me from attaining my rightful item.
    Son of a bitch , I voiced without opening my mouth as I continued to hold my breath underwater. This entire excursion was a waste of my fucking time. Denied by the game.
    Denied without any warning when I attained the first one.
    Those asshole game designers should have put a warning in.
    Bah! I wanted to shout.
    I tried grabbing it again for a third time and a fourth before I finally gave in. Looking around, I realized that everything was for naught. There was no reason at all for me to come down here and now, now I was stuck. There was no way out of this cave as I was convinced that the outgoing channels were much too small for me to fit and would likely go on for far too long. That left either swimming up the current back to where I started… or to take the shortcut. My last coherent thought… fuck it all .
    I might as well experience it… I wouldn’t be crippled by fear.
     
    Ah, it really was dark.
     
     
     
     
     

 
    Chapter 80: All Aboard
    (Wednesday, December 1st Game Day / Friday, April 23rd Real Day)
     
    “Sigurd, how about a tale to pass the time,” asked one of the crew as we were busy rowing out on the open ocean.
    “Sure, what do you want to hear?” I casually replied, not minding an attempt to help pass the time. As long as it kept one distracted, it would be good enough.
    “Why did you appear in the village stark naked the other day?” questioned another crewmember with a muffled laugh.
    “No comment,” I mumbled as I continued to row in silence.
    A few laughs spread throughout the small boat as the men poked fun at my situation. It was the talk of the town so to speak… a topic of conversation for the day. Everyone wanted to hear why the almighty Sigurd appeared out of the fire buck ass naked with no gear or items to speak of. Ah yeah, because they were all left inside a room, inside a cave, some fifty miles from Dragon’s Breach, that’s why.
    A waste of my expletive expletive, expletive expletive time.
    Ah did that make me angry.