"It's the plastic stuff. We're in the right place."

I push the rest of my hand through my shield and wrap my fingers around the pillar. It squelches between my fingers, offering a slightly worse sensation than the dry stuff, and I pull the handful away. Sending it to my inventory ups the number until it hits the limit, then starts filling another empty slot with the leftovers. I assume that means there's no difference between the stuff I already had and the stuff here, so whatever we need to do for the quest, it isn't going to just jump out at us.

Pearl stares out into the darkness as he kicks her legs. "What do we do now, then? I don't remember seeing anything obvious that could help us."

"Neither did I, but that's not to say there isn't anything." I say as I pull up my map. "Good thing I can still see this through my awareness. But… it doesn't look like anything's changed. Guess all it was supposed to do was lead us here."

I send my Class Card away and hum to myself in thought. If I'm right, which I easily couldn't be, each of the leads we followed should be able to access the quest on their own. So whatever we've seen since we got the map from the monster should be all we need to access it. Or… maybe what we had to do to get the quest in the first place.

"Any chance there's one of those… phase points around here?"

"Um… I can try looking for one. But will that, you know, count against you for getting the quest?" Pearl asks quietly, as if speaking too loud will draw the system's attention. "Because if I can't find one now, then there's no way anyone else would've been able to find one."

"The kid only saw the monster by freak accident. If I was the system, I would've put that one there so someone who can find phase points could access the quest. Of course, that all depends on the system personally putting all the hints in place." I scratch my shoulder as a frown crosses my lips. "Denmary was definitely the system's doing. But do we think the graveyard, monster, and Well the supplier were all directly put there by the system?"

Pearl slowly nods. "Hm. That's a good point. One I don't really have an answer to, since we don't know if the plastic was something the world made on its own or if the system made it specifically for the quest. I guess we'll find out really soon!"

"Really soon?" My growing frown shifts into a grin. "Does that mean what I think it means?"

She grins right back. "It's not a phase thing, but there's something different about one of the spires down below. Something much more… natural than these lumpy plastic monstrosities. A lot smaller, too, and… well, you'll just have to see for yourself. So go see! What are you waiting for?!"

Nothing, I guess. With a glance at my feet I wrap my free hand around the pole, then use it to push slightly away from the spire. Pearl instantly shakes her head and points in the opposite direction, and with a chuckle, I readjust to the right direction. The shield pole scrapes against the platform up top, barely providing enough friction for me to push myself downwards, and as my stomach starts to drop, the Pressure mounts on my shield.

"I've got about a third left in this one." I relay as I steer away from another spire. "How much further is it?"

"We're about two-thirds of the way down. Your awareness should pick up the real spire in about fifteen seconds." Pearl responds eagerly. "Ooh, I really hope this is the right thing. Time's running out, and I really don't want to sit around doing nothing while we hope another quest shows itself."

"Well, we wouldn't do nothing. I'd find some way to slow down the Preservation, get stronger, and help the resort. Sure, it wouldn't be exciting, but it'd be something to pass the time. I… there it is." I stop as my awareness slowly rolls over a much smaller, much sharper spire. In fact, it looks exactly like a bigger version of the things that came with the map. "If that isn't what we're looking for, then the system's got one twisted sense of humor."

As my awareness washes over the spire, slowly revealing more and more of it, I get increasingly confident in my analysis. The thing is a perfect clone of the ones on the map, albeit bigger, and it's planted right where the words are. I hold my breath as the bottom thins to a point, then the bottom comes into view. A rocky, uneven bottom with words carved into it.

I blink as I confirm that there are, indeed, words there. Carved into the bottom of an underground lake. Sure enough, four words as clear as day pop through my awareness with the intensity of a scream.

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'I Need To Breathe.'

A shiver works its way up my spine, ending with a full-blown shudder that has Pearl hanging onto my ear for dear life. The words cement themselves into my mind with the heat of a branding iron. Something about them just feels… important. Not just to the quest, but in general.

"I need to breathe." I whisper to myself. "It sounds like a plea for help."

Pearl grimaces. "It does. Even though there's no magic in them, they feel… strong. Like how somewhere can smell smoky for months after a fire. But there should be at least a little magic here, right?"

"Maybe there is. Just not where we're looking." I let go of the pole and pull out another coin. "I'm going out there. You want to go back in the shell, or are you fine getting wet?"

She looks at the coin in my hand, then turns and climbs on top of my head. "Now we can both be dry-ish."

I frown. "How'd you… nevermind. Just curl up so I don't cut you in two."

My coin blossoms into a shield that wraps itself around my neck, enclosing my head in an airtight diving helmet. Then I grab the pole, press it against the top of my helmet, and connect the two. A rush of fresh-ish air flows into my helmet, and I take a few deep breaths to make sure it's working fine.

It is. "Alright. Taking down the shield now."

Pearl gives me a thumbs-up from right next to my ear. I nod, jostling her something fierce, and dismiss the shield keeping me dry. Water rushes in to fill the space, and before I even have time to gasp, lukewarm liquid presses down on my body from all directions. Then… nothing. I blink in surprise and raise my hands, feeling the resistance of water, but not the… wetness?

"The hell is this?" I mutter in disbelief. "Pearl?"

She looks me up and down, then tilts her head to the side. "The water is perfectly matching your body's temperature. Like, to a thousandth of a degree. But I still can't feel any magic aside from the stuff in the plastic. How weird."

Just means we're in the right place. I flex my fingers a few times just to make sure they still work, then take a step through the water that doesn't feel wet. My mind works itself in knots to try and convince me that my clothes billowing away from my body is perfectly normal, and that the pressure attempting to rupture me from the inside out is just my imagination. If it wasn't for Pearl and Illumisia, I probably wouldn't be fine right now.

The spear looms before me like a giant's discarded toothpick, or a bone needle that someone left unattended in a mad scientist's lab. My feet slow to an unwilling stop when I'm a half dozen feet from the thing, and a melodic hum starts to play in the back of my mind. A somber melody reverberates through my bones, cut through every now and again by a diminishing of the volume, only for it to grow louder, but… off-tune.

My lips twist into a pained sneer as I cross the last few feet. The words 'I need to breathe' pulse in my mind like a popup that won't go away no matter how many times it's clicked. I take a deep breath for no real reason, then press a hand to the spire and pull out a coin. Before I even try to put a shield in it, something whispers that it won't be enough.

I stop dead in my tracks. "Pearl? Did you say that?"

She frantically shakes her head. "No, but I heard it too. Something's here. But it's… not here. It must be in phase."

That's terrifying. I really hope whatever's hidden there isn't something I have to fight–or if it is, that it's something I can actually deal with. Not that I have much confidence or energy after Ashmaw. As I swap out the shield coin for one of my precious few 5 Worth coins, the same whisper is completely silent. Let's hope that's a good sign.

I press it to the spire and focus. The image of a perfect seal sliding around the spire forms in my mind, and once that seal is made, the shield expands outward until there's a few inches of clearance. I take a few seconds to make sure the image is perfect, then nod to myself and spark the spell. It expands in the blink of an eye to surround the spire, then slowly starts to pull away.

Half a minute later, there's a three inch gap between the spire and the shield holding the water at bay. But nothing's going to happen yet–the pillar can't breathe a vacuum, or whatever's in that air gap right now. I take a step forward, lean in close, and connect my helmet to the spire's shield. Air rushes in, sucking my hair towards the spire.

I feel something change before it actually does. The text on the ground shudders and expands as if the very words were filling their lungs with a long-needed gasp of oxygen, growing beyond the letters until they're completely consumed by the floor. I try to take a step back, but the constraint around my neck makes that a little too difficult.

Then, in a spray of stone shards, new words start to appear right where the old ones were.

Now this definitely seems like a phase thing. I shift slightly, briefly pondering how I'll repair both shields before water can get in, but then something plinks against my arm. At first it feels like a stone shard, but right after the moment of impact, it squishes against my arm and splatters like whipped cream. As it slides down my arm, thousands of tiny pieces of… stuff… float through my awareness like snowflakes. I shift, ready to say something to Pearl, but my voice catches in my throat with a hoarse gasp.

Coating every single surface around me, printed thousands of times over like the scrawlings of a madman, are six simple words.

'Don't look at me this way'.

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