Ball of Nothing

Chapter 608: Dive with Docky

Nobody was happier than Ottley when Docky announced that Zero and Truen will spend the rest of their time training with him while the shipwrights finished the Marissa. Docky kept his students busy daily and often took them out to sea for a practical demonstration.

"Since the both of you can breathe underwater, swim and see things in the dark, you can start diving. I will explain as I go along with the diving sessions about the things to expect underwater. There are five basic layers under the sea, and each layer has its own dangers."

Very quickly, Docky explained that there were five layers of the sea, but the Marissa was only able to dive until the third layer, no deeper than that.

"Unlike the sunlight, twilight and midnight zones that the Marissa can sail in, the deeper levels are not fit for survival conditions. Sea monsters often lurk in the abyss layer, and some even reside deep in the trenches."

Simply put, the deeper they got into the ocean, the more dangerous things were. While the surface had its fair share of predators and weather threats, the calm beneath the surface was a lie.

Truen and Zero thought that taking a dip in the sea was going to be easy. After all, while they were doing sailing practices, they often fooled around and helped the crew gather food for dinner. It wasn't very difficult to keep up with Docky when he first led them to the deeper waters. The shores were full of sand and creatures that lived under rocks. Zero thought they would be diving to find clams, but that thought soon flew out of the window when Docky swam to open waters.

Truen panicked a little when he saw how the ground suddenly fell from below them. Above them, they could hardly see the sun, and the temperature of the water was getting colder. Thankfully, Zero and Truen had temperature regulating charms on their clothes.

Docky swam effortlessly and grinned to himself. It looked like he wasn't using any strength to propel himself forward, but there was a trick to it. He wasn't sure if the two land-dwellers figured it out yet. The wood elf looked like he was struggling, and the Chosen One was using brute force to keep up. Neither of them understood what was happening.

At a particularly powerful force coming from nowhere, Truen messed up and found himself getting pulled away from Zero's side. The wood elf struggled to swim back, but he only got further from them. Zero noticed it a little too late and followed the same fate.

Docky glanced back to check on the waddling kids a moment too late, and they were already several hundred meters away from him. Cursing in his mind, the sea otter jumped into the underwater current to fish the two careless land-dwellers out, pulling the startled rookies to the surface.

Truen spluttered, choking on both water and air. He was still unable to get used to using his underwater breathing skills freely. Docky checked on Zero, and the doctor looked slightly dazed. His eyes were unfocused, but he looked otherwise unharmed. Feeling slightly sorry for not warning them about the current, Docky ended practical lessons early that afternoon.

They headed back to shore, and Docky sighed. It was a good thing he looked back just in time to catch up to them. The underwater current in the second layer of the sea was a lot stronger than the first. They were only scratching the surface of that layer, and already, these two were at the mercy of the sea.

"How was your first experience swimming in the twilight zone?"

Zero furrowed his brows and remained silent, trying to recall why that feeling of getting swept away felt so familiar. It definitely wasn't the first time it happened to him. On the other hand, Truen was still hacking water up. Docky felt a pang of pity for the wood elf.

"What was that?" Truen finally asked after he could breathe easily again.

Docky smiled and picked up a stick, drawing on the sand to demonstrate what just happened.

"That force that swept you away is called an underwater current. It is also what is going to push your sinking ship without the help of wind. Underwater currents are created by various things, but most importantly, they are formed by the difference in water density. Did you realise that it started getting colder around the time when the sand suddenly fell out of sight as we swam? The sunlight was also unable to reach that deep down into the water."

Truen nodded. If it wasn't for dark vision or the temperature regulating magic, they might have suffered more at the hands of the merciless ocean. Docky looked unaffected by the dive earlier. Was this something the sea otters did very often?

"That force," Zero spoke up, and Docky was all ears. "Was that what made u swim without moving much?"

Hearing how Zero grasped the logic of going with the flow so quickly, Docky clapped in surprise. "Indeed! This is part of the ability to listen to the voice of the sea. You can listen to the sound of the water telling you where it is going to go."

It took a while, but Zero finally remembered why the feeling was so familiar. When he was just a ball of nothing who landed on his first planet, Zero was eaten by many things. When he was eaten by the shellfish, he remembered this knocking feeling and getting swept along in a rocking motion that he couldn't defy.

The voice of the sea... Zero still couldn't understand it. However, from the dive with Docky, he felt as if he was one step closer to understanding.

"It still doesn't solve the problem of navigating under the sea," Mii reminded Zero. "You might need to find a crew or at least a navigator from among the sea otters."

Zero agreed. He didn't bring this up yet because he had no idea what kind of ship the Marrissa was. Now that he knew how the sinking ship looked, he was slightly concerned. Mii's mini-map is dependent on the reflection of mana or life sources. Under the water, Zero could not feel an ounce of mana. There were hardly any living creatures advanced enough to produce mana or life energy of their own, dense enough for Mii to register their signals.

The doctor looked at Docky. Would the sea otters be willing to travel on a voyage with them with no guarantee of ever returning?