When we got outside, there was a sea of people flooding in to the area in front of the building. At first, I couldn’t tell what was going on, so I swam down to the group, followed closely by Lilith, Viktor, and Julian. Once we got down to the people, I was going to push through the crowd since I still couldn’t see, but I decided to just swim up to get a better angle. Many other people were doing the same, creating a sphere of people around the now visible object of interest.

In the center of the human sphere was something I was not at all expecting to see have so much fascination surrounding it. Floating in between all of us, was a small glowing golden piece of paper. There was something written on the paper, but I couldn’t tell from this distance. I looked around to see if I could spot the other three and once I did, I swam over to them.

“What do you think happened?” I heard Julian ask as I joined the group.

“Who knows. Any manner of large sea creature could invoke an emergency order that draws this much attention,” Lilith responded.

This prompted me to lean in and ask, “What’s an emergency order?”

Lilith jumped a little. She must not have seen or heard me swim over. Once she composed herself, she answered. “Well, we have the usual job orders that we take in the guild halls that everyone gets about monsters or whatever, but there’s also another kind of order that can be issued.”

“Well...”

"Shut up, Julian. One thing at a time. Anyway, the other kind of order is an emergency order. These are sent to whatever guild is closest to the incident due to the urgency of whatever matter they are addressing. Most town and village leaders are taught how to do this in the event of such circumstances. The only thing certain is that it’s something very bad.”

Once she finished speaking, she turned her attention back to the crowd as droves of people began walking up to the luminescent parchment before backing off and returning to the crowd. This either meant the job was so horrifying or really lame and people were disappointed in it, but the former seemed to be the case with most people that walked back, some having looks of true terror on their face.

This gave me an idea though. A lot of the people in camp had been a bit abrasive towards me, but maybe, if we helped them out with whatever this order was, they’d end up liking us better. Morale would be important for the coming fight in Ser. Without any warning, I called, “Follow me!” to the group as I swam down to the order.

I looked back to see them following while giving me death glares, but I didn’t care. If this all went well, the people here might actually like us. Once we were down at the order, I began to examine it very carefully.

The order seemed to be fairly hastily written, as one would expect from something in a state of emergency, but it did say everything it needed to. Something called a "Current Reaper” was attacking a village that was about 10 miles from the camp. I had no idea what a Current Reaper was, but by the name it obviously wasn’t too friendly. Well, that and the fact it was currently attacking a village.

I allowed the rest of the group to examine the paper and they all seemed to have pretty much the same reaction. None of us knew what this thing was, so we couldn’t really be all that afraid of it. We’d already fought some seriously crazy monsters and I could guess that the three of them had fought plenty.

I looked around to see if anyone else would be joining us, but it actually seemed like everyone had pulled back from us quite a bit. They looked at us like we were crazy which, depending on how bad this creature was, may be the case. I was about to ask them what exactly this creature was, but before I could, Jace came swimming out of the building.

“What is going on here?!” he shouted at the group.

I looked around to the rest of the people, who he seemed to be addressing, as they sank in to themselves.

“We have an emergency request that has been live for almost 5 minutes now and you people are just standing around? The first people to even show interest aren’t even some of our own!” He was absolutely fuming at this point.

"But it’s a Current Reaper...” a young boy in the crowd squeaked.

He eyed them up. “And so that means you’ll let the people of that village die because you’re too afraid? Is the job of an apprentice of magic not to protect others?”

The question was rhetorical, of course. They all knew he was right, but no one seemed to want to step forward.

“We’ll go,” a voice called from the crowd.

The group parted to make way for three people to walk forward and approach us and the order.

“Fantastic! Some initiative. Now we don’t have to force these nice people to risk their lives for our camp,” Jace said, now smiling.

“Actually, dude, we were still planning to go,” Viktor said, causing Jace to raise an eyebrow.

“Yeah. If people are in need of help, we are here to provide that,” Julian affirmed.

I smiled at the two of them as I looked at Jace confidently to assure him that what they were saying was true. He shrugged and nodded before swimming back inside the building.

I looked to the group of three that had approached us to join in this mission. They were an interesting cast of people. One boy had very long flowing hair that practically covered his eyes and fins on his arms and legs. The other boy looked much gruffer with a shaven blue beard and buzzed blue hair. The final one, a girl that was essentially a mermaid, given her bottom half was a shark’s back fin, has flowing blue hair tied back in a loose bun. Each of them were dressed in what I could only describe as combat robes. They were less baggy and included bits of armor on some important parts of the body that could be prone to fatal injury. They looked nice enough, but the look in their eyes told a different story.

“The name’s Maxim,” said the gruff dude as he reached out a hand.

Lilith took it and shook it firmly. “Lilith Syzerus. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

We each exchanged greetings by which I learned the other boy’s name was Alex and the girl was Ameila. Thankfully, even without the need of the very confusing coordinates included on order, they already knew exactly where we were going. Unfortunately, it would take a little longer than it would have otherwise because of the addition of our group and our less than apt swimming abilities. I would have suggested they help us along with their own magic, but that would have been pretty draining, most likely and from what we’d heard, we were going to need all of our strength for this.

After the campers wished us good luck, our group headed out. We swam towards the back of the camp where we were met with a somewhat grand archway. Maxim pushed open the door and ushered us inside. Once on the other side, we found ourselves inside of a very wide tunnel with intricate designs carved all around making it seem like we were inside of a giant sea shell. Lining the walls on each side were blue lanterns guiding us down the tunnel and bathing us in beautiful light.

As we swam through the tunnel, it was mostly quiet. I didn’t want to say anything because I didn’t know these people and we were dealing with a very serious mission here. It wouldn’t really be right to make jokes at a time like this.

“So, you four are from Camp VII, eh?” Maxim called back to us.

“Uh, yeah. We’re from Camp VII,” I answered.

“I’m curious. What exactly brought you all here to speak with Commander Jace personally? Wouldn’t it have been easier to simply send a message?”

I nervously looked back at Julian, Viktor, and Lilith who met me with furious head shaking. “Oh well, we just wanted it to be a bit more personal. It’s kind of an important thing, but I’m not the one to tell you about it. Jace will tell you about it pretty soon.”

“That’s Commander Jace,” he shot back.

I swallowed hard. “Yes, of course. My mistake.” His tone was deadly serious and it kind of unnerved me. Ironic given we were currently heading to fight something called a Current Reaper.

We swam in silence for a few minutes before we reached another ornate archway. Maxim opened it and we were promptly blinded by the light that burst through. We swam out and in to the open ocean. I looked back to watch as the door closed behind us and glowed with a water sigil. When I looked around the exit, I saw a giant formation of rock that was most likely encasing the whole city of waves.

“Maxim, why didn’t we have to leave through the labyrinth like how we came in?” I asked.

Maxim turned to face us as he continued to swim along. “Well, other than the fact that we’re responding to an emergency order and need to get there as quickly as possible, that labyrinth is only for groups entering with non-city residents. There are many other ways to get in and out of the city for those that are actually residents of the city. It would be highly inefficient to pass through the labyrinth every single time we entered or exited the city.”

I nodded. It made sense that entrance to the city wasn’t always so difficult and dangerous, but it also meant that Amus didn’t really trust us all that much. Yes, he’d led us in to the city properly, but if he’d really trusted us, he would have just let us in. We had just met him and he didn’t really know us, so I tried not to dwell on it too much.

We continued to swim on in silence for quite some time. I didn’t exactly like the ocean or anything contained within it, but it was very pretty. Much prettier than the oceans we'd had back in the mortal world. The creatures contained within this ocean were absolutely astonishing much like many of the other creatures contained within this world. The varieties of both flora and fauna were really impressive and I could guess the application for a lot of them when it came to alchemy thanks to the jade grimmoire.

I decided to slow down a bit and reconvene with my group. They all seemed to be doing fine, but I still needed to say something.

“Sorry that I kind of just jumped in to the fray with this one. I should have told you what I wanted to do first. I just really want these people to like m... us. I feel like if we do good here, they’ll like us better.”

Julian rolled his eyes. “Avien, do you honestly think we would have come along if we didn’t want to? We don’t care about your motives. We’re your friends and whether we really want to do this or not, we’re here and we’re going to help, so stop apologizing.”

I smiled as I saw Viktor and Lilith nodding along in agreement.

“Of course, we’re going to support you, dude!”

“Exactly, bubble boy, so why don’t you pay attention to swimming.”

I was about to respond before I heard Ameila shout, “Everyone stop!”

We swam up to the group ahead. “We’re about a mile off, but I can see the village from here and the Current Reaper is very much still there. The village is in pretty bad shape, but...” She paused and focused in on what I could assume was the village. “Most of the villagers are still alive. Their auras are pretty weak though. We need to get there as quickly as we can. Get your weapons ready.”

I drew my sword and readied a seal on my hand as we swam towards the village. Once we were in range, we came face to face with the Current Reaper and it certainly did not disappoint its name.