"Hey, Camellya, how about we take the second exit back up?"
"!"
Camellya's eyes widened at Leon's words, realisation immediately dawning on her. Without hesitation, she attempted to use her magic to break free from Leon's hold, but the ice under her feet cracked at that moment, instantly crumbling under her weight, and she lost her footing, falling to the side along with Leon.
The two of them fell onto the ice just as more of it cracked, instantly melting into water that began sloshing through the room.
Even though the source of the low temperature had been removed, normal ice wouldn't have melted instantly like this unless it was exposed to extremely high temperatures.
However, this magical ice was different in nature.
There was no active 'will' maintaining its frozen state, and the artifact responsible for the ice in the first place had already been moved into a pocket space.
Like a computer unplugged from the wall, the ice immediately shut down, thawing into water.
The ice along the walls, ceiling, and floors cracked and thawed within seconds, cascading into torrents that poured toward the ground.
Water from the ceiling above slammed down onto Camellya, drenching her and preventing her from being able to cast any spells to get herself out.
The pressure of the water forced it through the only available pathway, the vault doors, and the slant of the corridor leading up to it increased its speed.
Leon, laughing wildly, was swept along with a very annoyed Camellya, the current carrying them both down the passage as ice from every corridor and every section of Floor 15 melted at the same time, turning into a rushing flood.
Floor 15 was quickly flooded as the water from Floors 10-14 thundered down the stairs, merging with the torrent already flowing across the floor.
The entire 15th Floor turned into a churning, semi-submerged river, but the water wasn't fully trapped, preventing the whole Floor from filling from ground to ceiling.
Somewhere along the pathways of Floor 15 was a massive hole that had been drilled into the wall decades ago when the mermen attacked, leading through the cliff to the river outside.
The flood funnelled into this opening, its pressure increasing as Leon and Camellya were swept forward, their bodies tumbling, spinning, and sliding along with the flow.
The current tossed them around, slamming them against the rough edges of the carved-out rock, spinning them along the curves of the passage, pushing them forward at immense speed.
Leon laughed the entire time as the pressure propelled them like a violent slide, the water roaring in their ears as they curved through the carved channel.
Finally, the flood hurled them out through a hole in the cliffside about a kilometre from the tower they'd entered through, hidden beneath layers of greenery, the rocks covering the opening blown away by the force of the water as the two teens were thrown into open air.
They travelled several meters, carried by the current, before plunging into the river below, tumbling and rolling as they hit the churning water.
The river, running through the gorge, quickly swallowed them into its flow, sweeping them away from the dungeon and toward the distance.
"That was fun!" Leon shouted as he burst out of the water, breathing heavily, before scanning the area to find Camellya, spotting her some distance away, silently swimming toward the riverbank.
Leon dove back into the water and swam after her as fast as he could, surfacing behind her and grabbing her once more, shouting, "That was fun, wasn't it?!"
Camellya immediately turned toward him, her expression irritated, ready to voice all her grievances, but the moment she saw the look of pure joy on his face, she lost the will to argue and just heaved a soft sigh, averting her gaze.
"It was fun, wasn't it? It was fun, wasn't it?! It was fun, wasn't it?!!" Leon continued, repeating the question over and over while shaking her and disrupting her swimming.
Realising he wasn't going to stop until she answered, Camellya sighed again and said, "Yes, it was fun. Now let go of me before you actually drown me this time."
Leon scoffed. "Like this much is enough to drown you."
He dove back underwater, swimming toward the riverbank and quickly pulling himself up onto the grass at the bottom of the sloped cliff, water from his drenched clothes dripping to the ground.
Lying down, he stared up at the morning sky above, the scant clouds barely blocking the light of the rising sun.
Camellya swam up to the riverbank, climbing onto the land beside him and sitting down, before rolling up her shirt and squeezing out the water in it.
"Hey, Camellya."
"What is it?" Camellya responded with a pointed tone, still annoyed at the unplanned water slide, but Leon didn't mind as he asked what he wanted to.
"Do you have any plans to meet with our support units?"
Camellya's hands froze for a moment when Leon asked that question. She gave him a side glance, but he was still staring up at the sky, and after a moment, she continued squeezing the water out of her skirt, her thoughts drifting to the 'Support Units' Leon had just mentioned.
In Deity Rising, Leon and Camellya were both all-rounders, but they excelled more in DPS roles than any other.
Naturally, for a combat RPG like Deity Rising, certain support-type playable units were best suited to specific DPS units depending on element and damage type.
Now, those best supports existed as real people somewhere out there in the world of Citera.
"…What about you?" Camellya finally said, returning Leon's question to him.
"I'd like to meet with as many as necessary," Leon responded immediately. "Or rather, 'recruit' as many as necessary."
He'd spent the past few days thinking it over and arrived at this conclusion. Now, he wanted to hear Camellya's thoughts on the matter.
Shifting his gaze from the sky above, he faced her and asked, "So?"
She didn't answer right away, silently conjuring a wind plus fire magic spell to dry her wet hair before speaking.
"Unless absolutely necessary, I wouldn't go out of my way to look for them."
Her response made Leon raise an eyebrow, his curiosity sparking as he asked, "Why?"
"Potential differences," she said.
As the warm wind from her spell ruffled through her hair, she continued, "Have you thought about it? The lives they're living right now, the parts not mentioned in their Deity Rising backstories. How might those experiences make them different from the characters they were in the game?
Most importantly, some of them I personally just cannot get along with if they're the same as they were in Deity Rising.
I am not the same as Deity Rising's 'Camellya Seradain', after all."
"True," Leon said, nodding in agreement. "That 'Camellya' had a much brighter personality than yours."
His words made Camellya turn toward him with narrowed eyes. "Is that a diss?"
"Nope. Just an objective observation. Three days is more than enough to figure that out."
Camellya didn't argue, only looked away silently and continued wringing out her clothes.
For a moment, silence stretched between them, the sound of rustling leaves and rushing water filling the air, before Camellya spoke.
"I'm not sure I can bring myself to trust some of them. So I'd rather avoid them entirely."
Those words made Leon raise an eyebrow lightly.
"Trust, huh?" he muttered.
"I don't fully trust you yet either," Camellya said, infusing more magic power into her spell.
Before Leon could respond, she added, "But I do know what you're after, and I understand working with you is mutually beneficial, since we share a common goal. The trust is…something we'd both have to earn."
Her last words made it clear she didn't think Leon trusted her either.
'Very understandable," he thought.
Camellya stood, brushing the sand off her skirt as she said, "The road ahead is going to be tough. But for the sake of our shared goal of rewriting this world's…endgame into something other than the tragedy it's heading toward, we have to persevere."
She turned toward him, extending her hand. "We'll build this trust thing along the way, and maybe the experiences will change us in ways we can't imagine now."
Leon reached out and grabbed her hand, and she pulled him to his feet. He was about to speak, but the moment he opened his mouth, Camellya flicked his forehead, turning the sound that escaped him into a cry of pain.
"Ow! What was that for?"
"That's for dragging me into your deadly waterslide. Next time you want to try that, do it alone."
With that, she turned and began walking away, and Leon grinned.
"Camellya, I'm letting you know now, but when we go to the sky islands, I'm definitely pushing you down the waterfalls."
"Try that, and I'd kick you off the island to the ground below," Camellya replied immediately, retrieving a scrunchie from her inventory to tie her hair back.
"News flash, I'd have wings by then so I can just fly back," Leon shot back, leaping toward her with arms wide, only to grab empty air when she sidestepped.
"You're drenched. Don't touch me."
"That only motivates me to mess with you more. Also, you just dried yourself and left me alone! No fair!"
"I have no reason to expend my magic power on the person who got us drenched in the first place."
"No fair!"
"I fail to see what's unfair about this."
The two continued their light exchange, with Leon repeatedly trying and failing to get Camellya's clothes wet again, all the way until they reunited with Beriel and Elidyr at the top of the gorge.
Elidyr didn't hesitate to dry Leon's clothes, and as Beriel drove them back to the main city, a single thought crossed Camellya's mind as she stared at her reflection in the car's window.
'Camellya Seradain, you're such a horrible liar.'