Chapter 370: Floral Dungeon Part 6

"Robin I think you'll be perfect for this situation." Joshua said with a grin getting odd looks from everyone else. "It'd be a pain in the ass for me to try take out all of the trees since there are over a dozen of them. Keeping my aura while pulsing it for so long will leave me drained if anything else got in our way, but you on the other hand can deal with this situation."

Everyone looked at Joshua a little weirdly at his words, but then he pointed up getting them all to look up as well. They could all see the giant sphere hanging up in the air well out of their reach, but outside of that there wasn't anything else that stood out. Even so Henry quickly caught on to what Joshua was getting at. "You want her to use the open space that we've just entered to cast her lightning spell right? There won't be any other trees in the area that could get in the way of the attack."

"Got it in one. Were close to a lake as well so the electricity will be able to spread out more efficiently. If we're lucky it'll affect the other trees long enough for the rest of us to do something." Joshua said with a shrug as he stood off to the side giving Robin a clear look at the trees. "Go ahead and let lose."

"You don't have to tell me twice, it's just a shame that I'll have to destroy such a beautiful sight." Robin said with a smirk before she strode forward with one of her hands on her staff sending mana into it and another pointed towards the sky. After a few seconds cloud started to form in the air above the area. They avoided the waterfall and weren't high enough to reach the giant sphere so there weren't any obstacles in the way that could stop the lightning strike from slamming down and destroying one of the trees.

The clouds hovered over the tree that was closest to the center of the group near the lake edge. With a grin Robin clenched her fist and pointed her staff downward. The cloud seemed to react to these motions as the electricity building up inside of it quickly slammed downward creating a large lightning strike that immediately tore the tree it was aiming at in half. When the lightning slammed into the ground some of the electricity hit the water causing it to spread throughout the area. Robin seemed to encourage this with one of her abilities that allowed her to control the left over electricity and empower it.

Robin sent much smaller currents of electricity across the lake to strengthen them before having them strike at the other trees in the area. In the end this seemed to cause them to loosen up on their aura slightly, but that was all that Julia needed to jump in and finish off the rest of the trees. She quickly channeled her inferno spell and sent it in a large wave that engulfed several of the trees while the flowers weren't able to block the assault. The wave of flames latched on to the trees and burnt them down to their roots. Julia was able to readily control the flames to spread to each of the trees and quickly take them all down.

The entire group could feel the surge of experience that flooded their bodies the second Julia had finished launching her spell. The flowers all dropped to the ground or on to the lake powerlessly leaving the lake open for the group to explore. "Well that should clear out any issues we'll have with getting into the lake." Jayce said with a smile as he patted Julia on the shoulder.

"As long as those flowers were out of the way those trees had no chance against me." Julia responded with a small smile. "It's too bad most of the areas in this forest have those damn red flowers around."

"It just means some of us are going to have step up whenever you have your hands tied like that." Marcus said with a shrug. "Well what's the plan now? It's getting late so if we want to check the lake out tonight we better get to it now."

"Since we've got a chance we should check out what's going on in the lake and at the waterfall." Joshua said as he put his scale blade away into his inventory along with anything else he had on that was rather heavy and would be hard to swim with. "I'll go ahead and check things out. If anything happens I'll let you guys know through the party chat."

"Alright, but be careful. Blink out of there if anything dangerous happens while you don't have your gear." Amy said a little worried. She knew that Joshua could take care of himself, but he was diving into an unknown lake without any weapons to defend himself.

"If things take a turn for the worse I'll just get out of there and come back with Tank. He should be amazing underwater anyways." Joshua said with a shrug before taking a running start and leaping as far as he could into the lake. With a large splash he disappeared into the water from everyone's sight. Joshua had his eyes closed for a few seconds as he swam forward and stayed beneath the surface of the water. He knew that he could hold his breath for a long time so he had no problem with staying underwater.

When he opened his eyes he was met with a beautiful sight. For as far as he could see under the lake there was nothing but crystal clear water. He was sure that if the rest of his group looked in his direction they would be able to easily make out his body just beneath the surface as he swam forward. He himself could clearly see the giant sphere hanging in the air from above along with all of the little flowers that were floating on the water's surface just within reach. It was a serene feeling to be in such an environment, but Joshua turned his attention towards the center of the lake and started swimming in that direction.

From a distance Joshua could see where the waterfall crashed into the lake below and how underneath the surface of the water it created several turbulent waves of suds and bubbles that blocked off any view of what could be inside the area. Joshua figured he'd have to get closer if he wanted to see through all of the mist that was being created in the area and started swimming towards it. He stayed vigilant of his surroundings as he swam forward making sure there wasn't any immediate danger for him or his group. His aura shroud surrounded his body as he moved under the water just in case he was taken by surprise, but when Joshua looked around the area there wasn't any type of living organisms within the lake. At least not any that he could have recognized.

There were no fish, no plants, and no living organisms inside of the water that were at least large enough to be noticeable. There could be small scale microorganisms floating around, but there was no way for Joshua to tell if that was the case so he just pushed forward after taking his eyes off of the bottom of the empty lake. When he got close to the center of the lake he could feel the water pushing against him from the waterfall, but it wasn't nearly strong enough to stop his progress. He peeked his head up above the water just to see how close he had gotten to his target before diving back underwater and swimming into the clouded mist.

It was hard to see what was around him as Joshua swam further and further into the turbulent water, but after a short while he was able to see something glowing ahead of him that stood out from everything else. It was a small sphere like structure from what Joshua could make out of it as he pushed himself forward towards it. There were glowing blue lines moving across it which was the only reason that Joshua was even able to notice it in the first place. He swam up next to it and got close enough to where he could see it more clearly even with all of the churning water around himself.

The object was a small sphere around the size of a basketball that hovered gently in place even with all of the churning water around it. The glowing blue lights that flowed around its surface didn't seem to symbolize anything that Joshua could think of at first, but the more he looked at how the glowing blue lights moved the more he felt that they portrayed flowing water in an aesthetic sense. Seeing that the floating orb wasn't doing anything even with him so close and the fact that there was nothing else in the lake that could possibly be used for anything of importance, Joshua decided to reach out for it while still having his aura up to protect him if anything went wrong.

The moment Joshua's hand touched the orb it started to vibrate and pulse causing the water around it to thrum in a slow rhythm. The glowing lights on the orb seemed to spread out more and more as they flowed around it until it got to the point where the entire orb was glowing blue. Once it reached that point a wave of light flared out from the orb before shooting up into the waterfall like a large beam that nearly blinded Joshua as he closed his eyes and swam backwards to create some space between himself and the orb.

The large beam of light shot all the way up until it reached the large sphere that was hanging in the air above everything inside of the dungeon. For a few seconds the light continued to pour out before it suddenly cut off and the orb once again returned to its floating form, but this time there were no glowing blue lights around it. A few seconds after the orb had gone silent there was a loud sound that came from above that caused Joshua to rush backwards and swim to the surface of the water to see what exactly was going on.

When Joshua poked his head above the surface of the water he could see the open cavern on the giant sphere hanging above him along with the waterfall that was coming from it. The noise was coming from that direction and he could see why as the cavern seemed to be closing up causing the waterfall to shutoff. After a few minutes of not having any water crashing in from above, the lake became tranquil. The mist faded away leaving Joshua sitting at the top of the surface of the water next to the now shut off orb that floated up to the surface.

He looked back up to the giant sphere in the air and noticed that there were still three other waterfalls spread out around the dungeon and now he had a good idea of what they'd have to do to get to the next portion of the dungeon. It was a lot of land to cover to get to the other three waterfalls, but they'd figure out a way to do it as quickly as possible.