After accepting the quest, the trio was approached by a few of the other groups that had also taken on the quest. The groups wanted to pair up with each other to easily complete the quest. They argued that the lake was rather dangerous since no one had great mobility or visibility underwater. As such, they wanted to team up in order to decrease the risks that they were taking. These individuals did not come from wealthy families and were average, run-of-the-mill adventuring groups that lacked access to a magic item for every occasion.

  Of course, the three of them had no such problems and could easily deal with the lake issue one way or another. Therefore, they had declined to group up with the rest of the adventurers. In response, the trio had expected to get some trash talk, but instead were met with warnings to be careful. At the very least, they had found some decent adventurers, even if their warnings didn't mean much to the group. The one most out of their element was Arctur, but he was strong enough and had magic items to deal with the issue relatively easily.

  Meanwhile, on the other end of things were Alexion and Adriana. Alexion preferred the open air but was also rather adept at moving underwater. After all, he was the son of a Storm Angel and Storm Elf, who both serve the God of the Ocean, Storms, and Wind. Then there was Adriana, who was a mermaid and felt at home in the water. Due to this, they knew there was little to no chance of anything in the lake truly posing much of a challenge to her or them.

  Now, as powerful as Adriana was underwater while in her mermaid form, there were still things she couldn't do. Mostly, it came from the fact that she wasn’t a full-blooded mermaid, but rather a mix of different bloodlines. This meant that even though she could replicate many of the powers that mermaids had, and even innately had some of them, she didn't have all of them. Additionally, the powers she could replicate were at D Rank, which greatly reduced their effectiveness, while the ones she innately had suffered the same fate.

  The primary example was a mermaid's innate sense of being one with the water. They could feel the currents and ripples of the water they were born and lived in. It was something akin to a tremor sense, making them effectively be one with the ocean. Adriana did not have this sense. She did feel at home in the water, but that was more because, as a mermaid, she felt at home in the water. Their friend could still mimic this effect by spending mana and using her water magic, but it wasn't the same. Even with the reduced cost of being in mermaid form, the effect still took quite a toll mentally. It also tended to cost more mana the further out she used it.

  Another good example of Adriana’s power being scaled down, and one that the two men were grateful for, was her mental magic. Mermaids had an innate aura that they didn't really control, which caused men and sometimes women to lose themselves in the mermaid's beauty. The same effect also lowered a creature's mental resistance, which, when both were combined, made mermaids' forces to be reckoned with. Thankfully, said power manifested at Adriana's rank, which meant the two friends could block and fight off the magic. More importantly, their friend was a compassionate creature, and although some things had happened between the trio or with strangers, she had improved since they first met. And now she expected them to hold her back whenever she got a little bit too eager.

  All of this to say that when it came down to finding the missing lobsters, they were mostly on par with the competition. Of course, that was only finding the lobsters via magic. Finding them in the usual way was much easier when you could easily float through water without issue. No matter what else Adriana did or did not have, her water magic was incredibly good, and it didn't take long for them to find some lobsters by simply swimming around the farm area.

  The lobsters were, as their name implied, giant. They range in size from that of dogs to that of people. However, out of everything, there were a few issues that made the lobsters harder to find. One was that they were dark green, blue, or black in color, or anything in between. Their colors and many patterns made it so that everyone had trouble spotting them from a great distance. This meant that the groups had to swim relatively close to the lake's bottom in order to see them. Of course, the trio didn't have an issue with this, as they could see fairly well, but various groups were complaining and cursing about the quest.

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  Unsurprisingly, the first group of lobsters was the easiest to find, and afterwards, every single group was a bit further away from the farm area, thus the second issue with the quest. People transporting the lobsters. Not everyone had overpowered water powers; due to this, they had to make the lobsters move back to the farm, the hard way. On that note, the party was cursed out more than once as they stopped to watch groups of adventurers wrangling lobsters.

  To begin with, the lobsters could move at speed if they wanted to. Although they were slow, realistically, they were still fairly fast for adventurers, at least underwater. So, plenty of adventurers chased after spooked lobsters that swam away, who then made the same adventurers push them back toward their small herds. Other times, the lobster simply stopped to graze on weeds that grew at the bottom of the lake or on other things they seemed to find on the ground. However, out of everything, the apparent problem was that the lobsters were used to the frog folks. And adventurers were not frog folk, which made it so the lobsters were generally less keen to listen.

  Now, even if the trio was enjoying seeing said adventurers struggle. It also demonstrated to them that the dungeon was quite effective in training people. Unlike them, who could spend their mana to pick up the lobsters and move them in bubbles of water, air, or otherwise. Other adventurers were placed in an environment that wasn't necessarily the best for them and tasked with a challenge that wasn't the easiest to accomplish in that environment. Even more important was the fact that the environment wasn't as dangerous as the real world. Though they could still die underwater if they weren't careful. They weren't always being attacked by monsters, and could make mistakes relatively safely without paying the ultimate price.

  In the end, it didn't take too long for the lobsters to get put back in their pens. The most challenging hurdles were at the beginning, where the adventurers were figuring out the best way to do things. So, eventually, and even though sharks and suckerfish attacked some groups, all the lobsters were put back in their pens.

  Once the lobsters were back in their pens, the team experienced something many other explorers had experienced and something they themselves would experience once again. It was a moment of true immersion when they truly and utterly forgot where they were. See, there was a particular aspect to the dungeon that always served as a reminder that everything around them was constructed and artificial. For some, it was the system windows popping up; for others, it was how creatures acted in the dungeon. To remedy this, many explorers ended up turning off numerous system windows that were not relevant, such as the monster names appearing above previously defeated monsters. The trio was part of said group. Once they had learned a monster's name, they didn’t always want to see its name popping up.

  The thing was that even with its various quirks, reminding adventurers that it was a creation of a powerful entity. It was also easy for one to find a moment where everything felt real, and that they were experiencing life as it was outside of the dungeon. Even then, many studies suggested that if the dungeon remained for long enough, and adventurers spent enough time inside. They would eventually get used to the dungeon’s quirks, so much so that it would be the outside world that felt off. Of course, that time was still far off, but it didn’t mean perfect immersive moments couldn’t exist.

  One such moment happened as the entire adventuring group completed the quest. Like many of them had experienced in the real world, they had first talked to the frog folks, who had given them a mission to help them, just as villagers in a real village would, could, and did. That had made the frog beastkin real in many of their minds. Naturally, the hard work that followed and the fun they inevitably had while doing it further sentimentalized that feeling of realism in everyone's minds. Finally, the quest was completed, and it was time to receive the reward, just as they had many times before. However, that hadn’t been when the moment of true immersion struck, the already familiar windows still bringing them back from the brink.

  The actual moment of immersion came, even for the trio, when they saw how they would receive their rewards. The farmers didn't have lobster meat lying around to give them. Instead, they were going to kill some of the giant lobsters to provide the quest reward. It was something about that brutality, that moment when the adventurer's hard work bore fruit and yet came to a saddening end, that struck them all rather hard.

  It was a moment that brought them back to the real world, evoking a mix of regret, compassion, anger, excitement, and pride all at once. They regretted bringing the lobsters back, only for them to be slaughtered, and at the same time felt compassion at seeing their lives be snuffed out. There was also anger at the farmers for what they were doing and had tasked the adventurers to do. Yet, at the same time, they were excited to taste lobster meat or to have done a job well done. Finally, they took pride in looking back at their work, how far they had all come, and all their experiences since entering the dungeon.