The monster swam further downstream. Recently, he was getting less and less success hunting upstream, near the swampy Orsut Lake. He was reluctant to travel to leave the familiar waters, but if he wanted to recover fully, he needed to turn his luck around.

  The further he swam, the less recognisable the shores were. The swamp gave way to a dense pine forest. He didn't like how exposed he was in the clearer shores of the pine forest. As well, no matter how dangerous the swamp was, he was now near the unfamiliar dangers of the forest.

  He was feeling uneasy. The waters downstream seemingly are even more desolate than the ones upstream. Already, as he swam, he encountered rotten fish pulsating with strange life that attacked him on sight. The beast was about to turn back when he caught a strong and now-familiar scent.

  ‘Another dwarf? Ah, many dwarves!’ The smell surprised him. The fortune shined on him for the second time today. And as far as he knew, the competition was not around.

  The murkling decided to follow it. A group of dwarves meant more food, but it made things more difficult. He knew well enough that he could not defeat a group of dwarves by himself, but if they were all as careless as the last one was, this was still a great opportunity. He planned to kidnap one of the dwarves and let the stream carry him and the cadaver somewhere downstream. From his limited experience, dwarves have short legs, making them slow and terrible swimmers. So even if they got into the water, the advantage stayed his.

  ‘Might this be their nest?’ There are no other murklings around, and so these dwarves would be none the wiser for his tactics. The beast smiled.

  He continued to swim and soon found himself before a dwarven-made stone canal. This raised his suspicion and made him hesitant. He contrasted well with the grey stone, and the murky river water was too clear and too shallow to hide him.

  The canal itself was well-kept, and its entrance was cleaned out from reeds. The floor and the sides of the channel were made from large rectangular chunks of grey stone. The uniformly cut grid made the colour of the water even more clear as the chunks on the surface turned light blue when underwater. It led to the mouth of a cave, the entrance of which was supported by a semi-circular archway.

  He made sure to scout out the area from the shore, and it didn't look like anyone was around. The water in the canal was stagnant, and the smell was coming from inside the cave. He figured there might be someone off from his line of sight, but he should be obscured by the canal unless someone is watching it from the top down.

  It was safe enough to try. He dove down and started crawling along the floor of the canal. Around two-thirds of the way to the cave, he suddenly felt a strong current pulling him in. He tried clawing at the rock, but it was too slippery for him to hold on. The only way to save himself was to emerge from the water and grab the drier edge of the canal.

  He did so and froze. If anyone was watching the canal, they surely saw him or, at the very least, heard him splashing in the water. The water that suddenly surged towards the cave subsided as quickly as it rushed. No one came. He sat there for a bit wondering what just happened. He considered abandoning this and swimming back, but the cave itself seemed dark, and he could see in the darkness well. Going all this way here, he might as well check out the entrance of the cave.

  When he approached the cave entrance, he didn't see anything that could have caused the sudden surge of water. He felt as if he was being lured here. There was some kind of being lurking here that wanted to ambush and suck him in. Being an ambush creature himself, he was suspicious of such tactics.

  Strangely enough, there was nothing in the basin of water inside the cave. There was nowhere to hide either. The basin itself was rectangular in nature with smooth, clean surfaces. Swimming in this artificial body of water, the murkling felt uncomfortable. There was no mud to dig in nor algae or reeds to hide in for him as well. The only peculiar thing about this place is that one of the walls of the basin was made out of metal.

  Outside the water, the cave seemed abandoned as well. There were no light sources nor any living beings. There were a bunch of tools and huge rectangular slabs of rock stored here, but the murkling couldn't identify what they were. The only thing certain was that a strong smell of dwarf was lingering inside the cave.

  The only thing that the murkling could figure out was that this room was probably accessed through the stone gate. He thought he found his way inside the nest of the dwarves, and probably this is their watering place. Although impressive, he didn't understand why the dwarves dug out such a cave.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  'Maybe the weak dwarves need such measures to be able to safely access the water of the river?' He pondered while looking down on his prey's habits.

  It seemed like it would be easy to grab one of them while they were out to get their drink on the edge of the basin. He could set his ambush here and wait, though the source of the strange flow of water still mystified him.

  He couldn't get away if the surge appeared again, but also he couldn't turn away from this kind of opportunity. Maybe the being that sucked up all the water also left through the stone gate? Whatever that creature was, it must be large, so he should be able to spot it even while lurking underwater. Depending on how fast the creature was, he could swim away to safety and grab onto the canal edge before he was sucked in.

  With that rationale, he stayed in the basin and prepared for ambush as he did countless times before. He tucked his legs and arms under him as if compressing a spring and entered a sort of hibernation state. In such a state, he could hold his breath for a very long time without any bubbles exposing his position.

  This is a feature that all murklings share: they hide and compress themselves underwater near the shore. At this state they become very sensitive to the vibrations on the shore and rippling of the water. They pounce with their front claws forward whenever they detect a creature approaching and disturbing the shore. Their claws are coated with a paralytic mucus that is not soluble in water and strong enough that only a small scratch is needed to incapacitate their prey. Then they would drag them under the water to drown and eat them.

  Even though this was natural for him to do, he felt extremely uneasy. Several times he thought of leaving the cave, but strangely he felt as if something was urging him to stay. He felt as if some kind of great power was supporting him and promising huge rewards. He was really tempted, but his careful nature won in the end to the disappointment of this power.

  He carefully relaxed his arms and legs and was about to leave when suddenly one of the metal walls moved up. It opened up a passage for all of the water stored in the basin to flow into. The surging water was too strong for the murkling swim against, and he was quickly sucked in.

  ‘The being!’ The monster thought. 'Was it messing with his mind so it could eat me?' He couldn't explain what was happening.

  The murkling was, in fact, caught by a water intake for the dwarven water treatment system. The dwarven settlement of Zazarburak supplied its water from the Bluerimth River through several of such intakes. They all lead to a centralised treatment plant where the water could be cleaned and filtered or redirected towards different purposes of the settlement.

  With a bang, the gate shut as quickly as it opened. The murkling was carried away into a large stone funnel. He tried grabbing onto the side as he had done before, but the rock was far too slippery and angled, so the current dragged him further. He tumbled and slammed into the wall of the funnel, back first, and was carried down deeper. With a splash, he was dumped into another pool of water.

  ‘Dammit! I must have lost a few scales there...’ an annoyed frown was on the murkling's face. He painfully moved his back, sinking in the now-still water as he tried to check what damage he had suffered. To the relief of the monster, it wasn't more serious than a painful bruise. More importantly, he wasn't inside a living creature.

  The murkling was submerged in a very deep round basin. The walls were made from metal sheets, each welded together to form a fully sealed surface. There was a metal frame on one side with a door. The floor had a grating and was on the same level with a metal door frame. Under the grates there was a layer of sediment. On the opposite side of the door, just above the grating, there was a ten-centimetre-diameter pipe leading out of the chamber. The pipe was currently shut. He was caught inside the first stage of water processing: sediment filtering.

  The water coming from the river will eventually have sand, plants, and creatures in it. All of this clutter would damage the system as a whole and needs to be filtered out. In this stage, the water would stay here for a long time, having most of the sand and other heavy objects settle to the bottom. After that, they would slowly pour off the top layer of water through the pipe above the grate, only leaving the sandy water behind with the rest of the larger debris and creatures. The minimal obstructions that go through the pipe can be handled at the later stage of treatment.

  ‘This is definitely not a monster... Those bastard dwarves! They set a trap for me!’ The murkling thought angrily.

  He swam to the surface. The hole he was washed through was about three metres above him. The murkling could clear the distance with a leap. He dove down to the bottom of the water tank before quickly accelerating to the top. His head broke through the water’s surface as he leaped into the air, catching onto the corner of the hole. Unfortunately, there was nothing to hold onto, and he fell back into the water, making a loud splash. After a few more failed attempts, the realisation struck—he was not getting out of here through there.

  The door at the bottom of the tank was shut, and the pipe was too small to fit through. The existence of the door implied that the dwarves would visit inside of the tank at some point. And such he would need to prepare for a head-on combat.

  Indeed, he was correct: after several fillings of the tank, it needs to be cleaned of debris and sediment to make it functional again. Especially if there is a larger and more dangerous creature trapped inside the tank. In fact, the basin was designed with that purpose in mind. The doors leading inside the tank have an airlock design allowing one to enter without letting anything out.

  The murkling didn't know that there was no escape through the door as he set himself up in the ambush position.