Late Night, Open Ocean.
The wind and waves picked up as Hunter navigated his rented yacht about ten miles off the coast.
He dropped anchor, securing the vessel in the shifting waters.
Hunter suited up quickly in his black wetsuit. He grabbed a heavy-duty speargun and, with a splash, flipped backward off the deck and into the dark water.
He had scouted this area briefly before. The average depth was sixty to seventy meters, plunging to over a hundred meters in the trenches.
Thanks to his recent intensive training, his [Diving] skill had reached Level 4.
For a treasure hunt in these waters, that was more than enough.
Hunter moved like a fish, kicking powerfully toward the bottom. He carried a high-lumen dive light, but his enhanced vision did most of the work. Even as the surface light faded, the underwater world remained clear to him.
Soon, the sandy seabed came into view.
Hunter reached into his [Inventory] and pulled out a specialized underwater metal detector.
He began his grid search, swimming methodically.
For the past two days, he had watched Jared's boat linger in this specific sector. He was certain there was something down here.
Hunter had stayed about six miles back to avoid detection, which gave him a general area but not a pinpoint location.
But that was fine.
His stamina was superhuman. His Inventory was stocked with spare oxygen tanks. Whenever he ran low, he simply surfaced, swapped tanks, and dove again.
He searched with the patience of a predator. He had spent millions on this gear in Mexico, and it was paying off.
After nearly an hour of sweeping the ocean floor, the detector pinged.
Hunter swept the light across the sand.
There, half-buried in the silt, lay the twisted aluminum skeleton of an aircraft.
"Found it."
Hunter's eyes lit up behind his mask.
He swam toward the wreckage. It was the DC-3 cargo plane from Into the Blue.
He wasn't interested in the drugs for himself. But he knew the lore: the plane had crashed during a storm, and by sheer narrative coincidence (or ocean currents), it had landed almost on top of the legendary pirate ship, the Zephyr.
Find the plane, find the gold.
Hunter didn't rush to the gold immediately.
Instead, he gripped his upgraded speargun tightly and approached the plane wreckage with caution.
In the movie, this plane was a shark den. A massive tiger shark guarded the fuselage, and it had killed one of the characters (Amanda) when she tried to loot the plane at night.
Hunter wasn't about to let a fish take a bite out of him.
He moved silently, listening to the currents, sensing the water pressure.
Sharks had to keep moving to breathe. If it was here, it would be patrolling.
Hunter entered the shattered cockpit.
Silence.
No shark.
His presence seemed to have spooked the smaller fish, scattering them into the darkness. But the apex predator was missing. Perhaps it was out hunting elsewhere tonight.
Hunter didn't relax his guard, but he proceeded.
He swam past the skeletal remains of the pilots—drug runners who died decades ago—without a second glance.
He moved into the cargo hold.
There they were.
Rows of heavy, waterproof crates secured with rotting cargo nets.
Hunter pulled a crowbar from his Inventory and pried one open.
Inside were brick after brick of white powder, vacuum-sealed in plastic.
Cocaine.
Hundreds of millions of dollars of it.
Hunter looked at it with disdain. He picked up one brick, verified it, and dropped it back into the crate.
He had no interest in this poison.
Since the shark wasn't home, Hunter didn't linger. He swam out of the wreckage and surfaced to check his bearings.
He marked the plane's exact coordinates on his GPS.
Then he dove again.
He reset his metal detector and began a spiral search outward from the plane.
An hour later, about a kilometer southeast of the plane wreckage, the detector screamed.
Hunter fanned away the sand.
A black, encrusted object lay there. He picked it up and rubbed off the oxidation.
It was a silver flask.
Hunter grinned.
He sped up his search.
More hits. A silver coin. A gold doubloon. A piece of rotting ship timber.
He followed the trail of debris east for another few hundred meters.
And then, looming out of the darkness like a sleeping beast, he saw it.
The massive, skeletal ribs of an ancient wooden ship jutting out of the sand.
The Zephyr.
The pirate ship loaded with gold, silver, and jewels.
"Jackpot."
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