After this, you can stay underwater as long as you want. For Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Alucard takes damage simply from touching water from the beginning of the game until you grab the Holy Symbol, which looks suspiciously like a snorkel.
Also in Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, once Shanoa has a Serpent Scale, she can move and breathe freely in water instead of floating up.In the Castlevania: Chronicles of Sorrow, the bonus characters have no real reason for why they can breathe underwater.While in the real world, this equipment would allow you to swim only a small depth under the surface of the water, in the games following this trope, it lets you plunge boldly into the deepest oceanic depths. Sometimes, the character gets a diving mask equipped with only a snorkel and absolutely no oxygen containers.
This incredible feat is never ever explained, or even mentioned as something out of the ordinary in these games. This seems not to be the case with some Video Game characters, however, who can swim underwater for infinite amounts of time and show absolutely no signs of discomfort. The world record with training is 22 minutes, but anything significantly more than that would push the body to its breaking point. Longer than two minutes (without training to hold your breath beforehand) usually results in unconsciousness (and you'll automatically start to breathe again, which is very bad if your head is underwater). We can hold our breath for a short time, some of us longer than others.