ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

If you start to drown as an Oozemancer while using Mitosis in Lake of Nur, you will split and create a bloated ooze. At this point its logical to get on some bubbles. Problem is, even though you are no longer drowning, all your bloated ooze still act as if they are drowning. They take drowning damage which also makes you take damage, which makes you split more, each ooze that you have compounds the damage, till you die. I assume, if I had canceled Mitosis it would have de-spawned all my bloated ooze and therefore make me stop taking drowning damage from them, but I don't know because I was too pissed off to think about even trying that... seems to me that a ooze shouldn't need to breath... It is a liquid.

You don't take damage when your oozes do, the link is one-directional.

What's happening here is an old bug where if you start suffocating, you won't stop suffocating until you step on a tile that has no water. The air bubble tiles, while forcibly giving you air, are still considered water by the game and will not stop the suffocation despite you, well, getting air.