Henry hoped to distract or hurt enough to break its momentum. Instead, the bladed arm met the gray sharkskin and sank through it as if it had been slicing through jelly. Henry’s arm cut cleanly three quarters of the way through the shark’s side, almost decapitating it.
He stared for a moment, disbelieving. Holy shit.
Henry pulled his arm back and darted under the bleeding and twitching shark, disappearing into a cloud of ink. Two consecutive cracks resounded behind him and partially dispelled the black cloud, but Henry was already gone.
He hit the sand with another Inkjet and rolled out of the ink screen as a rock.
Didn’t expect them to catch up so fast. Now though… I’m on familiar terrain.
Two more sharks circled aggressively. Henry gave it a couple of seconds, then froze the closest one and whipped out with another sharp arm. This time, he tried putting some extra weight into it.
Henry’s class-empowered arm sank deep–but not fully through–and the third shark’s tail caught him from the side on a raised arm. The shockwave made his eyes quiver.
Ugh. So uncomfortable.
The sensation was in the top three of worst sensations he ever experienced. Right after getting munched on by a shark and putting on a wetsuit without lubricant. As for the tail, it barely did any damage, as far as he could tell. It was annoying more than anything else.
Henry shot another cloud of ink to keep things hectic, then felt at his mana reserves to make sure he still had plenty. With that done, he faced the approaching–still uninjured–shark that had just tail-whipped him.
The creature began building momentum to whip him again, cutting the waters separating them with frantic energy. It move left, ready to strike, and Henry clamped down with Telekinesis, before he approached the shuddering shark. He coiled a bladed arm around its neck, and tightened. The blade sank deep and blood rushed out, filling his sense with the familiar coppery tang. But the method was too slow, so with another arm, he razor-whipped it through the head to put it out of its misery.
Henry glanced around at the three dead Whipcrack sharks, then down at his arms. He wasn’t even panting yet. After a quick look around, he was about to go and collect the cores but he remembered he didn’t need to anymore. Above, a few more sharks were descending, so he hid into a cloud of ink and disguised himself as a rock near one of the dead sharks.
Henry stared at the carcasses, remembering how they tried to fight the serpent and even managed to deal damage to it. Compared to those sharks, these almost seemed like low-level Riptides.
Were they always this weak?
His bladed arms were sharper. Terrifyingly so. Henry could feel the jump in power after getting the new class and he believed the only reason he hadn’t been able to fully cut through the sharks was the whip attack. It was still lagging in F-rank, but once it upgraded…
I’m getting dangerous.
He brought up his notifications, and realized he had a couple of stat points he hadn’t assigned yet and resolved to take care of them once he’d gotten home. For now, he had some mana to burn and he was completely uninjured.
Henry was confident he could get himself away if ever he got into serious danger, so might as well do some more hunting.
Eying his notifications, he was happy to see Inkjet progressing. Now that he could take a few hits without being blown to bits, the value of the skill was coming to light. Before this day, he hadn’t dared take on more than one enemy at a time. But now that he did, his camouflaging and ink screens were synergizing pretty effectively.
3x Whipcrack Shark Cores (E) were collected
Mimicking Arms (E): Level 2 -> 3
Inkjet (F): Level 8 -> Level 9
One more level and I get the upgrade for Inkjet.
He looked up and saw four more sharks approaching.
And I should be able to afford the new telepathic skills after this. Alright. Here we go.
Henry watched the sharks cautiously circling above the bodies and had a thought. He should remember to carve out a piece of these things for dinner. Who knows, he might even get a new trait out of them.
***
What a day.
Henry swam into his turtle shell home and immediately slumped against the wall.
I’d kill for a bed. And a hot meal.
He looked at the shark filet he’d dragged along back home and sighed mentally, bringing it to his beak.
He chewed. And tried swallowing the bits fast without letting them linger too long in his mouth. He’d gotten mouth taste buds recently, thanks to the increases in Perception, but somehow that made things worse. Random raw fish with thick skin did not taste that great. Especially when it was mixed with saltwater. That didn’t bother him too much on its own, but it was most certainly not pleasant.
He pulled up his notifications as he chewed his bland, cold, salty dinner.
4x Whipcrack Shark Cores (E) were collected
Mimicking Tentacles (E) - Level 4 -> 5
Inkjet (F) - Level 9 -> Level 10
That’s 7 new cores total.
Henry glanced down at his limbs. It had been so easy to take down the shark.
I guess I could do this again tomorrow. Though now it’s feeling a bit like bullying Riptides again and to be honest, I’d love a change of scenery.
All of this extending fighting was doing wonders for his skills. Even Mimicking Arms had gotten another another level. Which raised Alter Physique’s weight limit to 30 kilograms.
Maybe he’d go back out again, or maybe he would change the area. But in any case, the focus woud be to start buying stat points and potentially find good traits. For now, after beating up the hours of fighting, Henry thought it was time to take a break. His mana was low, and even though he had evolved recently, this day had been particularly long, and he needed a good nap. But before that, he had one last matter to attend to.
Alright, let’s see what Inkjet’s got for me.
Henry paid and triggered the upgrade of his last Species’ skill. His body buzzed with the magic, and his arms twitched with excitement.
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Inkjet (E) - Level 1
F-Rank: Shoot a jet of ink to confuse your pursuers and hide yourself.
E-Rank: Quantity of ink shot is increased. Ink can temporarily have properties of ingested foods.
Ink Clone: Create short-lived Ink Clone with a simple command.
Henry whistled. No noise came out, and it just made the sand under him fan out.
I know I said it before, but I seriously need to focus more on my own skills. The gains with every upgrade so far have been amazing…
Henry triggered Ink Clone, and a decent portion of his mana evaporated while a burst of ink shot out of him but this time, it didn’t spread out in an ink cloud. Instead, it coalesced into pitch black form identical to Henry’s and its stood there, floating. Around five to six seconds later, it dissolved into motes.
This will be extremely useful when I’m trying to lose pursuers.
Clearly, it was about to become a staple and should level quite fast.
Inkjet should get a workout whenever the fights last more than a few seconds. Mimicking Arms is leveling just fine and might be the first to hit level 10 in E-Rank, considering how often I camouflage and change my appearance.
That left Bite, which Henry didn’t use very often. He hummed.
It’s a bit tougher to level… but it should be easier if I start using those temporary bites more often. I should also get back to working on venoms and poisons and fill up on charges from different monsters. That ought to help level it up. As for the other empowered offensive skills… they’re better. By a lot. Only the whip is still weak, but again, that’s probably because of its rank.
Sleep began to hound him, but he wanted to deal with the new cores. Then he could rest.
Alright. Erm… ah. Here it is.
Henry clicked the notification about cores, selected the claiming option, and all sever cores popped in front of him. The turtle home shone with silvery light, and Henry took it in for a moment before using Identify.
7x Core (E) - 38,331 F-Tokens
Henry focused on the number, and realized he could change the unit with just his thoughts
7x Core (E) - 38,3 E-Tokens
Damn. That’s a lot of tokens.
Henry shook his head. As much as that number was massive compared to everything he’d seen so far, it wasn’t that much compared to his new costs.
If I get the telepathy skill and trait, I’ll be left with close to 20k. Enough for a second upgrade for Telekinesis. Or some stats.
Henry looked at the tokens for a moment then reached a decision.
Telepathy can work as a lure. And I need something to communicate with intelligent life as long as I have no lips and tongue. Telepathic Sense will be useful for whatever can hide from my regular sense. The rest… goes to stats.
Henry pulled the trigger on the two telepathic purchases, which left him with 18 E-Tokens.
Next, he turned his attention to his stats. He already had two unassigned stat points, and he put both in Spirit. It wasn’t lagging badly, but his fighting style ate through his mana like crazy and so, he needed to work on that. For the remainder of the tokens, as he already bought every point available for F-tokens, he started on the E-tokens points. Thankfully, as the prompt had said all the way back when the menu had been made available, there would be no base stats to count against what he could buy, and he should have five points available to buy in each stat now that he was paying with E-tokens. With that in mind, he started spending.
Henry started with three Spirit points, three in Constitution to get it to 30 points, one in Strength, and one in Dexterity, to push it over the edge and get to 10 points.
Making sure all was as he wanted it, he confirmed the changes and braced.
His body buzzed painfully as the magic sunk into him, and though he thought he wouldn’t be able to tell which sensation was cause by which threshold-breaking stat, he definitely could.
While dexterity made his limbs shake and his nerves burn, the Constitution stat felt like his literal cells were being individually tempered, and when the process was over, Henry was left panting against the sand.
He slowly got up, then stretched his arms. It felt like there was a well of strength and durability in every limb. Almost as if every inch of his skin had flexible metal plating under the surface. Henry felt… good. He glanced down at the rest of his stats.
As long as I can fight E-ranks on equal footing, I’ll be able to afford the rest in no time.
Henry triggered Alter Physique and pushed it to its maximum. The weight difference shouldn’t make him too large for his home… but just in case, he leaned closer to the exit. Then he glanced at his stats after the changes.
Strength: 13
Constitution: 20
Spirit: 17
Perception: 12
Dexterity: 10
Henry nuzzled in his corner as his eyes began to droop. He felt great, but the day had been long, and the process of increasing his stats seemed to have taken something out of him. Next class rank up might take a while… Things are so… expensive.
***
Henry carried his algae wrapped turtle shell above his head as he slowly used the rest of his arms as legs. He came to a stop a few yards from the first few stalks of kelp and put the shell down, then took one last glance at the reef.
So long, sharks. And thanks for all the levels.
He might still come back, but Henry was looking forward for a change of scenery. The sharks being the main threat weren’t giving him much aside from cores, and those were everywhere.
He looked down at the shell, then up at the uneven ground of the kelp forest.
I wish I could store this thing in Maw.
Henry had gotten a bad surprise after his nap. The increased growth rate of Mimicking Arms, coupled with his slightly increased size after his evolution made it so that when he woke up, he found himself literally stuffing the turtle-home.
He could now increase his size to around sever or eight feet long from head to tip, but at this moment, he was around half that. A more reasonable travel size. Next time, he was going to try and focus his weight in his arms.
For now, he wanted to fit into his shell to sleep and hide when he needed to. And it was a lot easier to camouflage and be stealthy when he was smaller. He didn’t feel like he could just grow large without a care. Someday, something impossibly powerful like Deepcaller would target him, and that would be a dumb way to die.
Though the turtle shell was bugging him now that he was traveling.
Either I rank up Mimicking Arms until I get large enough to swallow it, or Maw hopefully gets better and easier to use as time goes. Clearly, it doesn’t level, but there might be a trick to progress it. Or maybe, just like Alter Physique, it’s tied to Bite. I guess I’ll figure out when Bite levels the next time. In either case, I need to work on my own skills.
Henry picked up his portable home and went back under it. He began walking and hopping forward, keeping an eye on his surroundings through both eyes and his vague and barely useful Telepathic Sense. He’d yet to feel anything from it other than small pings whenever he scared a nearby fish badly enough.
That’s going to take some work as well.
Around an hour of careful travel later, Henry found a spot with enough surrounding landmarks to hide his turtle shell. As he settled it down between a couple of rocks, he looked around.
Wherever he turned, he saw green. Tall stalks with reddish bulbs that looked like viscous fruits hung at somewhat regular intervals all throughout the stalks. Fruits of some sort.
Or the eggs of some very organized fish.
The water was a bit murkier than the reef, and his landmark was a tall, pointy cliff that reached pretty high. It had been mostly rocky so far–which was really making him think there was land nearby.
Were the whales wrong?
Henry wrapped his arms around one of the thick stalks of kelp next to him, then morphed his remaining limbs into similar leaves. He couldn’t shift the shape of his head, but he found he could spread the pigments to at least take the same color.
I can’t stay in this area for long or I’m gonna lose the shell. And I need to keep an eye out for the serpent. Or serpents. For now, though, let’s take a look at the surface.
how an octopus uses its ink
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He couldn’t shift the shape of his tentacle head, but he found ...
can shift the shape of his tentacles. The shape he can't affect much is his head's.