Chapter 28: Hollow Cloak
Gray drifted at the edge of the rock shelf overhang, his eight new tentacles spreading through the water like threads of silk. The kelp forest stretched before him, dark and deep and full of creatures that would never see him coming. His Hollow Cloak rendered him nearly invisible — ninety-seven percent transparency, seventy percent reduced detection range against sight-based predators.
[HUNGER STATUS: 12%]
’Twelve percent. It’s been... hours since I last ate. The Morraths. The Runners. I absorbed them all, but evolution must have burned through my reserves.’
He extended his tentacles further, tasting the water. He could feel the distant flicker of Silver-Fin Runners near the western edge, the slow crawl of crabs on the southern slope, the sinuous movement of something larger in the central thicket.
But he didn’t move toward any of them.
Instead, he drifted in the quiet dark of the overhang, his thoughts churning.
’I need to think about this carefully.’
He pulled up his skill list, the golden text materializing in his vision.
Skills:
· [Hollow Cloak] (Passive) Lv. 3
· [Neurotoxic Drift] Lv. 3
· [Overcharge] Lv. 2
· [EMP Shroud] Lv. 3
’Every fight I’ve won has come down to those two damage types. Toxin Cloud killed the crabs and the Darters. Overcharge killed the Morraths and the Runners. But what happens when I run into something that resists both?’
He thought about the Colossal Carapace Crab. The Abyssal. Creatures so massive or so alien that his venom might not penetrate their armor and his electricity might not overwhelm their nervous systems.
’I’ve been lucky so far. Everything I’ve fought has been vulnerable to at least one of my damage types. But luck runs out. It always runs out.’
He remembered his human life. Every good build had coverage. Multiple damage types for multiple resistances. If an enemy was immune to fire, you switched to ice. If it resisted physical, you hit it with magic. Redundancy wasn’t just optimal — it was survival.
’I need something else. A third option. Physical damage, maybe. Something that doesn’t rely on venom or electricity.’
His tentacles twitched with frustration.
’I don’t even have a physical attack anymore. My old Nematocyst Sting evolved into Toxin Cloud, and now that’s Neurotoxic Drift. All venom-based. Overcharge is electricity. If I run into something with thick armor and electrical resistance, I have no way to hurt it.’
His hunger pulsed again.
’HUNGER STATUS: 10%’
’But first, I need to eat. I can hunt and search for new traits at the same time.’
His new body moved differently than before — faster, smoother, each pulse of his bell propelling him through the water with barely a ripple. Hollow Cloak swallowed every trace of his passage, erasing him from sight and vibration alike. He was a shadow passing through the fronds, and nothing reacted to his presence.
A school of Glass Minnows drifted ahead, their tiny electrical fields flickering like candles in his new senses. Old Gray would have lured them with Bioluminescent Pulse, baited them into a trap. New Gray simply drifted into their midst.
They didn’t notice him.
He was inches from the nearest minnow before it sensed anything — and by then, his tentacles were already wrapped around its body. Neurotoxic Drift deployed silently, invisibly, the venom seeping into the minnow’s gills before its brain could register the danger.
[GLASS MINNOW DEFEATED — 4 EXP]
The other minnows scattered a moment later because their schoolmate had suddenly stopped moving. They had no idea what had killed it. No idea that the predator was still floating among them.
Gray absorbed the corpse and felt his hunger tick down to 9%.
’Efficient. But four EXP is nothing. I need bigger prey.’
He pushed deeper into the kelp, his tentacles reading the water ahead. A Spine-Fin Darter flickered at the edge of his perception, its electrical field sharp and fast. He angled toward it, letting Hollow Cloak swallow his approach.
The Darter was hunting its own prey — a tiny crustacean scrabbling against a kelp stalk. It never sensed Gray coming. Neurotoxic Drift enveloped it from behind, venom seeping through its gills. Three seconds of delayed symptoms, then the damage ticks began.
[NEUROTOXIC DRIFT — 10 DAMAGE]
[NEUROTOXIC DRIFT — 9 DAMAGE]
[NEUROTOXIC DRIFT — 11 DAMAGE]
[SPINE-FIN DARTER DEFEATED — 22 EXP]
He absorbed the corpse. Hunger: 7%.
’Better. But I need more. And I need to start looking for creatures that might give me new trait fragments.’
He extended his senses further, reading the electrical fields and vibrations of the kelp forest. The Morraths in the central thicket. The crabs on the southern slope. The Runners near the western edge. But none of them had what he needed. He’d already farmed them all, and their traits were either complete or irrelevant.
Then he felt something new.
A vibration. The crunch of something large moving across the seafloor. It was coming from the northern edge of the kelp forest, where the fronds gave way to a rocky slope scattered with tide pools and crevices.
Gray turned toward it.
He drifted north, his Hollow Cloak rendering him invisible, his movements producing no vibration as he passed. The vibration grew stronger as he approached — a slow, deliberate grinding, like stone against stone.
The kelp thinned, and the seafloor rose into a slope of dark volcanic rock. Tide pools pocketed the stone, their surfaces rippling with trapped water and tiny creatures. And there, in the largest of the pools, something was feeding.
It was a mollusk. A snail, but unlike any snail Gray had ever seen. Its shell was a spiraled cone of dark iron-grey, nearly two feet across, covered in ridges and nodules that looked thick enough to deflect a battering ram. Its body was a muscular foot of pale, mottled flesh that rippled as it moved, and its head was a blunt, eyeless wedge crowned with two thick tentacles that probed the water with slow, methodical sweeps.
But the most striking thing was its radula. A tongue-like organ covered in rows of serrated, diamond-hard teeth, currently scraping algae from the rock with a sound like a file on steel. Each scrape left deep gouges in the volcanic stone.
[IRON-SHELL DRILL SNAIL — Level 11]
HP: 280 / 280
Threat Level: MODERATE
« Analysis »
A heavily armored gastropod found in rocky mid-depth environments. The Iron-Shell Drill Snail possesses one of the hardest natural shells documented in this depth range, capable of withstanding crushing pressures and deflecting most physical attacks. Its radula is lined with crystalline teeth that can shear through rock, bone, and thin metal.
Behavior: Slow-moving. Non-aggressive unless provoked. Feeds on algae and mineral deposits. Will retreat into its shell if threatened, becoming nearly invulnerable to damage.
Weakness: Soft body beneath the shell. Slow reaction time. Vulnerable to attacks that bypass armor.
Gray studied the creature from a safe distance.
Gray studied the creature from a safe distance. ’It’s not aggressive. But if I kill it... its radula. Those teeth. That’s physical damage. Something that can cut through armor.’
He drifted closer, his Hollow Cloak erasing both sight and sound of his approach. The Drill Snail continued its methodical scraping, oblivious to the translucent predator hovering above it.
His hunger pulsed again. 7%. The snail was large. Plenty of biomass. And its shell, once cracked, would be a meal that lasted for days.
’I wonder what grilled sea snail tastes like.’