Chapter 21: Hunting Trait Fragments
Gray stayed flattened against the stone long after the Abyssal’s vibration had faded into the deep. His body wouldn’t stop trembling.
’What the fuck was that thing?! That wasn’t a predator. That was a god of death. A fucking god of death.’
The Silver-Fin Runner’s tail drifted past the overhang entrance, still twitching faintly. Gray watched it spin away into the dark and felt something cold settle into his core.
’Calm down. Calm the fuck down.’
He forced himself to calm, a slow, rhythmic pulsing of his bell that gradually steadied his racing thoughts. The Bioluminescent Pulse, which had been flickering erratically with his fear, slowly returned to its soft, steady rhythm.
’Okay. Okay. I’m alive. I can recover from this.’
He pulled up his status screen, the familiar golden text materializing in the darkness of the overhang.
STATUS MENU
Name: Gray Ashford
Species: Aurelia aurita — Common Moon Jellyfish (Bioluminescent Variant)
Level: 9
Title: Colony Killer
Stats:
· HP: 8 / 250
· MP: 23 / 170
· ATK: 6
· DEF: 19
· SPD: 19
· INT: 25
· LUK: 0
EXP to Next Level: 38%
’Twenty-three MP. Eight HP. Both need to recover fully before I move. This overhang gives me twenty percent bonus regen. That means... roughly one point three HP per minute. To get back to two-fifty, I need... about three hours. MP will take longer. Maybe four hours total.’
He let himself settle deeper into the overhang, pressing his torn bell against the cold sand. The wounds from the Razorscales still throbbed — lacerations across his margin, a chunk missing from one tentacle, the lingering burn of the bleed effect slowly fading as the last tick expired.
’Rest first. Plan later.’
The hours passed in darkness.
Gray woke to the soft chime of a system notification.
[HP: 250 / 250 — FULLY RESTORED]
[MP: 170 / 170 — FULLY RESTORED]
He flexed his tentacles experimentally. The torn one had regenerated completely, fresh translucent flesh replacing what the Razorscales had shredded. The wounds on his bell margin had sealed, leaving behind only faint scars that would probably fade with time. His Bioluminescent Pulse glowed steady and strong.
He drifted to the entrance of the overhang and peered out into the kelp forest. The Abyssal was long gone. The Razorscales had scattered. The water was quiet again, the only movement the gentle sway of fronds and the occasional flicker of a tiny creature too small to be worth his attention.
’That thing. It passed right over me and didn’t attack. It only went after the Runner because the Runner moved. The system said "REMAIN COMPLETELY STILL." So it hunts by vibration and bioelectric fields. If I stay still and keep my Bioluminescent Pulse dim, I’m invisible to it... maybe..?’
He filed that information away. That bastard was a problem for another day or never, if he was lucky. Right now, he had a more immediate goal.
’Level 10. I’m at thirty-eight percent. I need sixty-two percent more. That’s... maybe eight or ten kills, depending on what I’m hunting.’
He thought about the Razorscales. Fifty-five EXP each. Dangerous in groups, but individually fragile. If he could isolate them, pick them off one by one...
’No. Too risky. I barely survived that fight, and I only won because that bastard showed up. If I run into another school, I’m dead.’
He thought about the Morraths. Eighty-five EXP each. Tough, but weak to electricity. He’d killed two of them working together, and he’d gotten stronger since then. But they were hard to find, and fighting them in the kelp gave them too much advantage.
’Hmmmm...’
He pulled up his status screen, focusing on the trait fragments he’d accumulated.
Trait Fragments:
· Minor Shell Plating (1/3)
· Keen Senses (1/3)
· Minor Evasion (1/3)
· Electroreceptive Sensitivity (1/3)
’Four fragments, all incomplete. If evolution lets me combine these into something permanent, I don’t want to hit Level 10 with empty slots. Better to fill what I can before the threshold.’
Gray drifted through the kelp forest, his tentacles extended like a spider’s web, reading every vibration in the water. The Bioluminescent Pulse was his lure, slow waves of pink and blue light rippling across his bell in a rhythm.
’Shell Plating from crabs and armored things. Keen Senses from hunters and trackers. Evasion from fast, darting prey. Electroreceptive Sensitivity from Morraths and anything that uses electrical senses.’
He checked his mental map. The kelp forest stretched in every direction, but he’d noticed patterns during his hours of rest. The southern edge, where the kelp thinned into a sandy slope, had more crabs. The dense central thicket was Morrath territory. And the eastern edge, where the fronds grew shorter and the water grew warmer, seemed to attract the faster, more skittish prey.
’South first. Crabs are slow. Good place to start.’
He pulsed southward, keeping his Bioluminescent Pulse dim and his movements deliberate. The kelp thinned gradually, the dense fronds giving way to scattered stalks and eventually to open sand. The seafloor here was littered with small rocks and patches of bristle-like tube worms that retracted into their casings as he passed.
He didn’t have to wait long.
A Rock Carapace Crab the size of his bell was picking at something half-buried in the sand near a cluster of tube worms. Its mottled brown shell blended almost perfectly with the rocks around it, but its movements gave it away — the slow, methodical scrape of claws against sediment.
[ROCK CARAPACE CRAB — Level 4]
HP: 40 / 40
’Perfect. Shell Plating fragment, here we go.’
He approached slowly, letting his Bioluminescent Pulse work. The crab’s eyestalks swiveled toward him, tracking the pink and blue glow with what might have been curiosity or might have been confusion. Crabs weren’t known for their complex emotional lives.
At two meters, he deployed Toxin Cloud.
The nematocysts drifted forward in an invisible wave. The crab sensed something wrong — its claws raised defensively, its legs tensed to scuttle — but the venom was already seeping through the gaps in its shell. The damage ticks began.
[TOXIN CLOUD — 8 DAMAGE]
[TOXIN CLOUD — 9 DAMAGE]
[TOXIN CLOUD — 7 DAMAGE]
[ROCK CARAPACE CRAB DEFEATED — 25 EXP]
[TRAIT FRAGMENT ACQUIRED: "Minor Shell Plating" (2/3)]
’One more to go.’