Chapter 14: Farmed Out
Gray woke from his rest feeling fully restored. The shelter bonus had done its work — HP and MP both sat at maximum. He pulsed out of the crevice and into the familiar boulder field, his tentacles already extended to read the water.
’Time to grind.’
He didn’t have to wait long. A small school of glass minnows drifted near the eastern edge of the boulder field, their silver bodies catching the faint glow of his bioluminescence. Gray positioned himself upcurrent and let his Bioluminescent Pulse do the work. The pink-blue-violet light rippled across his bell in slow, hypnotic waves.
The minnows noticed. Three broke away from the school and drifted toward him, their tiny black eyes fixed on the shifting colors. Gray pulsed backward into the narrow passages, leading them deeper into the boulder field. They followed, weaving between the rocks in single file, their curiosity overriding their caution.
The central chamber welcomed them with silence and stone. Gray sealed the exits with Toxin Cloud before they even realized they were trapped. The invisible sphere of nematocysts spread through the water, and the damage ticks began immediately.
[TOXIN CLOUD — 7 DAMAGE]
[TOXIN CLOUD — 9 DAMAGE]
[TOXIN CLOUD — 8 DAMAGE]
[GLASS MINNOW DEFEATED — 8 EXP]
[GLASS MINNOW DEFEATED — 8 EXP]
[GLASS MINNOW DEFEATED — 8 EXP]
Three down in seconds. The rest scattered, but there was nowhere to go. The exits were death. The chamber was death. Gray picked off the survivors one by one, herding them deeper into the Toxin Cloud with precise pulses of his tentacles.
[GLASS MINNOW DEFEATED — 8 EXP]
[GLASS MINNOW DEFEATED — 8 EXP]
The last minnow tried to dart past him, a silver flash of desperation. Gray intercepted it with a lazy pulse sideways and lashed out with his tentacle. The limb caught the minnow across its body, and the impact alone was enough.
[GLASS MINNOW DEFEATED — 8 EXP]
[SKILL: TOXIN CLOUD has reached Level 2!]
"Huh. Already?" He pulled up the skill description, reading through the changes with quiet curiosity. Two extra seconds of duration. Slightly wider radius. Damage up from 5-8 to 6-9 per second. The paralyze chance had crept up a few points too.
"Not huge. But I’ll take it."
He absorbed the corpses, his hunger ticking down to 5%. The EXP bar crept up to 69%.
’Let’s keep going.’
The second group was a cluster of spine-fin darters near the western boulders. Faster than minnows, more aggressive, with a tendency to bite when cornered. Gray didn’t give them the chance. He dropped Toxin Cloud on their position before they even noticed him, catching four of them in the initial deployment.
[TOXIN CLOUD — 8 DAMAGE]
[TOXIN CLOUD — 10 DAMAGE]
[PARALYZE — 3 seconds]
The paralyze proc caught one of the larger darters mid-dart. It froze, its spined fins locked open, drifting helplessly through the venom. The others tried to flee, but Gray had already positioned himself at the only gap in the rocks. His tentacles spread wide, blocking the exit.
[SPINE-FIN DARTER DEFEATED — 22 EXP]
[SPINE-FIN DARTER DEFEATED — 22 EXP]
[SPINE-FIN DARTER DEFEATED — 22 EXP]
The fourth one lunged at him, its tiny jaws snapping. Gray didn’t bother dodging. He activated Overcharge. The electricity arced across his bell, and the darter impaled itself on his electrified body.
[OVERCHARGE — 32 DAMAGE]
[SPINE-FIN DARTER DEFEATED — 22 EXP]
’Overkill. But satisfying.’
He absorbed the remains and checked his progress. 75% toward Level 9.
The third group was smaller. Two scuttle crabs picking at a patch of moss on the northern slope. Gray approached from above, dropping Toxin Cloud directly on top of them. The crabs tried to burrow into the sand, but the venom seeped through every gap in their shells.
[SCUTTLE CRAB DEFEATED — 14 EXP]
[SCUTTLE CRAB DEFEATED — 14 EXP]
78%.
[SKILL LEVEL UP!]
He paused to check his skills.
[SKILL: TOXIN CLOUD has reached Level 3!]
[SKILL: OVERCHARGE has reached Level 2!]
[SKILL: BIOLUMINESCENT PULSE has reached Level 2!]
A small pulse of satisfaction rippled through his bell.
’Toxin Cloud hit Level 3 already. Eight seconds cooldown, fourteen seconds duration, bigger radius. I can keep it up almost permanently now. And Overcharge is doing thirty to forty damage with a fifty-eight percent stun chance. This is becoming a real kit.’
He pulled up the updated descriptions, reading them with the quiet pride of a player who’d optimized his build.
Toxin Cloud — Lv. 3: 7-10 damage per second. 22% paralyze chance. 14-second duration. 2.5-meter radius.
Overcharge — Lv. 2: 30-40 damage. 58% stun chance. 6-second duration. 4% self-damage.
Bioluminescent Pulse — Lv. 2: Brighter glow. Pale violet threads mixed with the pink and blue. Stronger attraction effect. Stronger warning about larger predators.
’Eight seconds cooldown, fourteen seconds up. I can overlap clouds now. Two spheres of venom at once. Nothing’s getting through that.’
The fourth group was the largest. A school of seven glass minnows, moving in tight formation near the southern edge of the boulder field. Gray positioned himself carefully, using the current to carry his scent away from them, and let his Bioluminescent Pulse flare bright. The minnows turned toward the light, their formation wavering as the hypnotic rhythm pulled them in.
’Come on. Just a little closer.’
They drifted closer. Four feet, then three—the gap shrinking in small, hesitant pulses as the Bioluminescent Pulse rippled across his bell. Two feet. The nearest minnow’s gills flared, tasting the water. Gray held perfectly still.
Then they stopped.
One of the minnows flicked its tail sharply. The others mimicked it, their tiny black eyes darting between Gray and the boulder field behind him. The school leader turned and darted away, and the rest followed without hesitation.
’Wait—’
He pulsed after them, but they were already gone, silver streaks vanishing into the dark. He extended his tentacles, reading the water. Their vibrations faded rapidly. They weren’t just leaving. They were fleeing.
’...They recognized me.’
He hovered there, his bell pulsing with something between frustration and surprise.
’The survivors are learning. The boulder field probably reeks of death. Every fish that got away told its friends. Every crab that hid in the rocks spread the warning. I’m not a predator anymore. I’m a hazard. A known threat.’
He drifted through the boulder field again, scanning for movement. The crabs that usually scuttled between the rocks were gone. The minnows had moved their school further north. Even the tiny rock shells had retreated into crevices too narrow for him to reach.
A single scuttle crab, braver or stupider than the rest, peeked out from behind a chunk of coral. Gray pulsed toward it, but the crab skittered away before he’d closed half the distance. It didn’t stop running until it had disappeared into a crack too small for his bell to fit through.
’Okay. This is a problem.’
He checked his EXP bar. 78%. So close to Level 9 he could taste it. But his hunting ground was tapped out. The creatures that remained were too fast, too cautious, or too well-hidden to be worth the effort.
He floated in the central chamber, his Toxin Cloud dissipating into the dark. The frustration welled up, and he shoved it aside.
’No point sulking. I knew this would happen eventually. The boulder field was a starting zone, not an endgame map. Time to move on.’
He drifted toward the northern edge of the boulder field, where the rocks sloped down into open water. The kelp forest waited in the distance, its dark fronds swaying with the slow rhythm of the deep. Past that, the seafloor dropped off into depths he couldn’t see.
He paused at the boundary between the familiar rocks and the unknown dark.
’Time to look for new prey.’