I'm a Stingray?

Chapter 139: Food situation, light

The entrance of the tunnel had been a bit exaggerated. He was only a second there and claimed that there was a big tunnel down here, but the swim through it would take a casual few seconds.

Tim was leading the team of course, now that there weren't any dangerous predators to pounce on him, swimming in the front felt much easier. After crossing the short-ish tunnel, the path led them downwards.

A drop of which was difficult to cross through, unless one swam. The lobsters struggled more considering their size, only their many legs managed to slow down and muffle the fall.

Most of the tunnel had a coating of sand with occasional dirt here and there that seemed to have been hardened over time ~ the overall texture was lumpier compared to the outside, the bumps were closer to each other.

They continued to follow what the path offered but by now it was still too short, as the 50 lobsters haven't even managed to crawl in now. Simply because the tunnel could only fit one at a time and each of these lobsters stretched around half a meter long, it was tricky to fit them all in the beginning.

On the other side of the stick, Timothy was giving it his best to observe the surroundings for food or possible predators. The area continued to become darker so it was difficult to stalk around.

By now the young man began to think that only the barracuda had inhabited this area, life usually stands near the entrance of tunnels, especially the smaller ones.

"Maybe that longfish has killed everyone here?" The hero thought but still wanted to keep his hopes up. If no life lurked in these tunnels, the biggest risk would be a time waste.

The path eventually took a sharp left turn and that's when the first sign of life appeared! The group was greeted with a pack of marble shrimp, that counted up to 10 in number.

Happy beyond explanation, the sea-pancake shouted. "Leggy crabs!"

And then charged towards these beings, chomping through a couple of them became the inevitable. He felt like it was well deserved, there was a full-grown barracuda carcass outside that the community could feed on later.

Although the effects these species bring wasn't drastic, memories from a couple of weeks ago had kicked in so it felt a bit nostalgic to bite these species in half with a single bite.

Of course he didn't eat all of them. Although the 8 remaining shrimp can't feed the community enough, it was still food.

The system asked about announcing the effects but Timothy only asked about the statistics he cared about, and the lady obliged.

[Eating 2 of these marble shrimp has granted you with a single point of health]

[Total health = 74/110 bars]

[Killing 2 of these marble shrimp has given you 2 system points]

[Total system points = 90]

"Good good good." He celebrated and only now realised that the rest of the team had heard the outburst of joy.

Gazing at them, the little hero commanded. "Let's keep moving, we will kill the rest of these shrimp later."

And so that same command was shouted across the tunnel, except it was a different language, one that the rest of this team could understand. Although it was fun for them to kill a species that has no chances of fighting back and dealing damage, it had to be left for later.

It only took 10 more meters through the deafening darkness for Timothy's sight to be blessed with another group of marble shrimp, except this one was double in size. They have found more of the same species, this was great but the amount now along with the barracuda outside, wasn't even enough to feed half of the children in the community. Hunger can force a few of these lobsters to drop down dead if more food wasn't found.

So they left these shrimp be and either swam or crawled above them. A drop of elevation was found after but it was easy to follow it. Because although it went down, it wasn't exactly vertical and the sand underneath their legs made it easier to crawl down. As for Timothy, he could just easily swim down towards this drop.

The drop stretched for 10 meters so that made it even easier to cross. But the first thing that greeted their limited vision was stronger darkness and what felt like tens of crawls from the left.

Another thing that felt weird was how this portion of the tunnel didn't seem to have an end or a sharp turn in either direction. Yet they still could hear crawls to their left, which made everything a bit more confusing.

After a bit of observation, the sea-disk had put all 60 points of his IQ to work in order to figure out just what the hell was going on.

After a few seconds, he yelled. "We've found a cavern!"

His shout had managed to scare those who were the closest by, while whatever was crawling to their left, had panicked and now were pacing around harder.

What felt like a slap across their eyes was the sudden burst of colourless light in this cavern. Which failed to give a hint of how big this place was or what the hell caused the light, because their eyes were squinting thanks to the devouring pain of sudden light!

After taking a second to get used to it, it became transparent that there were 5 light sources here and they were all moving around like madmen, or women? It was difficult to determine their gender because of the light and the fact that they still weren't sure what these bastards were.

One of these colourless lights was charging forward, by now it was sure that this attacker was an animal. So Timothy didn't want to hold back and wait for danger to come.

His eyes had managed to work through the pain and get a better glance of the surroundings. The form of the charging species felt all too familiar, it was a shape he loathed!