I Kept eating everything of the brown fish. I was so invigorated in eating that I nearly mist a shark that had tasted blood.

I fled from the brown fish at one of the last possible moments. I moved to the seafloor I had drifted away from.

Half way down I quickly looked back, that told me all I needed to know. That shark could have eaten me in a single bite like it did with the rest of the brown fish. The total length was about eight S1O, or about eights me’s back to back. I was not going to fight that anytime soon.

The shark wanted more than just the corpse however. It wanted to also eat me. It dived lower and it became a race, me versus it.

The problem I had was that I had lost the way, the combination of the fish chase and the brown fish fight had left me clueless to where my cave was.

‘Think, think, fool its eyes, it does not give enough space for that. What was on top of your cave? Think you stupid brain. Think.’

I finally reached the seafloor and started moving parallel to it. The shark closed the distance quite a bit. In my estimate the shark would catch me in about 20 seconds. I moved above the corals that carpeted the seafloor on this area.

A few seconds later I Saw a sand patch come up in the chase.

‘I could maybe use that to throw up sand and after that hide in the sand. System thingy do I have the brown skin color available? And what is the cost? And what is my total?’

 

    Yes

    157 BM

    2.248

 

‘Huh, my biomass went up quite a bit. Is Biomass proportional to the mass I eat? STOP no distractions, I need to survive.’

I reached the sand patch and dove even lower to reach the sand and used two tentacles to throw up a smoke screen in the form of a sand cloud. This made me massively slow down but had to be done.

‘System quickly give me that brown skin.’

I wasted no time waiting to check if it succeeded. I moved a bit to the left and started digging and throwing up more sand. When I felt hidden I stopped moving fully. This took all of five seconds. So I was not dug in nearly as much that would make me feel safe.

The Shark came out of the sand cloud and went straight. It fully ignored and missed me.

‘Seems like sharks still have tiny brains in this world. I guess some things barely change.’

I waited until the shark was out of view before moving again.

Slowly I rose up and looked around me. I looked at all the coral and other colorful things around me. It was hard to gather clues as to where my cave is.

‘Let's see, the kelp with the plant island is that way. I think I recognize those hills. If that is all correct it seems like I made a bit of an arc with my journey and need to go that way.’

I moved towards the right of the previous chase.

As I moved I finally just took all the sights in. The hills that are smooth. The colorful coral, red, green, blue, yellow, purple, magenta, cyan, orange and even more colors. The only unfortunate thing was that things quickly turned blue toned in the distance. Faster than on land, so visibility is worse.

After that we have the fishes, somehow in even more colors and combinations than the coral. All busily moving around in groups or alone. Some bigger fish in the form of sharks and some other animals I could not directly identify.

One looked like the combination of a shrimp and turtle. It had a big shell on the back with multiple legs sticking out of the bottom but it looked like it could fully retract into the shield.

And another looked like the unholy offspring of a lantern fish and a jellyfish.

I can spot a few other fishes that I can only describe as fish with sword, or wish with wings.

The other fishes are just variations on fishes.

‘With the kelp there, those hills in that direction, I think I recognize that coral formation. If that is true then on the other side of that formation should be my cave.’

I quickly move around and confirm my suspicions and enter my cave.

‘Now any other visitor that I can eat? No? That is unfortunate. Time to look at what that brown fish got me. Please leave out anything related to reproduction from reports like this.’

 

    You got DNA for the following:

    Muscle tissue (worse than current)

    Bone tissue (All  improvement extracted)

    Brain tissue (worse than current)

    Grills tissue (Slight improvement extracted, 36 BM)

    Heart tissue (Slight improvement extracted, 13 BM)

    Skin tissue (worse than current, skin pattern in use)

    Stomach acid (worse than current)

    Stomach tissue (worse than current)

    Liver tissue (Slight improvement extracted, 50 BM)

    Retina tissue (worse than current)

    Fin tissue (not usable)

    Teeth (currently in use on all tentacles)

 

    You got 649 BM

 

‘Oh wow, that seems more useful than that other fish. Let's see what my status looks like now.’

 

    Size: 1

    Passive daily upkeep: 605 BM

    Biomass stored: 2.239 / 6.283

    Biomass for the next size: 0 / 32.808

    All beneficial non clashing DNA upgrades: 414 BM

    Clashing and non beneficial DNA upgrades: 17 new, 17 total

 

‘It seems to be a bad idea to just upgrade various parts of me. It just costs too much. I need to hunt a bit more reliably then I can think about it. What are the individual upgrades anyway?’

 

    Grills tissue (36 BM)

    Liver tissue (50 BM)

    Heart tissue (45 BM)

    Anemone immunity (283)

 

‘How much is the improvement to the heart anyway?’

 

    1.18% increase in maximum pump frequency

    0.31% decrease in idle pump frequency

 

‘How useful is that?’

 

    0.00% decrease in BM usage

 

‘Can I get all the numbers on that last one?’

 

    0.0018543025001634786123402398475634786501%

 

‘That is a useless amount. It would take me what? A few years to get positive on that?’