Hah, I guess I could finally swim with these injuries. I had already accepted that they won’t be healing anytime soon, anyways. Though, I felt like my condition was actually worsening!
There’s a reason back in earth, things inside the deep sea were so simple and stupid, if they weren't they’d go insane from twiddling their non-existent thumbs all day!
I’d gathered my determination, and got my shit together, figuratively at least. Speaking literally, I lost my shit a while ago as part of natural processes.
Unsurprisingly, felt a lot cleaner and less bothersome when you’re pretty much surrounded by water. The keyword there was'felt' because in reality I was already disgusted by just being in the water.
On the topic of fecal matter, I have a keen interest in seeing the behind of this colossal critter. Not that I’m interested in him answering the call of nature, I’m just curious as to how he propelled himself.
Granted, I had no clue at what he actually is, just from seeing what’s on top and what’s on the side, if that was true at all. For all I know I could be on a giant, breathing underwater pancake of sorts.
Actually, that type of biology might make some sense. I’ve saw a picture of something undersea1https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didemnum_vexillum#:~:text=Didemnum%20vexillum%20is%20a%20species,North%20America%20and%20New%20Zealand. that look kind of like pancake butter, what if one of those grew around a giant landmass under the sea? Then, it gains some complexity and starts moving around in search of minerals for sustenance!
That would be a big leap in logic, now that I think about it. Well, if normal logic was applied, a colony of smaller organisms would perhaps be the best way to explain how something got this big. Not here, there’s wizard jizz and dragon shart! That would be too boring of an explanation.
Still, would there be a tail at the end or maybe some tentacle-like limbs to push itself forward? Hell, it could be using some novel propulsion method I hadn’t even began to imagine.
There was only one way to find out, and that’s through another adventure! I certainly hoped this adventure won’t contain swords and magic. I was not ready for those yet.
My escapades so far had been not all too crazy, so that’s a good sign. As much I would like to meet a new creature, a certain bugger certainly did not give me good expectations for what lives down here.
So far I’m getting more and more used to swimming around ‘blind’. If I just want to move around a little, I realized that sight was non-essential for the job. Simply having the ability to feel the difference in pressure made avoiding pesky obstacles a lot easier for me.
It still was somewhat unnatural to me, given how much I relied on my sight for more than a decade of my life. It was like suddenly going blind, but in exchange you gain some minor psychic superpowers. Minus the whole turning into a fish part.
I knew some people who would happily take that, not me. It would take some sort of monumental reward in exchange for me giving up my sight, like a superpower that allowed me to create energy from nowhere or cure cancer.
Those would have been my thoughts a while ago. Now, not so much.
This experience may have been changing my mindset a little bit. With how acute my other senses were, they may as well be better than sight. My eyes only allowed me to tell where something is, and its general outline unless it was really close. Meanwhile I could literally detect the small-scale movements of these undersea critters.
With that sort of conclusion, the glowing light I could produce was only good for hunting prey. It may even be ill-advised for me to use them while fighting enemies. It literally beamed my location out to things with especially sensitive eyes.
How long will it take me to reach the end of this ‘place’, anyways? The side took me hours, so getting all the way to the back might even take me a few days.
Whatever, it was better than lying down on the seabed and staring at stickshrimps and shrooms all day. With how active I was getting, I might need to actually find a meal way sooner than expected.
Thankfully, that meal was all around me. If I could find some way to flip the giant isopods over, I can even eat something more filling.
The journey so far has proven to be longer than my previous one, so now I at least knew that the shape of this critter has a distinguishable length and width of some sort. With the way the ‘ground’ is sloping a bit downward, I can sort of guess his shape too.
Since something like this obviously hadn’t been discovered before, else the internet would have went absolutely bonkers; I would take the chance to give it a name. How about… the leviathan? Nope, too mythological. Titanfish thingy? No, he deserved better than the rude system thingy.
Colossal Shitsnatcher!
Wait, that wasn’t actually supposed to be a name. I was just expressing my shock, but it actually sounds like a decent enough name. Just had to make it more appropriate… how about Colossal Sedimentsnatcher?
What caused me to inwardly curse were the familiar, red glowing tentacles nearby. This time, I din’t think it detected me since I was far enough from its vicinity and my lights are off. I could simply maneuver around it
What truly shocked me was the peculiar fish running circles all around it. If not for the slight movements of its flat fins, I would not have assumed it was a fish at all.
It appeared to be almost made out of some sort of translucent fluid. The only ‘solid’ parts barely reflected light at all, so I couldn’t really get a good visual.
With how it seemeded to be a literal blob of ectoplasm moving around, I might as well call it a ghost fish.
It looks to be around my size, yet it ma maneuvering around the numerous tentacles of the Siphoner Colony seem easy. Clearly, its biology allowed it to be a much more agile fish than I could ever be. It's moving around in there like its a broke college student in a supermarket sale!
Tubular organs inside its fluids appeared to shift around, locking on to the various dead husks caught in the tentacles. The fish easily picked them off, treating what I thought to be a vicious predator as a vending machine.
Once it was satisfied, the ghost fish left the area with a belly full of food.
I did not even begin to think of sticking anywhere near that tentacle hell, much less gathering a food supply from it. It seemed I have much to learn around these parts.
Curious, did it rank up just like me after surviving the encounter? Or did the system thingy consider it too adapted to recognize such a feat? Actually, the huge tentacle colony didn't even bother trying to trap it, what gives?!
Regardless of what I thought of the ghost fish, it retreated into the vast unknown of the deep. It did not answer my question and left me alone to distantly marvel at what almost killed me.
While the Sedimentsnatcher was the largest sea dweller I’d yet to see, the ‘Giant Siphoner Colony’ was no pushover when it came to size either. From the edge of its perilous feelers to the start of its ‘main body’, you could jam nearly 10 of the giant isopods in there.
Did I mention it had a main body, one that I could not fathom the sheer length of?
It wasn’t really much of a body though; it was more so a long string of varying thickness that kept its long network of tentacles together. The end of which could not be seen by my very limited vision.
I consider attempting to maneuver around the tentacles like the ghostfish for some orbs.
Ah, that would be very stupid. My body worked differently, and I couldn’t stay as stable as it did when moving around, I was far more prone to crashing into a tentacle. Not to mention, it may have also developed some sort of toxin resistance to survive coming into contact with one anyways, I had not.
Regretfully, I could only cower away in fea- tacitly avoid the obvious danger. I learned a bit just from simply watching the ghost fish maneuver around, so there was no loss.
After that, I had a rather uneventful trip down the end of the downwards slope. Wait, no, I should stop thinking that. There’s obviously someone ready to throw a bad situation at me every time I did, fucking Murphy.
The area did not grow smaller, neither did the ecosystem grow thinner, it just came to an abrupt stop. How anticlimactic.
This time, it was not a downwards wall, but a smooth curve at the end. Excitedly, I turn on my lights and peer down to see…
Shit, literal shit. The colossal sedimentsnatcher was doing its business, expelling its waste, busting a grumpy, glassing the water, laying an undersea castle, unloosing the caboosing…
Okay, that’s a bit too much even to express my shock. Still, a constant stream of liquid waste came out of the critter’s behind… it almost looks like an exhaust plume of sorts.
Well, that explained how he moves itself around. No tentacles, no fins, just ass.
Did that mean he could move the hole around if he wants to go in a different direction? Maybe he even had multiple of them….
Let’s call it a day; I needed to go douse my body in some cleaner water.
