I'm a Stingray?

Chapter 169: Elongated familiarities

And with their aid, the enemies were just flocked with bites and pokes, simply overwhelmed. This battle was finally over and Timothy just gave out a sigh of relief, although he couldn't keep up a smile thanks to the overall body pain.

Considering that these carcasses were contaminated due to the holy-tar, consuming them wasn't an option. The shrimps might try their luck but after a few bites they will figure out that it would be a bad idea, a few swallows surely wouldn't cause instant death.

He used the time to regain a bit of stamina, but it barely had any proper effects to pain. So he stalked the area for anything useful but that's when one of the bigger looking shrimp approached.

It seemed older too and once speaking out, it's gender was easy to identify as a male. "Your majesty, we are blessed with your presence."

Although he had a strong hunch of what happened, it would be the best idea to play dumb here so this community doesn't blame everything on him. "What's going on? Why have these haddocks attacked?"

"I just arrived here. But based from what some of the survivors told, these fish had just attacked without warning. Maybe for food?" The elder specified. And within a few seconds it became easy to determine that this was the same shrimp, of which was given the title of a president before.

Happy that this specific man had a soft approach, Tim expressed. "That's too bad. But do they know where these bastards came from?"

"I'm not sure." The president answered and then began yelling something in their own language, until a few more shrimp appeared.

After a while, the same geezer returned and explained. "These enemies came from the west, but we don't know if they have a den."

"I'll find the den." The sea-disk assured and then just broke the conversation there. One would expect for him to take a bit more time to lay down a few questions, regarding just how well this tribe of shrimp was doing alone.

But no that wasn't the case. Originally he wanted to give a few minutes of his day to these white-legged ones, but now wasn't the best time to do so. A hunch inched that the holy-tar tribe was too close, that could be one of the many reasons regarding why a battle had broken out.

And with the pressure of an enemy tribe being anywhere nearby, the hero felt restless and wanted to get rid of the enemies as soon as possible. After that task is done, it will feel less troubling to lay some governing on these shrimp.

So he began heading west without even letting out a greet to anyone, knowing that these critters have no option but to tolerate. Yet it still felt rushed to meet the enemies with a sprained tail. It was his most powerful weapon and battling what can be from several to tens of enemies, without a healthy tail, would just be playing stupid.

With that thought in mind, he began looking for health raising food. But the prime problem was that he couldn't really remember a lot of such animals, his memory was still terrible. He only knew that one marine animal gave health for sure, and those were the marble shrimp!

It was difficult to find a few of them considering that his vision was weak, but one thing came in as a reminder. These shrimp seemed to prefer partially secluded places, holes even.

So with that in mind, he poked his nose in a few coral cracks. It had taken over 10 minutes before he noticed any signs of this species. And once he did, about 8 could be counted but the difference they could make all together was minimalistic at best.

Regardless of that fact, it didn't mean that such an opportunity should be wasted. So he charged forward and killed one of them with a single bite, before taking his time to eat through one. These critters couldn't go so far, which meant that there was no reason to rush and kill all of them before happily consuming.

It took a while to eat through these little pieces of prey, and even after eating all of them, the hero still didn't feel exactly full but the healthy effects were felt a tad bit.

[8 system points have been given to you as a reward for killing these shrimp]

[Total system points = 134]

[Loading your overall state...]

[Health bar = 88/110]

[Hunger bar = 14/17]

[Sleep bar = 15/39]

[Stamina bar = 9/17]

The situation was getting somewhat better, but the wounds from the battle haven't been exactly recovered, so this was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to wellbeing.

So the best solution was to go west and just hope that he would run into more of these things before submerging into another battle, he didn't want anything more than to heal the barb.

Just 10 minutes after, his eye caught something that he was getting painfully familiar with: a glowing green colour. This meant that a battle was far too close but fate worked in weird ways.

But far different from any other tribes he had visited earlier, this patch of holy-tar wasn't hidden anywhere underground but was on the surface, visible to the naked eye.

Thankfully this one wasn't large but it was also difficult to understand just how this tar got here. It was difficult to remember if he was here before, but he had passed throughout the middle of the reef a few times ~ a patch of this unholy substance should have been easy to spot.

Upon further observation, he noticed that the tar wasn't guarded by any fish, there wasn't a bit of life to be spoken of. The tar was just laying there, which made the whole situation a lot harder to understand.

Getting closer, he noticed that a meter long, slithery marine animal was laying close to the tar but it was as good as dead. At first he didn't pay much attention to this carcass but once piecing together the hints, his heart sank due to a sudden realization.