I'm a Stingray?

Chapter 184: Menace

After another brief overview of all surroundings that enveloped the cavern at the moment, he started to become more and more sure that there just wasn't a way out of here. This place seemed sealed shut, and that fact was anxiety raising.

The only plan he had was to swim up towards the ceiling; and then just start chewing through it. But it slowly began to sound like a bad idea. Because apart from any collapses, being possibly caused thanks to this idea. It was difficult to pick out a spot where to start chewing through.

One would think that it would be okay to start anywhere, as long as it's through the ceiling, but no that wouldn't help here. He didn't know just how long it would take to chew his way out, because the ceiling could be a meter thick here and 3 meters thick there.

It could take a long time, starvation might come quicker than the blessing to leave this place. But regardless of just how bad this idea was, he didn't push it away and categorized it as a last solution.

But that's when a loud-ish tone was heard through one side of the cavern, reciting. "We need to get the green-balls, nothing else is important!"

For a second it felt impossible to orientate himself towards just where the hell this sound came from. Illusion in this new life, was something he had experienced for an hour or so. But this time, he sure hoped that this wasn't the case.

It became apparent that this wasn't any illusion, once a handful of fish had slowly gone through the left side of the walls. Apparently a tunnel had actually survived the collapse. Upon such realisation, it was easy to figure out that these fish had escaped earlier and then used this tunnel to come back.

But the reason why these green-balls were so important, he could not figure out. It had something to do with the tar pools, and greenland sharks, that was for sure. However the rest regarding this topic, was an agitating blur.

Before any of these fish had seen Timothy, he had barged upwards to find a place to hide. He simply laid over the landslide that had covered half of the cavern's lower section. It would take a lot of effort for any of these fish to find the boy, even though he had used dirt to cover his body rather than sand.

As for bravery, the sea-pancake definitely did not lack it! But the golden topic was related to green-balls, and he wanted to lend an ear for the sake of gathering information.

Exactly 13 of various sizes had entered the cavern, the biggest one stretched just a foot long. They weren't a true threat, but big numbers could be difficult to fight off.

However now was not the time for battle. These fish aimlessly wandered around for a while, apparently looking for any other tunnels. But they were stripped out of luck as the collapse had swallowed all of them.

They went around the cavern for about 10 minutes in this manner, until all of them came to the biggest fish and stated. "All of the tunnels have been blocked, there is no way for us to get the holy-balls."

That was an interesting name, the hero almost giggled to it loud enough to blow his cover, but thankfully attained control. These fish also said numerous other things but it was a language that he could not understand.

One thing that piqued his curiosity however, was when the biggest fish stated. "Then we have to dig our way through. I know every spot where we kept the holy-balls."

Looking towards a wall that was practically untouched by the disaster, but still had faced a level of collapse, he declared. "There are some balls over there. It won't take us too long to dig through it."

The remaining tribe members weren't crazy about this plan, and weren't exactly moving around to follow the plan. So the biggest fish shouted, by now it was easy to determine by tone, that she was a woman. "Common, chop chop! Without those balls, we can't make another pool!"

And so, the entire group of fish began swimming around like spooked sheep, and took a bite of the collapse. As useless as that seemed, it was their only way of digging through the collapse.

While the sea-disk who was hidden under dirt, repeated a few times. "Hmmm..."

And then finished pondering the new bit of information, although he had trouble thinking it out with a straight face. "So these holy-balls can make tar pools interesting."

A menacing smile grew on his lips, as he thought. "I wonder what would happen if they could never use these balls."

Such a thought continued to grow as a plan, but now was not the time for action. If he attacked now, 13 fish had to be killed without allowing any of them to escape. It didn't seem like a task that was too troublesome, but those green-balls had to be eradicated.

So he lied in wait, allowing these enemies to put in heavy labour. This plan continued to give advantages, even though he didn't realise it. Even the biggest fish on the enemy's side, had admitted that this bit of work will take a while.

This ultimately meant that at the end, these enemies will be dead tired. Even though they had no souls, bodies should tire out eventually after such work. It led to a sole fact, they will be far easier to kill and won't have enough power to swim away, if cowardice once more captured their heads.

Timmy continued to wait. Everything was going seemingly fine, this bundle of fish was putting in quite a lot of work. Some of them didn't have jaws, so they were just carrying mouthfuls of dirt and rock - for the sake of clearing out the workspace.

It was going fine, at least until a desperate shout erupted from one of these enemies. "No!"