Chapter 6: 6. Eat or be Eaten that is the question

Maxim was exhausted and hungry, mostly hungry, he was also having a light headache due to the number of times he smashed into ice. 

 

The thirty-three Maxim's head-shaped holes are a telltale of what happened.

 

He didn't improve much if at all in terms of control but he had a good time and familiarized himself more with his new body, so that's always a plus.  

 

He could now aim his 'dash' where he wanted with 4 chances of success out of 10, the same problem goes for the amount of power he put behind each of them.

 

Let's be real. He wouldn't have become an expert with the control of his powers in less than a day anyway, it takes time, patience, diligence, and dedication. 

 

And he is a newborn, a powerful one with very poor control and a low understanding of what he was doing and capable of.

He moved to the side with a flap of his flippers and reoriented himself to look down. Making bubbles with his snout as he pondered where he should go eat, just to decide that it didn't matter.

The pup swam downward in a random direction, being attentive to any feedback from his senses, his right ear flicked when he heard something far below him… fight? 

 

He didn't know how but he knew it was a fight. His heart beat harder in his chest at the mere idea.

Too curious for his own good he followed the origin of the sound, he swam seeing glowing jellyfish-like creatures that floated around all attached together in a long rope. He devoured some of them.

And they tasted like sea water so pretty much nothing to him since it's for him the equivalent of air for humans and those jellyfish weren't exactly filling either. But he liked the texture, it was a subtle balance between gelatinous and crunchy.

He didn't encounter a lot of life forms after that as he scared most of them away with his mere presence, he wasn't very discreet. He didn't know how to be and if he was concealment wouldn't be his fort.

He could see but it was relatively bad, his slitted eyes were faintly glowing yellow making it somehow possible.

He swam a bit more until he was in front of a large area where streams of lava and molten rock flowed in abandon, it was way bigger than the one he explored yesterday.

Maxim knew he was deep but exactly how much was unknown to him.

Currently, he was in the Midnight Zone at 3300 meters (10 827 ft), and even his first meal outside was in the Twilight Zone at more than 800 meters (2 624 ft) deep. 

Maxim lacked experience with this kind of thing, he did do scuba diving but this ain't the same thing at all and he didn't have any landmarks to tell how deep compared to the surface he actually was. 

 

Nevertheless, he could tell he was deep and he will always know what level of 'deep' he currently is at but that doesn't magically translate into actual meters in his brain.

 

 

 

 

The water was drastically increasing in temperature and acidity, both factors not affecting him as he got closer to the volcanic area. He could see better here and what he saw made his eyes gleam in anticipation.

 

 

In front of him were two giant hermit crab-like creatures, those were a sub-species of hermitaurs, and as the same as their cousin, they are monsters classed as carapecean.

 

Their counterparts were mostly land dwellers making them unique as they inhabited the depth of the sea specifically this kind of volcanic environment if put in any other they will die off pretty quickly.

 

 

On both of their backs was a makeshift shell to protect and hide their soft abdomen, those shells were made of volcanic rock, bones, precious metal, gemstone, and halfway solidified lava to hold everything together.

 

 

Especially made by the hermitaurs to fit them and only them.

 

 

'Are the things on their back really made with lava… oh their bio-energy is reminding me of fire...? So they are different elements, not surprising. And are they fighting for territory or something else?', Maxim wondered, swimming a bit higher to have a better view of the fight. His stomach still demanding food.

 

 

The bigger of the two carapecean slammed its left pincer at the smaller only for the heavy hit to be blocked by the pincers of the latter whose four legs left trails as he was violently pushed back.

 

 

It went on, both relentlessly attacking and defending, dodging and jumping with their four spiny legs, it was a bit like a dance. They were almost evenly matched, the bigger one being slightly stronger but slower than the smaller one.

 

 

Too absorbed in the ongoing battle below he didn't notice a large angler fish-like beast with small blunt metallic spikes covered with gold, they were all over its chubby but flat body and it was slowly swimming behind him.

 

 

It had a lure glowing orange at the end of its illicium(rode) that started between its two protruding eyes, below was a giant but closed maw it was taking nearly half of the fish's body, and hundreds of small recurved needle-like teeth were hidden inside, they kept preys inside.

 

Its maw when opened would be big enough to fit five average grown-up human males, placed on top of each other.

 

This fish was related to the gobul, a leviathan class monster, normal gobul are usually found on land close to water sources or in swampy areas. 

 

This variant would be named Faraday Gobul in the future by the Hunter's Guild, their diet is primarily composed of pigrons even if anything that moved and could fit in their oversized maws was food to them. 

They weren't picky eaters, food was rare down there after all.

 

Since they considered pretty much anything moving food and didn't care about anything else, Maxim looked like a small pigron and would fit in its mouth, so he was considered food. 

Even if Maxim's smell and overall presence were unnerving and unsettling for some reason, prompting it to not do what it has planned in its simple mind. But... the problem was gobuls didn't particularly used their mind too much, so...

Maxim stared intensely, entirely focused on the ongoing climax of the battle, just behind him the gobul was ready to gobble up its unexpecting prey.

 

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'Ah the bigger one won since he took the other pinceeeer… oh shoot.', Maxim's trail of thought took a totally different turn as he finally took notice of the orange lure, his mind directly arriving at a very unpleasant possibility.

Said possibly was instantly proved to be more than that when he felt himself being violently sucked in backward with most of the water surrounding him. His vision spun as his body uncontrollably ragdolled.

 

 

Everything happened so fast that he traversed the mouth, throat, and esophagus without truly comprehending what was going on.

And his confused mind only caught up to what happened when he was already swallowed and in the bottom of the bigger fish's stomach.

It was nearly empty of water as it was filtered out, the stomach already starting to compress, having for objective to crush him into pastes.

 

His belly touched the slimy mucosa of the stomach that shifted below his small but stoky bulk.

 

His dorsal fin, flippers, overall back, and most of his gills were in the open air. He could barely breathe since oxygen levels were insufficient.

He didn't panic nor was he scared for his life, only righteous fury burned in his heart while great disappointment for his stupidity and carelessness was on his mind. 

The fury rapidly surpassed every other emotion as he absolutely refused to die again and certainly not like this. 

He was beyond pissed.

He heard a gurgling as the fish's stomach started to produce gastric acid, it was completely ineffective on Maxim's scales and skin, only serving to piss him off even further. 

 

Adding that the smell of it was extremely unpleasant to his sensitive nostrils, making his muzzle scrunch up in disgust.

'You eat me I eat you.', the pup coldly thought with animosity and anger clouding his mind. His emotions were starting to spiral out of control.

He was at the same time thankful that it wasn't a fish that eat with more toothy and crunchy options, he should have... he should have been more careful and aware of his surroundings.

He could have died right there, as dumb prey for a dumb fish wasting his second and surely last shot at life. This realization didn't help his increasingly chaotic emotions.

His eyes glowed an intense yellow in the darkness, he crawled with his flippers, it was a mix between a sea turtle and a seal, it was not graceful at all mind you. He found it was easier than he anticipated, it was natural even.

He crawled in this manner to one of the rapidly approaching fleshy walls of the gobul's stomach, he opened his jaws full of sharp teeth and did what they were best for, bite, shred, tear and rip apart flesh.

 

His first bite on the stomach was a bloody mess as it immediately gored a hole through the organ, he didn't stop at just one bite. He was hungry, and ravenous, and watching the earlier fight only increase that.

It tasted like raw meat since it was well, raw meat, the taste was heavenly to his palate,e, and the blood, oh the blood. The coppery taste was the icing on the cake.

The copious amount of blood splashing on his head and body made it even better. 

The blood gushing out never directly touched his eyes as he had translucent pairs of scales protecting his eyes from any potential hazard and danger. Something he took notice of but his mind was too preoccupied with something else to care.

 

Outside the gobul was pleased with the small but first meal it had in weeks.

 

 

Its moment of happiness was cut short as it felt an uncomfortableness in its stomach, which rapidly turned to intense pain and then pure and unaltered agony.

 

 

Confused the gobul believed it was being attacked and he made the hundreds of blunt spikes covering its body point outward. 

 

Each then started to emit purple arcs of electricity that connected one spike to another, this repeated hundreds of times.

 

Forming a protective electric veil around the distressed gobul.

 

It also in its panic started to swallow seawater to inflate its body making itself bigger, the problem is...

 

Its stomach was getting shredded apart.

 

The water certainly inflated the fish as intended but not the way it normally should. But the gobul didn't stop as it didn't know any better, in too much pain to realize the folly of its earlier action.

Maxim inside the Faraday Gobul could swim again, water filling his gills energizing while the fish insides were flooded with seawater.

The pup took advantage of this by directly swimming to the other organs, for example, the liver.

He was comparatively small like a newborn baby to a grown-up human which means when he moved through the organs, he made them shift around and damaged them by not a small amount.

He was uncaring for the grievous internal injury and hemorrhage he caused in his wake. Why should he?

 

 

Maxim didn't feel the electric field outside due to the insulating property of the bigger fish's skin and scales, which is also one of the reasons he didn't feel there was something wrong when it was right behind him.

 

Even if he was way more careful he would have still had a high chance of having a similar mishap. Inexperience with everything ongoing is the major cause and his senses aren't foolproof either. 

 

Nothing is. What permit his electromagnetic sense is mainly located around his muzzle for example. He was exhausted too, even if that's his fault here for letting himself be taken at the moment.

The gobul howled in anguish as it finally realized what was causing everything, sadly for it, it was too late. Way too late.

 

 

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