Chapter 35: Chapter 32- Adventure time!

You know what time it is?! It's adventure time!!

Since I’m gonna be staying in this ravine for an unknown amount of time, then exploring the neighborhood is obviously part of the basics, right?

When you move houses, the first thing you gotta do is locate the important landmarks in the area. For example: Restaurants (Crab gatherings), schools (Juvenile fish gatherings), stores (Adult fish gatherings), and entertainment facilities (Fancy fish gatherings)!

You should also ask around and understand how your neighbors run the community around here and inquire about the presence of people with special identities or about the different events scheduled for the future (Strong tasty fish & fish migration seasons).

Then you should try to integrate into the community by paying a visit to each neighbor’s house with a symbolic but meaningful gift. (You already figured out where dem tasty fishes are, it’s mealtime).

Only then can you consider yourself a qualified member of the neighborhood!

However, following those instructions where I am right now is a hard task, y’know? Not only is it insanely large, but it’s also filled with treacherous terrains and dangerous natural hazards.

Additionally, the ethnic groups around here are extremely diverse, each with its own culture and traditions (hundreds of different fishies to hunt).

Enough of the metaphorical speech, let’s get down to my investigation.

 

First off, I’m currently still where I found myself after leaving the cave. This area has incredible diversity in terms of fauna and flora species present.

I have some complaints though... It’s too fucking colorful, my eyes hurt!! Maybe you can visualize it better if you know that my Vision Expansion skill has gained 2 levels in the time since I first entered the ravine.

Vision Expansion widens the range of visible light my eyes can process and facilitates distinguishing between minutely different light colors more accurately. A small coral cluster that a human’s eye would identify as just light red seems to have at least 10 different colors when I look at it.

Now take this image and apply it on an exponentially larger scale. Add in some colors I never knew existed and thus don’t have a name for, tons of bioluminescent bacteria, then mishmash everything together and BAAM, you’ve got yourself a drug trip of an area!

I mean, even the marine creatures around here are clearly influenced by the phenomenon as there are incredibly bizarre-looking fish with even more bizarre colors swimming around.

This area’s inhabitants specialize in poison and camouflage, they adapted to their environment and are making full use of the advantages they’ve developed.

I wonder if I’d get some sort of headache resistance if I stay here long enough...

On another note, this is the first time I actually see any monster that resembles a shrimp down here, even though there are supposed to be plenty of them on the sea floor.

My guess is that they became a victim of the crab population boom, their Appraisal results show how weak they are. Therefore, they probably make for an easy food source.

 

Moving a fairly large distance forward, the drug trip biome changes and merges into a new biome I dubbed the mushroom biome.

As you can tell by the name, the flora over here has changed from algae and coral to giant neon-light mushrooms. The ocean’s a huge drug dealer’s den apparently.

Fortunately, this area doesn’t have as much color as the previous one. In fact, the color gradient here mostly leans toward cyan and sapphire blue while other colors are rarely seen.

Bioluminescent algae are completely absent, so all the lighting comes from the huge mushrooms themselves, but their light intensity is quite low.

Also, since large mushrooms are covering the entire sky with their caps, the minuscule amount of sunlight that already had difficulty penetrating the waters can’t even pass through, this is the darkest place I’ve ever been to since my reincarnation.

Monsters around here mainly consist of large worms hiding underground, eel-like monsters hiding under the mushroom caps, and a race of snappy sea turtles sticking to the mushroom stems.

Colossal Worms are pure physical fighters with sharp single horns on their heads, four legs per each meter of length, and poisonous stingers poking out from their tails. They average around 20 meters for an adult, but I’ve witnessed ones over 50 meters in length fighting with the eels.

Despite all of their seemingly strong characteristics, they are actually weak when compared to the eels. I could also make out the vague shape of rune circuits in front of the eels’ heads when they fire their fancy attacks in my presence.

It’s Magic! The real deal! This is the first time I’ve seen it even though I’ve been in this world for a month and a half.

I’d love to get closer and appraise them, but each one gives off an aura that’s nearly as strong as a demi-leviathan’s aura, y’know? This is a high-power-level combat area that I cannot yet mix in.

The eels seem to have large scales which are very resistant to physical attack, it’s reminiscent of the Dragon Scales skill but for physical attacks. They shoot out elemental balls from their heads and their tails end in a spiky ball that releases lightning.

Unlike those two violent races that are always fighting, sea turtles just chill around while keeping to themselves.

They stick to the mushrooms’ stems and usually hide inside their shells except for when they’re hunting, their stats are focused on defense and speed, but their offensive ability is fairly low.

Don’t let their passivity deceive you though, they are actually a gregarious race, so you should prepare yourself for the sight of the sea turning green if you ever have the genius though of attacking one.

Stealthily and slowly, I swim through this zone while avoiding the monsters around me, finally reaching the next area after a long arduous journey that took me over 2 weeks!

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I nearly starved to death a couple of times on the way, but fortunately, I found a couple of worm nests with juvenile little guys inhabiting them. They made for an extremely nutritious and stamina-providing meal albeit their taste was very bland.

 

Leaving the mushroom biome, I eventually found myself in a huge rocky mountain-like area which I promptly dubbed the dead zone.

This place’s entirely barren, I can’t spot a single plant around here at all. It’s a true example of a wasteland unsuited for life; You’d be facing a battle royale every time you go out seeking basic survival necessities.

There are no more flat sections on the seafloor, it’s full of rocky formations than contain dark spooky caves and lurking monsters.

Creatures here tend to be of the scavenger type, most of them are gregarious yet frequently engage in cannibalism to survive.

This place doesn’t have a single aspect that’s better than the other thriving biomes, but I kinda understand why the monsters inhabiting it didn’t migrate until now.

Below them, there’s a labyrinth of sands and stones. Behind them, there’s the mushroom biome with its powerful monsters. Above them, water dragons are leisurely swimming while waiting for food to deliver itself. The two sides are blocked by the walls of the ravine.

And finally, whilst still unknown to me, there should be another biome with monsters that are at least as powerful as the mushroom biome ones to block them on the other side.

They’re completely trapped, so they had no choice but to adapt to this harsh living environment and survive with their limited intelligence.

I mentally marked this area as a buffer zone between the kiddie biomes and the adult biomes until proven otherwise.

Traveling through here was undoubtedly the easiest compared to the other biomes, the rocks and caves provide natural covers which greatly amplify the effect of Stealth.

Also, monsters around here are relatively weak when put up against me. Swarm species can be instantly killed with a single spike and lone wolfs can be kited until the poison kills them, just like the water wyrm.

 

After passing through the dead zone, I reach my temporary stop, the boneyards.

The name says it all, this area is pretty much a huge cemetery filled with the remains of creatures ranging from juvenile fishes to colossal behemoths.

The reason why I call it a cemetery is that those corpses are stuck on protruding rocks which gives the illusion of them being buried under tombstones.

Although marine life remains are usually fossilized and then transformed into substances like petroleum over the course of millions of years, this place has hundreds of dead carcasses that are clearly recently dead.

You can easily confirm that by analyzing the bits of flesh and blood stubbornly sticking to their respective skeletons, waiting to be turned into meals for hungry monsters passing by.

The sea floor has started to gradually slope downwards from the starting point in this area, and the large cracks in the sea floor which led to the pitch-black depths are no more.

All the monsters in here are evolved lone wolf scavengers, with stats highly surpassing the demi-leviathan. I guess that’s normal considering the insane number of loch ness monster bones down here (water dragons) ...

My stealth isn’t working as well as it normally does here, these monsters have clearly adapted to the environment and developed their perceptions to the point where they could detect a breadcrumb from over a mile away. Sharks on Earth got nothing on them.

Since It’s impossible for me to pass through here in one piece, this marks the end of my month-long expedition.

The drug trip biome is undoubtedly the safest choice for me right now, the poisonous creatures over there can provide tons of proficiency for my poison skills although they won’t be providing me race levels due to my race restrictions.

I can then move on to the mushroom biome and grind my levels in there like an MMORPG, starting with the weakest sea turtles, then the worms. Lastly, if both my next evolution and skill shop don’t provide magic operation and perception, I’d need to risk my life and target those eels.

There are monster species different from the previously mentioned ones living around, but their numbers are negligible when considering the bigger picture in the ecosystem, and their contribution to my strength is situational at best.

Sea dragons and wyrms are equivalent to roaming monsters in games, they are present in all areas of the ravine including all stages of their evolution tree which makes them prime hunting targets.

And finally, I gotta avoid those cracks all over the fucking place in the first three biomes. They seem to have unknown depths and may even lead to the Abyss zone or some lava ducts. I mentally marked them as areas where you’d fall off the map, yeah.

What happens after this is up to fate, to be honest. It all depends on what encounters I have in the future and what my next evolution options are like.

Living down here taught me that any detailed plans might be scrapped at a moment’s notice due to some living god randomly passing by. General outlines and goals are more suitable for long-term survival.

On another note, the boneyard isn’t actually the end, it’s just that I’m too weak to go through it and reach move on to other areas.

Well then! It’s time for another long ass trip back to the drug trip biome, I really wish I had Spatial Magic already...