I Became an Evolving Deep-Sea Creature

Chapter 2. Ascension

I felt dizzy to the extreme and lost consciousness. In the brief moment I lost awareness, I had somehow ended up 'outside.'

Yul guessed this was the outside because the water here was different from the water inside the creature.

Inside the creature, the temperature had been warm, but here it was slightly cooler. And there were faint glimmers of 'light' scattered around.

Thanks to the mysterious light, his vision finally gained some strength.

'What is this?'

There lay a gigantic corpse. Its size was impossible to estimate—a massive form sprawled like a mountain, and blood had spread around it like a fountain.

Whatever had killed this enormous creature had disappeared without a trace.

Yul moved his fins and emitted ultrasonic waves at the same time.

The echoes came only from the floor; the rest dispersed far and wide, vanishing somewhere in the distance.

'So… this is the very bottom of the deep sea!'

A chill ran down his spine.

He had seen the 'Deep-Sea Creature' trait on his status window, but he had never expected the environment to actually feel like the deep ocean.

'Could I even become human here?'

He wanted to, because he had been human in his previous life—but in an environment like this, such a goal was a dream, a luxury.

He didn’t even know if humans existed in this world at all.

As he scanned his surroundings, he saw that in the darkness, some things were glowing.

He waved his fins toward the lights and discovered countless worms of a similar species.

'Jellyfish? No… these are the same species as me!'

He instinctively knew. These were other Xenoia that had been parasitizing the body of the mountain-sized fish.

Interestingly, while their bodies were similar, each had different traits.

Some had developed fins like Yul and moved around; others emitted light from their bodies.

Those that glowed could use the light to identify objects in their surroundings.

'Are Xenoia naturally this diverse in evolutionary traits?'

Yul felt inspired observing their evolutionary forms.

The idea of generating light from his own body—it was something he had never even considered when he had been human.

Of course, it had been impossible then.

'Wait… is it okay to produce light in the deep sea?'

He recalled hearing that anglerfish use bioluminescence to lure prey.

A shiver ran down his spine as he emitted another round of ultrasonic waves.

Something appeared on the echolocation network.

'What… a human?'

He thought he saw a human figure—but no. Their lower halves were shaped like fish.

'Mermaids?!'

Is this world already a fantasy? Or perhaps it's an extreme future where they are a species of mutated humans.

Then he realized the timing of the mermaids’ appearance was suspicious.

The enormous fish had just died, and the mermaids appeared immediately afterward?

He discarded any thought that these beings would be cooperative.

Yul moved quickly, hiding his body between the cracks of the floor stones.

Perhaps they had organs capable of detecting ultrasonic waves as well. Yul knew nothing about these mermaids.

After a moment, the mermaids swarmed in.

The problem was that their appearance was quite different from what Yul had imagined.

Where a human’s eyes, nose, and mouth should have been, there was a helmet-like covering—smooth like the visor of a racing helmet, a single large scale. Their torsos were clad in a 'garment' of densely packed scales.

Men and women of all ages gathered, collecting the Xenoia that were sprawled on the floor.

-Wow! It’s glowing!

-There’s a lot of glowing ones this cycle.

For some reason, Yul could understand their words.

-Pick out only the glowing ones. Throw away anything with legs or fins.

-Ugh… this one has eight legs. Gross.

-Give me the cute ones.

However, this did not mean they were friendly towards Yul.

Squish.

The deep-sea mermaids crushed a finned Xenoia with their hands.

'I'm screwed.'

-Discard all the unusual ones. We can't even eat Xenoia, since they just squirm alive in our stomachs.

-Mom, even this tiny one is glowing. What should we do?'

-Take it. Even the small ones can be raised if they glow.

Yul realized that his species—the Xenoia—was being treated like an entire family picking clams in a mudflat, and he was the clam.

There was no kinship at all between him and them, but he could painfully feel that, from their perspective, he was just part of the harvest. Yul was prey.

-Dad! There’s one hiding in this crack.

-There's a way for that. Just sprinkle this powder.

A few Xenoia hiding in the rock crevices were drawn out.

'Even hiding in cracks is useless, huh?'

Yul checked his experience points.

[Current Experience]

[70/80]

He was painfully short. While inside a host, organic matter was everywhere, and he could feed carelessly—but now, doing so would get him spotted by the mermaids.

'Please… don’t come this way!'

But contrary to his hope, a small individual was heading straight for him.

Though young, its face was covered in scales, revealing nothing. Probably a juvenile.

And it was moving toward the crevice where Yul was hiding.

-Hmm. Is there one hiding here?

Yul chose the only option he could: sending out a long ultrasonic wave. The deep-sea mermaid flinched at the sensation.

-Huh? What was that? Was that the language of the Deep King's Tribe?

-What are you talking about?

-Didn’t you just feel that?

-Feel what?

-That's strange. Was the sound too faint?

While they paused, Yul slipped into another rock crevice.

Luckily, the mermaid didn’t detect him.

A short while later, their gathering seemed finished. An elderly-looking mermaid, with a long beard beneath a helmet, called out:

-All of this! Everything is thanks to the grace of Sea God Kaidron. Now, let us offer a prayer of thanks!

-A prayer to Lord Kaidron!

A soft, ritualistic sound spread. The frequencies were outside Yul’s range of comprehension, but he could feel something resonating far away.

'W-What is that?'

He saw an overwhelming, enormous, elongated shape.

It looked like a giant eel, but its size far exceeded the creature Yul had been inside.

'A creature of this size shouldn’t exist…'

That was his first thought.

The being called the Sea God listened briefly to the mermaids’ song, then disappeared somewhere.

And the mermaids vanished as well.

'Damn, that was close.'

How could there be so many disaster-level creatures?

Yul realized one thing immediately: he had to increase his body size. After all, he was only about the size of a mermaid’s finger joints.

After the disaster passed, this place became a paradise for the surviving Xenoia.

Yul inspected the corpse he had been parasitizing. Up close, it felt like a carp magnified hundreds of times.

The deep-sea mermaids harvesting it had stripped it clean—not a single piece of flesh or scale remained. They even collected the bones.

Yul absorbed the leftover organic matter from the fragments. The flesh that had fallen as powder wasn’t of interest to the mermaids, so it became nourishment for him.

Once he gathered all the experience points, he thought:

'I need a weapon.'

A powerful weapon capable of cutting through everything!

'A weapon!'

[Currently Available Attack Evolutions]

[Teeth]

[Tentacles]

[Spines]

'What… that’s it?'

While his sensory organs could expand rapidly, his attack options were pitifully limited.

Reluctantly, he generated teeth. They were tiny, proportionate to his Xenoia size, but at least they existed.

As soon as he selected it, his body reconfigured itself, and the teeth appeared—his first weapon.

【Stage 5 Evolution】

[Final Evolution for Current Species Completed]

【Your Current Lifespan】

[Remaining – 30 days]

'W-What!?'

He had a lifespan? He had been relieved to escape the mermaids, but he hadn’t imagined that the Xenoia species’ lifespan was already almost up.

'My goodness.'

He recalled watching a documentary on Earth: the Northern short-tailed shrew would starve to death in just three hours without food.

Xenoia, while it can evolve quickly, cannot live long.

Half-despairing, Yul noticed a glowing window labeled 'Ascension.'

【Ascension】

[Conditions for species ascension unlocked.]

Consume same-species: 1/10

Defeat a stronger creature: 0/1

[After ascension, you can evolve into a different species.]

[Becoming another species increases the available evolutions and renews your lifespan, but requires more experience points.]

'Changing species…?'

Upon careful observation, Yul realized he had misunderstood so far.

He had assumed he could keep evolving indefinitely—but there were stages.

Each species had a limited number of evolutions. Once those were exhausted, it could no longer grow stronger.

To evolve further, one had to metamorphose into a completely different species and undergo a new set of evolutions.

After completing that, one could ascend to yet another species…!

'So that’s why I’m included in the evolution rule.'

Becoming a completely different organism… Yul was on a path unlike any ordinary creature. Perhaps one day, he might even become human again.

'But that’s not something to think about yet.'

To meet the ascension conditions, Yul surveyed the Xenoia scattered around him.

All had been ravaged by the mermaid calamity, their bodies far from normal.

'Well, at least surviving a disaster makes life manageable.'

Even devouring a Xenoia with half its legs torn off filled his predation quota.

He didn’t feel guilty about consuming his own species. Xenoia were tiny, rat-brained worms with diverse traits—they weren’t even thinking of each other as the same species.

While feasting on the broken Xenoia, he spotted something else.

'A shrimp?'

If bald eagles are land scavengers, shrimp are the cleaners of the sea.

Somehow, dozens of blue-backed shrimp appeared and began feeding on the dead Xenoia.

These blue shrimp were about twice his size, and their claws looked strong.

One of them noticed Yul and started moving toward him.

'The ascension condition said I have to defeat a stronger creature.'

It was twice the size, and its claws were bigger. But Yul charged without hesitation.

He opened his sharp teeth and struck from above, aiming straight down.

He dodged the extended claws with his fins. The blue shrimp hadn’t attacked yet, but Yul was relentless.

He bit at the back of the shrimp.

The shrimp tried to counterattack, but Yul pressed from above, biting its midsection. No matter how it swung its claws, it couldn’t land a hit.

A counterattack from a Xenoia with human intelligence.

'Done!'

After finishing the shrimp, he realized he had fulfilled the conditions.

A strange barrier enveloped him, completely separating the inside from the outside.

[Ascension Conditions Met.]

[The path of Ascension begins. Please select an option.]

1. Head Deeper

-Descend to the depths of the seabed. The darkness calls you. Respond to its call.

2. Head Shallower

-Rise to higher waters to find a new path and avoid the call of the abyss.

Yul immediately chose option 2. If this place was already so dangerous, he couldn't imagine what lay in the deeper abyss.

[You have gained 13 Karma in this species’ lifetime.]

[Current creatures available for ascension based on Karma]

[-Jelly Octopus: Improve intelligence and perform a variety of strategic actions. Cuteness comes as a bonus.]

[-Carnivorous Sea Squirt: Fix your body in one spot and consume large amounts of plankton. As it grows, it devours brains and spinal cords, becoming an invertebrate.]

[Pompeii Worm: Possesses incredible heat resistance, able to survive in water at 100–120°C. Can easily find food near hydrothermal vents.]

[-Balloon Eel: Can swallow creatures larger than its own body with its huge mouth. Muscles have degenerated, but it can produce light at the tip of its tail, making hunting easy.]

'I specifically chose to go to shallower waters, didn’t I?'

Yet, why are they all deep-sea creatures?!