I'm a Stingray?

Considering how severe the overall situation was, any small hints that made sense out of this chaos were widely appreciated.

Likewise, the team slightly rushed towards the fish that was covered with such a thick-green colour.

Once they got close to the carcass, the scene was swift to become a bit anticlimactic. The naked eye could not find anything special at first, so the team had to heavily focus on this dead fish.

And after they did so, the team eventually captured a detail that could surely prove useful; well at least in terms of reaping information.

The fish was covered in some green-colour, that has been well established by now ~ but there was another detail that piqued their curiosity.

This carcass' skin began quite literally, sizzling. It seemed as if the fish was being boiled, along with termites in the same pot.

Now it was difficult to figure out how much relation, this detail had to the overall dilemma; but at least this was some basic information to start out from.

Yet overall it was still tremendously confusing. The team had many questions, but most of them didn't quite know how to form one.

Apart from Timothy who mumbled, "What the hell..."

Just a few moments afterwards, the mantis shrimp decided to add a few words of his own. He had been observing the body perhaps longer than anyone else, so he had a bit more to say.

After an attempt at word collecting, he theorized. "This green skin almost looks like holy-tar. Maybe this fish was just some weird new mutation."

"That makes sense," Dana swiftly complimented.

As the team pondered over that idea, and tried to figure out how such a small creature could bring any destruction; the scene itself slowly advanced.

Overall, this fish was quite average looking. It was just a plump fish who stretched a foot long.

Most definitely, the only special part about this carcass was the green colour it carried. So it was difficult to fully theorize what could have happened here, and how much this fish was linked to the massacre.

And now it was still difficult to figure things out, but at least Gerlach's theory slowly proved a bit more solid.

Simply because the green-fish began rapidly deteriorating! The weird substance that its body was coated in, vanquished every bit of skin and bone that the fish carried!

Within a handful of seconds, the entire fish transformed into nothing but a heavy pool of the green substance.

It was frightening to a certain extent, but it also proved difficult to comprehend. Most definitely, the team was yet to fully acknowledge what happened.

"That really looks like tar," Dana complimented once more.

Rather than focusing on how great his observation skills were, the old man swiftly moved to the upcoming topic. He inevitably managed to raise more questions, but it should prove eventually helpful.

That was why he followed along, "Indeed it does, but still. How could a small fish like that, kill an entire tribe?"

"What do you mean? Of course it can, who else could have done this?" Timothy decided to weigh in.

"Yes but if it managed to flawlessly kill everyone here, then why did it just die?" The old man pressured, and caused quite a head-scratcher.

Surprisingly, Osira had somehow caught up with these conclusions and even formed a proper theory! Maybe because it was related to battle?

However, she lightly exclaimed. "This fish was a victim too. That big green-line outside has probably hit it somehow, and turned it into this weird green thing."

"That's actually genius," The geezer lightly shouted out.

Before his compliment could have been fully pondered, he swiftly moved up towards another topic. There were too many things that they needed to figure out, so it was wasteful to stick to one lone theory.

After a few thoughts he blurted out, "Maybe something strong has unleashed this whole darkness. The black portions killed everything in its path, and the green lines have probably infected a lot of fish."

"Which would create a lot of tar pools," The black-grouper once more spoke out.

Since he felt a bit dumb right now, the sea-pancake complained. "How come you became a genius all of a sudden?"

"Just a thought. I would use the same strategy if I had that much power, and was like... evil?" Well such a sentence managed to make sense of her thought process.

But right now, it would be a waste of time to focus on her sudden bursts of intelligence.

Instead, Gerlach managed to filter out the unproductive seconds, by sealing up what theory they had in their possession.

He lightly complimented, "Our friend here is right. Perhaps the enemies came here with a different approach, after they figured out that their previous attacks did not work."

"So they have only sent their weak fish before? I lost my body to their spare troops?" Dana questioned after she caught up with everything.

"Seemingly so," The old man assured, he was quite unapologetically direct.

While the young woman fumed with strings of anger due to such realisations, Gerlach focused his attention towards the hero.

The entire group understood that he was the most powerful here, simply because he could upgrade his own body without any prior attempt or exercise.

Such a perk was truly useful, and that was what became the main topic.

The old man advised, "You need to upgrade as much as you can now. We don't even know how powerful the enemies are, it's best to face them while being prepared."

"I was thinking the same thing," The hero followed along.

And then he began looking through the system, and tried to pick which upgrade he should focus on at the moment.

Throughout the journey they had taken to get here, Timmy didn't buy any upgrades for a couple of reasons.

The first one was that he didn't want his purchase options to lock. And in order to do that, he had to complete the few system given tasks, in order to accumulate a total of thirty completed ones.

Such attempts had taken a bit of time. And when it was paired with the second reason, most of his time had been taken away.

Of course he also avoided upgrades due to health. He had broken a few bones before, so it seemed like a bad idea to buy any upgrades while in the process of recovery.

However, now he could finally buy the couple of upgrades that remained. And it was indefinitely the best time to do so!

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Author note!

Please consider voting with your power stones, as it can really affect the update-rate, and can bring occasional bonus chapters!

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