-<Star Fragment of the Ancient God>
-While you hold this, you are not subject to the effect of the 'Automatic Combat Power Reduction Debuff.'
What I had found inside the mimic was a star fragment glowing in a murky color.
Holding it curled in the tip of a tentacle, I swallowed dryly.
'Wow. This is counted as the number one cheat item across the early, middle and late game. One you had only a slim chance of getting even by paying.'
This star keeps Combat Power from falling by 1 a minute.
That alone made the fight to the death with the mimic well worth it.
GU-LP!
I swallowed this star at once.
Soon after, a change came over the status window.
FLA-SH!
Inside my body the star shone, giving off a dark red light, and right after that the drop in my Combat Power stopped.
-<Kraken 'Juvenile Form': Lantern Anglerfish Ghost Tentacle>
-The juvenile form of some cephalopod.
It has taken on a fair shape, but it is still weak and immature.
Trailing an eerie light from the tips of its tentacles, it swims the threshold of the abyss.
-Grade: ★ (1-Star)
-Combat Power: 1,033
-Traits: <Absorption>, <Basic Poison Resistance>, <Cannibalism>, <Powerful Luminescence>, <Ironclad Skin>
A new entry, '1-Star,' had appeared in the status window.
I was no longer hungry like crazy the way I had been.
'Phew.'
With the hunger gone, I felt my reason come back a little.
I had gone from a hungry pig to a full Socrates, you might say.
'Now I finally have some room to think about things.'
Leaning my back against an underwater rock, I sank into thought.
By default in this game's world, if you stay still doing nothing you come to feel hunger, and when you are hungry your Combat Power drops by 1 a minute.
The game is not titled <Raising a 'Hungry' Kraken> for nothing.
That is how much hunger means in this game.
Getting rid of that hunger would have an enormous effect on how the game would go from here on too.
'......I'm lucky.'
The countless traits and items that will appear from here on likewise amplify hunger as the price of great power.
In a game whose concept is 'With great power comes great hunger,' a hunger-blocking perk holds truly tremendous value.
'Now I should think about what comes next.'
I had gained a good perk, so my odds of survival had gone up further.
I began to think seriously about my plans from here.
'By the way, this game...... how did its story go again?'
I was a top ranker of 'Raising a Hungry Kraken' and, at the same time, a heavy spender.
I had unlocked every character, raised them to their limits and achieved their final evolutions, and the metas and morphs I had collected were tremendously varied as well.
I had perfect-cleared every single map in existence, and I had collected and tried out most of the items too.
So I knew it well.
That this game too has a story of its own, and that the world out of the water is implemented separately as well.
'......But back then it only said 'update planned.''
The game's title was 'Raising a Hungry Kraken,' but surprisingly there were many races the player could choose.
Sharks, whales, even fantasy races like mermaids could be picked as long as you paid.
According to rumor, there was even talk that land races would be added.
'Let me see. In the middle of the game, the evil god of the ancient city sunk in the deep sea revives. And it wages a great war with the humans on land, and......'
And so the world is destroyed.
I pressed a tentacle to my forehead.
'When that happens, the whole sea zone turns into hell and the survival difficulty shoots up. The deep sea gets split into zones that are too hot and zones that are too cold. Prey becomes extremely scarce and the number of threat objects grows exponentially. And when that happens, I'll have it rough as hell, even more than I do now.'
But there are exactly two places that are safe in the mid-game great war.
One is an island in the polar region, in the most remote part of the land.
The other is the 'Great Deep Sea,' in the deepest part of the deep sea. Those are the places.
I was in the deep sea now, so I did not have many options.
'The island can only be found with a map, whereas you can reach the Great Deep Sea just by going down and down. So going down to the Great Deep Sea is the better bet.'
The aftershocks of the cataclysm that breaks out in the middle of the game do not reach the Great Deep Sea.
I thought.
'If it goes by the lore I know, the deep sea will be divided into the upper layer, the middle layer, the lower layer, the deep layer and the great deep layer.'
I had to flee at least to the deep layer or below.
'......The problem is that the deep layer is swarming with powerful monsters, though.'
I had played this game as routinely as eating meals, so I knew it well.
Down below the sea is truly the very den of demons.
'To survive there, I have to raise my Combat Power. And it'd be good if I could collect more Star Fragments of the Ancient God on top of that.'
A Star Fragment of the Ancient God is a cash item and grants a variety of perks.
It does not merely block the drop in Combat Power, is what I mean.
'I'll sort out the game's story bit by bit later. For now, let me solve the problems at hand first.'
I decided to drop the complicated thoughts and focus only on reality.
Because for now, surviving this very moment was the urgent task.
***
The upper layer of the deep sea.
BLINK—
A single faint light swayed limply in the dark cave.
A baby clownfish was drawn toward that light.
In the cold, dark deep sea, food is scarce.
So the baby clownfish had no memory of ever eating its fill of anything since right after it hatched from the egg.
BLINK—
The light up ahead grew faint, then twinkled again.
The clownfish noticed that at some point the anemones around it had disappeared.
Mom and Dad had said never to go where there are no anemones.
But it was so hungry.
It felt sure there would be something to eat if it went to where that light was.
BLINK—
The light beckoned in the darkness.
Saying that if it came here, it could eat its fill.
In the end, the baby clownfish followed the light.
The baby clownfish, leaving the forest of anemones and swimming toward the cave floor where there was nothing.
At that very moment.
CHOMP!
Ten teeth appeared from above and below.
It swallowed the clownfish up in the blink of an eye.
BLINK—
The swaying light simply went out.
***
GULP—
Right after eating the clownfish, I thought.
'I knew it, I was right to pick up the light trait early.'
Had I picked up an attack trait or a defense trait, by now I would be starving, unable to find prey.
A trait that gives off light, on the other hand, is not only useful for escaping but can also be used to lure prey like this.
BLINK— BLINK— BLINK—
It would be trouble to draw in an enemy that was too strong, so I gave off light from as small a part as I could.
'It'd be trouble if a monster with a Combat Power of 1 million got drawn in like before.'
I recalled the boss-grade monster I had seen a while ago.
The giant hermit crab that had made the sunken ship its home.
I still shuddered when I recalled its huge pincers.
Hiding in a gap in the rocks, I turned my light on and off over and over.
Before long, another prey approached.
SSSSSLIDE.......
This one was fairly big.
Just in case, I hid my body in the gap in the rocks and poked out only my eyes.
-<Skull-Head Octopus>
-It is futile to expect there to be a life form of normal shape in the dark deep sea.
The appearance and behavior this grotesque cephalopod displays let one readily guess at the terrors of the seabed.
-Combat Power: 523
-Traits: <Sticky Ink>, <Squishy Body>, <Whip Choke>, <Cunning>, <Stalking>
At first I was startled, thinking some human skull was floating about.
It turned out to be an octopus that had gone inside a human skull and was stretching out its tentacles.
In the skull's sockets, where a person's eyes should be, the octopus's yellow eyes glistened.
'A Combat Power in the 500s is pretty high.'
In this small undersea cave, it was probably a big shot that farted as it pleased.
But my Combat Power was over 1,000.
The instant I confirmed that my opponent's Combat Power was lower, I pounced.
[Gluk!?]
The octopus resisted quite fiercely.
But it had a mere 8 tentacles.
Mine had increased to 10 when I evolved.
I set aside 8 tentacles to seal off its tentacles and went on the attack with the remaining 2.
CRUNCH! STAB!
My tentacles pierced into the octopus's head and destroyed its brain in an instant.
The octopus's body, which had been brown, turned white in the blink of an eye.
I chewed and swallowed the octopus at once.
MUNCH— MUNCH— MUNCH— MUNCH—
The status window shook hard.
-<Kraken 'Juvenile Form': Lantern Anglerfish Ghost Tentacle>
-The juvenile form of some cephalopod.
It has taken on a fair shape, but it is still weak and immature.
Trailing an eerie light from the tips of its tentacles, it swims the threshold of the abyss.
-Grade: ★ (1-Star)
-Combat Power: 1,556 [+523]
-Traits: <Absorption>, <Basic Poison Resistance>, <Cannibalism>, <Powerful Luminescence>, <Ironclad Skin>, [+]<Sticky Ink>
Its Combat Power had become mine, whole and intact.
What's more.
'Oh! I took the ink ability!'
This was a big haul.
I had been unhappy that a squid couldn't shoot ink as it was, and this solved it.
As a test, I tried shooting ink from my mouth.
PTOO-EY!
It felt like spitting, except that a little too much spit came out.
Sticky ink spread out into the water.
Surprisingly, the ink did not burst apart the instant it was spouted but spread quite slowly.
'So shooting it accurately at the opponent's eyes will be what matters?'
It seemed to be because it was not plain 'ink' but 'Sticky Ink.'
I stretched out a tentacle and tried touching the ink.
Sure enough, the ink clung stickily to the tip of my tentacle.
It would not come off no matter how I waved the tentacle about, which made it look just like instant glue.
'Hm. With this I've collected all 3 of the early survival traits.'
There are three survival traits that are useful in the early game.
Ink, light, hardness.
I used to call this the coward's 3-piece set.
'Early on you have to live as a coward. A kraken gets strong like crazy from the near-adult form on, but until then it's nothing but a feeble squid.'
Here in the deep sea there is no eternal prey and no eternal hunter.
When a hunter grows weak it becomes prey, and when prey grows strong it becomes a hunter.
The weak are meat and the strong eat. A world where Combat Power alone decides everything.
'I'll survive, whatever it takes.'
For now I had acquired all the early-game traits, the skills that favor survival, and on top of that I had blocked the Combat Power reduction debuff, so my odds of living had gone up greatly.
'Now, as long as I just watch out for a surprise attack when I go down to the middle layer of the deep sea......'
With my light off, I groped my way through the dark deep-sea cave.
And the moment I was about to enter a vertical shaft bored deep downward.
STA-B!
Something stabbed my side.
It was long and pointed, and sharp as well.
'......A tooth?'
It was a truly out-of-nowhere attack.