I'm a Stingray?

Chapter 17 - The Murder Spree

Over the course of a couple of minutes, Tim gathered all the courage he needed to approach this odd and massive cloud. Sure this approach made him a bit nervous, however, he gathered a bit more courage, as he kept insisting that this was a golden opportunity, one where he could reap a lot of system points!

If these sardines were easy to kill, then he could just slip between this school of fish, and stab them left and right with his tail. This could turn out to be his greatest, point-farming opportunity yet, and he was aware of it! Tim also noticed a hint of suspicious, green dots within the cloud as well, but decided to ignore that for now, as he didn’t want to back down.

He wasn't given much time to think about that either, as now the cloud was approaching him by itself, rather than the other way around. This sudden approach intimidated him a lot, but he wasn't even given any time to think about swimming away from the approachers, no.

A few seconds later, he was surrounded by the same, speedy cloud! At first, he had it difficult to comprehend all of this commotion around him, but he eventually calmed down, because he wasn’t threatened within this school of fish whatsoever. A few small fish bumped into him, but they didn’t really hurt him whatsoever, as this massive group seemed pretty coordinated.

Tim eventually attacked one of the fish. He charged towards one of them, and bit its head off. These silvery fish were a few inches long, each, so it wasn't really a challenge to kill them.

A moment later, the system announced. [Congratulations, you just killed an alefin, rotter sardine, and won 5 system points as a reward. If you kill nineteen more of them, then you'll also be rewarded for completing a system-given task, the one which is about killing sardines.]

Furthermore, she added. [If you consume these sardines, their oil will make you feel very drunk. However, in this drunk state, your bites will become beyond venomous! You'd be able to force your living targets/enemies to rot, just by biting them! The intensity of this magical ability, entirely depends on how many sardines you consume.]

"Holy shit!" Tim exclaimed, "That's borderline necromancy… and I know exactly who to use it on! Watch out, Harold, I'm coming to take my home back."

Tim got overly excited afterwards, for two reasons! The sardines couldn't hurt him, so he felt like a god here, and could hunt any of them freely. That aside, he could also and finally exact his revenge!

He didn't want to get drunk now, because he wanted to kill as many sardines as possible, as he couldn’t miss this opportunity. However, as far as goals were concerned, he was set towards one direction, and knew what to do for the rest of the day. With that considered, Tim stopped plotting those little plans of his, and then got into work!

He charged at everything in sight, just to rack in as many points as possible! Upon every kill, the system kept spamming him with information about the points he won over. This part was a bit annoying, especially since he couldn’t mute the system, however, he was still having the time of his life!

This murder spree made him feel high, Tim was feeling a cluster of mixed emotions that no tiny kid should ever feel. He raged through the cloud, for a whole, half an hour, and throughout this timespan he killed fifty-two sardines! Such an amount was insane, but yet again, it wasn’t enough to buy every available upgrade there was right now. He had to work even more to buy them all.

Anyway, Tim completed one of the tasks that the system gave him, regarding killing more than twenty sardines, and this in turn came with a reward of fifty points. However, the cloud of sardines outswam him by now, so he couldn’t kill any more of them. That huge cloud went away as quickly as it arrived, and for now it was floating across the huge reef he called home.

That latter part was alarming, but it was unlikely that they were going to the reef just to live or feed there. Odds were that these sardines were just migrating, if fish even did that.

Tim didn't think about it much, and instead, he celebrated the points he won over, throughout this time-bracket. The system went into details about it.

She first said, [You killed fifty-two sardines, and as a result, you accumulated 260 system points from them. Aside from that, you also get 50 points as a reward, because you completed the associated task that I gave to you, regarding the sardine hunt.]

Afterwards she added, [In total, you now have 470 system points at your disposal.]

"Now that's badass! It's definitely a way to end the day." He celebrated, however, the end of the day was nowhere near.

It was still a few hours after the crack of dawn, so he could use the rest of his day to get some other work done. He didn’t want to buy any upgrades yet, because he was too far from home… or at least, too far for comfort.

Instead, he wanted to seek out the few sardines that were littered across the sand, around the shallow area near the coral reef. He wanted to get drunk and then hunt Harold afterwards, but then he remembered that he could do another task here, before going all stupid in the middle of the morning. The task was rather simple.

The deep sea was right behind him, so he decided to swim towards it, and sink as deep as he could. He won plenty of points today, yes, but he wouldn't mind winning thirty more of them, just by swimming three hundred meters deep under the sea. Tim's fins were still flaming with power, so he could get down there within minutes!