I'm a Stingray?

Chapter 20 - 5x Upgrades!

Tim found the panzer crabs he had stashed. It took him a moment to find them, since he was both hungry and disoriented, but he did succeed nonetheless. Without wasting a second, he started munching on them.

He got a belly full of crab meat in less than ten minutes, and from the looks of it, he wasn’t going to run out of food anytime soon. Tim was still pretty small, so his belly could only fit so much food. Survival felt a lot easier this way, and Tim guessed that if he killed anything as big as a shark, then he'd have food forever around here!

Of course, he wasn't so great at math, so he didn’t consider that meat would rot quickly. There was no such thing as an infinite food glitch, even in this odd world, but it was fun to fantasize about it nonetheless. Anyway, as for the panzer crabs that he had stashed between a crack of coral, he was eating and protecting this stash for a greater reason, as he remembered what the system told him about them. These crabs were precious!

Regarding them, he had a question. "System… these panzer looking motherfuckers are supposed to help me, right, I'm supposed to have my growth sprout? How much more of them do I have to eat, because I'm tired of being this small! Any motherfucker could kill me, and I'm sick of being scared of that! If it wasn't for my venomous, rotter bite, Harold would've eaten me like a pancake by now! I don't feel safe, not at all..."

His concerns were valid. Tim had a stroke of luck so far, because he ran into the right magical creatures at the right time, and stole their powers, however, this type of luck may not last forever. In every beating second, he was a mistake away from getting mauled!

The ocean was not safe, so he couldn’t count on his luck forever. Instead, he needed both physical and magical strength to survive, or more simply, he needed every kind of advantage there was. The system was quick to give him an answer, about the prior matter.

She said, [You need to be patient, Timothy. The growth sprout is a body altering, and bone toggling mutation, that isn't easy either to achieve or endure. Stingrays aren't supposed to double in size within a day, but when that happens it will be effective, and also really painful. Bottom line, if you're to encourage this growth sprout, you need to consume a lot of the alternation encouraging proteins that the panzer crabs contain, right within their meat. You have to eat more of them, as much as you can.]

"Well, this is gonna be an annoying couple of days." He sighed, "But then again, I do get hungry pretty often, so maybe I don't have to wait that long…? It's getting easy to kill time as well, cuz the hunt for points is endless… speaking of which system, I want to buy every upgrade you have for me right now. If all the pain that comes with the upgrades knocks me out, then so be it, that's good too. I'd wake up as hungry as a shark, ready to chow on more of these hard-assed crabs!"

It wasn't typical of him to think ahead, but for once, he had an idea that was quite effective. The system granted his wish right away, because she knew that this decision couldn't kill him. Since he had enough points to buy every available upgrade anyway, then there was virtually no barricade that went against his wish. Timothy dug deeper in a hole within the corals, and waited for the upgrades to unfold upon him!

The first thing he noticed was a couple of bodily spasms on his fins. Tim's muscles twitched quite a bit, so this meant that his muscles were being tampered with directly! He automatically assumed that his speed and strength were being upgraded right now, because he had thought about this upgrade for a long while, since it had been the cheapest. It was the first thing that crossed his mind right now.

Thankfully though, this upgrade didn't hurt him too much. Although he did twitch more than a stingray ever should, the spasms were totally manageable. The next thing he felt, however, was more unrelated and far more challenging!

Tim's skin was suddenly burning, to an extent where brazilian waxing would be considered pale in comparison! The pain knocked every logical thought out of his head, so he couldn’t really figure out which upgrade caused this immense pain! He was clueless for a moment.

Moments later, he also felt a couple of sharp pains within his head, and this wasn't easy to deal with, but there was a bright side to it. This was likely an intelligence-oriented upgrade, and since his head hurt because of it, it meant that he was finally smart enough to feel brain pain, directly, right on the spot! This was a new sensation for him, but a terribly painful one nonetheless.

He kept feeling sharp pains within his head, and then his headache developed to the point where it was so severe, that it managed to knock him out cold! Tim went unconscious.

This was what he wanted to begin with, as apart from being a bit of a time skip, getting knocked out, was also an escape from all of the pain that he was experiencing right now! After this point, he'd wake up possibly hours later, and hopefully experience less jittery or horrendous feelings afterwards; It was a good way to handle such multiple upgrades!

The system went on with her work, and after about ten minutes, she implemented all five of the available upgrades, successfully. The upgrades had beaten Timothy's body quite badly, but she didn't care about that right now. He was alive, and would also wake up later, as a stronger, and likely more destructive stingray, and that was all that mattered to her right now.

With that train of thought, she shamelessly left a couple of notifications for Tim to hear, as soon as he woke up later on. She went into a few specifics.

[Upgrades complete,] She notified.

Furthermore, she added. [These upgrades consumed a total of 870 of your system points, Timothy. Although the upgrade session was expensive, you still have 830 more system points remaining in your sum.]

Timothy had progressed a lot today, and this progress had been expensive in many ways, but at least starting now, he'll be more magical than ever. He could accumulate his very own, low-quality mana from now on, which could keep him busy for a long while. As for the upgrades that were yet to come, even though he may be able to buy a couple of them soon, the pain he just experienced, may have him ignore these upgrades for a while!