A school of unsuspecting fish was my next meal. After swimming around for what felt like two hours, and leaving the safety of the coral reef I’d been created in, I discovered them swarming around something in the water. I t might’ve been plankton or some smaller fish school. But there’s always a bigger fish. In this case, me.

I rose from the depths, swallowing half the school in a single bite. (What? They were small. I’m not fat!)

I didn’t feel myself grow any stronger, like I did when I leveled up, but I actively tried aiming for weak spots in the school, even though they were only worth one bite. It almost seemed to jump out at me, the way the fish were swimming. Their patterns flew through my brain, and somehow, I sensed where they were going to swim next.

So that’s where I bit down. And I definitely felt… something when I aimed for it. It was like a tickle in the back of my head. A mouthful of living creatures was torn to shreds by my teeth, and as I feasted on the fleeing school, no match for my speed, I felt my stomach finally begin to fill up. Just as I noticed my hunger beginning to wane, a message filled my screen.

Error. Your mana is full and you must spend it before you may absorb any more.

My mana, huh? I wondered as I read the notification. So that’s probably why I’ve been so hungry. The Create skill had stated that I passively absorbed the energy around me, but I assumed that would apply to everything around my body. Not just everything around…

Oh. Now I realized.

In my stomach, where my food went, was probably the remaining crystal shards of Terry. They were likely undigestable, but since his status had fused with mine, I’d assumed that he’d just… vanished.

Maybe that delicious fluid he’d leaked out had coated the inside of my stomach, and connected me to the dungeon’s innards or something.

Maybe the crystal was just a shell that the dungeon core lived within, and the actual core was the fluid, which I’d absorbed with Consume.

I don’t know, and I don’t honestly care all that much.

What I did care about now was that my stomach had been absorbing the pieces of chum I’d been feeding it, and instead of digesting it like normal, it had seemingly been converted into mana.

Handy, I supposed. If Terry had to wait and passively absorb mana from the environment around him, he probably did a lot of waiting. I, on the other hand, could just eat some fish and recharge. Good to know. Wonder how much mana I have in total, though… Hmm...

Unfortunately, my musing didn’t present another prompt, as I’d hoped it might’ve, so instead, I tried applying the strange tickle I felt in my mind to the problem, twitching my head uncomfortably as I tried to flex a new mental muscle. The feeling was similar to when I once taught myself how to wiggle my ears, but so much more difficult. I floated there for a while, learning which of my actions seemed to make it “move”.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

I can almost compare the weird sensation to what I imagine it must be like to grow a third arm, learning how to control it, you understand? The tickle felt something like a hand, almost like it needed something to grab, or maybe to hold.

I offered the mental hand--Charlie, as I’d now begun to refer to it--my desire to use the Create skill I had. A sudden warmth bloomed in my chest, as though I’d stoked the fires of imagination, upon which I might forge great things.

In fact, that last part almost seemed as though it were spoken by an inner voice, deep within me… I shook that thought off. Too much had changed today. First I died, then I woke up as a fish, and then I gained dungeon core abilities. I wasn’t about to start hearing voices, too.

I refocused my attention on the warmth within my chest, closing my eyes and calming myself. I suddenly understood so much more about my skill. Create didn’t just suddenly spawn things into existence. It wove pure magical essence into complex structures, forcing the particles which made up this world to obey.

But the particles weren’t simply made. They were guided by the energy to morph as I saw fit. I knew that if I wanted to, I could experiment with their structure, and turn them into various creations. It’s just… I would have to have an inherent understanding of whatever I wanted to make and its biochemical makeup. That… wasn’t going to happen.

Likely, I would have to convert a resource with an equivalent mass in order to use Create. That much anybody could understand. But there was something else… As I dove deeper into Create’s limitations, my mind erupted with knowledge.

If I still breathed air, I would’ve been breathless as the information flooded into my brain. This new world… it was truly, just… miraculous. As much as I hated Grant for my fall from the ladder, if I was in a coma right now, I hoped I’d never wake up.

I’ll create… Hmm…. How about we start with a Kelp Tree?

After I realized I needed to fully understand what I wanted to create for it to be truly successful, I wondered then why I had the blueprints and creatures in my status. As soon as I had, their information bloomed in my mind. Handy.

With merely the intent to create the Kelp Tree, as well as the boiling sensation in my chest, green energy began to flow out of me, floating out of my mouth and into the water around me. My vision turned viridian as it washed over my head, and I could feel my hunger return.

Ah… It needs a designated location and a resource to be converted. Of course. But…

Would water work? Could I just feed the spell with the ocean around me? That seemed cheap! I closed my eyes again, seeing an image appear in the darkness. A teal outline of my body floated in the black, the same green energy forming a bubble to surround it.

This was the area I could place the new creation within. Certain sections of the bubble were greyed out, like over my eyes, mouth, and… Oh yeah, I have gills now…

I picked a spot on my forehead, just above my eyes, so I could see the structure form. Opening them, I glanced upward to see the vibrant green mana becoming denser and denser, forming into a cylinder, which then stretched outward from my forehead, branching off into little pieces.

So yes, I can use water as a resource. And that’s probably ridiculous, but who am I to complain? Thanks, water gods.

As the shape solidified into the Kelp Tree I’d intended to leave floating in the air, I could see it was bigger than I expected. The core cylinder of the shape was maybe as thick as a human’s arm, but the leaves that crew off it were flat and wide, swaying gently in the water, like real leaves in a breeze.

And now that I thought about it, I noticed it. It almost felt like a breeze was, in fact, blowing through the water. It was cool and comforting, but invisible if I looked for it. When I inhaled through my gills, it flowed into me, and when I let out the breath, it flowed out. The sensation was calming, and for the first real time since I’d woken up as a fish, I smiled.

By forcefully creating a structure in an area it cannot normally grow, you’ve gained direct access to its sense of mana.

Congratulations! You have unlocked the passive skill Mana Sense: Divine Wind.