Daphne awoke to herself in darkness. She was surprised to be alive.

Her mind slowly reminded her of the past, her victories, her failures, and …her death.

Somehow, she was alive again, awake but confined. She could not feel her own body beyond a slight pressure surrounding the whole of herself.

She was blind.

She could hear the sound of water rushing in waves, and the roar of fast-moving water over stones. The world was immensely louder here than her natal pond.

She felt for her spiritual power.

It was there!

Weak, dimmed, a tiny glimmer of what she had had before her death, but she had a core.

She called on this spark of power and reached out with the senses of Water Control.

Her first impression was constant movement. All the water was in motion, the force of it distorting the chained connections each water molecule made with every other. The movement of the creatures within the river were dictated by the constant downstream flow. It was so different from the pond. The flow gave all things an orientation. Where a creature stopped, where it moved, all were dictated by the force of the water itself.

Here, water wasn’t a placid, passive medium to move through, it demanded attention. If you wish to go upstream, you must fight the river, if you wish to cross the stream, you must fight the river. Only yielding to the river allowed you to move without fighting the flow.

System Detection of favorable environment for Second Life.

Leave Resting Egg? Yes / No

Daphne immediately chose to leave. A swirl of power flowed from her core, pushing outwards against the confining pressure she had felt. After a short time, a sudden freedom, she could feel her body again.

She was floating in a mixture of mud and water between the two halves of her old carapace. She was much reduced than before her death.

She reached out with Water Control, examining her surroundings. Her old dead shell was buried under almost a foot of sand, gravel and silt deposited during the breakup of the river ice. She manipulated the water into a searching tendril, pushing a small tunnel apart through the sediment.The tendril broke through to the open water. She then began expanding the walls of the tunnel, pushing them outwards until it was large enough for her smaller body to pass.

She slipped out into the open water of the river.

System Detection of Hostile Predatory Organisms- System suggests utilizing Host Daphne innate ability Epigenetic morpho-plasticity

Daphne realized that her necktooth was gone, her fierce tail spine!

She agreed to the system modification immediately.

Spiritual power surrounded her again, she felt the familiar stretch and pull as her carapace extended, forming her beloved necktooth and tail spine. She was armed again!

She began swimming along the bottom, fighting the current, moving upstream through the turbid dark water. She reached out with Water Control, looking at her surroundings that were too dark to see with her eye.

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There were huge fish here! In every direction, behemoth fish drifted along the bottom, lazily turned with their noses facing upstream as they flapped their tails to hold position in the current. Daphne had never seen such fish. Many were ten times larger than the greatest of the snakeheads she had ever killed.

A part of her urged her to charge in and slaughter one of the huge fish, to feast on its flesh and level-up. She could hardly contain her desire to hunt.

The realist side of her recognized that she was tiny, severely reduced from her former strength. She was not ready to tackle these giants yet. She needed time to gain her strength. She needed smaller prey.

As she continued upriver, the current became stronger as she moved out of the deep pool and into a narrower and shallower section of the river. Here the bottom was covered in gravel and large stones instead of loose sediment.

The current was lessened along the very bottom, and Daphne hugged the surface of the rocks, maneuvering between them as she reached out with Water Control, seeking suitable prey. Her range was dramatically shrunk. When she was the Queen Tyrant of her pond, she could feel all the pond at once in its entirety. Here, she had just twenty feet in diameter that was open to her senses.

It was enough, she found a sculpin lurking between the rocks ahead of her. She drifted up behind and above it. Deliberately staying far enough above the fish that she was hidden in the turbid water. When she was in range, she fired a single shot of Piercing Intent into the sculpin’s brain. It gave a quick jerk, and then rolled over, drifting into the current.

Host Daphne has defeated a Mesocottus haitej fish Level 1

Daphne latched onto the fish and began carefully and slowly disassembling it with water control. A slow stream of tiny fragments of the sculpin’s flesh streamed into her phyllopods where she grasped them and feasted. The sculpin was delicious, it even had a tiny reservoir of spiritual power! This was a welcome surprise, almost none of the fish in the pond held any spiritual power at all. Leveling in the river should be much more productive.

Daphne began to search the bottom for more prey.

After a time, she realized that there were far more sculpins amongst the rocks than she originally thought! They were using their tiny reserves of spiritual power to enhance their camouflage and stealth! She began to very carefully scour the bottom in front of her, she learned to detect the sculpins by the movement of water over their gills using her Water Control skill, rather than feeling for their shapes. Their own skill disguised them as part of the rocky bottom.

Daphne began to hunt sculpins systematically as she pushed upstream. From time to time, larger predators would swoop overhead, hunting. Daphne took care to move slowly and hug the gaps between the stones.

She began to smell a powerful scent in the water, a delicious odor that promised abundant and nutritious food. The smell wafting in the current had a richness, a complexity that surpassed anything she had ever tasted before. She eagerly swam towards it.

Soon, she saw a mass of large fish all traveling purposefully upstream in the water above her. Many of them also gave off a trace of the same scent. She had come upon a summer run of spawning salmon. She began to follow the trail of fish, realizing it was easier to follow the huge group of fish than to hunt for the odor trail.

She turned up a large tributary stream with a large group of the salmon, they charged upstream, streaming into the shallower water en masse as they surged for the spawning grounds.

The fish came to a huge gravelly bed and Daphne watched as the fish charged around, males scrambling to fertilize eggs that the females deposited in troughs dug in the gravel.

The water was thick with the scent of spawning salmon. The females churned up the bottom, throwing eggs from earlier-laying fish up into the water again. Daphne began snatching the passing eggs out of the water and feeding on them. They were magnificent, succulent and fat with the flavor of the sea. It was intoxicatingly delicious. She feasted on the drifting eggs, observing the frantic spawning of the salmon.

Around her, sculpins, grayling, carp, and minnows darted everywhere, snatching eggs from the water. It was a feast for all the native fish in the river. Bears stalked the banks and stood in the stream, lunging for passing salmon and eating till they were engorged.

Daphne began to notice many of the salmon looked listless and exhausted. The trial of traveling upriver and spawning had taken all they had. She slowly idled over to a lurching female hundreds of times Daphne’s own size. The fish was pointed partially downstream, leaning against the gravelly bottom and breathing listlessly.

Taking a cautious approach, Daphne slowly moved to just above the salmon’s head and then charged forwards, stabbing her necktooth into the base of the huge fish’s brain. The salmon gave a brief lurch and was still. It lacked the energy left to struggle against death.

Host Daphne has defeated twenty Mesocottus haitej level 1 and one Oncorhynсhus Level 2

Spiritual Energy reserves now sufficient for partial Level Restoration

Begin Restoration? Yes / No