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Initiate Daphne - Level UP!
Diet
Detritivore, Herbivore, Omnivore, Carnivore NEW!
Trophic Level
3
Strength
1.0 Stamina 1.5 Agility 2.0 Vitality 2.3 Intelligence 0.075
Charisma
0.1
Spiritual Energy
3.0
Skills
Piercing Intent LEVEL 4
Speed Boost LEVEL 1
Once again Daphne was enveloped in light as she molted, her body grew larger, her neckteeth and tail spine lengthening and sharpening. She was now much larger than any of her sisters could ever hope to be, Daphne had grown beyond them, she had become something new.
Not only had her body changed, her attitude had as well. She was no longer content to drift in the water column chasing the patchy clouds of greenfood as they drifted across the water. She had found a new way to live, a new way to feed herself, hunting. She resumed her search for Chaoborus worms, combing the bottom for their near-invisible shapes.
When she discovered another one, it reacted differently that the Chaoborus she had fought previously. It flinched away, jerking out of contact from her and attempting to wriggle its body into the muddy bottom. It feared her. She had grown, it no longer recognized her as a prey, but as a threat.
It was correct.
She fired into the Chaoborus, the force of the needles passing through its soft body sending it tumbling to the side. Once shot was enough to dispact the Chaoborus, but Daphne continued to hit it with multiple strikes of Piercing Intent, intending to perforate the worm as she had been. This time, her upgraded skill did not just perforate the worm, but tore it to shreds. Fragments of pulverized Chaoborus began floating aimlessly through the water.
Daphne realized this and ceased fire. She positioned herself in the midst of the cloud of pulverized worm and began to filter the water with her phyllopods, harvesting the shredded worm flesh as food. It was even more delicious than her previous hunting method, she tasted the solid flesh of another creature for the first time. This was the best meal she had ever had!
She began actively hunting Chaoborus worms, shredding them with Piercing Intent and eating them. The light grew dim and Daphne realized that she could ascend to the surface and graze on the greenfood, but she realized that she enjoyed the hunt more. She would remain here at the bottom and level up by eating tasty Chaoborus.
Level up. Daphne realized that she had hunted and eaten far more Chaoborus this time than she had taken to level up before. Her mind was not capable of doing real mathematics or even counting, but she vaguely understood that her previous level up had required a certain number of worms to level, and that she had now killed far more and had not leveled again. Were the Chaoborus too weak?
Perhaps she should try and hunt something else.
She swept across the bottom, moving faster now, looking for another species she could test herself against.
There!
She saw a narrow tube pointing upwards from the mud, water jetted out from the end of the tube in slow pulses. Something was there, breathing in and out the water. She approached it slowly and aimed for the very base of the extended tube. She fired.
The tube retracted with a lurch into the mud. A cloud of mud billowed up and Daphne was momentarily blinded. She continued firing darts of Piercing Intent. As the muddy water dissipated she saw what she had been firing at reveal itself. A pond clam, shut tightly in its shell, partially uncovered by the force of the Piercing Intent she had fired down at it. With the water clear, she fired again. The needle of force hit the clam’s shell squarely, but the thick hardened shell was more than hard enough to resist. The clam’s defense was too strong.
Daphne moved on, scanning around for possible prey. She noticed that the bottom in this region had a gentle slope to the west, if she followed it upwards, she would no doubt find the edge of the pond again. There were plants there, and backswimmers to fight! She turned and traveled up the slope towards the shallow zone.
There were soon traces of plant life, roots emerged here and there from the mud, and flotsam of dead leaves lay on the bottom. Daphne could taste the decaying plant material in the tiny particles her phyllopods filtered from the water. She saw a lumbering shape on a dead stem ahead of her, something moving slowly along the length of the stem, ponderous and rolling.
She approached slowly, using just the current provided by her phyllopods. She came closer and realized it was a snail. Another shelled creature, she was disappointed. She fired several shots at the snails fleshy foot, but the normally slow mollusk yanked itself into its shell with an audible snap, rolling off the stem in the process. The snail was completely protected. Even the entrance of the snail’s shell was covered with a solid operculum, she fired a few times at it, but the defense was stronger than she could overcome at this level. Once again disappointed, she moved on.
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Only a short distance further and she came into the first areas with active plantlife growing. First there was simply a coating of long filamentous moss-like algae that began to be seen growing across the mud, then she came across thin stems of aquatic plants, reaching upwards into the brighter light. These plants grew thicker and thicker as the water became shallower. Daphne drifted forwards, scanning for danger, and for possible prey.
She saw flitting motion in the thicket of stems, a school of tiny fish, where hiding there, darting in and out in close proximity to each other. Daphne slowed, drifting forwards on an extremely gentle flow of water from her phyllopods, antennae folded to her sides.
The fish were tiny minnow larvae, still feeding from an attached egg yolk on their bellies, they must have hatched only hours before. Daphne allowed herself to drift slowly forward, creeping into range of the school. She turned her body around the stems with caution, careful not to startle the school.
Finally she was in range, she used her phyllopod jet to hold herself stationary in the water and took careful aim. The tiny fish were moving too erratically to aim specifically at any individual, so Daphne aimed for the center of the mass.
She fired several shots of Piercing Intent into the loose ball of fish. The fish exploded outwards and away the moment the shots reached them, fleeing in blind terror from the attack. They quickly regrouped and swam away to the next thicket of stems to hide.
Her shots had not been ineffective; however, several baby fish were drifting lifelessly amongst the stems. Two more were crippled, jerking spasmodically in attempts to flee, but their swimming ability was compromised by their injuries. Daphne targeted the crippled fish and dispatched them with a shot aimed at their heads. With her upgraded Piercing Intent and improved aim, she was able to pierce directly through their bodies with a single shot.
Initiate Daphne defeated 5 Carrasius hatchlings Level 0.5
There was no level-up, but the notification indicated that these counted. Daphne moved closer to the nearest pair that had sunk to the bottom. She began firing into their bodies repeatedly, piercing and shredding them into a cloud. She settled into the water over this cloud and filtered as much as she could out of the water with her phyllopods. The flavor of the fish was exquisite, better than the Chaoborus flesh by far and away. It was her new favorite food.
After she could not profitably gain any more food from the first two fish, she repeated the process with the next, which had drifted a short distance away into the base of a nearby clump of plants. She blasted the fish corpse and began feeding. She was becoming extremely efficient at rapidly firing Piercing Intent from repeated use of the skill.
As she turned away from the finished fish, she noticed that the school of baby Carrasius had returned to the first thicket where she had ambushed them. They were even picking desultorily at the mangled skeletons of their siblings Daphne had left there. She was delighted. If they wished to provide her with more targets she would oblige them.
She repeated her hunting strategy from before, moving even more slowly this time, concerned that some of the tiny fish might have grown wary of her shape approaching them. This was a valid concern as the fish became agitated almost as soon as she came into range. She fired off a single shot but was only able to cripple two of the hatchling fish as they darted away. She quickly killed them and started in for another meal.
As she was filtering the pulverized fish from the water, she mused about using these plant stem forests as her new hunting ground, the flavor of the Carrasius hatchlings was magnificent.
Without warning, she was struck from behind! Her carapace groaned as an enormous crushing pressure was brought to bear on the rear section of her body.
She was attacked! A crayfish had grasped her in its claw, she was going to be crushed to death if she could not free herself quickly. Already the edge of her lower carapace had a chip, and the stress of the grinding pressure was approaching the failure limit of her chitin.
She attempted to retaliate, her tail spine was capable of releasing Piercing Intent. She had never used that ability until now. She desperately began firing needles of intent blindly from her tail spine. Without the ability to see her attacker she had no way of aiming, and the shots missed or bounced harmlessly off the hungry crayfish.
It had been attracted by the scent of pulverized flesh and followed the odor trail through the water to her original ambush site. Her distraction had allowed it to sneak attack her as she fed.
Realizing that the Piercing Intent had failed, Daphne tried her only other ability. She pushed all her available power into a Speed Burst while hauling anxiously at the water with her swimming antennae. Her body shimmered with a silvery pearlescence and the strength in her antennae increased ten times. The effect of the skill reducing the hydrodynamic drag also made her carapace slippery to the point of nearly frictionless. She slipped from the grasp of the crayfish’s claw with a sickening crunch.
She was free, but not uninjured. Her tail spine was gone, and her lower carapace had a severe crack in it. She was bleeding into the water as she shot away from the crayfish at incredible speed. She was safe.
Daphne however, was uninterested in being safe. She had determined on a course of constant attack on her enemies. If she was crossed, assaulted, injured? She would repay that insult a hundredfold or die trying. She was determined to never turn and run again.
She turned back to search for her enemy.
Her path back was slow, as she attempted to feed as she travelled, regaining strength and allowing her body to seal its wounds, at least to stop them from leaking blood into the water.
In time she returned to the area she had been attacked. The crayfish was no longer in the clump of plants, had she lost her enemy?
No, it was there, further down the slope, feeding on the corpse of one of the Carrasius hatchlings she had killed in her first attack. She had not found or eaten two of them.
Daphne assessed her opponent for weaknesses. She had greater range and maneuverability, but the armored defenses of the crayfish were difficult for her Piercing Intent to penetrate. She did not think she could easily kill it by kiting from the distance. She would need to fire into it’s body at point blank range to be sure of a kill.
She decided to attack from above and attempt to pierce the carapace with her necktooth. If she could break through physically, she could then fire into the crayfish’s undefended body.
Slowly she moved into position above the crayfish, moving with care using her phyllopod jets to maneuver. The crayfish had terrible vision, but its eyestalks allowed it a nearly full hemisphere of visual field. It had virtually no blind spots.
Once she was exactly above the crayfish, she steeled herself and activated Speed Boost. The strength in her swimming antennae returned and she launched herself straight down at the crayfish, her body shimmering with the magical drag reduction field surrounding her. She aimed directly for the center of the crayfish’s cephalothorax, inside was not only the animal's brain, but all the crayfish’s internal organs were housed there.
The crayfish detected her in his motion sensitive vision, but she was moving at such incredible speed that it had only enough time to begin raising its claws in a threat display before her attack reached it.
The force of the impact was concentrated on the very tip of her super-sharp necktooth, and the fierce lancepoint lived up to Daphne’s pride in it. The necktooth smoothly pierced through the tough chitin of the crayfish’s carapace, sliding half its length into the animal before coming to a halt.
The crayfish lurched upward in pain at the blow. It instinctively tried to flee from attack, violently curling its tail underneath it and shooting backwards in the classic backwards swimming technique of decapods.
Daphne responded by beginning a series of rapid continuous blasts of Piercing Intent into the body of the crayfish. Sharp needles of distruction rocketed through the animal's body, ricocheting off the inner side of the creature’s carapace and spinning to do even more damage. Within seconds the crayfish’s internal organs were nearly liquefied. The crayfish lurched to a stop and shook spasmodically. Daphne was still impaled on the animal’s back.
Initiate Daphne defeated Cambaroides dauricus Level 2 Level UP!