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Daphne charged forwards, reaching within herself at the same moment to activate Speed Boost. The increased strength coursed into her swimming antennae, she surged forward, rocketing directly at the snakehead. She fired bolt after bolt of Piercing Intent, the energy shards slinging ahead of her into the broadside of her enemy.
Unlike ever before, the bolts did not pierce the fish. Flashes of deep green energy rippled across the fish’s body from every impact of one of her bolts of Intent. The snakehead had some type of armored defense! It was not some powerful physical resistance either, but a true spiritual skill! For the first time, Daphne had met another uplifted creature, one that could use spiritual power! Daphne tensed for a death battle as she closed on the fish’s side.
It seemed that nothing could stop Daphne’s charge from lancing into the snakehead, yet the water itself swirled violently in the tiny gap separating them, the snakehead pulling away and downwards from the tip of Daphne’s necktooth while Daphne was caught up in a whirling vortex of water that sent her spinning careening above the fish.
The snakehead, which had been slow at first to respond to Daphne’s attack, turned its head back with lightning quickness and lunged towards Daphne with its mouth agape to swallow her whole. Seeking to end the fight in a single chomp.
Daphne felt the water dragging her, drawn rushing towards the gaping mouth of the snakehead. The fish could control the water! It was using the water around Daphne like an amorphous net, pulling and twisting her into position for its final bite.
Without options, Daphne desperately drew power from her spiritual core and activated Speed Boost again. She pulled frantically with her skill-enhanced antennae to drive through the clinging force of the snakeheads control, while the frictionless energy that the skill covered her with slipped her free of the gripping water. Using the combined force of the pull from the fish's and her own skill, she launched herself on a vector that swept just past the head of the fish, clearing its scissoring jaws. As soon as she passed the snakehead's eye, the clinging power of the fish’s water control skill lost effect and Daphne instantly accelerated, jetting out of the clearing and into a dense tangle of water weed.
With the plunge into the thick weed, Daphne broke contact with the fish. She began using her newest skill Water Sense to feel where her opponent was and to sense through the thick weeds a path she could use to escape from the tangled plants. She felt the maddened charge of the snakehead as it plowed into the weeds to her right. She backed up, then began dropping downwards with her necktooth aimed for the bottom, she wanted to be as low as she could. The plants grew in clumps on the bottom, mere thickets of stems vs blinding tangles of leaves and tiny branches.
The two began a game of cat-and-mouse through the weed beds. The snakehead was tearing aggressively through the upper thickets of weeds, searching for Daphne hiding somewhere in the dense growth. It began using its water control to part long sections of the weeds at once, laying bare alleyways of open water, trying to unveil her.
Daphne, at the bottom, was attempting to slowly shadow the snakehead from below, waiting for the right moment to ram the fish from below. She wanted to use her tactic that had defeated the armor on the crayfish. Driving into the snakehead’s belly at top speed, depending on the momentum and sharpness of her necktooth to force its way past the snakehead’s defensive armor skill and impale the fish in the guts. She knew if she could get her necktooth inside the snakehead, its innards would be vulnerable to the shredding destruction of Piercing Barrage.
They were oddly evenly matched as they hunted each other. Daphne lurked below, watching the snakehead lunge through the weeds above via her new senses. She slowly maneuvered, trying to keep the clumps of stems and the thickest weed between herself and the enemy's line of sight. She didn’t need to see the fish now to know exactly where it was. She could even have fired bolts of Intent at the snakehead without having it in direct view, the skill told her exactly where everything around her was, instantly.
The snakehead did need to see Daphne, but its vision was superb, it had huge eyes that roamed everywhere constantly, it could lock onto the smallest movement and turn towards it with astonishing reflexes. This, coupled with its ability to control the water, allowed it to systematically comb the weeds for Daphne. Waves of force shot from the fish and rippling alleys divided the weeds in their wake. It startled countless tiny minnows and water bugs, with the fish dragging the choicest ones into its mouth with tendrils of water.
Finally, she found her moment. She was positioned behind a clump at the edge of a wide gap in the plants, just ahead of the snakeheads path, Daphne waited as the fish passed until she was firmly in the snakehead's blind spot.
Throwing spiritual power into Speed Boost, she flung herself towards the snakeheads belly at maximum speed. She hurtled through the clinging weeds, tearing bits of leaf off in the violence of her course.
The ambush failed. The moment Daphne came within range of the snakehead, it folded backwards on itself like a noodle. The water around Daphne attempted to drag her off course, tumbling towards the fish's open mouth. Daphne raged and forced even more power into Speed Boost, dodging over the fish’s mouth once again and then angling upwards to the surface. She raced up at a steepening angle as the snakehead spun around in pursuit.
Daphne crashed through the surface like a missile, arching over the water before splashing down on her side, many yards away.
The jump through the air made the snakehead lose sight of her. She dove towards the bottom, determined to make another try, this fight was to the death from the moment Daphne watched her daughter-sister disappear down the snakehead's throat.
They began hunting each other again. This time the snakehead changed its strategy. It realized that Daphne had been lurking underneath it, so it dropped to the bottom. Daphne ‘saw’ the fish with her Water Sense, twisting among the thickets of roots and stems, it would be much harder to sneak up on it now.
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She briefly considered rising up into the upper layer of leaves to try and ambush from above, but quickly rejected it. The fish had excellent vision above itself, there was no blind spot to exploit.
In the end, Daphne adapted her oldest hunting strategy. She tried to anticipate the path the snakehead would take. Then she looked for dark and shadowed nooks to hide in and ambush the fish from the side or behind. This required her to lurk motionless while watching the fish patrol the weed forest. She also had to circle wide around to reposition herself several times as the snakehead's patrol route began to take the huge predator away from her.
Finally, luck was with Daphne at last, and the snakehead came looming out through the weeds, passing a few feet from Daphne’s hiding spot. She took careful measure of the snakehead's speed and direction. Waiting just until the fish’s head passed out of sight beyond the next clump, Daphne charged out at maximum speed. She headed straight for the thickest barrel on the enormous fish’s body, hoping to strike a mortal blow in one hit.
This time, the snakehead did not detect her charge so quickly. But still, before Daphne’s necktooth could pierce the fish’s scales, the water thickened around her and began pulling her off course. She furiously fought against the fish’s control, pouring power into Speed Boost to drive herself forward. She pierced through the fish’s scales!
Unfortunately, she had missed the vitals of the fish, her necktooth was lodged in the flesh in front of the tail, below the end of its long dorsal fin. She began blasting into the tail with Piercing Barrage.
The snakehead, however, was not a safe fish to attack in this way. Most fish cannot bend themselves in half back to their tails, but the snakehead’s long eel-like body did so. The snakehead turned backwards and lunged at Daphne, who had no way to dodge with her necktooth lodged inside the fish.
The huge mouth closed over Daphne and ripped her from its own flesh. Daphne heard loud grating noises as the sharp teeth ground themselves over the hard surface of her carapace. The snakehead jerked its head violently from side to side while rapidly popping its jaws open and closed, bobbling Daphne around into a position where it could swallow her. Daphne’s swimming antennae were pinned against the fish’s bony tongue and striated, jagged palate. She was helpless to prevent it as the fish finally got her body aligned with its throat and swallowed her.
Daphne was surrounded by the squeezing muscles of the snakehead’s throat. She quickly shot down the slimy tunnel and dropped into the creature's stomach. Immediately incredible, searing pain coursed through her as the filaments of her antennae and her setae of her phyllopods began to dissolve in the corrosive acid of the snakeheads stomach. Her gills began to melt and she began bleeding from her eroding extremities.
She gave an anguished mental scream of defiance and forced every mote of power within her core into Piercing Barrage. She began rapid continuous blasts of Piercing Barrage into the walls of the snakehead’s stomach, she forced her foreshortened antennae to lurchingly turn herself as she fired, sending blast after blast of spiritual energy needles into the soft body cavity of the snakehead.
The effect was devastating. The stomach fluid she was floating in became mixed with the blood and pulverized organs of the giant fish. She was ripping the fish apart from the inside. She continued her turn, shrieking out a mental yowl of rage as she pulped its vitals. The next blast destroyed the snakehead's swim bladder, then its liver, then its heart.
Host Daphne has defeated Spiritual Channa fish Level 3 Level UP!
Congratulations to Host Daphne for defeating a Spirit Beast of a Higher Level! Additional Skill Points awarded!
Warning! Host Daphne is in an environment not conducive to Level Up Protocol, please relocate to a stable environment immediately.
Daphne was still being eroded from the outside in by the corrosive stomach acid, although now somewhat diluted by the snakehead’s own blood and tissue. She could hardly think or navigate with her damaged antennae and the pain, but Water Sense still enabled her to orient herself to the world beyond the fish’s body. She flailed awkwardly with her crippled antennae and phyllopods, but managed to point herself down towards the fish’s belly. She began blasting with all her power, cutting a ragged hole through the stomach lining, and then through the muscle and thinner scales of the snakehead’s belly. With the fish’s demise, its spiritual armor covering its scales was no longer present. Thus it was easier for Daphne to blast through even in her pain ridden exhaustion.
With the hole shredded through the fish, she lurched fumblingly out of the fish’s belly using the stumps of her antennae. The clean water of the pond washed over her wounds, bringing fresh pain but relief as the tiny area of undamaged gill surface that remained allowed her to breathe again.
She listed to the side, unable to control her attitude or orientation with almost the entirety of her antennae melted away. Blood leaked from her carapace as her gills hemorrhaged
Then the level-up took hold.
Host Daphne Level UP!
Trophic level 4 Diet detritivore, herbivore, omnivore, carnivore Strength 4.0 Stamina 5.0 Agility 5.0 Vitality 10.0 Bonus Applied! Intelligence 2.5 Bonus Applied! Charisma 1.0 Bonus Applied! Spiritual Energy 25 Bonus Applied! Skills
Piercing Barrage Level 4
Speed Boost Level 5
Iron Chitin Level 3
Water Sense Level 1 has combined with Water Control Level 1 to become Water Control Level 3 NEW!
Water Control -this skill allows Host Daphne to possess innate control over the water flow, density, and viscosity of the water within a set sphere of influence centered on Host Daphne's spiritual core. The diameter of the sphere is determined by the skill level. Active. Upgradeable.
The Level-Up surrounded Daphne, the power took her, and she began to heal.
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