“Sex appeal, huh? Wasn’t it level zero before? I specifically remember being embarrassed about that level.” Tim followed along.
He barely understood why fish needed to have sexual-appeal levels to begin with, so it was difficult to follow along with what the system had to say. Furthermore, the offer she made wasn't as appealing as she thought, because he was still pretty young and couldn’t care less about being more appealing to other fish, especially in a sexual manner.
The system picked up on his train of thought, so she then corrected the other, she said. [You bear the body of an adult now, Timothy, that’s how growth sprouts work in this world. With that considered, certain hormones will settle in your body in the following weeks, and in order to cooperate with these hormones, you need an adequate sex appeal level, to do your bidding. Buy this upgrade now, boy, don’t leave it for later.]
While Timothy pondered over what she said, the system then also answered his first question. Her answer correlated with what she previously explained.
She said, [As per your first question, your sex appeal is at level two now, because it leveled up itself once you had that growth sprout. All of your physical attributes have leveled up, actually, as I told you before, which makes things easier for you now, things are going your way for once. You’re one purchase away from being more attractive than the average stingray, which is quite a beneficial statistic to have.]
Tim thought about this for a moment, and then he added. “Well, since you put it that way. Make me look sexier, I guess?”
[Ding,] She confirmed, [Done! You look a lot shinier now, so, full grown female stingrays will find you more attractive. It’s worth mentioning that some stingrays are known to practice homosexuality, so, bear this upgrade with responsibility. Be critical.]
Furthermore, she added. [This upgrade consumed 600 of your points, as agreed upon, Timeth. As of now, only 263 points remain in your sum.]
Tim had a hard time processing everything that the system just said. First, he didn’t understand why female stingrays found shiny guys appealing, this didn’t make any sense to him. Furthermore, he skipped entirely past the gay stingray part, because he didn’t have the mental capacity to think about that right now. His brain was overwhelmed, as he still hadn’t recovered from the pain he experienced from the durability upgrade, so he wasn’t ready for something new.
Anyway, he took all of this information as a grain of sand, and thought. “No biggie, I’ll worry about the weird stuff in the future. I’m five inches deep in sand right now, so who gives a fuck if I’m shiny or not? There isn’t any other upgrade that I could buy either, so I might as well try and rest for once. I’m pooped!”
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Then, Tim did exactly as he plotted. He fell asleep, and rested for a solid three hours, which was a lot for a stingray such as himself. His energy of course replenished in exchange, so when he woke up, Tim felt more ready than ever to face the troubles of the sea.
He plotted, “We’ll find a new home, that’s what we’re out here for. After we find a new home, I’ll pick up on the stuff that I care about. I need this sect, er… what’s left of the sect, so there’s no point in ditching them now. We gotta survive.”
…
It’s been a couple of days since the lair of the blistering mana sect got attacked, and within these two days, its ten known survivors had traveled quite a distance. They swam all the way to the other side of the reef, where life was known to be more scarce, and they ended up finding a decent, new lair there.
They believed that the north-side of the reef was pretty safe to live in, because of that aforementioned reason. This area only housed a few species of animals, and these animals were prey at best, they were not dangerous.
Hunting groups from within the sect had explored this side of the reef a few times before, so they were aware of the low-risk factors that this area featured. This new den/lair was safe, as long as a pool of anti-mana didn’t randomly erupt within the vicinity of the lair. John the barracuda, and the remaining survivors of the sect, hoped that they wouldn’t be that unlucky!
Anyway, throughout these couple of days, Tim had slaughtered and eaten several fish. These fish were smaller than him in comparison, at least by half, because he had nitpicked who to attack and eat. Tim killed fish that weren’t much of a challenge, solely for the purpose of eating them. These fish didn’t have any powers either, so the species that they represented did not really matter much.
Instead, their meat mattered more, and so did the amount of points that these fish forked over once he killed them. Points were really important recently, as he wanted to upgrade his abilities as much as possible.
Tim had gathered a few hundred points from the kills that he made these past couple of days. In total, he now had seven-hundred and twenty-five system points, which wasn’t a lot, but it was better than nothing. He had to kill a bunch of other low-risk fish in order to have enough points to buy the good stuff, but more recently, he didn’t feel as rushed to do so.
The new lair and its vicinity was less threatening, so he didn’t really feel motivated to rush with his level-ups. Tim gained about four kilos in two days, and that itself felt like plenty of progress, considering that he was quite anorexic. He felt excited!
Tim’s feelings towards progress were a bit mixed, and even paradoxical, so he didn’t really have his priorities straight, but that didn’t matter much, because as mentioned, he wasn’t really threatened here. He was safe, so it wasn’t a big issue if he slacked off sometimes!
Anyway, regarding anorexia, he had this theory, which might be a quick solution to the same anorexia he was experiencing. Tim had accumulated enough mana to fill his mana pool entirely, six-thousand whole points of them, and with that said, he felt comfortable enough to use a recently purchased item, the micro shift ability. This ability would really put his theory to the test.
He thought, “If I was smaller, I should become a lot fatter, in theory at least. I guess that it’s worth a shot, it’s worth half of my mana…”