When I woke up I expected to feel terrible. That wasn’t the case, my health was around seventy percent an insane amount considering hours ago it had been at six percent. For a moment I suspected the whole thing to be a dream, or maybe I had fallen into a coma afterwards. I was no longer bleeding, most of my skin was healed but there were scabs, marks from the fight that proved it was real. I hadn’t been in a coma either. I had slept a lot but not any more than a day, my muscles didn’t ache and I wasn't hungry for food.

I went over to the crevice entrance and looked down, my friend wasn’t there. I dropped a few pebbles but they didn't come out, much to my worry. The leviathan would have told me if she died right? He had told us when the third one died, I didn't hear anything so that meant they were still alive...right?

Sure i hadn't known them for more than a month; we hadn't talked or even exchanged names; fsor all I knew they were some sort of meerkat criminal before this. They were the only other people here with me though, I don't know what it would be like if it was just me but I could only imagine how isolated and alone I would feel. We’d only played a few childish games together and fed each other but they were my friend and I worried for them.

I worried for all my friends. I worried that on earth Sophia would make the same mistake as Jeremy and me, that she would come here only to get eaten. I worried that Jeremy might be in danger if he was still alive. I kept hoping that he hadn’t been eaten, that he was someplace safer and until I found his remains I would continue to hope. I worried for everyone except myself, no sense worrying about a boat if it was already sunk.

There were sixty four fish that I could see, not counting the yellow Jois which were too numerous and small to count. The average amount of fish that I could spot at a given time seemed to be around seventy eight. Yeah that's what I was doing, oddly enough I'd grown to enjoy the action. There was something about sitting down and wrapping your head solely around numbers and your surroundings that seemed meditative to me, so much so that I decided to do that first before seeing my notifications. I gave up counting fish as a larger fish plunged out of the sand kicking up a cloud of it while scaring everything away.

Time to play with my menu again. One thing I had noticed with the last fight was that the notifications were a huge distraction. I went into the settings menu and changed it. Previously the notifications would come and I'd have to close them but now whenever I'm sleeping or eating the notifications will just go into the folder giving me a small buzz. That way it wouldn't distract me and I'd know when I killed anything.

With that all done I started harvesting the shifus while I went through my notifications.

Congratulations you defeated a Sensor Shifu level 2

Experience points gained: 15

Congratulations you defeated an Adolescent Sensor Shifu level 2

Experience points gained: 11

Congratulations you defeated an Alpha Sensor Shifu level 4

Experience points gained: 48

Congratulations You have leveled up!

You are now Level 1

1 skill point gained

1 stat point gained

+5 Max Health

+10 Max Stamina

Points to next level: 136

You have earned a Title: Alpha Slayer

Reward: Alpha Prize

Note: title can only be earned once.

After reading the last message a box appeared right in front of me. It looked like your typical present box, a bright red box that had a white bow wrapped around it. I took the bow undoing it and the sides fell away to show a bracelet hovering in the middle of what once was the box. I took it and the box disappeared just as soon as it had come. The bracelet was made of some leather cords with shifu teeth woven into it, it looked like something a surfer dude might have worn. I reluctantly placed it on my wrist: the lether bracelet which seemed too big for me ended up fitting perfectly snug. Once it was on I felt a bit different: more fierce, more aware of my surroundings.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

It was strange though this box must have been teleported here. I knew they could teleport people but I had thought their teleportation ability must have some sort of drawback when it came to tight spaces. From the failed logout message it was apparent the leviathan had some sort of admin privileges. If he was an admin and was in some level of control then couldnt he teleport me out of the crevice? There was something stopping him from doing that, maybe it was harder to teleport something out of a tight space than into one, or maybe he just didn't have the ability to teleport people? Whatever the reason, I was alive because of it.

The level up was a nice change, although I cared more about the fact it meant more fiddling with the menu in the ongoing war against boredom. The alpha must have been the bigger one i fought, It had to have bled out after running away. It was a shame it didnt die in the crevice, i could only imagine the meat i would gain from it.

When I inspected the character sheet I found that I indeed had more health and where the stat point once said zero was now a beautiful one. From video games i knew what upgrading a stat would accomplish, i only had to wonder if it would actually do anything. I clicked on magic which was the only stat which was at zero.

Do you want to upgrade your magic for 1 stat point?

Yes_________No

I pictured saying yes and being able to summon a dove from a hat or disappearing a deck of cards. The thought made me chuckle. The magic stat seemed to be connected to the spells I could purchase. If this was a videogame the stat would give me something like mana which would let me use spells. From what I could recall there were some useful spells like shooting ice spikes. Besides magic I could also upgrade my luck, body, or mind, i had a vague idea of what each would do if i did upgrade them but i decided not to upgrade anything untill i checked out my skills and spells.

Magic spells seemed useful but were expensive. The cheapest at two skill points was summon water. Considering i was constantly surrounded bye the stuff i doubted it would help. I could maybe wait for a few level ups but the amount of Shifus I’d need to kill would be around twenty to thirty and I wouldn’t survive that many fights without my knife. In that regard buying a skill seemed a better use of the point. That decided though i had to actually find a good skill to buy. There were a lot of water skills, the most noticeable ones being: swimming, underwater burst, small splash, hold breath, underwater combat, underwater stealth. Then there were random skills like: insight, bash, stoneworking, stone carving, communication, knife combat, harvest animals, unarmed combat.

If i still had my knife i think i might have stuck with the knife combat skill but since it was gone that left me on the fence. There was also the problem that I had no idea what some of those skills did, there was just the name and cost.

Underwater combat seemed good because it would help me stay alive longer in case any more fish came. The problem is that I can't really outfight the leviathan, It's just too strong. It would help me stay alive but it wouldn't help me get out of my current problem. Other than that no skills seemed to stand out. Stealth seemed decent, in the dead of night it might allow me to swim away, did i want to take that chance though? If the leviathan could see me in the dark then I'd be dead.

None of the skills seemed right. Since I only had one skill point I wanted to make the most of it. I thought through each option and finally decided to think on it some more later. If i was smarter i might have used the skill point to find some way out of here but im not a smart man. The best idea i could come up with is to get the stoneworking skill and dig my way out of here. That could take years though, that was even if i could use the rocks around me to dig, i would starve before i got out of here.

After I had gotten done harvesting the meat which ended up yielding me only two pieces and no whiskers, I stared outside not really thinking or looking at anything. It was sort of beautiful down here under the water, if you didn't think about the dangers that lurked all around us. As the sun was starting to dwindle I finally saw my friend again. They lurked around the outside of their crevice, staring at me. Their arm still hung limp but now they weren’t bleeding, they looked slightly better than before but noticeably still hurt. It pained me to see them like this, i felt guilty a part of me whispered if i hadnt killed the first shifu the attack wouldnt have happened, that was stupid though the shifu would have found them even if i hadnt killed the first one. I wish there was a way i could help but if there was healing magic I didn't have any way to get it.

They looked up at me and I held out my hand in a fist, the sign for us to play, they beat me three times. I won once, in the very last game we played before the sun disappeared entirely. As the light was fading and the darkness overtook us I saw them make one last gesture. Pounding their fist on their chest, they were saying goodnight.

My friend went inside their crevice, and I sat there not wanting to move. Then they were back again, they flew outside the crevice with a bundle in their arms. They seemed to fly past me in record speed, shaking their legs back and forth. I saw them for little more than a second but in that time I could see what they had done. They’d tied their shirt like I had done to make it into a sac. A sac they had filled to the brim with there eggs. Since the eggs were boyant the whole bundle would act as a flotation device bringing them to the surface faster than swimming.

I stretched my head up and out as much as I could and stared as they continued to rise. They went far, far enough that I couldn't even make them out other than the occasional glint off their earring. I wasn't much of a religious man but at that moment I prayed that they would make it to the surface and out of this hellhole. I prayed that the leviathan had left, and had given up. For tonight that it had let down its guard and wasn't here.

If there was a god he hated me, because while I was looking up I had failed to notice the shifting demon beneath me, not until the leviathan swam up past me. It wasn't swimming fast, it was swimming slow and methodical, it was just fast enough that he would get my friend but slow enough that my friend would realize he was there. He was the michael myers of the sea, he didn't need to move fast because as soon as my friend left the safety of the earth the leviathan had won. I couldn't see what happened, the only light was from a few glowing fish and what I think was the moon above, that wasn't nearly enough to see. But I did feel what happened. The leviathan initiated its mind connection except this time it wasn't just us the two of us, there was another mind there.

The fear washed over me as if I was the one that was about to die, it was a terrifying feeling because there was nothing either of us could do to stop him. Her arm was barely connected to her body. It should have been cut off but she didn't have the willpower to do it. It was the worst pain imaginable like the arm was filled with hot iron.

The connection only lasted a few seconds but that few seconds was an eternity. My friend's name was Jerl, she was in her thirties and had seven kids. She used to live on a planet called Crath until slavers invaded and sold them to the game. This all was a game. She used to work for the game to keep it running but she made a mistake along with her husband and both of them had been sent here. Her husband had been with her in the crevice when the leviathan had attacked the cliff, they’d both held onto roots that were growing in their crevice. His root had snapped, sending him flying out straight into the jaws of the leviathan. The whole time the leviathan had connected them mentally just like he was doing now, when her husband had died she'd felt it all. just like i was feeling all her emotions now. She was a person, who had a family and I just got a glimpse of that person before I heard a plea in my mind.

“No no no please,” and then there was excruciating pain as i felt my body-her body being crushed bye giant teeth as her skin and bones broke and were torn apart.

then there was silence.

She was gone, there was a hollowness where there once had been something important. Hollowness and him, the whole act shot dopamine through his system at an unnatural level. This was a drug to him.

“One,” the leviathan said to me.