Henry’s head broke through the water surface, and he shivered when he felt the cold air touch his skin.

“Air. Finally.”

He couldn’t breathe it. But it felt good against his skin. The sun blinding him though? Not as much. Henry squinted around.

“I can’t see anything… is it the light? Why is… why…”

Henry dropped his tentacles. He turned around, breathless. Then he looked up.

“...Holy shit.”

Far above, taking nearly a tenth of the sky, was a planet.

He could see continents. He could see parts that were darker than the rest, where the sunlight couldn’t reach.

Henry strained to glean more details, but the serpentine golden light that connected this planet to the next made it difficult. Far, far away, beyond the horizon, he could see the wall of light that made up the light bridge, surrounding him in every direction.

His thoughts stuttered as he tried to comprehend what he was seeing.

A solar system with two inhabited planets. Maybe more. And the bridge of light connecting them.

Henry realized at that moment that when the whales had told him he was trapped in the Great Current, they hadn’t meant a regular ocean current. But a current of golden light that connected two planets.

“No. Fucking. Way.”

Henry reeled for a few seconds more before he snapped himself out of his daze and dipped back underwater.

He examined his surroundings for a few moments and checked his camouflage, then popped back out of the water and stared. His mind trembled.

“This is incredible.”

He peered at the horizons, and after a couple of minutes he could see a section where the wall of light seemed softer.

“That’s probably the direction Deepcaller and the others told me to go. The shortest path out.”

Henry slowly looked back up at the world above. He could only stare.

A few minutes later, after marking the direction he was supposed to travel to, he dove back underwater and followed the kelp plant back down.

He kept surveying his surroundings. It took him a few moments to snap himself back into the present. He examined this section of the kelp forest and what he saw bothered him.

“I can’t stay here.”

First of all, visibility was awful. He would struggle to find targets or lure them. He would be at risk for ambush because there must be predators around, but so far, he only saw a few more Riptides. He didn’t trust Telepathic Sense that much yet; he was sure there were other things living around.

Maybe this area was quiet for a reason. It reminded him of the spot he’d woken up in and why that place had been deserted.

So Henry swam back to his landmark, picked up the turtle shell and, after glancing in the direction he’d come from, moved on.

The thought that something dangerous was living nearby was making his skin tingle.

----------------------------------------

An hour or so later the kelp forest grew a bit sparser, and his surroundings became much more lively.

The sea floor became somewhat reefy again, with a lot of dark rocks and growing corals. Whenever there were some sandy bits, kelp stalks took root.

Riptides were here as well; mostly F-ranks, but he saw a few E-ranks.

Henry put down his turtle-home, and as he made himself into a rock something pinged near him. He looked at the shell, thinking a rock or something dislodged when he put it down, then saw a green and white banded quill.

By the time he realized he was under attack, pain flared in one of his tentacles. “Ouch!”

Henry shot ink and swam down toward the rocks. At the same time, he ordered a clone to swim upwards.

The tentacle was pulsing with pain, and a familiar burning sensation was making his limb throb.

“Damn that hurts.”

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He took a glance behind, and saw nothing. He kept his eyes peeled as he looked around, until he found a nice hiding spot under two dark rocks.

Camouflage hadn’t worked. Or at least, whatever saw him was smart enough to see through it.

Or maybe it had seen him before he began the process of disguising himself.

He looked down at the quill. It was the same as the one that had hit the turtle-shell.

Henry gingerly touched it, wincing at the pain. A glance at his health confirmed it was venomous as he saw his health tick down by a full percent.

“Damn… I did say I wanted to work on venoms and poisons, but this is a bit soon. And how is this thing doing that much damage? At least it barely got through the skin.”

He ended up disguising himself again, because that shouldn’t hurt, and finally began to relax when he saw how slow the venom was progressing. It was costing him around 1% health every minute or so, and he could feel the toxin slowly flow up his limb, but it was nothing alarming. It was painful though.

Henry hadn’t been stung by a lionfish in his past life, but from what he heard about it, this was the sort of pain he imagined it would feel like. A stabbing, twisting pain. Like someone slowly turning an uncomfortably warm auger under his skin, but as much as he could feel the pain, his high Constitution was keeping it under control. It was creating a buffer between the pain and his mind.

“I don’t think it’s barbed… so I could just pull it out. Or wait it out and give Accelerated Recovery a chance.”

Henry winced. It hurt. But his body seemed to be fighting off the venom well enough, and getting better with toxins was on his to-do list. The same way he got his first Trait through Hoard Vitality, he was positive that sooner or later he’d get something for venoms as long as he worked on it hard enough.

“A few days ago, this would have ruined my day.”

Henry suffered through the burning pain and tried to keep himself calm. He slowed his breathing, and with his eyes open, he tried to relax.

“I still have enough charges in Hoard Vitals. This is as good a time as any, I guess.”

Henry watched the outside world above. Sharks and various shoals of fish swam around. At some point a blue crab walked by, then continued on.

Accelerated Recovery kicked in at some point, and the pain of the venom slowly but surely was pushed back enough for him to stop losing health, somewhere around the 85% mark.

Then the shooter swam by. Or one of its kind.

[Lionfish (E) - Lvl 9]

Henry followed it with his eyes as it kept swimming. It stopped and shot at a grouper who suddenly changed directions. The lionfish swam after it, and Henry smiled inwardly.

“Oh buddy. You’re gonna pay for that. And you’re going to help with my toxin resistances. Congratulations, you guys are the new Riptides. A bit more dangerous than them, though.”

It was interesting how this one was just “Lionfish”. No odd appellation or variants.

Henry blinked. “This is a whole other world. With a second planet. So why are these species so close to Earth’s?”

So far, everything aside from the serpent shared the features and names of species he knew from Earth. There were variations, like the Riptides or the Bahamut Whales or even his own species. How come they were so similar?

“Is it a parallel universe thing? Are these lionfish also invasive?”

It was uncanny. “This is a question for the System.” He paused for a moment. “I should give him a name. Or ask him.”

Thirty minutes or so later, he pulled out the spine and waited for his health to fully tick back up to 100%. He looked outside, then exhaled.

He was ready to get some hunting done.

Henry swam out slowly, disguised as a rock, and headed back to his turtle-home. On the way, he kept an eye out for predators and for more lionfish. And the spiky fish were not difficult to find.

They seemed to infest these areas. Whenever a shark or anything large enough swam by, lionfish would come out of the woodwork, spines blazing, shooting venomous darts at everything that moved.

Henry made sure his shell was still safe, then found his first victim.

“I shouldn’t touch it. So Telekinesis, then… hmm. It’s very spiky.”

He examined the lionfish as it traced the reef above him. Similar to the species he knew from earth, it had spines along all of its fins. It also had extra spikes under its stomach and under its mouth which looked like a beard. Its dorsal spines extended forward to include all of its length, with the first spine popping right above its eyes.

“Damn. Okay. I need to immobilize it and aim for the side of the face. Or gills. Though… will Telekinesis stop its darts if it starts shooting? And is it shooting the ones on its body or are they being created by the Skill?”

Well. It’s not as if the venom was going to kill him.

Henry began swimming upward toward the lionfish after checking nothing was creeping around. As soon as the fish’s eyes swiveled toward him, he activated Telekinesis.

He immediately felt the feedback of the lionfish fighting to free itself.

[Lionfish (E) - Lvl 13]

Henry grit his teeth and learned that the darts were being blocked by Telekinesis; he could feel each one of them pinging against his Skill and slowly empowering the headache that was building up.

He activated the Razor and worked his tentacle around the spikes. “The upgrade to make Razor Tentacle rigid would have been useful here.”

He cut its gills on one side, and as he was cutting the next one the lionfish began shaking violently, even through Telekinesis.

Henry stopped and swam away, eyes still on the lionfish. He grimaced from the migraine, and he readied an Inkjet to shoot and run. But right before he released Telekinesis, the lionfish broke through it. A blinding flash of pain slammed into his mind, punctuated by four envenomed spikes.

The lionfish had violently detonated into a cloud of green blood and a storm of keratin shrapnel.

Henry's vision swam. His tentacles and body spasmed from the burning pain of the venom. One of the spines had gone through his stomach.

It took him a moment to regain control of his limbs. “Safety. Get… to safety.”

He struggled to swim. Even his breathing was ragged.

Henry slowly made his way home. He already felt feverish. In pain. And his mind reeled.

An exploding venomous grenade hadn’t been on his list of possible outcomes.