Chapter 546: Sandy's Personal Aquarium

"I feel bad for them. Imagine just living your happy life in the water, and then suddenly, this naked monster comes down and forces you to stab them several times as you try to get away in fear. But the monster refuses and just keeps smashing his body into you in a ridiculous display of self-harm. The confusion when he then just leaves with several of your spikes in his chest must only make it worse, too," Sandy said in a highly judgemental tone.

Jake was sitting on a jagged rock sticking out of the deep ocean, completely naked. Well, naked, as long you didn't count the many quills sticking out of many places on his body. He ignored Sandy as he meditated, feeling the venom from the many quills course through his body. He purposefully did not eliminate it right away but slowly integrated it into his body.

He had gotten super lucky, and they had come across an area filled with sea urchins. No C-grades were around, but thousands of D-grades dwelled below, and Jake had jumped into the water with glee once he discovered them. Sense of the Malefic Viper had detected them even from a distance as they were all highly toxic and had powerful neurotoxins on their quills. From how the venom felt, Jake assumed these were all weaker versions of the C-grade he had gained the Lifeblood of. Probably also weaker variants. However, what mattered was that their venom was similar in nature.

This meant Jake had just stumbled across a living treasure trove of potential ingredients. It was also a great way to feed Palate and allowed him to get more familiar with the Lifeblood of the Sea Urchin Emperor. Consuming the actual liquid was only worth it in small quantities due to the diminishing return of Palate when eating something new. Yet he still wanted to become more familiar with it, so these lesser D-grade variants were perfect.

There was the negative side effect of Sandy being bored of waiting. Jake had spent about a day here at the many sea urchins, and he knew Sandy was getting more and more impatient. It was weird that a C-grade was so much in a rush for no reason, but Jake assumed it was just in Sandy's nature.

"I told you to find a solution then," Jake said in return, briefly exiting meditation. "As long as the sea urchins are here, we stay here. At least for a while longer."

"You just wait!" Sandy said with indignation. "I will show you!"

"Do just that," Jake said teasingly. "Back to meditation."

Sandy tried to say more, but Jake blocked the worm out. He opened a single eye and saw Sandy wriggle in anger up in the air, making him smirk as he reentered meditation. The poison still flowed through his body, and he absorbed it all over the next hour or so before diving under the waves again.

The Sea Urchins were all large porcupine-like creatures and were pretty much just oversized versions of the pre-system animals. The sea had many parts where it was not as deep, and this was one such place as they are close to a few islands, meaning he could make it to the seafloor only by diving a few hundred meters down.

Jake happily swam down to a big crowd of the animals, and annoyingly enough, they now no longer attacked him on sight but instead just hunkered down and erected their spikes. Not to worry, Jake could make them attack him anyway as he just barrelled into one and got himself impaled. Well, okay, not impaled, more stabbed a bit.

Each sea urchin's main body was about the size of a small two-person car, with their spikes a bit longer than that. Their sizes did vary a bit, and there were some variants here and here with different forms of venoms. Jake wanted the ones with white tips on their quills while avoiding the ones with blackened quills. He did try to get stabbed by them a bit, but they just had necrotic poison, so it wasn't that exciting.

Mind you, he hadn't gotten stabbed on purpose the first time around. These sea urchins hunted as a flock, and the first time he dove down, they had all attacked him. Their tactic was to form a barrier of themselves all around him and slowly incircle him before stabbing their prey to death.

Jake reckoned this was also the cause of their mixed toxins. Neurotoxins would make it harder for the prey to flee, while the necrotic poison would slowly whittle down and kill it. It was a good strategy, and Jake could even see C-grades die when a thousand sea urchins decided to attack. Especially larger C-grades would find themselves injected with ludicrous levels of venom.

However, this strategy of theirs quite frankly sucked against small targets. It was clear that Jake did not fit in the underwater meta where most powerful creatures were massive, and those of small size moved in huge groups. He was a singular small person, so only a handful of urchins could prick him at once. If all of them struck him at once, Jake could not come out of it alive simply due to the sheer physical damage, but as things were, they were simply not a threat.

This time around, Jake spent a few minutes down there before coming up again and integrating the venom. The last time he went down there, he killed a few to consume their Lifeblood, but sadly the system was annoying in that regard. He already knew that when a creature died, its remnant Records would be infused into select parts of their bodies. If it was weak enough, sometimes no item at all would be born, but in most cases, something would come out of it. The most usual thing was a Beastcore, and so was it with these sea urchins. If they had a Beastcore, the Lifeblood would be useless, and one of the spikes could only get infused, making it into great material for a spear but shit-tier material for Jake. He even had one of them not result in an item at all, indicating these were low-tier creatures. He could kill enough and get some blood, but he didn't feel comfortable killing hundreds for only one or two to give him Lifeblood.

Hence why Jake continued this process of diving down, getting stabbed, and going up to integrate it.

The next day Jake also began to forcefully extract some venom from some of them for further testing. On the third day, it appeared that Sandy had had enough.

As usual, Jake was sitting on his rock and meditating as the worm swept down and pushed him hard, sending him splashing into the water.

"Stop ignoring me!" Sandy yelled, finally getting Jake's attention.

"What?" Jake said as he stopped ignoring the worm and got out of the water. "Didn't you say you were fine with waiting a bit longer yesterday?"

"That was yesterday!" Sandy once more yelled madly. "Also! Since you are not killing these things, do you need to stay here?"

"Well, I gotta go where they go," Jake answered with a shrug. He had taunted Sandy for a reason and hoped he had gotten through to the worm.

"Great!" Sandy said, suddenly sounding a bit happier as Jake got a feeling he had indeed managed to get his point across.

Sandy flew past Jake and down into the water as he saw the worm suck up seawater like a vacuum. Space distorted and warped as the C-grade went further down until finally, Sandy reached the seafloor where all the urchins were. The vacuum then got stronger as a whirlpool formed, sucking in hundreds of tons of sand along with several hundred of the sea urchins.

Jake caught on quick and smiled. "I only need the ones with the white-tipped quills."

Sandy kept sucking for a minute or so more, eating close to a thousand of the D-grades, all of them between level 150 and 170. After being done sucking up, the massive worm closed its mouth for a bit before opening it again, spitting out large sea urchins like they were watermelon seeds. Jake counted them all and saw nearly nine hundred had been tossed out.

The worm then swam up and also chomped down on Jake, sending him back to his usual cave-like stomach. Outside, Jake saw Sandy land and lay down on the large rock Jake had been sitting on earlier.

"So..."

"Ugh..." Sandy groaned. "I think I ate too much. My stomach hurts... give me a moment."

Jake patiently waited for ten or so minutes. Throughout this time, Sandy sometimes spat out some water, some of it containing a few quills here and there. After these ten minutes, Sandy once more rose up and took to the air.

"Better thank me for making a water stomach," Sandy complained.

"No one asked you to," Jake chuckled. He had just heavily implied she should do something like this.

"Coercion through boredom is literally torture, and how is torturing someone not forcing them?" Sandy retorted.

"Rather than discuss the definition of torture, how about you explain what you did?" Jake asked curiously. In all honesty, even after all his time, he had no idea how Sandy worked.

"Fine, fine," Sandy agreed. "I spent these last few days figuring out how to make a bigger stomach. You see, I thought that since I can eat you and get stuff when you do the alchemy, why can't I eat other creatures and maybe get something for that? Even if it doesn't work like this, I can keep them around, and you can stop being so boring."

"So I can go there somehow?" Jake asked, unsure how the setup of Sandy's stomachs worked. His Sphere of Perception looked outside of Sandy while inside, only revealing the room he was in. He assumed this was linked to him being unable to see inside of people's bodies, even with his sphere.

"Yeah... two seconds," Sandy said. Two seconds passed before, off to the side, and a hole appeared in the floor. It looked like a manhole without the cover, and Jake saw water within.

"Is this a portal?"

"I guess you can say that," Sandy answered shruggingly. "I don't really know. I am just going by feel, you know?"

Jake did know and decided not to argue further. Jumping into the manhole, Jake felt like he was in the ocean again. His sphere instantly spread out, and Jake was taken aback. The stomach Jake was usually in was about the size of a large room, but this place put any aquarium on pre-system Earth to shame... shit; it put all of them put together to shame.

Jake's sphere could fully spread without him being able to see the bottom. Swimming downwards, he soon got a scope of things, and Jake estimated the entire stomach was around a kilometer deep and spherical in shape. The bottom was covered in the eaten sand, with the walls the usual rock-like surface Jake's stomach had originally been before Sandy turned them transparent.

"This is larger than I thought," Jake said. "How many of these can you make?"

"A few, max," Sandy answered. "It drains quite a lot of energy if I want to keep the environment healthy. I also probably shouldn't keep those things in there for too long, though they do seem docile enough."

"Probably shouldn't, no," Jake agreed. It was good they were solid two out of ten in the smarts department. The one point was only given due to their teamwork. Jake wasn't sure how to feel if Sandy began abducting more intelligent species.

Jake quickly left the water stomach again and entered his own stomach. The manhole that was there remained to now give him easy access to materials. Sandy, in the outside world, could finally fly forward, albeit a bit slower than before, as the worm got used to having eaten so much stuff.

As he looked at Sandy fly, Jake could only begin to imagine what kinds of things the Cosmic Genesis Worm could do in the future. How large spaces could the worm have if they were already this spacious in C-grade? Would an S-grade Cosmic Genesis Worm have entire solar systems within its stomach?

The thought was insane but not out of the question based on what he had seen so far.

Shaking his head, Jake returned to the task at hand. He was getting better at using neurotoxins with every passing day, but more than that, Jake was now finally forming an idea of what to do. The sea urchins had given him quite the inspiration as Jake had asked himself a question... what if, instead of trying to subtly inject the neurotoxin into the Ashen Phantom Devourer over a long period of time, he would do the exact opposite?

What if he bombarded it with ungodly amounts of neurotoxin all at once in an attack it could not avoid? For him to, metaphorically speaking, attack with a thousand smaller doses all at once?

The Fallen King focused on regenerating the severed leg as it slowly regrew. Reforming it was far more difficult than for a normal biological lifeform - if he even was one - as the Fallen King did not possess any Vitality. Or vital energies at all, for that matter. His body was not truly flesh and blood, after all.

He had fought this Ashen Phantom Devourer dozens of times by now. Every exchange ended with the other Unique Lifeform fleeing after taking significant damage. Every time he came out on top. He was winning the battles... but... losing the war.

The Fallen King had yet to fully recover for weeks now. He still had a few golden orbs remaining to recover himself, but those had been running out fast too. His issue lay in the fundamental difference between himself and the Ashen Phantom Devourer.

While he had to heal using time, the Ashen Phantom Devourer healed by being true to its namesake. It devoured other beasts in the surrounding area and dove beneath the earth to consume those who resided in the subterranean world. As a result, the other Unique Lifeform recovered slightly faster every time.

And it knew it, gladly fighting the month-long battle of attrition.

Losing a leg had been the biggest loss so far he had taken. The Fallen King had attempted to conserve resources and ended up losing the leg in the process. He knew he should have used his golden claw, but a moment of hesitation had nearly proved fatal.

Neither of them had shown any trump cards either. They simply consumed too much energy, and both knew that they risked leaving an opening. There were also some good things, such as the King now far more easily dealing damage to the Ashen Phantom Devourer and Telekinesis was now solely a defensive tool. What truly mattered was striking the soul of his foe.

Despite all this, the King was not overly worried. Alone, he would perhaps lose after a long time. Even that was uncertain as he still had his most powerful attack remaining, which should give him a high chance of at least ensuring mutual destruction. Again, this also assumed the King would even die if he was killed, considering his peculiar relationship with the hunter.

Not that the Fallen King wanted these fights to end just yet. Neither of them did. Killing the Ashen Phantom Devourer was one goal, yes, but a more important goal was proving himself superior to the other Unique Lifeform. A goal only slightly surpassing enjoying fighting a foe of equal level able to fight on equal footing with himself.

Sadly, the fight would end in due time, as the King did have one more weapon to deploy. He was a King, after all, and while he was not a subject, the little hunter was certainly someone worth having assist you.

He had spoken to the little witch already, and he was more than prepared. In fact, he was excited to see what the little hunter had cooked up.