I'm a Stingray?

Chapter 134: First settlement

"Hell yes!" The young hero hollered as he lunged away from the corpse, being completely done with it already.

[Confirmed. The new upgrades are included in the following...]

[Option number 1 = Upgrade body strength to level 2]

[Price = 60 system points]

Body strength, he had completely forgotten about this one although he heard about it in the very beginning. Strength seems important but he definitely failed to associate it with anything, be it in battle or under any other circumstances.

So to hear about it now, the prime question that rolled in his head was. "The hell could I use strength for? It's not like I'm a heavy-weight lifter."

Regardless of that question, the system had not paid attention to that raging thought and just continued with her pace of explaining.

[Option number 2 = increase personal IQ by 10 points]

[Price = 160 system points]

Hearing out such an option, his heart spiked in excitement as he hollered out. "Yes, finally! I love to be smarter."

Although such a reaction adorable, the system ignored him once more and the little stingray didn't let out a specific command for the sake of allowing the system to continue with the third and last option.

[Option number 3 = increase bodily durability by 10 points]

[Price = 80 system points]

"That's extremely cheap!" The hero pointed out after just remembering how helpful these kinda upgrades could be. And from the looks of it, purchasing the last option will make him 4 times more durable compared to the very beginning.

He wasn't great at math but the thought of buying all these options felt possible and managed to cause emotions similar to the warmth of love. The system seems to be finished with her part of the bargain, so Tim immediately asked. "Can I buy all 3 of these options like last time?"

[You have sufficient system points to do so.]

"Really? That's awesome!" At this point he began swimming in circles thanks to utter joy and everyone around thought that he had gone mad. "I'd like to buy them all."

[Calculating...]

[300 system points consumed]

[193 system points remaining]

"I'm still rich?" He questioned and for once felt bad about not understanding mathematics. "You definitely aren't a cheap bastard!"

The celebrations for today were plentiful, but that's when he thought. "Maybe it's because I had so much time to collect points..."

Before the sea pancake could continue the thought, a wave of sharp pain began overwhelming his body and felt as if thousands of needles had been bashed against his every bit of skin!

It wasn't enough to knock him out cold but this could quite possibly be the toughest upgrade-related pain he had ever experienced!

In shorter than a blink, all of the pain went away and the system announced. [Body strength has been upgraded to level 2]

Tough pain was expected right after but the system instead announced, [Your IQ has been upgraded by 10 points]

[Total IQ = 60 points]

"Oh nice." He celebrated and became happier than usual of how this upgrade went by without experiencing any particular pain, he forgot that increasing intelligence didn't cause any discomfort.

Right now he was too happy so the increased 10 points weren't really proving too effective, but they will likely noticeably perform later on.

Just when he thought that all of these upgrades were over, pain once more entirely enveloped his body and allowed the system to announce. [Bodily durability has been increased by 10 points]

[Current durability = 20 points]

"All of this is worth it." He uttered while trying to shake away what was left from the pain, only now realising that he was pushing against the sand thanks to strong disorientation.

He regained balance under a few seconds and noticed that everyone had been staring weirdly. Trying to brush it off as nothing, he swam a couple of meters higher and ignored everyone around.

The two communities had already started walking towards the reef and had covered the lands with 300 meters of either white or brown. Thankfully both of them respected each other's route and steered away from battle.

Now he had to decide which one to follow, it was impossible to follow both as they were going on different destinations although on the same reef. He didn't have bonds with either side so favouring one over the other stood as a stupid idea. So instead, personal benefits had to be taken into consideration.

One group would be heading towards the middle of the reef where the most damage was, these were the white-legged shrimp. While the lobsters would be going to the west of the reef which in some aspects is considered as below the middle.

This necessarily meant that if he went with the shrimps, it would become easy to go towards the west afterwards to check out if everyone had settled in ~ so with that in mind he decided which side to follow.

...

They've finally made it to the middle of the reef and thankfully no casualty had struck them. Thanks to this success he felt tad happy but also upset because the same sea-snake whom had requested aid for this reef, wasn't anywhere to be seen.

His plan swiftly became to seek this lady right on the other day, right now the silvery rays of the moon had partially coated the sea surface, which was a great sign for the weaker to sleep and for the predators to rise.

The timing felt perfect and he was close to collapsing for sleep and left the community to handle their selves. Right now they were all seeking places to settle in and sleep, while he had found a little crack in the coral to slip in and nap on.

This community now carried 31 full tribes, as some were completely obliterated in battle while a few tribes who ended up with too few members, joined another smaller tribe.

That fact aside, there were still over 4,000 shrimp in this community and they were all putting in effort to find a proper place to sleep and live in.

Since this place didn't have a large tunnel that could fit all of them in on spot, most tribes picked a hole or small tunnel to live into while a few tribes paired together.

This worked for the best as the tribes were spread all around, circulating in a 200 meter radius even, instead of just being compressed in a small spot. So in general, this could help the reef restore a bit faster considering that it was common for smaller beings to feast on the reef's properties be it good or bad - therefore slowly creating an ecosystem from scratch.