I'm a Stingray?

Chapter 136: Temperature

The travel towards the west of the reef wasn't exactly problematic. Now with a compass on his vision, everything became a bit easier to follow along - mainly because he didn't have to worry about following a straight path.

The texture across this west side doesn't seem to be too eye catching. In his little brain, the area here has been brushed off as normal, a typical reef.

The main 3 colours he kept seeing were blue, green and yellow. Patches of such colours often spread wide but they were often all mixed together as well. They are truly beautiful but not so special compared to the north where the entire portion was coated in yellow.

Considering that the distance stretched 2 kilometers away, it wouldn't take much time before young Tim arrived at his destination.

But now, the system came knocking with a question. [You haven't yet explored the 3 new available purchase options, would you like to have a look?]

Considering how starved for upgrades he became because of lagging behind in tasks, the answer was an immediate, "Yes!"

[Loading options...]

[Option number 1 = Upgrade speed to level 3]

[Price = 120 system points]

Speed, this is the thing that he probably lacked the most. The very speed itself helped this young one to perform tremendously in battle against opponents that were at least a few times stronger than him.

A brief idea of how fast he would become after this upgrade was impossible to imagine since it was never upgraded before, but the hype about it only arose.

Considering the success, the price for this upgrade seemed too cheap. And the sea pancake even unleashed a high pitched screech, that made it tricky to determine his gender.

But the system continued explaining the rest of the deal as usual, [Option number 2 = Increase temperature toleration by 10 points]

[Price = 25 system points]

This might be the cheapest upgrade he had ever heard of. Well the first upgrades were even cheaper but considering that he has bought several so far now, the prices should get higher - yet here it showed the total opposite.

Tim's only guess was that such an upgrade was so lacking in his body that the price had dropped down to the bottom of the well. That aside, this upgrade seems pretty fresh and at the same time confusing.

Sure temperature durability seemed interesting, but a raging question popped on his head. "What will I need this for?"

The system refused to answer and just continued, [Option number 3 = Increase EQ by 10 points]

[Price = 200 system points]

"I definitely can't afford that." The sea disk pointed out the obvious and then asked, "Why the hell does intelligence cost so much points?"

[Because it's intelligence]

This kind of answer felt a little bit sarcastic but that short sentence was totally understandable, intelligence shouldn't be cheap, those two thoughts don't go well together.

It didn't take much thought to decide what to upgrade. Surely it felt like a kick on the belly to lose all points but he couldn't stay weak forever. But even though his IQ was upgraded earlier on, he couldn't remember enough.

So he instantly asked with no shame, "Can I buy the speed and temperature upgrade thingy?"

Both of them seem cheap, and the system assured it. [Your system points are sufficient to buy those upgrades]

"Lay it on me baby!" Timothy requested with a tone high pitched thanks to excitement.

[Confirmed]

[Implementing purchases...]

That's when the young man felt a quick sharp pain on his fins, specifically the side that faced towards the sand. This pain went away fast and was replaced by a sore and restraining feeling located on the middle of the fins. It was so strong that he couldn't move them anymore and therefore comfortably landed on the sand.

[Speed has been upgraded to level 3]

[Temperature toleration has been increased by 10 points]

[Total temperature toleration = 10 points]

[145 system points consumed]

[48 system points remaining]

This definitely meant that he had no tolerance before towards such an aspect of nature, but what confused him more was this type of upgrade bringing no pain. Sure the fin pain was directly related to speed, but there was no other pain.

The soreness had let him go by now and it became easier to move the fins. Now it was time to put them to the test!

He charged forward towards the west and put in all effort to reach the very pique of speed that those little fins could provide. It took little observation to figure out that he was travelling at almost twice the speed, but it surely felt accelerating. The best guess was that he could swim at about 5 mph now when at full speed.

Little Timmy was happy about it, but a question still steered in his mind. "What is this temperature thing for?"

[The durability towards water temperature compliments water pressure endurance.]

[The lower you sink underwater, the colder it becomes. Low temperatures won't necessarily cause you health loss but your blood will slow down and you'll slowly freeze to death. That is, if you don't have the temperature upgrades.]

"So basically without this, I can die?" He understood the system just a hunch better now but reassurance surely felt nice.

[Yes]

...

Travelling towards the west became a lot easier now, it only took him an hour to reach the destination. And spotting a large patch of lobsters wasn't exactly difficult, as they covered a land mass of over 200 meters - considering that they were spread on little caves and tunnels that were imprinted in the coral.

Although brown in colour, this community was like a bee's nest. Once one of them saw Timothy approaching, half of the community became aware before he even reached the community, still hovering 20 meters away.

An old lobster approached him right away and gave out what felt like a genuine welcome, "Your majesty, we are happy to be blessed with your presence."

This felt a bit odd, especially since the elders from the white-legged shrimp community had hated him to the core. These lobsters let out a far more welcoming aura, but this seems overdone.

And managed to arouse suspicion too, so his young majesty immediately asked. "Is there something wrong?"