I'm a Stingray?

Chapter 87: Returning grace

Motivation becoming his best friend now, although we can't say that it was lacking up until this point - Timothy avoided to charge straight forward against the tiny hole and instead just slowly swam near it.

With a prime idea in mind, he began to test his jaws along the tiny rocky hole, making sure it's biteable before risking to break those little jaws in an attempt to break through this natural prison.

After about 15 seconds of testing, he figured out that it might not be such a bad idea to chew through this thing, although it won't necessarily be easy.

Finally putting the idea into motion, little Tim began crunching his two and only jaws against the barricade, felt them sink in just a quarter of a centimeter. Such statistic convinced the boy to give just a little bit more power against this rock, which aided to bite a centimeter deep.

It felt weird at best, especially since this procedure reminded him of the holy protection - a.k.a coral he had to crunch and eat, that wasn't the best experience consumption-wise.

And finally after a bit more effort, the determined little sea critter managed to find what the other side of this small hole had to offer. Well his jaws found it, those little eyes are yet to see what's on the other side.

Spitting the chunk of pure rock out, he took a peek at the hole and noticed that now it has expanded to being 3 centimetres wide. Not exactly the biggest but it will do the trick considering that this young one was only 7 centimeters, he is yet to grow into a bigger killing machine.

Successfully squishing through the hole along with a couple of scratches but thankfully not any notified health losses, Tim finally managed to grasp a better peek at just what this new section contained.

Well...

It too was just mild-green in colour, fairly confusing considering the fact that no light source made itself visible. Everything just shone in the same colour, his little stingray vision couldn't spot anything different even if there was anything to notice.

But, one particular fact that didn't fail to strike the boy stunned, was the architectural values of the place he made it through with that vicious little bite.

This place is huge!! Possibly the biggest natural structure he had ever seen before. Here, he could see what seemed to be several tunnels, spread randomly here and there - fairly complimenting the overall perplexion this 32 meter wide structure had to offer.

The walls themselves are mostly coated with rock, if he bothered to look closer, small patches of dirt would be visible here and there.

Now a lot of options to escape this place had made their selves mildly transparent, but it was a bit more concerning once grasping the idea that this place felt more like a maze.

A handful of new tunnels are through his vision just here and the bottom itself didn't yet make itself clear, so there is no gurantee that there aren't more tunnels if he swam deeper.

Taking these options under careful thinking, he managed to come up with one plausible idea. "I should swim deeper before getting into any of these tunnels, maybe I can find where this green light is coming from. Besides, I have time."

And putting that idea into motion, he began to swam down, it took 30 meters of travelling to find a whole new field of view. At this point, what was a blur before was rather clear now.

Although tunnels became a lot more scarce down here, the ground itself became an option to explore, giving a hint that this large tavern was also more like a ditch due to being about 50 meters deep.

Aiming to explore the ground, one thing finally managed to capture his vision - fairly standing out like a big red zit, and it was what Timothy hoped with all of his being, not to find down here.

"I was just high, I was just high, I was just high..." he repeated while swimming closer towards the eye sore, trying to bend reality just to avoid handling this situation. "It can't be!"

What stood in front of him was a patch of thick, and yet crunchy green coloured tar. Worse yet, whatever was the life of this unholy substance, managed to cause bubbles ~ underwater!

Deciding to accept his fate, Timothy cited. "Great, the holy tar is here and the hidden den is just half a kiloemte away."

Thinking it over a bit more, thankfully using a few more sprinkles of reason, he came to a thought. "That old hag isn't here, and even if she was, so what? I killed her twice already and can do it again!"

He indeed began feeling cocky, but yet carried still a little hit of doubt, so a self made idea was pitched. "Maybe I should bring this place down."

But when glancing at the walls, he understood how bad of an idea it was. "I can't spend all day here biting rock!"

Yet he couldn't ignore this holy tar, it was definitely a problem, especially when gazing at size. He remembered the first patch of holy tar being small but this one... it stretched nearly 10 meters wide!!

It's absolutely massive for a stingray, whatever use one can yield out of this spot, it surely would be a lot which in return made this a problem for the whole reef if one decided to become an enemy.

Slowly swimming away to keep his distance, Timothy asked. "System, do you have any idea what the hell this is?"

[You don't have the option to hear out such information, but even if you did, I don't recognize this substance at all.]

After a minute of thinking and resisting the urge to complain, he cited. "Let's hope that crazy old hag doesn't find this tar, I don't know how this works but I'm assuming it would be bad."

And afterwards began swimming higher, reaching for the closest tunnel this place had to offer.