[END OF BOOK 6] Chapter 701: – Tale of a doting sire |
Several years earlier
The young ones had fallen behind again, forcing him to stop and wait. This had been a problem ever since his accursed spawn hatched from their eggs and had only grown worse after his recent evolution.
His offspring were still at Orange, so they swam slowly and tired often. If it hadn’t been for their mother, he would have abandoned – or probably even devoured – them a long time ago, but it wasn’t easy to find females of his species in these waters.
Then again, she was starting to feel like as much of a liability as her spawn. She was only at Yellow, so she wasn’t much faster than them, yet still required a lot of his food. Even mating with her had grown… inconvenient due to the size difference.
He had considered getting rid of them and starting over, but finding a Green female would be even harder than waiting for this one to evolve.
So frustrating…
Everything was made even worse by his grumbling stomach.
Something large moved in the distance, catching his attention. It was difficult to make out the details through the water, so he cautiously stuck his head out of the surface to examine it.
It was colossal.
He wasn’t sure what exactly it was, but he had seen others like it.
They were fast, tasted horrible, and were typically guarded by small creatures capable of firing strange lights from their limbs. The bite-sized animals were much tastier than the object that housed them, though it was difficult to extract them, and there wasn’t much meat on their bones.
Attacking the giant object for so little food typically wasn’t worth it, unless it happened to break and sink by itself. He had only seen that happen once, though he still vividly remembered that night’s sumptuous feast.
That was when he had discovered the dark secret of the tasty animals: they couldn’t survive long underwater. Once submerged, they seemed to enter a panic, doing everything in their power to resurface. They clearly couldn’t breathe underwater, they were slow and clumsy swimmers, the ocean dulled their senses, and even weakened the strange attacks they fired.
It appeared that he had gotten lucky again. The giant object was sinking slowly, and the creatures had already started jumping off and swimming toward the nearest island.
He had to make sure to get one before the other predators in the area ate them all. He considered swimming to the submerged object to dig out the ones still trapped inside, but he knew that he’d never reach them in time. He was quite far, and there were dozens of powerful creatures much closer. His only hope was to wait in the fleeing creatures’ path, hoping that a couple of them would last long enough to deliver themselves into his maw.
So that was what he did.
His mate and spawn had caught up at some point. They groaned their complaints when he left them behind once more, but he didn’t care. His priority was to fill his belly. Depending on his mood, he might even leave his family some scraps once he was satiated.
To his horror, the tasty creatures got devoured one after the other, making him doubt that any would reach him. There were too many hungry predators around, and the creatures had to swim way too far in the hostile environment.
Most of them got picked off long before they neared him, but a few remained – just enough to rekindle his hopes.
Lurking patiently beneath the surface, he was about to pounce at the closest creature the moment it passed over him, when another male of his species slammed into him, trying to fight him for his meal.
How dare he?!
The challenger was also a Green, but a smaller and clearly hungrier one. Who had given him the guts to try?!
Biting back, he easily tore out his rival’s throat, spitting it into the depths. He wouldn’t have turned down the nourishing meat on any other day, nor would he have ignored a Green core. However, there was no need to fill up on the foul taste of his own kin when he could experience the unique flavour of the small creatures.
Shifting his attention back to his target, he realized that it was gone, the water where it should have been painted red. Yet another predator had probably ripped it apart.
Who?!
Who was it this time?!
His blood boiled as he searched for the perpetrator. Once again, it was a male of his species, albeit a much younger one. No. Not just one. Three. They had torn the tasty animal into just as many uneven chunks, each greedily munching on a piece.
How dare they?
HOW DARE THEY?!
Lunging at the closest predator, he opened his maw wide before snapping it shut around its torso. The young one was only a fraction of his size, its soft scales and bones not standing a chance against his tempered fangs.
Seeing the young one’s severed head spinning in the water, he thought that its now-lifeless eyes looked somewhat familiar, but this was a mystery that he didn’t care enough to solve. Moving on to the next little thief, he repeated his actions, adding even more blood to the water. It was only when he was about to slaughter the third that he was interrupted again, this time by a charging female of his species.
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
This one, he recognized, having swum by her side for a very long time.
His mate wasn’t looking at him with her usual fear and reverence. Her eyes were bloodshot as she tried to claw out his heart in blind rage. She had to know that her actions were about to get her killed, but that didn’t seem to stop her.
It was only after butchering her and the final younger male that he realized what had happened.
The three smaller predators who had just stolen his meal had been his own spawn. Of course. They had probably caught up to him while he had waited in ambush for the tasty animals, foolishly attacking his prey while he had been distracted by his rival.
Good. They wouldn’t be missed. Losing his mate was the only shame, as he would have to go through the trouble of finding another, but she would have never forgiven him for slaughtering her hatchlings.
Lifting his eyes out of the water, he tried to locate the tasty animals again. He had to eat at least one. The giant objects rarely sank, so he might never get another chance to taste the unique flavour of their cores. Unfortunately, there weren’t many left, and they had already swum quite close to the island. He would never reach them in time.
Thrashing in frustration, he cursed his rival, his mate, her cursed spawn, and all the other predators who had ruined his perfect meal.
How dare they?!
HOW COULD THEY?!
In his frenzy, he caught a glimpse of the giant object. It was almost completely submerged, though something shifted atop the part sticking out of the water, giving him pause.
There was another tasty animal!
His heart thrummed excitedly as he realized that he might get his meal after all, though he quickly calmed himself down. If it was only a single creature, it would never survive the trip. The other predators would devour it long before it reached him.
Having no choice but to wait and hope for the best, he watched the tasty creature dive into the water.
Scores of predators rushed at it from every direction, only to get brutally slaughtered. He couldn’t tell how it had done it, but anything that approached it found itself dead and devoured by scavengers within mere heartbeats.
Realizing that this one was different from the others, his feelings were mixed. Against all odds, it might actually survive the trip to him, but it also wasn’t nearly as defenceless as its kin. If he didn’t want to end up like the other predators, he had to act cautiously. Swimming ahead of the tasty creature, he maintained a fixed distance while waiting for the others to tire it out.
The tasty creature appeared to slaughter the others by controlling something in the water. He couldn’t tell what it was, but it was obvious that it was growing less effective with every kill. Before long, the tasty creature had to strike multiple times to finish even a single Yellow off, its exhaustion making its movements sluggish.
Eventually, it gave up on fighting back, releasing strange bursts of something from its hindlegs to propel itself away from the fangs and claws of its would-be killers.
It was time for him to attack.
Considering how much the tasty creature struggled to escape from even the Yellows and Oranges, it shouldn’t be able to resist him. Either way, they were already dangerously close to land. The water was shallow enough for the tasty creature to step on the seabed, so he had to do something before any additional complications emerged.
This had to work.
He’d been denied his feast so many times today – he wasn’t about to waste his final chance. Leaping at the tasty animal with his maw wide open, he tried to bite the top half of its tiny body off. He could almost taste its juicy meat rolling along his tongue, and feel its warm blood spilling through the gaps between his fangs.
The moment that he had fought so hard for never arrived, however.
Right as he was about to reach the tasty creature, his vision was replaced by something he didn’t understand. An endless expanse of grey stretched in every direction, forming smooth, flat surfaces below, above, ahead, and around him. Each was covered in enormous colourful shapes that pulsed rhythmically.
He tried to turn back, but he couldn’t control his body. He couldn’t even feel anything below his neck. His head landed gracelessly on something cold and hard, the warmth spilling away from him at a frightening speed. He couldn’t even summon the strength to close his maw, his tongue hanging limp to the side, draped over his fangs.
But he remained conscious.
Before he knew it, he was surrounded by creatures standing on two limbs.
Tasty creatures!
Their shapes and sized varied greatly, and none of them looked like the ones from earlier, but he was sure that their flavour was just as good.
He had to eat one.
He HAD to!
It didn’t matter what came afterwards.
He didn’t even care that he didn’t have an afterwards.
He just wanted a bite of their flesh.
Sadly, he had no way of getting what he wanted. The creatures stared at him with a mixture of surprise, confusion, and pity, right as a few colours flashed on the grey surface around and below his head.
His surroundings changed again.
He landed on a stinky pile of rotten meat and excrement, a few broken bones and other objects that he didn’t recognize sticking out of the filth. Everything spun around him as his severed head rolled several times down the sloped surface, coming to rest at the base of the pile.
It was over.
And yet it wasn’t.
He couldn’t do anything – he couldn’t move, feel, nor close his eyes. But he couldn’t even die. He could only stare unblinkingly at what was right in front of him – which wasn’t much.
But he didn’t care.
He didn’t care that he was in this sorry state, nor that he would never swim in familiar waters again. He didn’t even care about his dead family, ripped apart by his own claws and fangs. He wasn’t afraid of dying, nor of staying alive like this.
The only thing that bothered him was that he wouldn’t get a bite of the tasty creatures.
Why?!
By the corner of his right eye, he caught sight of a blinking light in the distance. The heaps of filth in this entire area appeared to be slowly moving toward it. He wasn’t sure what happened when they reached it, but he imagined that he would find out soon.
He didn’t care about that either.
Something shifted inside him. It wasn’t his doing – he wasn’t capable of doing.
Whatever it was, it spilled out of its mouth and eyes, darkening his vision for the briefest of instants. He grew lightheaded as the little flesh left within and around his skull shrivelled rapidly. Then, he was able to see what exactly had just poured out of his face: a viscous, dark sludge. His previously-perfect vision blurred, as what was left of his consciousness started to slip away.
He might get to die after all…
Recalling that day’s events, he was suddenly repulsed by the flavour of his mate and spawn’s blood lingering on his tongue. The little ones could get a bit annoying sometimes, but they weren’t really that bad. He realized that he actually liked having them around, wishing that he hadn’t slaughtered them.
The dark liquid squirmed, transforming into a swarm of tiny critters. They scurried atop the bumpy landscape of rot and excrement, pausing into a short-lived shape.
It was a grin.
It dripped with such malice that he felt glad that he was about to die. Had it really come from inside him?
The last thing he saw was the black critters scattering in every direction – some toward the blinking light, others away from it, while a few burrowed into the filth.
[END OF BOOK 6: CLASH OF THE SEVENTH CIRCLE]