I'm a Stingray?

The bars were just raised higher, by word it's easy to determine that the task Tim was assigned to demands someone bigger and more powerful.

Because of that, Tim was almost accompanied by his siblings, it would make sense. But considering that his siblings didn't have a system, them tagging along would just slow down the whole process.

Tim would need to save their asses all the time and chances are it wouldn't be enough to keep them in one piece. This coral reef carries enemies more than possible recruits, just bashing in this mission can kill them all.

As for accepting the task, Tim didn't think twice about it and instantly agreed. The prime reason behind it, he gets to move more and burn out food more, of which he can replace with food that can raise health.

At first navigation was tricky, especially since Tim didn't know which way the far north is... however Marlo helped navigate, now Tim just had to follow a straight or at least slithering path.

...

"I don't understand this! How did you send a little bastard there? I can recruit fish better than him!" Alba hollered, glaring at Marlo and awaiting for an explanation.

Perfectly calm, Marlo took the liberty to answer. "He is a qualified survivor and the only one who can come back unscaved."

"And how can you know that if you didn't even test me? I'm bigger than him too!" Alba rambled, circling on her spot and fairly enraged.

Wanting to evade this topic without hurting the lady's feelings, Marlo cited. "His skillset and speed tops size Alba, now are we going to continue talking about this? There's fish to hunt, we need food."

Finally calming down as an idea arose in her mind, Alba pitched. "We'll see about that, I'll go to the far north and get more recruits than him."

Pointing out the obvious, the leader muttered. "That's not smart, it's full of predators."

"I'll do it anyway, that little bastard can't be stronger than me." She didn't yell once more, well perfect because topics like this can develop headaches even on fish.

Understanding that having an envying hot head in the tribe would cause more trouble in the future, Marlo agreed. "Okay, it's your death reef, go for it."

And so the lady stingray slipped her way out of the reef and made her way towards the far north, however she took a different path from Tim. Chances are they won't meet each other, the reef was large and they could be swimming 50+ meters away from each other.

...

As Tim travelled about 300 meters through the reef, using his level 5 speed to the utmost advantage, losing stamina quickly became the resulting aftermath.

And so he sunk deeper towards the reef instead of swimming above it, he found a little hole that's befitting to his body colour.

Although he is still roaming through that massive dark blue portion of the reef, there are sea plants here and there that share his body colour.

The hole he slipped 4 meters deep in, had a bundle of yellow sea plants above his head. And the fact that he was on blue coloured coral, led to an inevitable fact that Tim is almost invisible to anything above.

His body looked like a yellow plate that's covered by blue dots, so the camouflage here makes sense.

However, relaxing a little bit opened his mind towards other topics and he instantly put it into words. "System, why have you stopped giving me tasks?"

[Guest's health is too low for system given tasks, you have to raise health before the next task is given to you.]

"Oh right, that's fair." The young man added and took some time to recall everything that happened.

Everything went downhill ever since that human damaged his tail and yet somehow wherever he went, losing more health feels like the inevitable. It truly was a pain in the ass, sometimes literally but at least he's progressing.

Laying over the coral, something else captured the young man's attention. Well, the thing was moving, climbing up and heading towards Tim.

It's tiny, just a bit bigger than Tim's 4 centimeter mouth so killing this little critter was most definitely easy.

But yet, the creature doesn't seem to fear Tim's presence and was even getting closer.

Granting the creature a better view, Tim noticed that it's a crab of some sort, although different compared to what he saw so far.

This crab was white and covered with red dots, well at least it's normal for a crab to have a hint of red as a body colour.

"I'm a little hungry..." Tim murmured and dashed towards the approacher once it got 1 meter near.

The little crab had no luck when it came to dealing with a stingray whose speed was still cranked up to level 5, so faster than the eye could blink, the crab lost most of its body.

Tim's jaws were sharp enough to bite through that crab so swiftly that the little critter's legs and claw were left behind after that bite, barely a few centimeters away from the former spot.

And so Tim made a U turn and got back to his prey, finishing it off.

[Trapezia killed, 1 system point has been added as a reward.]

[Effect on health, non existent.]

[Effect on hunger, non existent.]

[Effect on sleep, non existent.]

[Effect on stamina, non existent.]

"That was a waste of time." Tim murmured, but then out of a sudden felt his stomach feeling weird.

First he felt discomfort and then pain, of which forced him to shout. "Shit shit shit shit! Trapezia, more like trap!"

[Your hunger bar has been doubled for 1 hour.]

After the system alarmed about that weird gain, Tim's sharp stomach pain suddenly disappeared and made him think. "Uhhh... I hope that crab didn't get me pregnant."

[You're a male, it's impossible.]

"I died, now I'm a stingray and am listening to a system in my head. Don't tell me what's possible." Point taken, but Tim finally learned how to add a dash of sarcasm.

[With your current temporary upgrade, you can eat twice as much for a while and when the upgrade is over, you won't throw up because of overeating.]

[Health bar = 63/100]

[Hunger bar = 12/30]

[Sleep bar = 7/35]

[Stamina bar = 8/15]

"Oh looks like I need to sleep... but these upgrades can't be wasted." Tim uttered, getting in a slight debate with himself.

That aside, getting such a upgrade will aid twice as much when it comes to raising his health. So to that Tim felt tad grateful, soon enough his health will go over 70 at least. The disaster of what we can label as a massive health loss, will finally be tamed.

A few seconds later, something unusual captivated the young man's field of hearing. A familiar voice yelling out the same sentence over and over. "System, answer me!"