Leaving Safety

Thomas wiggled his fishy body, excited to see what he could do with the skill point and the stat points. 'Status!' He mentally shouted out. Once again, the leather bound book once again popped up in his subconscious, showing him his stats again;

Name: Thomas Marrow

Race: Silver Baitish (Minnow)

Level: 1 (Awaiting Level Up)

Health: 10/10

Skills: Swim (Level Max)

Mutations: None

Strength: 2

Agility: 5

Fortitude: 1

Toughness: 1

Will: 15

Intelligence: 25

'Hm, I have three stat points right?' Thomas thought for a moment on how to spend his points. 'Well, the biggest thing about being a shoaling fish is speed isn't it?' With his knowledge on fish, Thomas knew that speed was the most important thing to a fish, to escape from predators. With a short nod, Thomas willed his three points into agility. After a moment, he could feel a slight change in his body, almost as if his tail was a little bit stronger. He took another look at his Status, and saw this;

Name: Thomas Marrow

Race: Silver Baitish (Minnow)

Level: 2

Health: 10/10

Skills: Swim (Level Max)

Mutations: None

Strength: 2

Agility: 8

Fortitude: 1

Toughness: 1

Will: 15

Intelligence: 25

With a satisfied nod, Thomas willed the page to turn to available skills. The books creme white pages began to flip, until landing on a page titled 'Available Skills'. The page was completely full of skills, so many that Thomas could hardly read the tiny script. With a thought, the page began to zoom in, and Thomas began to read one of the skills at the bottom of the page.

Advanced Teleportation: By further folding the dimension of Space, the user can traverse massive distances in an instant.

'Holy shit! Advanced Teleportation!' Thomas could imagine him as a warping fish, untouchable by any predators. 'Purchase Advanced Teleportation!' He shouted at Freeman.

Error! Requirements for skill, 'Advanced Teleportation' not found. Unable to Purchase skill!

'Wh-what?' Thomas was shaken out of his day dream of teleporting all over the ocean. 'Why not?!' He looked closer at the skill, and saw another line he didn't notice the first time;

Requirements: Advanced Spacial Affinity LVL MAX, 150 intelligence, Superior Mana Shaping LVL 5

'Ah' Thomas felt embarrassed. 'I guess it would've been too good to get teleportation right off the bat..' After looking closer at the skills, Thomas realized many of them were greyed out, because he didn't have any of the requirements. However, there was one skill, at the very top, that was written in bright letters;

Swift Swim: An upgraded version of the basic Swim skill, this skill has an active and passive mode. As a passive skill, it passively raises the users swim speed, based off the Agility stat. As an active skill, it allows the user to have short but much faster bursts of speed, as opposed to a consistent speed. Requirements: Swim LVL MAX, 10 Intelligence

'Swift swim huh? Well, lets get it!' Thomas willed his single skill point to be spent on this skill, and he could feel yet another change, but this time in his brain. He gained the knowledge on how to activate and deactivate the skill. 'Sweet!' Thomas swished around for a moment, noticing that his top speed had slightly increased. Happy with his purchase, Thomas focused back on the ocean around him, realizing that he had drifted away from the shoal a little bit as he was browsing his skills. With a quick flash of his tail, Thomas rejoined his brothers and sisters in the safety of the shoal. They all moved in a general direction, a little ways away from the edge of the reef.

Crunching down another shrimp, Thomas ignored the announcement of gaining more EXP, and another Muta point. He was sitting on five now. He had been cruising around with the shoal for a few hours now, eating whatever shrimp he could find, but hadn't leveled up again. 'Is the difference between levels really that high? I've eaten at least twice the number of shrimp I had before..' Puzzled with his predicament, but unable to do anything about it, Thomas decided to take another peek at the reef. Leaving the safety of the shoal, Thomas swam out to the reef. From what he had seen over the last few hours, the really dangerous predators were fairly slow moving, only moving in bursts of speed when their prey was close enough. 'As long as I keep an eye out for them, I should be fine.' With a wag of his tail, he sped along to the reef, his increased agility making him motor along. Soon, he reached the edge of the reef, and was once again enthralled by the sight of all the other fish and other sea creatures that lived along the colorful reef. He saw crabs with claws nearly the size of their own body, fish that flashed with light when another creature got close, all sorts of fantastical and amazing things. Thomas could've sworn he even saw one of the corals move out the corner of his fishy eye. Despite his instinct telling him to return to the safety of the shoal, Thomas stayed at the edge of the reef, taking in all the sights, and studying the variety of life. 'The reason humans became the dominant creature was because of intelligence! We were able to move past instincts, and that's just what I'll do here!' He reasoned with himself. He swam around a little more, before spotting something out of the corner of his eye; one of the dual jawed fish had been grabbed by one of the fanged eels he had seen before. Thomas could smell the blood in the water, which excited his hunting instinct. 'If I kill one of those guys, I should get tons of EXP!' With that, he slowly swam closer, watching the fight closely. The eel had wrapped around the duel jawed fish much like a snake, but its body was being bitten by one of the fishes jaws. As he got closer, Thomas' sense of danger began to grow, until his instincts were practically screaming at him to get back to the shoal. He resisted the urge, creeping closer and closer, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. All of a sudden, the duel jawed fish wiggled free, and bit hard on to the eel! It was at this moment that Thomas decided to rush in, activating his Swift Swim skill, his speed increasing until he was a silver bullet, flashing across the space. 'Woah, this skill is fast as fuck! And it's only level one!' With a crunch, Thomas dove headfirst into the eel, right behind its head. He felt pain in his whole body as he was suddenly forced to stop. The dual jawed fish did not stop biting the eel, despite Thomas' arrival. With a loud snap, its jaws connected, nearly biting the eel in half. It stopped struggling as it slowly began to float to the bottom of the reef. Thomas was disappointed that he didn't get EXP, but before he could do anything, the dual jawed fish began to swim over to him, snapping its jaws together. 'Oh shit.' Thomas turned to swim away, but he realized that he couldn't move, as the Swift Swim skill had left his body momentarily exhausted. 'SHIT!" Thomas could do nothing else but watch as the predatory fish swam up to him. It got closer and closer, before it suddenly stopped. It waited for another moment longer, then turned away and swam as fast as it could. Thomas could hardly believe his luck. 'I guess they're more cowardly than I thought..' Despite both predators being gone, Thomas' sense of danger hadn't gone away. If anything, it had gotten even worse. He turned to return to the shoal, and froze in fear. In the open ocean before him was a massive leviathan, many times his size. Its mouth was absolutely humongous, wider than its body. In it, he could see hundreds of thousands rows of teeth. And, to his absolute horror, it was heading directly for his shoal.