5 Chapter 5: Playing with water

The pup, Maxim, was starting to wake up, it has been two days since he fell asleep. In his jaws were a dozen small shrimps cleaning him without his knowledge.

His yellow-slitted eyes groggily opened, his jaws stretched to inhuman proportion and he yawned, making water bubbles come out.

He saw one of the shrimp getting trapped inside, before floating to the ceiling and the bubble popped with the shrimp becoming a small cloud of blood after.

'Huh? Oops. I guess? There is something in my mouth…', he sluggishly thought and that was when he noticed that his jaws were full of the same species of the shrimp he made explode on accident. Some were also moving on his snout making this deduction possible.

He slept with his jaws slightly open on instinct to let the water flow in his gills more easily. He at least didn't need to continuously swim to breathe like some species of shark do.

'Ha… that feels strangely good. I now know how animals with the same type of relationship between species feel and fully understand why they let it happen and want it.', he remarked, it was incredibly relaxing.

It was like a massage but with places, he would have never thought of as relaxing as a human being.

They were cleaning his jaws by eating the little piece of food left between his hundred and eighty teeth. Some even went near and in his three sets of gills, cleaning them as well.

Maxim's ears twitched and flicked around, while he purred loudly, like a cat, showing his current state of relaxation and enjoyment.

He stayed like this for more than half an hour before he decided that he was clean enough, even if it was with a tiny bit of reluctance.

The small swarm of cleaner shrimps, as if reading the mood, fled at the end of his cave. The pup then swam closer to the exit and remarked to his shock that it was too small for him to exit, he was too big.

'I grew…and this fast uh. At least I won't have clothes problems, since I'm always in my birthday suit and I feel pretty comfortable like this.', he thought.

The smell surrounding him was of himself but there was another, this so diluted that it was nearly nonexistent.

Now how to get out? Simple, brute force. He bit chunks of green ice off the exit until it was big enough for him to swim through it. No need for elaborate planning here.

Located on the other side was a purple pigron pup, it was four months old, and still only one-third of Maxim's size.

It shrieked in surprise as it saw a strange green 'pigron' surge out of the weird wall in an explosion of ice, it was looking at everything with innocent curiosity.

'So that's the origin of that smell.', Maxim out of his cave realized with an unusual hint of anger, he glanced at the purple pigron for half a second before swimming down.

Said pigron was young and didn't realize the danger of the mutant in front of it, it moved closer to Maxim, ignoring the low animalistic growl of warning emitted by the latter.

While Maxim may be barely two days old he was fully autonomous, an enormous advantage in the wild and in any situation really. Something he was very grateful for.

And he also was already bigger and stronger than other pigrons of his age, counted he wasn't exactly one. He is an extremely mutated variant, different in practically every point.

The ex-human reacted aggressively, snapping in hostility at the purpler pup and nearly biting its left leg off, both ending up being surprised by this sudden and aggressive reaction.

'Wow! Maxim calms yourself down. It's just young and curious. Still tastes good though… and I'm very aggressive now huh, like a lot more. I was a pretty chill guy... before. Guess that one more change.', he thought of this but still displayed his hundreds of fangs and growled like the animal he was, again, this time louder.

Squealing in pain the other pup with a now bloody gash on its leg swam away in complete terror, but had difficulty due to the injury and how an ominous was pressure slowing him down, dragging him down to the depth of the sea.

He did eat pigrons, it was his first real meal in this life after all. And damn were they freaking delicious.

But he wasn't particularly hungry right now and he also wasn't going to mindlessly kill everything on sight because it dared to look at him. Being cute also helped.

The next time they meet, it will become bacon though, and Maxim will remember its smell, it was stored in his brain.

The fact that he didn't immediately chase after it and ripped it apart was because he was abstaining himself. Something he found harder than he would like.

Calming down he put this episode at the back of his mind and dived into the black nearly lightless water.

He traversed more than ten kilometers in a straight line without truly realizing it. He barely felt any sign of exhaustion.

Between observing every new living being, most of the time tasting them, noticeably failing to catch anything remotely fast or agile due to his inexperience as a newborn predator. It was a bit disappointing but he will improve, he will need to, he wants to.

He was currently playing/testing, his 'superpower', and it was making his heart thump with excitement.

Reincarnation was something extraordinary, and as an entirely different species that have 'magical' power to boot.

'So how does it exactly work?', he wondered with childlike excitement, his eyes closed in concentration.

The way his abilities worked seemed centered on his physiology, biology, and his emotions, earlier he could have accidentally crushed or drowned the pigron to death with how he was affecting the seawater.

He didn't have much control of his abilities, if at all. It was wild, chaotic, and spontaneous. And seemed to be constantly but very slowly gaining in power, growing with him.

The pup felt it will take a relatively long time before he will have a good grasp and control of it, most of it came instinctively but that didn't mean it was easy.

Another perk that comes with his loss of humanity, is that time is now a resource he has in abundance, since his current lifespan is, well, very, very long.

A human's entire lifespan is less than a speck of dust in comparison to his. He will have to discover it himself.

'Maybe like thi-*BAM*, his thoughts were interrupted by him suddenly losing control, again, but this time it resulted in him whisking straight into the ice above.

He stayed head embedded in the ice for five long seconds, where he was contemplating what he just did.

After those seconds he used his pectoral flippers as leverage to unstuck himself from the ice, his small tusks and fangs already having made most of it melt away.

And with a bit more effort he was free from the icy restraint.

'Ahahahahaha! Yessss! That was awesome!', the pup heartily thought. His small pointy ears again betrayed him by moving on their own with excitement. He was swimming in circles with the same feeling going through his body.

He tried to recall how he did it, he pushed in himself with the well of energy that was everywhere in his body.

This energy was bio-energy and it was for him a homogeneous mix of Dragon and Water elements and that is why Maxim thought it was only one.

Because it felt and acted as such, not that he knew how elements usually behaved, to begin with. Most of it came to him instinctively and spontaneously.

The elements.

Elements are key components of this world.

They are known as Water, Ice, Thunder, Fire, Earth, and last but not least, Dragon the most mysterious of the six. (I put Earth even if it was only seen in Monster Hunter Explorer and I think some monsters should have this element)

There is no fixed system, specific hierarchy, on who's elements is stronger on whose all of this depends on who and what wields them.

A monster wielding the Fire element might not necessarily be weak to the Water element, in fact, it might be weak to its own element instead.

There is still a pattern in their most commonly seen weaknesses and strengths:

The Fire element is usually weak to Water and Earth but strong against Ice.

The Water element is usually weak to Thunder but strong against Fire.

The Ice element is usually weak to Fire but strong against Thunder and Dragon.

The Thunder element is usually weak against Ice and Earth but strong against Water and Dragon.

The Earth element is usually weak against Ice and Water but strong against Fire and Thunder.

And finally, the Dragon element is usually weak to Thunder, Ice, and Dragon.

This is only what is most seen so there are a lot of exceptions to this rule. Such as the earlier example.

Noting that an element can also be manifested in different ways and have different variants of itself.

And having one element or more than one doesn't necessarily make one stronger, it's the quality and quantity of bio-energy that matter, and even then…

Power is more than just this and it exists in innumerable amount of forms.

Back to Maxim, his bio-energy was not equally distributed in his body, most of it was concentrated in his head, which took a bit less than one-fourth of his body.

Yes, he has a big head for a big jaw with at the moment small tusks that have a slightly lower concentration of bio-energy than the rest of his head.

His other body part with the most bio-energy was his six flippers, going down from the one with the most to the least: dorsal flipper, pectoral flipper, and pelvic flipper.

Then his dorsal fin, followed by the rest of his body where is evenly distributed but with a tendency to be a tad higher in his muscles.

Maxim flexed his dorsal flipper and spread his pectoral, water started to condense around them and his body.

*BAM*

He propelled himself and immediately lost control since he used too much power in his left pectoral flipper, which resulted in him planting himself head first in the ice, yet again.

Did this repeated failure frustrate him? Of freaking course, it didn't! He was having so much fun with something no one in his last life has ever done and could ever do. Just this was thrilling enough and it was only the tip of the iceberg.

Adding that smashing into things didn't even hurt that much, and was sort of addictive since it pleased his new reckless and hyper-aggressive side.

This new side of his personality is the result of his current brain and new brain chemistry, his memories only being of little help when his very being is wired toward this.