Chapter 93: Dangerously dangerous
Taking a few seconds to comprehend the entire complex of that sound, Tim felt shocked and struggled to admit what the situation was evolving to. "It can't be, my luck can't be that bad!"
"I can sense you down here, motherfucker!" That same female tone shouted, it felt like she was far away but the tone was loud enough to cause a few goosebumps and raise the inevitable feeling of danger.
Majorly unwilling to battle such an enemy while carrying a low health bar and no friend to aid in the collision, Tim didn't bother to argue-from-a-distance and made a quick dash for it towards the other side of the tunnel, avoiding confrontation.
It took half a minute for him to reach back to the previous point, where the brave stingray had met the two pufferfish whom were used for information. It was fair to say that the heat of the moment aided to attain such speed.
After a few more short seconds, the route led to a straight way up, and what option would the little boy have but to follow it.
One thing that stood to his favour was the overall calmness in the waters at the moment, sure he was freaking out because of how dangerous the situation had become.
But the waters were yet to meet any disturbance, there was nothing following the young man.
[Deadly gas detected!!!]
[You don't have any form of protection against it, swim away!]
"That old bitch already activated the tar?! Well shit, I didn't manage to see how that works." Tim stood in one place, still contemplating what had happened instead of heeding the alarming command.
The situation was similar to a person who was frozen in fear, but in this case the small sea pancake was frozen in confusion and sudden deep thoughts.
Agitated and in a small but not-so-noticeable form actually concerned about the young fellow, the system almost grilled up enough emotion to suffer, but yet was still able to shout. [Swim away you dumb fuck!]
"Okay okay okay okay!" Tim repeated, panic arising and shunning away any other emotion.
He continued following the same path but then saw the gas slip in, surrounding the boy by a bit. Eager to escape it with every muscle of his body, Tim gave it a bit more effort to swim and almost reached the usual speed.
But his fin was still damaged, so this type of effort managed to spread pain on the other fin, a portion of it went down to the tail.
And yet the system was still alarming, [Faster! Swim away faster!]
[This gas has a large kill rate, you won't be able to survive it!]
"Okay okay okay!" The panicking stingray yelled out as he followed the same path with full capacities.
A familiar figure appeared in his eyesight through this dash of speed and fear, but thankfully it didn't stand like a large barricade.
Although in panic, Tim just swooped to the enemy's side and landed a blow right across the face.
His barb managed to hit the enemy's eye, scratched it out of use all throughout the heat of the moment and the very tip dug in the enemy's head as the curl successfully formed ~ in that last quarter of a second, the collision ended and the fleeing boy continued the route.
[Checkered pufferfish killed. 10 system points have been given to you as a reward.]
[Total system points = 75]
Yet throughout all that panic he couldn't help almost laughing at the enemy who was supposed to be trained, to get killed this easily.
And at the same time scoffed at the points, thinking. "What use are these points if I can't upgrade anything?"
Thoughts became something minor to run upon after that point, especially since he could feel the very gas following along so fast that a portion of it had engulfed his tail.
To fight off what could be any damage at all from such exposure to the pre-unkwnown, Timmy raised his tail up and pushed it forward as much as possible - as if he was a cow in heat, the barb almost scratched his head at this point.
After about 40 more meters of intense fleeing, the system carried a glad voice as she announced. [The dangerous gas is no longer in your perimeter, system fails to detect it.]
But yet still unsure and urging to be on the safe side, he continued to swim for 20 more meters and then collapsed on the sand but thankfully remained conscious.
With a bit more energy he flipped around like an actual pancake just to see what had been following the rear, green gas was easy to see from that point and it quite well portrayed the form of a mist.
Energy did not stand to his disposition, all the effort put in just to swim away, explained the case but he was still able to observe. "This is exactly the same mist I saw when I bombed everyone in the other holy tar spot. Don't know what the hell these bastards are doing but it's not natural."
[Stamina = 2/15] the system announced, obviously this was the most concerning statistic.
For once, the youngling felt lucky and thought. "Would you look at that, if the gas followed me a bit longer, I would be deader than that crazy angler hag."
Yet still uncomfortable to stand so close to this deadly gas, he flapped against the sand to elevate a foot high and began following the path he had started, to find a way out of here instead of weighing luck based on this not-so-natural substance's overall mood.
His stamina couldn't bear it but the current speed was a bit below 1 mp/h, so in a way it allowed for the bar to slowly recover while at the same time making good distance away from the problem.
This tunnel seemed to be rather long, he had travelled for about 100 meters more, following the path that took turns left or right.
No enemy came to greet him thankfully and quite frankly he preferred it this way, the last kill was by luck at best, such a result wouldn't be able to be so easily repeated.
Although no soul had yet greeted the little boy, he still managed to hear a familiar tone calling out. "Did you find Tim yet?!"