So I’m a Fish, So What?

Anxiety truly is a sickening emotion.

Compared with any of the emotions I’ve ever felt with my limited emotional capacity, anxiety is the only one I was never able to cope with.

It lies between fear and worry, yet only inherits their negative aspects.

Fear’s induced heart palpitations are already bad enough, but add in the continuity of worry and you’ve got yourself a recipe for disaster.

 

Passing through the mushroom biome again, I unconsciously start recalling the first time I went through here.

I remember having my normally hidden adventurous spirit fully released at that time.

There are only a handful of things in life that could arouse my joy and excitement.

Progress, fights, my loved ones, and finally, discovery and innovation.

I absolutely love rediscovering previously lost locations and items, yet I also adore innovating the newest ones.

Sometimes, I feel that my personality is very contradictory, but I never really cared.

My life creed is to follow my own desires after all.

Most reachable areas back on Earth were already discovered while collecting the treasure trove of humanity’s knowledge took up most of my time, so I didn’t get in touch with the innovative aspect much.

This place however, was the literal definition of undiscovered.

It’s in a whole nother world after all!

The scenery was breathtaking, and the presence of new creatures with different habits really aroused my curiosity.

Sadly though, I didn’t have the qualifications to enjoy it back then.

The basic qualification for anything around here is strength.

I didn’t have enough of that before, so getting distracted might’ve led to a quick and painful demise.

I could only make some plans to enjoy it at a later date.

Yet here I am.

Even though I’m basically the strongest around here, I still can’t settle down and enjoy it.

In fact, I might’ve actually explored more of my surroundings the first time around.

Right now though, my brain is filtering out everything that wouldn’t help in achieving my goal.

So, the final result’s the same as before.

Another plan to enjoy all that I’ve missed in the future.

 

Traveling through the dead zone wasn’t much of a challenge.

This place is quite safe compared to the other ones on my list with only the colorful area being the safest.

That is because the only special thing about the monsters around here is their swarm tactics, but this strategy doesn’t work if you can’t even break through your opponent’s defense, does it?

If they were able to tear me to shreds before, they now pose no threat whatsoever.

The real challenge starts after you cross this area though,

I assume this area is just a buffer zone between the kinda dangerous locations and really dangerous ones.

My goal’s the boneyards that lay right on the opposite side of the mushroom biome.

The enormous skeletons characteristic of the boneyards can already be seen at the edge of my vision, meaning I can’t be distracted by anything from this point on.

Before going in though, I check the skill point shop one last time.

Sadly, the result’s still the same.

Even though I have a very high number of skill points, the shop offers practically nothing useful.

It’s honestly frustrating!

The best thing to do would be to save them up for skill boosts, ruler skills, or even just leveling up a skill in dire situations.

More specifically, I would like to have enough skill points at hand in case I need to max out Piercing Super-Enhancement when encountering a defensive tank, or acquire a fully maxed-out resistance skill in case I’m up against a magic user.

For now though, I use 900 skill points to buy Silence, Odorless, and Heatless skills.

After which I use another 1000 skill points to max out Camouflage and evolve it into Concealment.

Those four, along with Stealth are the only hiding-related skills I can get my hands on at present.

My mission is covert infiltration and sabotage, so I’d love to have as many stealth skills as I can get.

No way in hell am I gonna fight the guys in the boneyards!!

That would be literally suicide!

 

Arriving at the junction between the biomes, I instantly sense the changes in the surrounding environment.

Although I can’t fully grasp it, it feels as if the water has become heavier somehow.

Even though the ground is gradually sloping downwards, this weight isn’t due to the increase in pressure.

The water itself is different...

It’s like the difference between walking in a meadow in the middle of a warm summer day and doing the same on a snowy winter night.

You would normally get gradually used to such a change with the gradual shift in seasons, but this area feels as if it was summer in the daytime and then shifted to winter at night in one single day.

It doesn’t affect me, but the accuracy of Tactile Enhancement is surprising, to say the least.

I don’t actually have a map of the area, so I’m going in blind.

Fully capitalizing on my intuition and Spatial Awareness, I start venturing into this giant cemetery.

Slowly but surely, I make my way through the ridiculous number of skeletons scattered around.

The monsters around here almost always ignore my presence with the superposition of my stealth skills.

Even the ones strong enough to find me tend to think I’m not worth their effort.

I feel insulted somehow...

What’s of some importance though, is a rather worrisome fact I’ve discovered throughout this journey.

Monsters around here tend to use the carcasses of their slain foes to make some sort of nest for themselves to rest.

So, there’s a high chance that my destination, the area with the densest collection of bones is actually the home of the biggest fella around here.

Well, as soon as I confirm this, I’m definitely gonna be smashing all my skill points into those stealth-related skills.

Ahhh, my poor skill points...

Every time I accumulate a few of them, a problem requiring hundreds of them pops up.

I thought having Greed would mean no shortage of skill points, but what’s up with everything suddenly requiring them?!

 

I feel like I’m getting real close to my destination, but intuition has been throwing alarms at me for a while now.

It seems my conjecture is true, my destination is really the home of the head honcho of the boneyards...

But what attracts more of my attention is an area I saw through my sphere a few minutes ago.

About a kilometer away, there’s a large circular patch of ground that’s different from the others around it.

It’s similar to those pitfall traps, but the top is covered with a space-type illusion instead of hay.

Yes, a space-type illusion.

It’s the first time I’ve seen such a mechanism whether in reality or fiction.

This thing is freaking cool!

Unlike those vision or five-sense illusions where what you’re seeing isn’t actually real, whatever’s shown here is an actual physical scene!

Maybe they played around with space gates or something, but I couldn’t spot any difference between it and the surroundings with my eyes only.

Activating my new Space Perception skill though, it becomes as obvious as a spotlight in the dark!

Normally, space nodes are floating points that follow the pattern of a 3D grid.

They’re present everywhere where space exists, but the few around here are anything but normal.

They are folded in a very clever way that forms a one-way portal from the other side while making it seem as if there’s no abnormality in the surrounding space nodes.

In fact, I couldn’t actually detect the abnormality with Spatial Awareness, while Space Perception just implied that something was wrong with the space in this area.

I’d say the only downside of such illusions is that the scene must physically exist somewhere else as an initial condition.

Also, experienced eyes would be able to detect the abnormality through pure visual information.

You don’t have to worry about the scene on the other side being disturbed though as it would be hidden between the space folds.

And even if it’s detected, you can’t do anything about it unless you’re good at manipulating space because you need to straighten those nodes.

If you throw some physical or magical attacks at it, they’d get lost between the space folds.

The same goes for any living creature trying to pass through it, they’d get lost inside.

It works as an illusion to hide what’s behind it and doubles as a trap that captures any snoopers.

If I came here while this illusion was working at its fullest, it would be impossible for me to pass through unless I increase my space-related expertise to god-tier.

Luckily, this thing has already fallen into disrepair with the passage of time, so the illusion only covers the uppermost layer of the ground.

I’m really curious about what’s down there, and by the looks of things, this should be my destination.

 

As I get closer, intuition’s haywire warnings stop pulsing and become a never-ending continuous warning instead.

...Well, I can see why.

Right above the densest collection of bones I’ve ever seen in this biome, lays a monster so strong that my body freezes up due to nothing but its aura.

But that’s not even the worst thing about it.

I would’ve been totally fine had it been something like an ancient elder dragon or even a huge Cthulhu myth Kraken.

This guy though—is a member of the underwater species I fear the most.

 

{Proficiency has reached the required level. Skill [Fear Resistance LV 7] has become [Fear Resistance LV 8].}

 

A jellyfish. A giant fucking jellyfish.

Now you might be wondering, why would the great Tomoko-sama be terrified of some floating jelly?

Especially when that jelly is harmless as long as you don’t get close, right?

Their unassuming appearance is exactly how those guys trick us!

They might be physically harmless, but those freaks are soulless!

They abandoned their freaking souls somewhere down the evolutionary road!!

Back on Earth, I almost always used Spiritual Cognition to check the appearance of everything’s soul, but I’ve never done it again after that one time I observed a jellyfish’s soul.

I was expecting to see a small weak soul that can barely move a body, but what I saw was a void—no, an abyss.

And you know what they say.

When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

It was at that time that I fully realized how small I am in the vastness of existence.

My consciousness was almost assimilated into that abyss. Or in simple terms, it was the closest I’ve been to death.

Since then, I’ve had a morbid fear of this creature and any other seemingly harmless creature that was somehow able to survive the harsh baptism of time.

Anyways, I’m not going anywhere near that thing!!

I’ll just go under it!

I always wanted to pursue a career in digging anyways!