I'm a Stingray?

Chapter 235: Island

In most situations, blowing an animal's head off was considered enough to land a kill; this was another one of those cases, Osira had managed to kill the enemy in a manner that seemed almost effortless!

This gave them a feeling that the mission had ended. And the thought of returning back to the reef was rather tempting right now, they were all looking quite forward to it.

Upon further observation, they made sure that this shark was indeed missing a fin. It made a lot of sense, that a shark of such size could easily kill a family of stingrays.

It was the biggest great-white they have seen so far, approximately eleven-feet long! This slaughtered carcass was fat too, so it firmly aided the thought that this fish had killed Timmy's family.

The mantis shrimp was first to speak after the observation, "Well, that settled this task. What will we do now?"

Before such an existential question was asked, they could see several more sharks surrounding them. It had managed to sink them into quite a bit of shock, their senses spiked up to maximum use!

Not to forget, this group of seven-sharks seemed equally big to the monster they had just killed! The smallest one could be just a foot shorter compared to the carcass.

One of them approached the gang, and demanded. "Surrender the food and we won't kill you."

It seemed like a great deal. And Gerlach was the only one whom had the proper vocabulary to accept these circumstances.

So from the comfort of Osira's back, he spoke out in the shark's language. "That seems like a splendid deal, we don't like shark meat anyway."

It was weird to see sharks eat one another, but cannibalistic actions in the wild were quite common, and all for the sake of survival. It made sense to a certain extent, especially since fish generally were not intelligent.

As these monsters began chewing through the carcass, of which could have quite possibly been their friend; the mantis shrimp wanted to use this situation, for the sake of attaining more information.

Because the task they saw as finished, seemed to carry a different and yet perplexing story. These sharks were all missing a front fin!

It was bizarre, but it also made the situation a lot more confusing: because if many sharks missed a fin, how on earth would they find the right one?

In the meantime, Osira was struggling to keep herself away from bloodlust. The carcass these sharks were eating through, kept unleashing quantities of blood.

And somehow, it took less amount of blood now, for the grouper-lady to lose her grip of stability. This lack of control had grown after she unleashed that attack of which solely consisted of red-light, maybe it was not a coincidence?

From a distance, the shrimp yelled out for the shark who negotiated in the beginning. And once it got close enough, he cracked open the topic with elegant ease.

By firstly asking, "Can you tell me how all of you are missing a pelvic fin?"

The shark felt hesitant to answer once, this made the little group genuinely feel like they were dwelling into danger.

It would be terrible if these sharks took such a question as anything offensive. Because even though Timothy had friends who could unleash lethal attacks, the amount of times those powers could be used, was tremendously limited.

But thankfully the latter had managed to keep neutrality, "Humans took them away from us. There is a whole island of them close by and all they do is hunt for fish."

"I'm sorry to hear that, but can you point out to us where the island is?" At this point it felt like the old man was pushing his luck, but a brief risk had to be taken.

Using her only remaining fin, the shark pointed towards the north and spoke. "That way, but don't be dumb enough to go there, you aren't a match for those humans."

To hear a massive great-white say that, it was certainly interesting. But the punching realisation that this task was not over, gave the group a lot of motivation to take this challenge.

Yet going there for the sole sake of finding humans and big sharks, seemed like a dangerous waste of time. So the shrimp pushed his luck with another question.

And it was rather tricky to build this sentence, "May I also ask if you know of any sharks that like to eat stingrays?"

Although with a sigh, the latter could still explain. "Most sharks around here avoid eating stingrays, because those things have a lot of venom. But there is a group of sharks who hunt stingrays only, they should be around the same island."

Adding information that wasn't asked for, the same lady weighed in. "Those sharks want to take revenge on humans, so it can be very dangerous there."

That was when this apex predator parted ways, and calmly expressed. "Good luck."

...

With the motive reflected and thought out, they began heading north and struck down a couple of needlefish in the meantime, for the sake of feeding on them.

They had to eat something. After all, the previous carcass was exchanged for peace and information.

Eating food became more common when one was constantly travelling, so knowing how to hunt was necessary. However, the group became happier by the passing moment that Osira was their friend. Her ability to shoot down an easy meal was just marvelous.

They had to travel for half a kilometer in order to reach this island, but it didn't exactly seem so worthwhile.

The air-encrusted landmass was small, perhaps just a hundred meters across and the marine life around here seemed rather deprived.

That was likely because these humans were over-using this natural resource. Money was a great motivator for such a case.

But the misfortune did not stop there. Since there wasn't much life around this area, it firmly meant that there weren't any big sharks to consider as enemies that they had to slaughter.

It led to a fairly fresh thought, and Dana pointed it out for the sake of sounding smart. "Maybe these humans have killed our enemies?"

After a bit of contemplation, Gerlach expressed. "We need to be sure, plus there is something that I want to try out right now."