Day 3!

I said it out loud, or at least I thought I did. The sound didn’t travel far. It dissolved in the pressure before it reached the stone. But that didn’t matter. The words existed, and that was enough.

Three days. I was still alive.

Fear had stopped driving me sometime during the second day. It had burned itself out, leaving something colder, steadier, and far more dangerous behind. Curiosity.

The sea was no longer just a void trying to kill me. It was a system, vast and deliberate. It had rules, patterns, logic. If I could learn them, if I could understand the math beneath its cruelty, then maybe I could live longer than I deserved to.

I moved carefully through the water, tracing the edge of the vent shelf. The warmth that rose from below felt weaker now, its flow stuttering in uneven breaths. Plankton fog drifted through the cracks in thin curtains, sparkling faintly where the light from my own body caught it.

The faint glow under my scales had not vanished completely. It was the gift of the luminous prey from yesterday. Every motion of my fins released a thread of light, soft as breath, curling through the water before fading.

It reminded me of phosphor scraped from an old match. Fragile, temporary, and yet mine.

I wanted more.

Not more light, exactly. More understanding.

So I began to test.

Three types of prey. Three different reactions. If I could map cause to effect, maybe I could map survival, too.

The first test was the simplest: the shell feeders.

They clung to the rocks like forgotten coins, heavy and patient, each one sealed shut with the stubborn quiet of something that believed nothing could hurt it. I had learned better.

I slid close to one and clicked. The echo came back clean, marking the hollow where the hinge met the stone. My jaw tightened. The new strength in my scales allowed me to press against the current without slipping.

One sharp twist of my body, one bite at the hinge, and the shell cracked open.

The taste was metallic and bitter. The meat inside was dense, as if the creature itself had been built from stone. It resisted even as I tore it apart, each chew sending dull vibrations through my skull.

When I swallowed, I felt the change begin at once.

The warmth that spread through me wasn’t the gentle heat of the vents. It was molten, forging its way along my bones and settling in the plates beneath my skin. My scales thickened, layering over themselves like hammered iron.

I tested the change. My side brushed the rock. The scrape made no sound.

I fed again, slower this time, watching how the water shifted as I cracked the second shell. The hinge broke easier now. My jaw felt heavier, more reliable.

Three shells. That was enough.

Any more and the stiffness in my scales would cost me speed. Armour was good, but armour without movement was just a coffin.

I logged the finding in my head like a diver’s notes scratched on slate:

Intake Profile: Shell Prey – Result: Metallic taste. Thicker scales. Reduced flexibility.

I let the current pull me along. The water ahead shimmered faintly, alive with movement. Small shapes pulsed with light, drifting in clusters.

Luminous prey.

They looked fragile, delicate things, soft as breath, nearly invisible until they shone. I approached slowly, wary of any trap. But these were not hunters. They floated aimlessly, feeding on the invisible dust of the sea.

I bit one cleanly in half.

The texture was unlike anything else I’d eaten. Not solid, not liquid, something between. It slid down like cold silk. The taste was faintly sweet, the first sweetness I’d known here.

Almost at once, I felt it spreading beneath my skin. A pulse, then a shimmer. My scales caught their own light, reflecting dimly. The glow strengthened, outlining my shape in ghostly blue.

It was faint, but the difference in vision was immediate. The water around me sharpened. Edges of stone emerged from the shadow. I could see farther into the dark.

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Luminous prey: faint glow, visual range extended.

I fed on two more, careful not to drain the small cluster. The glow steadied.

The shells had given me weight. The luminous had given me sight.

I wondered what the others might offer.

The next current carried the scent of the gelatinous.

They lived in colder lanes, where vent heat faded and the pressure grew heavier. I found them suspended in the open, soft sacks that pulsed with slow rhythm. Each inhaled the water around it, filtering plankton through translucent membranes.

They did not react when I approached. I pressed my snout into one gently, and it folded inward. No teeth. No sting. No fight.

I tore it open anyway.

The inside was cold and tasteless, like swallowing the sea itself. My body absorbed it instantly. I felt no heat, no forging, just motion. Energy.

The water around me seemed thinner. The currents yielded faster. I could dart forward and stop again without losing balance.

Fast, light, efficient.

But when I tested my scales against the rock, they felt the same. No growth. No protection.

I logged that too.

Intake Profile: Gelatinous Prey – Result: Fast energy, improved speed, no defensive gain.

I drifted in the dark for a while, testing how long the energy would last. My fins carried me farther before tiring. My body felt lighter. Yet the scales did not thicken. The jelly strengthened motion, not form.

Three types, three functions.

The pattern was clear.

The System had built a world where every meal was a choice between strength, sight, or speed. The creatures that survived longest would be those that knew when to sacrifice one for the other.

I stopped beside a ridge and stared at my faint reflection in the stone. The glow under my skin pulsed in quiet rhythm with my heart.

And then something else pulsed, inside my head, not around it.

A fragment of light. A whisper from the System.

Progress is nonlinear.

The message wasn’t spoken, just known.

I repeated it, turning the words over. Progress is nonlinear.

The realisation unfolded in my thoughts with sudden clarity.

The stronger the flesh, the slower the gain. The sea didn’t count by ones; it multiplied by rarity.

Each time I ate the same prey, the effect dimmed. The first shell had forged me. The second had refined. The third had only thickened slightly. The jelly had flooded me with energy once, but when I took another, it only filled my stomach.

The law was simple: the sea rewarded novelty.

If I wanted to grow faster, I would need to risk more. To find what others could not touch.

It was both elegant and cruel.

I could almost hear my grandfather’s voice in my mind, from the old days before the storm. The sea gives, the sea takes. But it never gives the same gift twice.

Now I knew the truth of it.

The System confirmed my discovery with a soft flicker of light.

[Rule Update: Progress is Nonlinear]

[Adaptation Progress: 25%]

[Biomass Multiplier: Rarity Factor Enabled]

The glow faded, but the meaning stayed.

Progress wasn’t about eating more. It was about choosing what to eat. The sea wasn’t chaos, it was arithmetic.

I thought of the hierarchy I had seen before. The fry devoured by hunters, the hunters fleeing from the leviathan. Even that monster obeyed this rule. Its size was not an accident. It had climbed the same ladder, one mouthful at a time.

And so would I.

I resumed feeding, alternating the prey types to see if the order mattered. It did. When I switched from jelly to shell, the gain was slower. But when I went from luminous to shell, the forging heat returned in full strength. The System favoured contrast.

Different flesh, different changes. Different order, different yield.

The discovery thrilled me more than any meal.

The sea had stopped being a cage. It had become a study.

I worked through the next few hours cataloguing every detail, every sensation. I was no longer just feeding. I was testing variables. Shell for armour, jelly for stamina, light for sight. The balance mattered.

By the time my hunger eased, I could move faster through the water, navigate the vents without touching stone, and sense vibrations at twice the distance.

Every sense had sharpened. Every piece of me was learning.

I found a hollow to rest in, a smooth cavity carved by the vent currents long ago. The rock there was warm, faintly slick with life. I pressed against it and listened.

The sea’s hum was constant. Not random, structured.

Each vent exhaled in sequence, like the lungs of some great creature. Each current followed predictable paths. I could see, finally, that this place was not chaos. It was order written in the language of pressure and survival.

The System had not trapped me here to die. It had trapped me here to learn.

Data. Rules. Systems. If I can understand them, I can live.

I said it aloud because saying it made it feel real.

Something inside me responded to the words. A pulse of cold light shimmered through my vision, followed by a pattern of quiet glyphs that settled like frost across my thoughts.

[Adaptive Biomass Recognition: Enabled]

[Adaptation Progress: 27%]

[Data Logged: Prey-Type Correlation Established]

The text faded into darkness, leaving a faint afterimage of starlight.

I rested in that hollow until the water grew cold again. The glow from my scales dimmed to a soft haze, but I didn’t mind. I had seen more today than I had since I’d been born into this body.

I closed my eyes and pictured the notebook in my mind, the one no one would ever read but me.

Intake Profile – Shell Prey: Metallic taste. Scales strengthened. Reduced speed.

Intake Profile – Luminous Prey: Sweet taste. Faint light under skin. Enhanced perception.

Intake Profile – Gelatinous Prey: Tasteless. Fast energy. No defensive gain.

Together they made something larger than survival. They made sense.

The water trembled faintly above as a predator passed through the distant current, but I did not flinch. I knew how to read its movement now. I could sense its trajectory, its speed, its size. I stayed still, counting the seconds until it was gone.

When silence returned, I whispered the truth I had learned.

The sea doesn’t count by ones. It multiplies by rarity.

It was not just a rule. It was a map.

I followed that thought into stillness, letting the warmth of the vents lull me toward sleep. The glow beneath my skin faded to almost nothing, but it pulsed in rhythm with the world around me.

Day three had not been about feeding. It had been about discovery.

And in a world ruled by hunger, discovery was the first form of power.

The current shifted softly, as if nodding in approval.

The System slept, but I knew it was still watching.

I whispered to the dark before I closed my eyes.

I will learn you.

The sea did not answer. But for once, it did not try to stop me either.