Quill groggily blinked his eyes before rubbing them and sitting up from the grassy plains. He had spent half the night running back and forth from the land shark territory to the cliff just to thin out the numbers until he was utterly exhausted. At that point he just decided enough was enough and fell asleep.

  Still, this was once again confirmation that both the days and the nights were longer as despite both working and sleeping for who knows how long, it was only barely dawn with the faintest of light cresting over the trees off in the distance.

  “Morning sleepyhead. Just some advice, but you might want to consider getting something that will help camouflage your body a bit better when you sleep if you do it out in the open. While none of those birds flying through the sky spotted you, or if they did they chose to ignore you. It would still be a rude awakening if you woke up in mid-air with their talons digging into your skin.” Grey spoke, sounding especially chipper.

  “Of course I'm chipper, I get to laugh my ass off as you frantically run towards a bunch of giant crabs with a bunch of land sharks chasing after you. I'm assuming you're doing that today right?”

  “Yeah I am, just one moment.” He managed to get out while yawning and took out some food and drink too munch on. Nothing too big since he'd probably be doing a lot of running today and very soon but just enough to give him some energy. He could have really used some caffeinated tea or coffee though.

  While doing that he briefly looked over his system notifications that he had gotten from last night but was too tired to properly go over. He had killed a lot of sharks, a few of them were also adults with all of the adults having been over the level of 43. He had also leveled up once from the encounter putting him at level 36 while his dodge, dirty fighting, and survival instincts skills had leveled up once also. Perhaps killing the cursed sins had spoiled him in regards to leveling speed but given how many of the land sharks he had killed with many being over his level, he kind of felt like he should have gotten an additional level or two from all of that.

  “Just speculation but you probably will grow levels slower the higher you go. Isn't that kind of how it works in those video games of yours?”

  “Yeah except this isn't a video game now is it? I mean, the system ignores the laws of physics, or at least enables creatures to ignore the loss of physics. So why would it follow the rules of a grindy RPG video game?”

  A part of him mentally noted that he was talking with her more and more often now and while he couldn't rule out that she was influencing him in some way, he also just didn't have the energy to fight it just yet. Hopefully when he had a chance to settle down he would be able to focus more on getting rid of her.

  Grey snickered at those thoughts but didn't comment while Quill finished up eating and did some basic stretches. His mind naturally wandered off into wondering if stretches were even needed anymore but that would be something to test when his life wasn’t potentially hanging in the balance from an unfortunate leg cramp.

  Once he felt fully limbered up, he did a very light jog towards the pillar of light. He said light jog but at this pace it was probably as faster than his running speed before the system. Which seemed pretty ridiculous, especially since he could probably keep that speed up for the entire elongated day.

  Once he was overlooking the valley where the territory light pillar was. Grey spoke up “All right genius, so what's the plan?”

  “Run around like a headless chicken for a little bit and then head towards the beach.”

  “ Right…” Her voice held some strong skepticism before speaking again “So at this moment, I am definitely calling you a genius sarcastically. But your plan does suggest some wonderful entertainment. Do try to not get eaten and die. If you thought dealing with depression beforehand was rough, you will be even more depressed when you're dead. Of course I'll happily console you through the whole thing.”

  “And that just makes death sound all the less appealing.” He grumbled unsure if that was her intent or not before breaking down into a Sprint towards the pillar of light.

  He got maybe a quarter of the way there, which was better than he had hoped before the first shark tried to attack him. It was an easy enough dodge but that would likely change as more and more sharks continue to leap out of the ground to take a bite of him.

  The attacks continued to ramp up until finally, as he had gotten to the pillar of light, he was forced to start manifesting some extra limbs and the occasional club to smack some of the Sharks away. All the while the ground continually burst underneath him.

  How these sharks weren't crashing and bumping into each other he had no idea. He also noted that there were far more adult sharks at this point though the adolescents still outnumbered them.

  Despite everything it was still surprisingly manageable, probably why he wasn't panicking or having heightened sense of stress. Even if the sharks weren't bumping into each other, only so many could attack him from so many different directions and he could easily deflect, move or dodge their various attacks but he knew he couldn't keep it up forever. Since he probably had at least most of the population's attention at this point, he quickly started sprinting towards the direction of the beach.

  Similar to how he had been dealing with them before, he had to make sure to keep the correct distance so he didn't completely outpace them and they lost all interest. Many of the adults were clearly faster so he had to dodge many of their attacks while still making sure the adolescence could keep up. On the rare occasion he would end up killing one or two sharks whether it was due to having no choice, or to avoid taking any kind of damage.

  The whole trip was not just physically taxing but mentally as well. In fact he was pretty sure his mental focus and split thinking skills were pulling a lot of the weight in keeping him from slipping focus and getting hit or bitten by one of the sharks. Not to mention also keeping track of how many were attacking, how the tremors under his feet told him where most were, and how many were still pursuing.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  To say it really felt like a giant ordeal was an understatement. These stupid sharks better appreciate him guiding their ravenous fins to those crabs because he was wondering if all this effort was actually worth it.

  Perhaps the biggest mental taxation was he didn't actually know how far the beach was. Definitely a misjudgment on his part as he probably should have measured the distance, or at the very least seen how long it would take to get from the pillar of light to said beach.

  Eventually he crested over a hill and saw a straight shot down to the sandy beaches. He figured he had been getting close as the grass had become more and more patchy with more and more sand but it was nice to actually see the ocean of water along with an ocean of crabs.

  He knew there were a lot but even still, getting this close he truly underestimated how many there were. Now he was wondering if he even needed to cull the shark numbers to begin with.

  He began sprinting down towards where the crabs were. Thankful that this was finally coming to an end as he was now thoroughly exhausted and could even start to feel the effects of the overuse of his pseudo energy manifestation.

  “Hey so quick question, what were you planning on doing once you got to the crabs? Because if your plan was to figure it out when you got there? well you're here.”

  “ The plan is to not get pinched or suffer anything that might cause me harm!” he managed to get out through an exasperated breath as he smacked another Landshark out of the way.

  “ I look forward to seeing how you get out of this mess.” Grey snickered as the crabs started to notice Quill running towards them. Or perhaps they noticed the hundreds or thousands of sharks that were chasing after him. That seemed like the most likely scenario. Either way, many were now approaching him with their Pincers seemingly at the ready.

  As he got to them, he noted that the smaller ones stood probably four feet in the air but the larger ones were definitely closer to 7 ft. He casted a quick identify On one of the larger ones hoping to figure out what he was working with

  Sea salt Pincher (adult)

  Level 52

  These giant crabs are said to have delicious meat and a very hard shell, perfect for making armor. They are widely considered prized and can sell for a decent amount of money. However due to their durability and dangerous pincers, not many are willing to hunt them without compensation.

  Good! They were delicious so theoretically the Sharks should stay with the crabs as opposed to him. He used his spider legs to push him off into the air and climbed up on top of the giant crab shells allowing him to go even higher.

  The crabs were naturally trying to snag him with their claws but his spider legs easily kept him out of reach. Even when they tried to climb on top of each other to grab him he just climbed even further up.

  That was when the sharks hit and if he could describe it in a couple words it was Feeding Frenzy. Though the jury was out on who was feeding on who. The Adolescent sharks started chomping at the crab legs and yanking them down to the ground while the adult sharks used their bullets like ability and slammed into their hard shells.

  The crabs were no slouch either though as they quickly started trying to grab, slice or rip apart the sharks, some even spewing massive jet streams of water from their mouths that was strong enough to cause the unlucky shark that was hit with it to bend and crumple at weird angles.

  It was brutal and the commotion only seemed to grab the attention of more crabs while the rest of the sharks slowly caught up to the ones in the front.

  On the bright side, all the fighting and commotion seemed to make the crowds of crabs and sharks forget about little ol him. The bad news was now he had to try and get out of all of this danger in one piece somehow.

  He at first tried to scuttle off to the side with his spider legs but with how many crabs in sharks there were it was starting to become impossible to escape unnoticed. Even when he tried to climb on top of the crabs who climbed on top of each other, there was always at least one pincer trying to snag and grip one of his spider legs to fling him back towards the chaos. He couldn't really scurry through the sharks either as by this point there were hundreds if not thousands leaping out of the sand and biting into the various crabs.

  Realizing he needed a change of tactics he quickly pivoted to a different mode of transportation. While manifesting the giant beyblade would have been great, it also would have taken a lot of focus, energy, and he still wasn't entirely sure if he could properly steer that thing yet while maintaining its spin. Instead he manifested a large ball around him with some spikes around the outer surface for traction and damage.

  With his new gerbil ball at the ready he quickly had the thing spin and he was soon launched roughly towards the direction of where the pillar of light would be.

  That was when he realized a very stupid error on his part because he had the thing spinning faster than he could run. He promptly face planted into the front of the orb and was soon spinning along with it. His mental focus skill once again doing wonders in keeping the manifestation alive and well as he felt his stomach churn over and over again. He didn’t want to stop the spin to reorient himself as that would lead him wide open to getting attacked so he just had to hope for the best.

  At some point he thought one of the crabs smacked him in the air but he had been spinning so quickly it was a little difficult to tell. Greys constant laughter wasn't helping either.

  Despite not knowing where he was going or what direction he was rolling, the constant bumping and tossing around slowly lessened and after spinning for several more minutes he finally dissipated the manifestation. But that was more so he had a chance to vomit up everything he had eaten by this point. There was no way he was going to be in that spinning ball while vomit was getting tossed around too.

  As the world continued to spin for him, he suddenly felt his survival instincts blared their warning and since he was still incapable of moving, he quickly porcupine himself by having several spear manifestations shoot out around him and he felt several meaty thunks that had enough momentum to push him away.

  Despite the physical strain he was currently undergoing from his body hurting all over and his skin once again ripping open. He still kept the Spears manifested in case something else attacked him while the world slowly corrected itself so that it was facing upwards.

  As the world became more focused he got a look of his surroundings while dissipating his spears. First off, the couple kills he got were from adolescent sharks that had impaled themselves on his spears. He was thankful that they didn't try to come up directly beneath him.

  He had also gotten quite a ways away from the crabs and sharks, though at a bit of a diagonal which was probably for the best as based on what he could see, there were still sharks “swimming” to where the crabs were. He was just thankful that he didn’t accidentally get knocked towards the direction of the ocean.

  Still, he should probably keep moving. While he was away from the conflict, the fact that he could still see and hear them, even without his enhanced senses, meant that they had a chance of seeing or hearing him. And he did not want to get into that messy brawl again.

  “Sooooo.” Grey managed to get out between giggles “Please tell me that gerbil ball of yours is going to be a mainstay in your arsenal.”

  Quill's stomach did an uncomfortable flip at the horrid idea. “Not without some changes.”