In the uncharted depths of the Pacific Ocean, where time seemed to freeze and pressure sculpted silence into stone, Mark glided like a shadow of judgment, his vast body seamlessly slicing through the heavy black water, driven not by instinct nor vengeance, but by a deep, calculated hunger that transcended mere survival; a hunger to transform.
The system embedded within him remained quiet and dormant, offering no gifts, no powers, only the mounting reminder that he was still incomplete, still bound to a form that, while mighty, remained insufficient to claim the title of apex among monsters.
He began his harvest with creatures so common that most would have ignored them; shoals of squid, darting like living punctuation marks in the void, swirling in dense spirals that obscured even the bioluminescent haze of their own schooling behaviour.
Mark dove into them not once, but repeatedly over the course of an entire day, catching and consuming hundreds with precision. Only after the count crossed well into the four digits did the system respond.
[New Genetic Material Acquired: Loligo vulgaris — Common Squid]
[Potential Traits Catalogued:]
[Ink Cloud Defence (Level 1): User may emit a chemical-rich ink cloud to disrupt visual tracking underwater.]
[Tentacle Dexterity (Level 1): Improves micro-control over individual tentacle filaments.]
He absorbed the data silently, neither impressed nor dismissive. What mattered was the accumulation. Even the smallest brick had its place in a fortress.
…
Further west, Mark approached an undersea mesa thick with decomposing organic matter, a garden of rotting kelp and dead whales, upon which grazed giant sea slugs the size of motorcycles. Slow, gelatinous, and grotesquely vibrant, they oozed and fed with all the urgency of eternity.
He devoured them by the dozens.
[New Genetic Material Acquired: Aplysia gigantica- Giant Sea Slug]
[Potential Trait Catalogued:]
[Neurochemical Resistance (Level 1): Marginal resistance to neurotoxins or paralytics.]
Satisfactory, he thought, although the lack of offensive capacity made them less appealing. Still, a body resistant to poisons could shrug off the strategies of future opponents.
…
Mark then moved into colder waters, navigating beneath ancient glacial shelves and subarctic trenches, where the slow-beating hearts of Greenland sharks echoed like war drums in the distance.
Ancient, armoured, and lethargic, they were apex predators in their own frigid kingdom, and he took them down one by one until the system finally acknowledged their saturated DNA.
[New Genetic Material Acquired: Somniosus microcephalus- Greenland Shark]
[Potential Traits Catalogued:]
[Longevity Boost (Level 1): Biological aging is drastically slowed.]
[Cold Environment Adaptation (Level 1): Enables survival in freezing currents.]
The longevity intrigued him more than he expected. A creature that lives long enough to fight every war, learn every strategy, and survive every extinction; that was a worthy direction.
…
Near geothermal vents that belched boiling gases into the deep sea in bursts of violent chemistry, he found colonies of extremophiles: tubeworms as thick as legs, blind shrimp coated in translucent armour, and microbial carpets glowing with radioactive fluorescence.
He devoured entire ecosystems.
[New Genetic Material Acquired: Thermococcus abyssalis]
[Potential Traits Catalogued:]
[Extreme Heat Tolerance (Level 2): Provides moderate resistance to geothermal exposure and thermal-based attacks.]
[Anaerobic Metabolism (Level 1): User can survive temporarily in anoxic environments.]
Against creatures like the MUTO or even beings born from nuclear fire, this resistance could prove vital. It was one more step toward total adaptability.
…
Midway through the Pacific trench-line, he intercepted a migration swarm of box jellyfish, their filaments whispering through the water like death-threaded veils. He consumed them in careful clusters, enduring the stinging toxins that meant little to his dense outer skin.
[New Genetic Material Acquired: Chironex leviathan— Variant Box Jellyfish]
[Potential Traits Catalogued:]
[Toxin Filament Deployment (Level 1): Allows development of trailing stingers capable of delivering paralytic toxins.]
[Photoreceptor Expansion (Level 1): Enhances detection of bioluminescent and ultraviolet light sources.]
Venom and vision; offense and tracking. Both traits offered specialized tactics that could prove lethal in ambushes or low-visibility combat.
…
In the shattered remains of an ancient nuclear test site, he found a dozen mutant moray eels twisted by radiation, their muscle fibres enhanced, their jaws split in asymmetrical mandibles.
He hunted all of them, savouring the corrupt energies within their flesh.
[New Genetic Material Acquired: Gymnothorax colossus — Mutated Moray]
[Potential Traits Catalogued:]
[Secondary Jaw Projection (Level 1): User may deploy a secondary jaw structure for internal capture.]
[Muscle Coiling Power (Level 1): Increases torque and rotational force in tentacle or limb constriction.]
This was worth remembering. Barbs and tentacles empowered by crushing torque could serve him well against plated monsters or fast aerial predators.
Still, some of his hunts yielded nothing. He feasted on vast clouds of krill, enormous mutated clams, and bottom-dwelling stingrays bloated with radiation, and yet…
[New Genetic Material Acquired: N/A]
[Potential Traits Catalogued:]
[N/A]
Frustrating, but not wholly unexpected. The ocean was vast, but not every creature within it was useful.
…
Eventually, he stumbled upon the skeletal ridge of a once-giant mutant crab, alive but barely. Its chitin armour reflected the faint glow of deep-sea radiation and bore scars from battles long past.
He tore into it, and then into the others that emerged to avenge it. He slaughtered them all.
[New Genetic Material Acquired: Paralithodes regalis — Royal Mutant Crab]
[Potential Traits Catalogued:]
[Chitinous Flex Armor (Level 2): User's skin may develop interlocking armoured plates with movement flexibility.]
[Rapid Limb Regeneration (Level 1): Limb regeneration accelerated under specific metabolic conditions.]
His barbs would not pierce this armour easily; but he would become this armour. Slowly but surely, the ideal form was beginning to take shape.
And yet, the system remained dormant. No tremor. No shift. No evolution.
Despite everything he had consumed, despite all the progress, he was not there yet. Mark turned, rising through thermal gradients and silent chasms, until the blue shimmer of filtered sunlight danced faintly above him.
His body hovered, massive and tense, near the surface.
'The sea fed me well,' he thought, stretching each tentacle as if in silent reverence for all the lives consumed beneath him, 'but now... it is time I eat the land.'