The dark water was quiet. Too quiet.
A ripple, subtle but unmistakable, brushed against Kuro's sensitive suckers. Eight tiny limbs tensed instinctively. The currents whispered of movement larger, sharper, more deliberate than the plankton or drifting detritus he had scavenged.
From the blackness emerged a larval squid, larger than him by half, eyes like molten darkness. Tentacles whipped with erratic speed, searching, probing, testing. Kuro froze. The analytical mind screamed analyze, avoid, escape, but instinct had other plans.
The moment the predator lunged, his body betrayed him. Limbs shot forward, coiling around the opponent's mantle. Suckers clamped with a feral intensity, driven by impulses older than memory. The abyss did not negotiate. The abyss demanded.
A flash of teeth or what passed for teeth in this juvenile hunter scraped against him. Pain was sharp, precise, but fleeting. Kuro reacted instinctively, slicing with his own tentacles, tearing through the delicate flesh of the intruder.
Water bloomed red.
The scent, alien and metallic, filled his senses. Warm blood spread in the water, an intoxicating haze that made the currents themselves seem alive. Kuro recoiled slightly, revulsion flickering humanity tugging briefly at the edges of his consciousness.
But hunger… hunger was louder. Sharper. Deeper.
Limbs wrapped tighter. Mouthparts tore, consumed, devoured. The act was brutal, efficient, alien. And it felt… necessary.
As he fed, a pulse echoed through his mind. Not thought. Not words. A whisper of awareness from the abyss itself:
> [Growth Accelerated 1.3%]
Kuro felt it immediately. Slight enlargement muscles denser, suckers stronger, skin more resistant. Evolution was no longer abstract. It was chemical, neurological, undeniable.
The taste lingered not pleasant, not disgusting. A reminder that survival demanded violence. That in this world, analysis alone was not enough. Action, instinct, adaptation these were the tools of life.
For the first time, Kuro accepted it. Violence was not evil. Violence was survival. Tool. Language. Weapon.
And as he floated in the aftermath, tentacles dripping with the residue of life, the abyss pressed around him, silent, observing.
A single thought solidified in his alien mind:
Instinct is not weakness. Instinct is evolution.
The larval predator was gone. Its life extinguished.
Kuro was different. Stronger. Sharper.
And the abyss was watching, always.