It took around an hour for Henry and Maurice to finally reach the ship.

  While the fight itself had taken barely a handful of minutes, catching up to the sleek xebec with the wind in its sails took a little more time, especially with Henry taking it slow while he fixed up the damage to his soul. As he quietly swam, with Maurice settled atop his head like a submarine’s periscope, Henry took it easy on himself, using only some basic camouflage while he went over the aching parts of his soul with his Octominds, nursing the sensitive spots and infusing them with the essence of Renewal.

  It was working. It wasn’t fast, and it would take a couple of days for the soreness to fade away, but he could see himself being able to freely use his Skills in another hour or two without it feeling like rubbing broken glass against his spirit.

  With the ship in their sight, Henry was content to tail it from a safe distance. He didn’t feel like mingling or chatting and in any case, he was still working on fixing himself up as he rethought his actions. Over the last hour, he was very much aware that he’d messed up, and he knew Maurice thought the same. And now that the ship was in sight, the crab finally spoke up.

  “[Sooo. I know that usually you’re the one who tells me this stuff, but wasn’t that a little too… reckless? Not the first part. The second part where you almost put yourself out of commission, I mean. The first part was just fine. We followed the plan and were going to leave. And I’m not gonna lie, I didn’t wanna run either and I would have totally been fine fighting a little more. But I don’t know about injuring yourself that badly. That’s… you know?]”

  By now, Henry’s Octominds were very familiar with the healing process, so he really didn’t need to be too involved. He wasn’t too busy to answer. He heard the question perfectly fine. Still, it took him a few seconds to finally find the words. Because no matter how he turned the situation around, he just couldn’t find any good reason aside from not wanting to back off. That was mainly it. He knew he still had cards to play—no matter how risky they were—and he didn’t want to walk away when he knew he could have won. Plus, even though he’d been warned, there was no denying this technique—if one could call it that—had potential.

  I rushed. I should have practiced more before deploying it, he thought, thinking back on the fight. In that moment when he was retreating and watching the Stinglance rush after them, he realized that he had been preparing to spring an ambush instead of actually trying to get away. And when he had decided to empower the compressed Lightning Discharge with essence, it was because he knew the basic condensed version might not have been enough, and at that point, they would have actually lost if he hadn’t done enough damage to the A-rank. He had started to work on his soul’s resilience for the last few days and he had seen some progress, but by adding essence to the compressed spells, he had basically jumped from two weeks of calisthenics to trying to deadlift 500 pounds. So no wonder he injured himself.

  “[Yeah. I don’t think there’s any good excuse other than not wanting to lose. The mistake was using something I wasn’t ready for… because in the excitement of the fight I thought the risk acceptable. So long as we won. Which is another issue. I think I’ve done that a little more often than what would be considered healthy.]”

  It wasn’t different from when he’d faced his first shark. Then the serpent. Then almost every other risky encounter that had brought him close to the edge. It had been exhilarating—too exhilarating. Maybe that was the problem. If he let that thrill keep deciding for him, one day it wouldn’t be a temporary injury he walked away with.

  Maurice was quiet for a few moments as they dove below the waves. The late afternoon wind was making them choppy. Maybe a storm was approaching.

  “[But what if something else showed up? Would you have been able to get us out? I mean, I could always try my best, but… you know?]”

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  Henry let out a sigh. “[I probably could have forced a teleport. But it would have been bad. For me,]” he sent back, watching the inscrutable depths below. He could make out a school of thin, silver-colored fish a few paces to the right being chased by some tuna. “[Honestly, Maurice? I kinda messed up. We won, and I’m pretty happy about that. But I can’t afford to take stupid risks like that. I guess now’s a good time to get it out of my system for good.]”

  “[We did win, didn’t we? Did you use your fragment already? I’m definitely going to use mine for levels. I bet it’d have some good stats. But I want to enjoy it, you know? Do you want me to bring its body? I keep thinking of taking a nibble on it but I’m worried it’ll taste bad.]”

  Henry chuckled, relieved to move on from the conversation. At least temporarily. “[I bet it’d be good for your toxin resistance. But let me try first, just in case. We’ll do that in a few hours. I got a good dose of that damn thing’s venoms and toxins, and I can tell you that it’s not fun to deal with. I bet its flesh is saturated with the stuff.]”

  Henry wasn’t sure of everything it had at its disposal as he hadn’t looked into his interface or sensed what was going on with Venom Production, seeing that he was still busy with the healing part. But he’d bet there were at least two toxins the Stinglance had been working with. One that was caustic to everything—including mana and Skills—and the stuff it had in its darts, which was…well, mostly painful. Henry wasn’t sure if it had other functions aside from pain and bleeding, but he himself was pretty resilient to toxins at this point, so he wasn’t exactly the best candidate to test them on. What he wasn’t noticing might be severely dangerous to others.

  “[Even when it’s dead it feels a little heavy,]” Maurice grumbled. They kept chatting for a while, casually tracking the Shadow Henry could sense on the ship—which he used to tell Velistraine that everything was fine and they were just out on a swim—and progressively, bit by bit, the cracks he could sense in his soul were slowly stitched. It took a couple of hours, and he knew that if he forced any big cast or Skill, the freshly healed wounds would rupture, but he expected a couple of days of this before he could restart on some reinforcing exercises. Velistraine had said it could take weeks but frankly… he didn’t think it’d take that long. This wasn’t the first time he’d gotten some soul damage and for what he’d just attempted? He knew it could have been much worse.

  Well. No more of that technique for a while. I’ll need to slowly work my way up with tests and practice. Just like weight lifting, he thought as he finally spared his interface a look. It was too soon to consume the core, as he worried that might interfere with the healing process, but he was surprised he wasn’t seeing any new venoms updates.

  Maybe it’s just the same as the other one. Just stronger? As for the caustic toxin, I wasn’t really exposed to that, though I hope I can recover it from its body, Henry thought.

  1x [Wyrdkelp Stinglance Tyrant (A) - Level 17] greater core fragment was collected.

  The fight flashed in his mind as he stared at the notification. Aside from the last part, it had been really fun. The Stinglance had been such a terror to keep up with. It had been relentless and honestly, he didn’t remember the last time he’d enjoyed such a fight. Even the lobster’s fight hadn’t been this exciting. As for the crab he’d scored a few days back, that had felt like a glorified B-rank fight. That was on him, of course. He hadn’t faced the crab head-on and instead, he had tricked his way toward the win. But the Stinglance’s speed and relentlessness hadn’t allowed for cheating, and that made the win feel… just better.

  Now he just needed to be less stupid about fights in the future. Especially once they figured out what’s going on with the System and what’s out there. Because even now, he couldn’t help but think of that vision Maurice had.

  There were things out there. And they had to be ready for them.

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