Draft: 41 Fish System Evolution

Two days later, James was looking a lot better. Finally over that critical 90% of health points, she was also finally feeling better. Her whole-body bruise was replaced with a healthy, natural glow. It also helped that it didn’t hurt to breathe anymore.

Despite not being totally fine, she had enjoyed her two-day break. With her new fire starter and dagger, she had finally been able to enjoy cooked fish. Compared to the nutria, it was miles better. The fish didn’t really need salt either, which made the lack of seasoning tolerable.

Another new luxury was her transformed sleeping quarters. The added blankets, pillows, and growing mana veins in the tree added warmth and coziness to the little cubby she hadn’t expected to find in the woods. So, while her sleep wasn’t comparable to her apartment during the Tutorial, when her night headaches had finally stopped, it was good.

Knowing that she would set off soon, she had spent the two days cooking fish and storing them in her earring. This also let her study the differences between the fish species her Identify Skill found. She discovered that the Sharped Carps were probably not all that different than their pre-System counterparts, at least internally.

Externally, though, she had already observed how their skin was, predictably so, sharp. She wished she could compare the old and new proteins, or how the arrangement of the skin changed to cause this affect. As it stood, though, she didn’t have the tools for that type of analysis.

The Heavy Carp were much more interesting in what she could see. Their liver was much darker than she expected, a deep black compared to the brownish burgundy she expected. Moreover, it was much heavier than it had any right to be, and she estimated it was around 80% of the carp’s weight. Cutting it in half, she noted how each slice had dots of brown, which immediately bled out, reducing their weight in approximately half.

James theorized that the Heavy Carp had some way to redistribute all the liquid in their liver throughout their body. So, while they were heavy, their real power lay in their weight distribution. This would presumably make their movements in water less predictable and help them either escape predators or enemies, or attack more efficiently.

It was certainly an interesting theory, but since she didn’t want to spend days observing their behaviors, or had another way to test it, it remained a theory only. For all she knew, it was a protein change in their blood, a change in some organelle, or a byproduct of another difference. Science without the right tools was shooting shots in the dark at the best of times.

There were other species too, Yellow Carp, or Toothy Carp, but none were as interesting as the first too. The also didn’t have anything particularly special about them. This, in turn, seemed to make sure that they’d never reach a very high level. Most were at Level 1, with some occasional Level 2. The rest had grown to Level 2 but had a fair bit of organisms at Level 3 already.

The System seemed to drive natural selection to work faster, as it was able to work on an individual itself for the first time rather than a species as a whole. If she was more of a scientist, she’d have probably stopped doing anything else except for looking at the fish and observing them evolve. But her overall goal had evolved with her time in the Tutorial, and through her experiences in the dungeon.

James wanted to get stronger. She could observe these fish and come up with theories. Watch as they grew stronger than her and she couldn’t observe them safely anymore. She could do that.

But if she really wanted to see the greater world, where there were dungeons and monsters much more complex than the Heavy Carp, then she would need to be stronger. If she didn’t want to be used as an alert system while being held back on the sidelines, she had to get stronger. She needed to be strong enough to be by herself wherever she went.

So, while James observed the fish, she recognized that her central goal had changed and evolved too.

Now, she was all packed up and ready to go continue to find monsters and explore the Tutorial lands. She had decided to continue going along the river, mostly because she wanted to be able to take a dip whenever she felt like it. If she saw anything interesting, she could always veer off before returning again.

Beginning her hike in a flowy wrap dress she found at the boutique (which really didn’t match her shoes), she trudged on by the river. She continued like this until lunch, seeing only two other plants like her home tree that shared the same mana veins running through. Unsure if that counted as the plant being sentient, she only observed it and picked up some of its leaves from the ground for later study.

Around lunch, she sat on a fallen log and picked at her fish, getting slightly tired of the meal. She had much more packed in her earring. The break was short, and soon she was up and walking again.

Soon enough, she saw something in the distance. Getting closer, she could see it was a small cottage. It looked abandoned, though she couldn’t be sure for how long since it didn’t look derelict. There was no driveway attached, but James couldn’t tell from far away if there used to be one and it had just become overgrown, or if one never existed to begin with. Either case would be interesting in her opinion.

Speeding up her walk, she got closer to the two-story cottage. Unlike the infirmary from the clearing, it didn’t have any sort of magnifying force attracting her to it. It was simply exactly what she always dreamed about, a secluded cottage in the woods. None of the area around it was cleared at all, and it seemed to simply exist in the forest, another one of the denizens that called it home. Getting closer, she could also tell it lacked any mana, making her believe it was probably there before the Tutorial started.

So of course, James went back to what she did when she first got to the Tutorial. She knocked on the door.