Cthulhu Gonfalons

Chapter 3

The moonlight shone down on the sea surface, with a gentle breeze blowing over the water, making countless silver ripples.

It may be an illusion, but in this world the moon appears much larger and brighter than on Earth. Even if it was night, Sui Xiong could clearly see the teeth of the fish approaching him from below. They swim and eat very fast. Before long, most of the jellyfish in the sea had been torn apart and eaten. Now, they were gradually getting closer and closer to Sui Xiong.

He didn't run. Instead, he calmly floated in the sea and prepared to fight. In a short period of time, the three fish closest to him were close enough for him to begin his attack.

As a natural predator of jellyfish, the small fish is very superior to jellyfish. But inside this jellyfish hides the human soul. Most importantly, these jellyfish were very different from the weak ones who were basically helpless when faced with their natural enemies. Seeing this little fish as they opened their frightening white teeth, wanting to tear their prey apart, Sui Xiong laughed. His soul stretched out its hand, snatched two of them, easily withdrew their souls, and stuffed them into his mouth. Before long, the third one was eaten as well.

Nevertheless, a small price was paid. Sui Xiong (or, in fact, the jellyfish she owned) suffered a slight bite, which was still large enough to worry her. Although he was much stronger than a small fish and could kill two of them at once, his soul only had two hands, while there were hundreds of fish. Three of them could make him focus on one fish, lose sight of the other and become vulnerable to their attacks. What if hundreds of them attacked him together?

Sui Xiong suddenly felt extremely frightened. When he calmed down and surveyed his surroundings, he found that he was already surrounded.

“Sh *t! Hundreds of you are against me. Even if you win, you will never be considered a hero! If you consider yourself strong, why don't any of you come and fight with me! ”He shouted.

Clearly, these little fish were not heroes, or they could not hear the curse. Even if they heard, they did not know what his words meant.

Now, they came at him from all directions. Sui Xiong was too surprised to think about eating. He started punching aimlessly in all directions, trying to kill them all. For a while, the light reflected the scales and sharp teeth of the fish, creating a mesmerizing sight in the sea. Meanwhile, the curse of this new water spirit never stopped.

It took a long time for the sea to calm down naturally. Surrounded by the body of the floating fish and seeing the body of his broken jellyfish, Sui Xiong wanted to cry. But no tears were flowing in his eyes.

“It's only been one day, and I'm almost dismembered. A dangerous world! ”He sighed. Soon he began to think about what to do next.

Obviously, the body of the jellyfish was too fragile. There is a common joke on the internet, which says that if the CE of an otaku is 0.5, then the CE of a jellyfish will probably be less than 0.1. The water spirit version of Sui Xiong had a very high CE, and so far he had killed his enemies with just one move (except for that pope). But he only had two hands, so it was impossible for him to counterattack when surrounded by enemies coming from all directions. Even if Sui Xiong ate the herd of fish at once, he would still become too full. The fish had put him in a very bad situation; what would happen if a stronger enemy appeared?

If possible, he would need to exchange the body of his useless jellyfish for a stronger one. But now he could not leave this body, so he had to formulate a new plan.

“Whatever happens, I need to repair this body,” murmured Sui Xiong, while lifting up the remains of the torn tentacles. “I know that the weaker the creature, the stronger its ability to self-heal — but only with abundant energy.”

But where can he find the nutrients to give him energy? Unless his memory betrays him, jellyfish eat plankton. But what if there is no plankton? Does that mean he can't do anything but sit there and wait to die? Maybe he died during the battle. The body of this useless jellyfish may have been injured too badly to recover. Once this body died, could it be that his soul would die as well? Maybe ... it can happen …

No, I really won't allow it! I'm a man! If a man wanted to die, he wouldn't die in such a funny way!

Helplessly, Sui Xiong turned his head to look at the dead fish. He had eaten their souls, but their bodies were still intact. In theory, fish meat is nutritious, which can provide food for the body of jellyfish. But the question is how to eat?

Question: how to eat jellyfish? I'm waiting online, please hurry. There is no internet …

Sui Xiong thought for a moment, then tried to poke the nearest dead fish with one of its tentacles. The tentacles of the jellyfish are also its weapons, and logically, the weapons of the creature are often connected with the organs that consume — food namely the teeth and mouth. However, he soon learns that the tentacles are useless for harming fish. No matter how hard Sui Xiong tried, the tentacles were unable to pierce through the scales of the hard fish.

“There's a pile of food right in front of you, but you can't even eat. How sad! ”Sui Xiong wailing. But he didn't give up. Using his tentacles to pierce almost every part of the fish, he searched for a place that had no scales.

Finally, he succeeded. The tentacles found the mouth of the fish.

Sui Xiong started to think again. Release digestive juices? He tried to extract the digestive juice a few times, but he failed. Perhaps it was because this particular jellyfish naturally lacked this ability, or perhaps because of its limited intelligence. Maybe he should just try eating fish? Again, he tried many times, but unfortunately, the result was the same. Perhaps it was because there were no teeth on the tentacles, or his intelligence was still limited.

This was exactly the situation where the mouse tried to attract the turtle, but did not know where to start. Faced with this situation, Sui Xiong grew furious.

“I will find a way to eat this fish, no matter how difficult it is! It's dead, but I still can't eat it? Can a piece of meat on top of the cutting board fly ?! ”He pondered over this problem for a long time, and finally a solution presented itself.

Suppose there is a cup of milk tea on the table, and the lid is fixed. How will you drink tea? Well, of course, straws will work. Just ... when he realized that he had to suck food out of the fish stomach with a straw, he felt disgusted. It's too much.

What happened next is not worth mentioning. Eventually, the dead fish around him turned into an indistinguishable pile of entrails, bones, and scales. Sui Xiong drowned her tentacles as deep as possible in the fish, while comforting herself with the thought that she was actually just eating sushi. Maybe his entrails were very nutritious, but as long as he subconsciously ate something that the fish had already digested, he felt pain.

Actually, it's very strange. The meat of the fish should be very dense, so why would it dissolve directly into the liquid once he sucked on it and digested it? Can a jellyfish do that? Could it be that the jellyfish in this world have this ability? Seeing the carnage around him, Sui Xiong pondered for a moment and concluded that the reason for this strange phenomenon came to the uniqueness of this world.

Now that he had eaten and had the energy to sustain it, the next step was to make the most of it. So how? Sui Xiong started to think hard about this.

First, he needs to increase his speed and mobility, because jellyfish swim too slowly! But how did he achieve this goal? By adding a pair of fins? Even if he could, adding flippers was not the best solution. Maybe by adding some tentacles? Or flatten the tentacles until they become like sails? None of these seem like good choices …

So he decided to equip a jellyfish with two propellers. Back on Earth, propellers were fairly common objects, and their main operating principles were not very complicated. Simply put, a propeller is a set of sloping blades that can rotate in water. By making the propeller rotate quickly, water will quickly flow in one direction, thus creating thrust in the opposite direction. This principle of operation has been widely used in everyday life, in everything from ship engines to electric fans. At least that was how Sui Xiong remembered.

“I need a sturdy wick, three hard blades, and a very solid cushion,” murmured Sui Xiong, turning the nutrients stored in the jellyfish body into muscle. By repeatedly expanding his muscles, one on top of the other, he was finally able to get what he wanted.

He spent most of the night figuring out what to do, but once he found the right strategy, it only took him a while to make himself two propellers. The body of this creature is amazing: once it has a clear plan to execute, the process becomes very interesting. All that is asked of him are two simple things: design and wait.

Once he was done, it was not difficult to make the propeller spin. All he had to do was turn his teeth. For a living being, it may be very painful to turn his own flesh and blood into teeth that constantly spin and bump into each other. But fortunately, Sui Xiong himself was not a jellyfish. No matter how much damage he did to the body, he felt nothing.

So that's a problem solved. Now he has a good power system, which can help him move fast in the sea. If the jellyfish he had could see this, it would probably die of embarrassment. Now that his speed was increased, what to do next? Increase its defensive strength or CE?

Sui Xiong thought for a moment, and decided to focus on increasing his defense. He already had an extremely powerful attack technique, and to date, no fish could escape his attack when it took out its soul. So naturally, he needed to increase his defensive strength.

Of course, his first priority was to increase the scale. Just as soldiers on Earth used metal armor to protect themselves, Sui Xiong also wanted to wrap a hard armor (weigh) around the body of a jellyfish to protect himself. Although this seemed like a good idea, when he started designing the armor, he found a problem. He realized that when he made the scale using the same technique of overlapping muscle fibers, they were not strong enough. In fact, it is not a matter of lack of hardness and more of a problem with lack of elasticity, a deficiency shared by the same scales and propellers.

Before Sui Xiong was transported to this world, he had read several books on military affairs, so he knew that in the Cold Weapon Era, armor had to be hard and elastic. When the armor had sufficient elasticity, one could counterattack by meeting toughness with the same toughness. The armored body would only absorb energy, thus weakening the effect of the attack into a lump. Therefore, the armour must be elastic.

But the reality is that he can't make the scales very elastic. After realizing this, he had no choice but to try a more practical way: to make the skin tight. This approach is much easier. All he needed to do was to pile up the muscle fibers a few times, making his skin come out of the sclerite. Then, it adds several layers of mesh-like structures, which can serve as a buffer under the sclerite. Eventually, he changed the shape of the jellyfish's body.

As the sun began to set in the west, Sui Xiong had finished repairing the body of a jellyfish, his temporary home. Now it was slender, with a tight and thick outer skin, and on each side, the propeller was protected by sclerite and was able to produce high speeds. He still had thin tentacles at the end of his body; he intended to refine them as well, but his energy was too low, so he had to leave them for another time.

But now, Sui Xiong looked like a monster, imposing from all angles.