The Evolution System of the Drowned

Chapter 2: Trial of the Apex

The blood from my split lip billowed in the water like a crimson silk ribbon. It was a dinner invite for every nightmare in the Atlantic. I floated there, my lungs burning with the strange, cold fire of the seawater, watching the darkness. Then, the system’s voice vibrated through my teeth.

[PREDATOR DETECTED: CARCHARODON CARCHARIAS. MAGNITUDE: APEX.]

Suddenly, the black void wasn't black anymore. My vision shifted into a neon-grid of heat and light. I saw it—a massive, scarred Great White Shark. It was twenty feet of muscle and prehistoric hunger, circling me just outside the range of human sight. But I wasn't human anymore. I could see its neural pathways glowing like golden threads beneath its skin. I could see the pulse of its heart.

"You want a piece of me?" I growled. The bubbles that left my mouth carried the sound like a low-frequency hum. "Come and get it, you overgrown sardine."

The shark didn't hesitate. It snapped its tail and charged. It was a blurred gray streak of death. In my old life, I would have died of a heart attack before it even reached me. Now, I felt a strange, cold calm.

[SYSTEM ANALYSIS: TARGET WEAK POINT IDENTIFIED. LATERAL LINE SENSORS VULNERABLE.]

"Target locked," I whispered.

The shark opened its maw, a cavern of serrated white knives. I didn't swim away. I dived toward it. At the last second, I kicked off a piece of the sinking anchor chain, using the momentum to spin above its snout. I slammed my fist into the side of its head. My grip felt like iron. The shark flinched, its bioluminescent neural lines flickering.

"What's the matter?" I shouted, my voice vibrating through the water. "Too fast for you?"

The beast thrashed, its massive tail whipping around and slamming into my ribs. The force sent me spinning through the dark. I hit a thermal layer that felt like concrete, but my new body didn't break. I could feel my skin thickening, reacting to the trauma.

[WARNING: INTEGRITY AT 80%. ADAPT OR DIE, HOST.]

"Shut up and help me kill it!" I snapped at the voice in my head.

The shark turned for another pass, its black eye locked onto me. It was pissed. It came at me faster this time, a living torpedo. I waited until I could see the individual scars on its nose—scars from a thousand other battles.

"You're not the only king in this ocean," I said.

As it lunged, I didn't dodge. I drove my hands deep into its gill slits. The shark erupted in a frenzy of bubbles and gore. I held on, my fingers hooking into its flesh like gaffing hooks. My grip was no longer human; it was a vice of pure survival. I felt the rough, sandpaper texture of its skin tearing at my palms, but I didn't let go.

"Eat this!" I yelled, and I ripped outward with every bit of strength the Abyssal Pearl had given me.

The shark’s internal neural lines turned a violent, flashing red. It let out a muffled, underwater thrash that shook my very bones. Then, silence. The golden glow in its nerves faded to a dull, dead gray.

[TARGET NEUTRALIZED. CONSUMPTION COMMENCING.]

A strange, liquid heat flowed from the shark's body through my fingertips. It felt like drinking electricity. I watched, mesmerized, as the shark’s mass seemed to wither, its "Essence" flowing into me like a river of silver light.

"Is this what it feels like?" I asked, my voice dropping an octave as my throat restructured itself. "Power?"

[GENETIC MATERIAL ACQUIRED. INITIALIZING CALCIFICATION...]

My skin began to itch—a deep, crawling burn that started at my toes and raced to my neck. I watched my arms in the spectral light. My skin was turning a matte, obsidian black. It wasn't just skin anymore; it was calcifying into a jagged, diamond-hard shell.

"Rough-Skin Armor," I breathed, running a hand over my forearm. It felt like forged steel.

I looked up toward the surface. The lights of the *Gilded Sovereign* were long gone, but I could still feel the direction. I could sense the vibration of the ship's engines miles away. Elowen and Cuthbert thought they had buried me. They thought they had sent me to the one place where no one could ever rise.

"You were wrong, Elowen," I said, my voice now a terrifying, deep rumble that caused the smaller fish nearby to scatter in terror. "The ocean isn't my grave."

I kicked my legs, and the power in my muscles nearly launched me out of my skin. I moved through the water with the effortless grace of the beast I had just eaten. I wasn't a man anymore. I was a monster in the making. I was the king of the dark.

"It's my throne," I declared, looking at my clawed hands. "And I’m coming to take my crown back."

But as I began my ascent, the system's HUD flared a violent, pulsing violet.

[ALERT: ANOMALY DETECTED IN SECTOR 4. HIGH-LEVEL BIO-SIGNATURE DETECTED. NOT A SHARK. NOT A WHALE.]

A massive, echoing groan rumbled from the abyss below me—a sound so deep it felt like the earth itself was cracking open. Two dinner-plate-sized eyes, glowing with a sickly green light, blinked in the trench beneath my feet.

"You've got to be kidding me," I whispered, my new armor vibrating from the sheer force of the sound. "What now?"

[WARNING: THE WARDEN HAS AWOKEN. ESCAPE IS UNLIKELY.]

I looked down into the green glow. Something was rising. Something that made the Great White I just killed look like a goldfish. I gripped the water, my heart hammering against my new obsidian chest.

"I didn't survive a murder attempt just to get eaten by a myth," I growled, baring my serrated teeth. "Bring it on."

The green eyes surged upward, moving faster than anything that large had a right to move. The water around me began to boil with a strange, unnatural heat.

I was no longer a drowning man, but as the massive shadow loomed over me, I realized the trial had only just started.