a cold sensation passed through Andrew body, he could recognize the predator from a few meters away, it was a smallmouth bass, while ridiculously small for a normal human being, The smallmouth bass was currently 5 to 6 time bigger than the poor goldfish. Andrew was frozen for a few second before he started to think of a way to save himself. He could obviously not fight it, fighting it now was akin to suicide especially since he had 0 point in strength, he could try to run but judging by its size it's probably way faster than the goldfish even with the agility points. Also Andrew didn't know if the creatures in this world could also increase their stats after upgrading skills but in Andrew's mind the probability of it being a yes rather than a no was higher since he has already seen creatures using skills. Maybe he could use magic as he has discovered magic recently his only skill regarding magic was mana sensitivity which clearly wasn't a skill that could help him in any way shape or form so clearly a no go. There was only one way left to protect himself from the fish, he had to find a way to hide.
On the bright side it seemed that the creature didn't see him just yet so the strategy to hide was quite natural, On the contrary the land is actually quite barren so there was nearly no place to hide, nearly being a euphemism, has there was no place to hide at all.
Suddenly Andrew had a genius idea, he remembered that sandfishes actually uses the ground to hide themselves from predators, what if he could do just that, of course the ground was not sand but some kind of mud puddle, it was way less practicable but it will have to.
He swam with all his might to the ground and started bathing in it. His color was not that of a goldfish anymore but pitch black, he couldn't see very well but it was okay, While under the ground Andrew remembered that when he was a child and used to play Hide and Seek and had one unique rule while playing, 'if I can't see them they can't see me', Of course it was only viable if the person searching for you only used his eyes, it was the case for most humans and Andrew really really hoped that it was also the case for smallmouth bass. He stayed for at least 40 min before being sure that the fish had left.
Andrew was happy with the bet he made, as it was actually a good one, there was indeed a cold resistance skill, he previously believed that because it came from him adapting to the environment, it would actually come out has a trait, but he was wrong, it seemed that trait are in fact more special. He didn't complain though, he actually quite like the fact that it was a skill as he could level it up.it was time for a check up of his status.
strength - 0
agility - 7
endurance - 3
intelligence - 11
magic - 3
charisma - 4
Traits :
Skills :
Andrew was still going down the lake, he wanted to improve his cold resistance to the maximum, he still remained close to the ground in case he met more predator.
he actually met quite a few of them, even thought it was very stressful it was still really useful as he was able to increase his camouflage level by quite a chunk ,he didn't stop his endeavor and continued to go down, and down and down again. the more he went down, the less things he was able to see around him, the vegetation was no more, the wildlife was disappearing even faster than the plants. the only seemed that was unchanged is the unnatural amount of 'ordinary' pebbles that were present in the lake. While advancing, everything around him started freezing, the water also seemed purer, it was quite a majestic sight. A question popped through Andrew's mind at this instant, how was it possible for the lake to go colder and colder, usually it was against any principles of thermodynamics as the temperature should even itself out throughout the lake. It didn't make any sense unless the soil was a special ground that somehow was extremely cold, it was weird for a game that was supposed to be so realistic to not follow the laws of physics. Andrew realized something at this instant, magic, he forgot that magic existed, of course with magic anything was possible. Now he had a new objective while going down : search for the source of the cold.
The cold resistance wasn't enough, the more he went down the more he felt the cold, it was more and more oppressive, Andrew never really liked cold areas, he always preferred to go to places that are pretty hot during vacations. But for the sake of improving in the game he didn't mind going against the cold if he was able to improve his cold resistance. Around Andrew were 'giant' ice spikes, they were giant only because he was a goldfish, but in reality from a human perspective it was only 40cm. everything around him was bright blue, it was nearly magical Andrew never saw something so beautiful in his life, but it was really weird that everything was so bright so far from the surface, Andrew felt like he would actually gain a lot if he was able to follow the source of light so he actually went down again fighting against the cold yet again... the descent felt eternal, it went for hours and hours, the more he went down, the more he felt the cold. At some point he actually had to stop going down, he actually was starving, he didn't eat for a long time since he was so obsessed by the light. He used the food searching skill to find some. It took a long long time to follow the trail as there was not much food around but he finally found some ice algae. he tried to eat it but he was frozen cold, he ate it so slowly to try not burning himself from the cold his skill improved quite a lot in the meantime
Andrew was feeling delighted, after leveling up both the swimming and cold resistance skill to level 10, he was finally able to unlock some superior level skill, it was time to look at his status yet again.
strength - 0
agility - 12
endurance - 15
intelligence - 19
magic - 8
charisma - 4
Traits :
Skills :
Andrew did some rapid calculus in his head, his level didn't add up, his skills leveled up 28 times but he had gain 30 levels overall , it was strange, unless superior skill level actually increased his level by 2 instead of 1 each time. That actually made a lot of sense he thought, otherwise the goldfish would have actually been overpowered by the time it evolved. The ice resistance gave a huge boost to Andrew's confidence he really didn't feel the cold as much right now, it was time to move on and to finally see what exactly was this light and how it was related to the the drop of temperature in the lake.