Sheldon looked around him as he and his 7 other fellow crabs marched through the rocky terrain.
Because of the upcoming conflict, he followed elder Carn's advice and joined a hunting group so that they could stock up on food to minimize danger.
Truth be told however, Sheldon had another motive for joining this hunting trip.
Sheldon always thought that the world had been unfair. Others creatures were born with harder skin, stronger muscles, and sharper teeth.
Other creatures were true predators, but and what did that make them?
The prey.
His only salvation was the fact that he could move up the evolutionary tree and keep growing stronger. But it didn't change the fact that he was going to start with a disadvantage.
Their tribal settlement was known as the Carak tribe, and fortunately, their enclave was only a little ways away from the Guppy Kelp Forest.
The hunting party's main goal was of course to get food, and their secondary objective was to gain experience and get stronger.
The problem was however that the experience was to be distributed equally across all members of the party, regardless of contribution.
This meant that no matter how much Sheldon did, he wouldn't receive any major improvements from this trip.
'But if I was to sneak away and hunt by myself, no one would find out that I'm gaining some extra experience' Sheldon thought to himself.
As they kept on marching through their journey the environment slowly changed from one of corals and rocks, to one of seaweeds and more importantly off in the distance, tall dark green pillars of kelp, their destination!
...
"Huff, Huahhhh..."
Sheldon exhaled tiredly, looking around the battlefield, and at the remains of their enemies, who also happened to be crabs.
Cannibalism wasn't looked down upon in this world, as it was a place where only the strongest survived after all, plus, these were wild crabs.
Not only were they not as intelligent as their own tribe's crabs, but they also simply weren't apart of the family, thus making them have no qualms about killing and consuming them.
As a red ranked creature in his tribe, Sheldon was barely considered an adult, allowing him to actually participate in these hunting groups.
However, due to his rank, he was also one of the weaker crabs in this group, meaning that he wouldn't be able to do as much compared to the senior members.
Of course he would still get his fair share of experience because of the way they hunted, however what he really wanted was explosive growth.
As he mulled over his thoughts, the leader of the expedition Barnbo called out to all of them.
"Alright! We're going to be setting up camp here for the night! We'll spend 3 days to recuperate our injuries and then have one last hunting day before we return!" The crab shouted.
"Now finish packing up the rest of this meat! We need to settle down!" He finished before returning to carving up the remaining crab corpses.
Sheldon, quickened his pace of stuffing the bags they had each brought along with them for meat. It was made out of weaved kelp, and a combination of animal parts such as tendons to tie the end of the bag off.
As they finished packing away their spoils, The found a nearby hole before going inside and spreading out.
Two crabs went to the entrance and began to pile up stones, sand, and dirt until it was much harder to spot, and all the crabs went to rest by their own means.
As the crabs began to fall asleep one by one, a single crab stayed wide away as it watched the rest of them fell into slumber.
Once all of the crabs were asleep, the lone crab crept towards the entrance and went outside of hole.
'I've got 2 days, to hunt, I need to kill as many creatures as I can in during this time.' Shelton thought to himself as the began to creep towards the kelp forest.
...
Two days later...
Screee!
The dying crab screamed as its final leg was torn off leaving it as a limbless body.
The crabs eyes slowly shut as it felt the embrace of death before finally succumbing to its wounds.
Its enemy, who also was a crab, began to peel back its shell before digging into the meat of its victim greedily.
'Its been a pretty rewarding hunting trip.' Shelton thought to himself as he recalled the past two days.'
While Shelton couldn't hunt large groups of crabs like he could when he was with the rest of his party, he could still take on most of the wild crabs located here in the forest.
Not only was he usually simply stronger and smarter than them, but he also got lucky when he has advanced to from the white rank to the red rank growing up.
When he had advanced, he received a mutation causing his shell to become darker in color which also happened to increase its protectiveness.
This made piercing and scratching his shell much harder meaning he was able to tank a lot of the attacks which these wild crabs could throw at him.
As he finished devouring his latest victim, he noticed that the light levels around him had begun to decrease indicating that it would be night soon.
'I should be able to have one last hunt before I rest and go back to my tribe mates' He decided as the began to quickly scurry around looking for potential prey.
As he search about, he spotted a peculiar sight nearby...
It what looked to be around 3-4 sloppily eaten crab shells...
As Shelton picked up the shells, he noted that these crabs only appeared to be around the white rank, which eased some of his worries, as he glanced around wondering what could have done this.
'I know that some predators aren't exactly clean or thorough when it comes to eating but what the hell is this?'
He thought as he looked back at the crab remains.
While most of the meat on them were consumed, the eyes of the crabs were not eaten and a few legs were left here and there.
'Whatever did this, must have been injured from the fight with the crabs, so this could probably be my chance to score before I go!' Shelton deduced as he began looking around for clues to where this creature could have gone.
Shelton really wanted to kill and eat this creature because it was known that killing a predator of a higher blood not only increased your chances of mutations, but also helped increase your level of existence far more than it would for some of the creatures lower in the food chain even if they were of the same rank.
Thus it would always be more rewarding to kill a shark of the red rank, than it would be to kill a turtle of the red rank.
Eventually, Shelton, came across a hole in the ground which he concluded must be where the predator was hiding.
The hole was difficult to see as it had seaweed and bushes around it, however it was easy to tell that they were moved there manually due to them not been rooted deeply in the ground when he found it.
The predator must've also sealed some of the entrance to make the hole smaller because whatever killed the crab couldn't have fit inside of a gap this small.
After peeling away most of the dirt from the entrance, the inside of the hole was revealed and low and behold, it was definitely bigger on the inside.
It looks like there was a bit of a tunnel leading to the main section, so Shelton checked himself over before giving himself the green light to march down there and begin his final hunt.
As Shelton turned the final corner and found the end of the hole...
...
Shelton glanced around as he saw nothing at the end of the tunnel.
'Did whatever it was already escape?'
'No no, if that's the case then the entrance of the hole would have been larger from it leaving'
'If that's the case then were is it?'
Shelton glanced around again before he looked at a one of the rocks protruding from the wall.
This rock looked like all the other rocks around it aside, from the fact that it was much larger than the ones nearby.
*Clack clack!*
Shelton clacked his pincers as we approached it thinking he finally found his target before suddenly two black and yellow eyes opened on the rock to stare back at him.
"Sh*t, an Octopus!" Shelton yelled out in alarm as he wasn't expecting to come across such a creature in this area.
He began to prepare to fight for his life before he heard the octopus quietly reply back,
"What the f*ck?"