Chapter 37: Chapter 37: Battles
(Shelton POV)
As I left Oliver inside of my cove, I immediately went back towards the hunting sector so as to pick up an assignment and let them know that I would be out.
Thinking about how Oliver is already evolving in less than a month is seriously pressuring, especially if you consider the fact that I had evolved the day after him and yet I still don't feel like I'm even halfway to evolving yet!
However, I quickly calm myself down however as I remember our conversation with Elder Carn.
'The flood is going to be of a greater intensity?' I think to myself.
For our Carak tribe, this a pretty bad thing to happen. While the flood does make more creatures appear, and increases the strength and growth of those creatures, typically the higher one is on the food chain, the better the flood is for them.
Now, that doesn't mean that a lower creature can't kill and benefit from killing higher predators, but it does mean that it's substantially harder for those naturally weaker creatures to be as effective at it.
Heck the current ruler of the sea we live in, Exorum, was born as a grouper!
While we crabs may not be higher than groupers in terms of creature status, we're not necessarily lower than them either!
Arriving at the hunting sector, I quickly see Travos, the crab who had laughed at me and Oliver earlier, still working the counter.
He looks up to see me approaching and I can see his expression on his carapace scrunch up in awkwardness as he is most likely remembering our encounter from a few minutes ago.
"What do you need?" He asks, "I already submitted the report and the spoils, so you should know better than to try and see if you already have the merits considering you just turned them in like 20 minutes ago."
I shake my head in denial as placed down a piece of paper I had grabbed earlier as I had entered the Hunting sector.
Grabbing the paper with his pincers, Travos looks down at it before looking back up at me in mild confusion.
"You're already going hunting again? Didn't you just get back?" He says to me.
"We slept before we returned from our trip so I'm not tired, plus I want to increase my state of existence to the maximum during the flood."
The paper I had grabbed was a general hunting paper that is supplied in bulk near the entrance to the hunting sector.
Because so many crabs and creatures of our tribe just want to go out and hunt, this paper simply stated that they were going somewhere in the territory and weren't hunting anything in particular either.
It was more of a way to track to see where creatures most likely are at the moment and what they're doing.
Grumbling about my impatience, Travos quickly stamps the paper with a rock covered in some moss before sliding it into another pile on top of the rock in front of us.
"Alright, you're good to go. I don't need to remind you of the rules but be careful out there, especially with how bad this flood seems, things will only get more dangerous for us crabs."
He advises me as my internal evaluation on the crab softens up hearing his last few words.
I won't lie, the guy kind of got on my nerves after I realize how he had treated us when we returned.
I didn't realize it at first because my mind was still focused on Oliver's evolution, but he was kind of a jerk when we had arrived.
Thinking about this, my opinion of him went pretty low, and I was only willing to talk to him because he was the creature accepting and registering hunting requests, but hearing him warn me despite how he made fun of us earlier made me a little less judgemental towards him.
As I passed Monty at the exit of our enclave, I giggled to myself as I realized that I'm almost the same rank as Travos despite being months younger than him.
While the growth rate of some creatures is different around the world, some of the more commonly seen creatures, such as crabs, it was well known their approximate age based on their ranks.
Obviously the higher ranked a crab was, the older it was as well. However, for crabs, it is extremely rare to see them anything higher than green rank and even then, they were a few years old at best.
It's not that crabs couldn't necessarily evolve higher than that, for example the legendary crab progenitor, Karkinos, was said to be even higher than the golden rank, but crabs just died to often and quickly for that to happen.
As a general rule of thumb it took until a creature was about 1 month of age to get to the white rank, 2 months to get to red rank, 3 months, to get to orange rank, and 6 months to get to yellow rank.
Anything higher than that, varies from creature to creature however, which be anywhere from a single year, to hundreds or even thousands of years.
This is of course, before the flood, so creatures will start to get to these ranks in about half the time, but that will mainly affect the lower and lower middle ranks.
While I was less than 5 months old at this point, Travos was nearing around 8 months of age. And technically since we're considered adults at around 2 months of age, he's been an adult since before I was born.
So the fact that I'm about to not only catch up and surpass him is kind of crazy.
Of course, Travos doesn't go out and hunt very often, rather he is one of the main crabs working in the hunting sector, but that doesn't change the age gap.
Shaking his head and scratching his eye stalks, Shelton removed the thoughts about Travos from his mind and back towards his objective.
Catching up to Oliver!
...
Crunch!
Shelton felt his pincers snip cleanly through the body of the wild snake.
It had struggled and thrashed, but ultimately, as a lower ranked predator who was more focused on strength rather than poison against the way stronger Shelton, it couldn't do much.
Shelton looked around making sure that he couldn't spot any nearby predators or even scavengers who would challenge his scuffle for a meal before plopping himself down, and digging in.
Out of all the foods Shelton has ever eaten, he definitely thought that clownfish was the best.
He only had it a few times because of the rarity of finding them in this part of the sea, but also because most clownfish were intelligent enough most of the time to join a society, and attacking unprovoked members of a family was downright foolish.
'I've been hunting for about 8 hours now, and managed to kill 2 wild snakes, 6 wild crabs, a single wild turtle, and 8 eels.' Shelton tallied his score so far, and quickly felt content with his progress, only for him to calm down and think about it more realistically.
'Logically I should be able to evolve only a day after Oliver since that was when I had evolved into the orange rank like him... But I still really far away from the yellow rank...'
'How did he do it?'
That was one of the things that Shelton couldn't quite get over. He already felt like his progress was faster than Great White Shark heir, yet Oliver had still left him completely in the dust when it came to increasing states of existence and evolving.
While he was eating and having this internal debate he spotted movement out of the corner of his eye.
Dropping his food and raising his pincers preparing for a fight, Shelton stared at the emerging crab for only a few moments before he recognized the creature.
"Elder Carn?"
Shelton called out to the larger crab as the rest of the creatures emerged.
Their group consisted of the yellow ranked Elder Carn who was most likely the hunting leader, one of the other elders who was also yellow ranked and went by the name of Hugo who was known for his specialized sharp pincers, a couple of younger orange ranked crabs, and finally the tribe's strongest non-crab creature, Jurn, a yellow ranked turtle.
"Shelton." The larger green crab waved at him and beckoned him over.
"You're out hunting, yes?" Carn said as the rest of the creatures spread out and sat down.
Well, almost all of the creatures. Jurn, the turtle, didn't have to actually sit somewhere and instead could just float in the water.
Shelton could technically do that too and so could other crabs, but it's a lot harder for the since they're just not simply made for it.
Tearing his eyes away from the turtle, Shelton replied.
"Yes, with Oliver evolving already I don't want to be left behind."
The older crab nodded in understand before speaking up again.
"How about you join us then? We're on the lookout for Synok tribe patrols who may have wandered into our territory."
Shelton only thought for a quick moment before decided to agree.
Not only would this probably speed up his growing speed because he would be fighting stronger enemies, but it would also help the clan stay safer. Plus, it was elder Carn mentioning the idea.
"Not to mention that we may even have the chance to fight a yellow rank snake or two."
Another voice sounded in as both of the crabs turned to look at the joining crab.
It was elder Hugo, and unlike elder Carn who was a plant mage, elder Hugo was a brawler type crab who was about twice the size of Shelton. This also meant that he was noticeably bigger than elder Carn, however it was known that Carn was among one of the strongest elders in their clan despite the appearances.
"Sure!" Shelton said happily.
He hadn't run into any groups from the Synok tribe while he had gone out hunting and frankly he appreciated that.
While he was confident in his strength as an orange tier he knew that he could at best only take on 2-3 snakes of the same tier, and that's not accounting for any weird mutation they might have.
If there also happened to be a yellow ranked snake, then Shelton was even less confident about being able to fight them. Maybe in a 1v1, but with other orange ranked snakes there? He had no doubt that he would have to run.
But now that he has a group with 3 yellow ranking creatures in it, they may be able to kill a fellow yellow ranked creature which would help Shelton's progress immensely.
'I really do hope we run into one of their groups' Shelton thought to himself as the creatures of the hunting group got up again, and continued their search.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
SquidBeetle
SquidBeetle I don't know why I decided to post three chapters today. Impulsive I guess.
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