[Evolution Failed!]
Seeing this notification that felt glaring to the eyes and piercing to the heart, Sebastian sighed, dejected. He should have expected it, the odds of this being a success were just too low originally.
He went through with it because he expected a miracle.
With his system in his head, and with the status of a transmigrator, he saw himself as unique which was true. In normal circumstances, he would have never done it but as he said, he expected a miracle.
Now that there was no miracle, he felt depressed and indignant.
He wanted to forfeit his principles and angrily blast his system for not ȧssisting him at such a crucial point, but he still forced himself to stop and rather decided to encourage himself.
"In every defeat, there is a silver lining".
Not even a second after he said this did his system light up again.
[Every evolution failure is plagued with consequences!]
[After adding up your skills, adaptations, battle strength, and species, and after subtracting them from the level of evolution failed, you have suffered the following evolution consequences.]
[You have fallen, losing 2 levels- You are now level 18.]
[The difference between your advantages and level of evolution is low: Full-fledged Mutation chances are low, Major Mutation chances are low, and Minor Mutation chances are between low/mild.]
[You have suffered a Minor Mental Mutation- Mild Madness.]
[Mild Madness: When engaged in an intense battle, the host is susceptible to minor bursts of madness. Madness in the form of loss of body control, inverted body control, misplaced skill activation control, and others.]
[In some cases, this mutation may prove beneficial.]
[Note: Mild Madness evolution's definition of intense battle is subject to your brain and what your reticular activation system is programmed to.]
[This mutation can only be removed by host evolving to the purple tier.]
"Mild Madness?" Reading this, Sebastian felt his head turning dizzy.
The fact that after all the efforts that he put into making his situation better, he ended up with a mutation like this left Sebastian even more depressed.
Of course, he was happy that he didn't suffer a terrifying mutation punishment like in the case of Teeth or the other pitiful sharks that Verni told him stories of, but this consequential punishment sounded a little bit funny to him.
It sounded a little bit funny didn't mean that he ignored it.
He only needed a little bit of thinking to know the terrifying effects of this mental mutation. When engaged in an intense battle, in his view, entering a state of mild madness or whatever was a straight ticket to the next world.
Just the 3 examples of mild madness revealed by the system scared the sh*t out of him. Loss of body control, inverted body control, and misplaced skill activation control were so terrifying that Sebastian shuddered on imagining it.
Loss of body control meant that he would no longer be in charge of his body, madness would take over which was frightening.
Inverted body control was a little milder but still terrifying. It was like going back to when he just reincarnated into this world when he swam like a clueless SpongeBob. He dreaded the thought of going back to those days.
It meant that if he perhaps activated his supersonic skill to escape, this mild madness could translate it to him having activated his electroreceptors. This was dreadfully terrifying.
Thinking of these 3 effects alone eroded most of Sebastian's hopes of surviving, the fact that there may be more only demoralized him further.
Another thing that demoralized him further was the words of his shark dad. As an anatomist, he knew of it, sharks were bad parents who didn't know how to take care of their kids but he was still depressed after encountering it.
Knowing it and encountering it was entirely different scenarios.
Due to his pitifully injured state, there was a tiny hope at the back of his mind that his shark dad would use some advanced magic to render him help but welp, he received none.
At this moment, he was as alone and lonely as lonely could be.
For some reason, all these alleviated his mental burden a bit.
For the past few minutes, he had to endure the feeling of having lost both his eyes, having suffered severe injuries all over his body, having lost his magic domain, and having to think of surviving the pursuit of 4 purple tier predators.
Even for a Megalodon like him with a human mind, this was undoubtedly stressful. The stress was already threatening to affect his mind, but now, having to avoid thinking of surviving his pursuers alleviated the stress a lot.
Despite applying mins bandages and recovering some of his HP, both his eyes were still damaged, and the pain from his severe injuries was still there.
Now, he just rested his body against the rocky walls and let his brain drift aimlessly. He tried to avoid thinking of his pursuers and thought of other things.
Surprisingly, his first thought at this moment was about his life on earth.
He thought of the research company that he worked in, he thought of his fat-faced mean boss, he thought of his colleagues, most especially Dave, and of course he thought of his pets.
He thought of how many sharks he dissected, including some of his pets, he thought of his hilarious 'crazy dissector' nickname that Dave first called him, then he thought back to Oceania.
He thought of the first day that he reincarnated into this world, he thought of how he betrayed Dave to his system after first encountering it which made a sharky smile spread across his injured face.
He thought of his first kill, he thought of the first companions that he met, Leroy and his clan members, then he thought of all his adventures since then.
After thinking and thinking for more than 20 minutes, he finally thought of one last thing. He thought about the fact that he still hasn't dissected any prey with his legit dissecting skills.
As soon as he thought of this, he felt a little depressed again. He wanted to sigh in a sad manner but the next moment, the water suddenly shifted beside his enormous body in his small dark hole.
[You have activated skill: Advanced Electroreceptors.]
With this skill active, Sebastian was shocked to see that he had a companion in this small hole. And surprisingly, it was a fellow that he was familiar with.
A Blue Tang Fish!
In an ocean volcano region? Sebastian immediately asked this as his brain was filled with question marks. He already saw a lot of weird things since coming to this world, but a Blue Tang in a region like this was surely one of the weirdest.
Such weird things were supposed to be the least of what he should be thinking about, but he did because he was entering exciting territory.
"If I'm about to die anyway, why not dissect this fish first so we can die together unluckily?"