Chapter 138 - I Did It!
A few seconds after the metal shark escaped, Sebastian's tense and rapidly beating heart finally calmed down. He had a lot of things in his mind due to this battle but he shelved them aside for now and rushed towards his companion.
Due to this battle, not only was Tosh injured after the metallic tail fin slap from the metal shark, Shanks was severely injured after the first burst of attack.
His companions were not the only ones injured; he was also injured. His reluctance to give his all at the beginning cost him severely for the first time, yanking that veil from his eyes that was hindering him from seeing reality.
The dizziness as he lost blood due to the bite injury in his head, the numerous bullets lodged in his body, and the flesh he lost when the spiked metal chain tore through his body were painful evidence of that lesson.
The most dreadful lesson of all was his current handicap of losing an eye. His only saving grace was that he had an electromagnetic vision in the form of his electroreceptors.
Despite the pain from his injuries, he gritted his teeth and ignored them while rushing towards Shanks. Perhaps, it was because he was a predator now, but his tolerance to pain already increased a lot as he got used to this world.
Shanks was so injured that hovering in the water now seemed like a chore to him. Hovering in place made his body sink like he was dead, he had no choice but to lean on one of the rock platforms to rest.
Sebastian winced after getting close as he saw the fierce bite to the shark's head which was currently bleeding.
Not only that, the ram from the metal shark at the beginning left one side of its abdomen deformed. Of all the injuries, the one from the spiked metal chain was the worst. The chain almost cut through Shanks completely.
The shark looked at him with unfocused, scared, and unwilling eyes. Without even needing to check with his system snooping tool, Sebastian knew that Shanks was already dying.
Seeing and confirming this, he felt panicked immediately.
Originally, Shanks was not taken into any hunting team because he was still too young to go out and face all the dangers of this cliff. Perhaps, impulsively, but he decided to take the shark in, believing that he could protect him.
In normal circumstances, Shanks was expected to kill the stray creatures that escaped to the territory of the shark clan or eat from the clan's reserves to slowly get battle experience and level up.
This was so that by the time he evolved to the orange tier, he would be ready and prepared to face the world's challenges.
It was never like his own where he shot up, becoming a powerhouse in just a few months since reincarnating into this world. He was an anomaly.
Now, seeing Shanks like this left Sebastian all panicky. His brain went to work as he started thinking of any way possible to heal the shark.
He just couldn't let Shanks die after being the one who personally took the shark into his team, after being the one who took the shark into the wild, after being the one who opened the shark's eyes to the outside world.
"Damn, you can't die!"
"At least, not like this". Amid his venting, ideas flowed through his head like water as he started a game of addition and subtraction.
He thought of his rejuvenation skill but he easily cut it off, that was a personal skill that he could only use on himself. But as he was pushed by desperation, he tried his luck with it only to be disappointed.
In his panic for ideas, he remembered another thing. The system once told him that eating a prey that he killed also meant assimilating its magic essence. And through some strange mechanism, assimilating the magic essence heals.
But what if, he didn't have to kill the prey with his own hands before he could assimilate its magic essence? What if just eating any dead predator would allow him to assimilate its magic essence.
His system never said this was not possible, he was the only one who assumed so after rationalizing it. This was when he remembered that this was Oceania and not earth, most of his rational deductions may be wrong.
Without even asking his system to confirm it first, he accessed his system inventory immediately and brought out the enormous meat left of the Giant Squid.
"Shanks, please, I want you to bite this meat and eat, do you understand?"
"Please eat, it would save your life and make you healthy again. Eat and you'll be able to dissect again. We'll only be able to take revenge against the metal shark if you can dissect again".
"Come on man, eat something!"
Crunch!
It took considerable effort from the shark but Shanks succeeded in opening his mouth to take a bite, then he fainted the next moment.
Seeing this, Sebastian was stunned as he panicked even more. He felt the urge to cut the meat and pack it into the shark's mouth, forcing them in but the annoying fact was that he no longer had human hands.
He didn't have human hands, but who said he couldn't create them?
As soon as this thought came to his mind, his head seemed to have exploded as a door to new ideas and discoveries seemed to have opened to him.
For some reason, though he already thought of it before, he always felt that creating other magic manifestations apart from the ones already recognized by the system was impossible.
This thought process only became stronger when he was rewarded invention points for merging 2 magic manifestations. It always felt like he had a mental block that always prevented him from thinking deeper into this route.
But now that he thought of it, his system never said doing that was impossible. He didn't succeed in creating a machine gun magic manifestation because it was too complex and required too many mana points from him.
As he thought, he immediately put it into work.
[You have activated unique skill: Water Transmutation.]
[You have created a magic manifestation: Cutting Knife.]
[You have created a magic manifestation: Prying Rods.]
[You have created a magic manifestation: Human Hands.]
Seeing the first magic manifestation appear, Sebastian's eyes glittered, seeing the next appear, his eyes glowed, and seeing the last one appear, his eyes literally exploded with a bright light akin to the sun.
"I did it!"
"I f*cking did it!"
"I actually, literally, freaking f*cking did it!"
Suppressing his excitement which only aggravated his injuries, Sebastian took control of the magic manifestations and went to work on Shanks.
He first used the extremely sharp cutting knife to cut huge chunks of meat from the Giant Squid's meat, then he used the prying rods to pry open Shanks mouth. After this, he finally used the human hands to start feeding the shark.
This continued for 10 minutes until he was satisfied that Shanks had already eaten enough. Though Sebastian was not sure if his theory of the magic essence would work, his first success increased his optimism that it would work.
After taking this vital step, he heaved a sigh of relief before turning around to face Tosh who had been watching all along in awe. He wondered how the shark was able to keep its mouth close throughout.
"Let's dig in". He muttered before taking a bite from the Giant Squid's meat.
Of course, this meat was originally for their mission but only a living shark could use shark points.. If he was dead, the mission and this meat meant nothing, eating it now was the best justice that he could ever minister to it.