Keep still. Keeeeep still. And don’t ink yourself again.

  The fish carefully approached the worm. It had been wiggling for the last few seconds, peeking out of a patch of white sand nestled between a couple of large and flat coral reefs.

  Henry held still, hidden behind a rock, and watched. An arm was lying under the sand, right next to the one he was using to bait the fish.

  The fish was really close. This was the closest Henry had gotten to a fish that wasn’t actively trying to kill him in the past couple of days. And he was starving.

  It'd taken him a while to learn how to control his now eight limbs. How to swim. And how to not squirt ink whenever anything moved in his general area.

  Or maybe he just ran out of ink. Henry vaguely recalled that octopuses had enough for only a handful of ink shots, and their reserves didn’t refill that fast.

  Anyway, he’d–

  –The fish darted forward and bit the extremity of his arm.

  The flash of pain didn’t distract him from the plan. The rest of his arms surged around the fish, while the second hidden limb made contact. He grit his beak as he tried to activate the suckers and latch on to the fish.

  That fucking hurt!

  The extremity of his bait-arm was pulsing with pain, but he could ignore that. It didn't matter; he was finally about to eat something.

  He knew he should be able to eat clams and crabs… but he hadn’t managed to crack open the first. And every crab he’d encountered was twice his size and had unnaturally sharp pincers that could probably snip him in half, so he didn’t risk it.

  Henry didn’t celebrate as he pulled the thrashing fish toward him. He fearfully looked upward, hoping no other predator had seen the commotion and was on its way to make a meal of both Henry and his newly acquired fish. His monochrome and distorted vision made it difficult to see much. But it seemed safe.

  He could vaguely see a patch of light in the distance, and he assumed that was the water surface.

  It didn’t look close. And he didn’t think he could go up there without ending up as a snack for the many large shapes he could see occasionally swimming by.

  Henry angled the fish toward his mouth, and using his awkward beak, cracked the fish’s brain stem. The prey went still.

  Now we go back home.

  The fish was tiny. Around a third of his own size, so it wasn’t too difficult to carry as Henry carefully and slowly made his way back to the empty turtle shell he’d come to consciousness in. After a few seconds of skirting around rocks he’d previously scouted, he was back to safety.

  Henry didn’t dare get too far from his hiding spot.

  Back inside, in the turtle shell lodged between a couple of boulders and stalks of some plant he didn’t recognize, Henry began to eat. He already could taste the fish through his arms–which was an odd concept to experience and had made getting used to his limbs even more challenging–and discovered that he couldn’t taste the food with his mouth.

  Odd.

  “[So you managed to stay alive? Commendable.]”

  Henry froze. He looked around, then back to the fish he had been chomping on. Was this thing hallucinogenic?

  “[It’s not the fish.]”

  Henry narrowed his eyes at the fish. He couldn’t speak. Because he had no tongue. Or lips. Or air. But he responded to the voice in his own head.

  “That’s exactly what a hallucination would say.”

  “[Hah. It’s always a treat when a foreign soul finds its way to this world. It is unfortunate you got stuck in such a little form, though. And in such a dangerous environment. Still, I can’t tell if you’re incredibly lucky or unlucky. It’s rare for the beings you’re inhabiting to make it far… but with a sapient soul within? I wonder…]”

  Henry didn’t respond. This was really convincing, as far as hallucinations went. Not that he had that many experiences. Alcohol and weed didn’t really cause such things.

  “[I’m not a hallucination, Henry. And I believe you’re here because of the shells of those annoying turtles. The multicolored ones.]”

  Henry's breath caught. More accurately, he stopped inhaling water through his gills.

  He remembered that. He’d seen the rainbow-shelled turtle and had been in pursuit when… something happened. When he died. It would have made his career to document it. A new, never-before-seen species. But next thing he knew, he’d woken up here.

  Henry looked up at the inner walls of the shell. He hadn’t known it was the same type of turtle. He couldn’t see colors. He’d just thought it was an ironic coincidence.

  This is real? That’s a real person talking?

  Then with his internal voice, he spoke. “Who are you?”

  “[I’m this world’s System,” answered the voice in his mind. “[I usually keep my distance, but you’re an interesting case, so I had to come see for myself. I take care of things. Help intelligent life strive to the top. Give them tools and skills to gain more power. Then I take a small percentage of that. It was supposed to go somewhere… but no one’s come to collect in a while.]”

  Henry narrowed his eyes. “That sounds like interests. Are you some sort of loan shark? Or a bank?”

  The voice paused for a moment. Then it spoke, with a curious tone. “[That sounds familiar. But also boring, and I’m not either. In any case, being sapient and all, you qualify for a class independent from your species. And considering you kicked out that poor octopus’ soul when you came in, you also lost the basics. So. Let’s fix all that, shall we?]”

  Henry was about to answer when his body buzzed and he blacked out for a moment. When he came to, there was something displayed over his vision.

  Name: Henry Dubois

  Species: Trickster Octopus - Reincarnated Intelligence (F)

  Class: Undecided - Level 1

  Consumption Tokens: 0

  “What do you mean Undecided? And what’s the (F) for?”

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “[F is the classification of your current species. I like the letters more than Bronze. Or Prawn. This world uses more than one type of ranking, but I liked the simplicity of the letters. So I adopted it. As for the class itself, it doesn’t seem like you have any relevant skill or vocation, and I know nothing about you. Undecided seemed like a fair label. Don’t worry, you can change it when you evolve. It won’t matter much at this rank.]”

  Henry titled his head as he stared at the text, then glanced up at the disembodied voice. “I’m a marine biologist.”

  Well, an intern. But this System didn’t need to know that.

  “[Now we’re talking. Let me set that up for you.]”

  Class: Undecided Marine Biologist - Level 1

  Henry was about to object again when the voice cut him off.

  “[Well, it was nice talking to you, Henry. I can’t stay for long, rules and all. We’ll talk again when you rank up. Maybe. Work hard and good luck!]”

  Henry flailed his arms and sent chunks of bloody fish flying. “Hey! What’s all this? What’s stats? Hey!”

  He could see–or more accurately, feel–more options available to him. Stats, classes, and a few others, some of which he couldn’t read or access. For now he loaded everything, so he could see it in the interface.

  Trickster Octopus - Reincarnated Intelligence (F)

  Strength: 1

  Constitution: 1

  Spirit: 4

  Perception: 2

  Dexterity: 2

  Species skills

  Bite (F) - Level 1: Your bite inflicts more damage.

  Mimicking Arms (F) - Level 1: Your arms can mimic shapes and lifeforms somewhat accurately.

  Inkjet (F) - Level 1: Shoot a jet of ink to confuse your pursuers and hide yourself.

  Species traits:

  Magic Mimic (F): By sampling the tissues of a magic-empowered being, a skill can be temporarily copied. Only one Skill can be remembered at a time.

  Accelerated Regeneration (F): Recover from injuries and ailments faster.

  Class - Undecided Marine Biologist - Level 1

  Class skills (1/4):

  Identify: Get basic information about an examined being or object.

  Class traits (2/4):

  Universal Tongue: Can understand and be understood by all intelligent beings.

  Nothing is Lost: On death, a being’s power is condensed into a Core. You can absorb such Cores to gain levels, or exchange them for Consumption Tokens.

  What is all this? Oh god. Am I in a game?

  Henry put down the fish and inwardly groaned. Bits of the fish’s blood and viscera filled his turtle-home, and he could taste it through all his arms. He swam to one of the two entrances not blocked by rocks and breathed in the cleaner water. He took a quick look outside, just to make sure nothing was sneaking up on him before he looked over his new menu again.

  Damn. Is this really a game? This looks like RPG stuff.

  Well, if it was a game, then Henry got screwed. Because he didn’t see the word “lives” anywhere. It didn’t seem like there was much room for mistakes.

  He glanced around. Overhead, a shark swam by. A striped thing that reminded him of tigers sharks, though Henry had never seen sharks with such clear stripes. They almost looked like a tiger’s stripes

  I don’t think I’m on Earth anymore.

  This System-business, on top of the fauna and flora he’d been seeing for the last two or three days made it clear… this wasn’t Earth. If it was, it would have to be some obscure, undiscovered ocean. Seeing one unrecognizable organism was something, but more than ten? In two days?

  Where am I?

  The System had mentioned the F-rank being named differently… Did that mean there were people around?

  The thought of meeting people made him chuckle, and a bit of ink escaped him. Goddamn it, he cursed, waving two arms around to get the ink away from him.

  Even if there were people around, it wasn’t as if he could go talk to them. He’d end up on a grill. Or in a soup. Or fried.

  I’d kill for a warm meal right now.

  Henry extended a arm and brought the fish back to his mouth. No matter how unappetizing it looked, he was hungry. Then he paused.

  System. Status. Whatever. Come back.

  The screen popped back up and Henry studied the stats again and as he read through the options, the scratched the stump of an arm against the soft sand. It was itching. He’d lost it yesterday to that damn eel when he’d barged into its own burrow. Henry eyed the Accelerated Regeneration trait. Was that going to heal it faster? It did claim it would.

  Oh well. Henry would have to wait and see. For now, he could test some other things.

  Now about these skills… Bite? Let’s see what that does.

  He brought the fish to his beak, and thought of the skill. Nothing happened. He paused and thought for a moment. “Bite?”

  Still nothing.

  Whatever. I’m starving. I’ll test some other time, he told himself, and opened his beak to bite.

  As if it had been waiting, as soon as he opened his beak, it snapped back down on the fish with a terrifying strength, more than anything he could ever recreate by himself.

  Half the fish was pulverized, and some–to his chagrin–was now floating around in his home. But it wasn’t all gone. And then, he got a notification and brought it up.

  Magic Mimic: Dart (F) was copied temporarily.

  Dart (F): Propel the user forward a short distance.

  Oh? This should be useful.

  Henry waved the chunks of fish away from his face.

  I’m going to need a place to test all of this. And I should actually look into some of the details listed and figure out what they mean. There’s a lot being communicated between the ranks, levels, classifications and those descriptions.

  Henry hummed, bringing the remaining chunk of fish to his mouth.

  First, I should finish my–

  A shadow fell over him.

  Henry slowly turned and found two bulbous eyes staring at him. A jaw full of misaligned teeth was slowly inching toward him, followed by a long, skinny and smooth body.

  An eel. The eel.

  Henry inked himself. Completely on purpose.

  Setting expectations: