I'm a Stingray?

Timothy felt sure that he would crash soon, his stamina had depleted rapidly through this chase.

Now he didn't swim over hundreds of kilometres all at once, but there was another aspect that tired him out.

He had to swim at top speed for over three hundred meters so far, and that simply didn't treat his body so well.

Yet the hero didn't want to stop, as one second put into waste would force him to lose sight of the fast-travelling diamond.

The thought of losing track was nerve wracking, so he pushed forward regardless of how his body disagreed with such an action.

A stubborn pace of that liking had only one fate, and it was expected regardless of how tough the young man tried to act.

At first he couldn't take a proper sharp turn across the tunnel he swam through.

One of his fins struck at one edge of the thin tunnel. The impact wasn't painful but he lost a bit of orientation.

Paired with the fact that he felt dizzy already, this sudden fate could only lead him towards the ground.

And in this case he had spun like a disk a few times, before he met with the tunnel's floor.

The hero could feel that his stomach sharply ached on one side, and his fins almost felt disconnected from his body, all thanks to exhaustion.

In all ways possible, he had been overworked more than ever, well at least in terms of stamina.

It took a few moments for the hero to let go of his ego, but this time he had a good reason to do so.

In any normal case he would keep going regardless if it killed him. But at the moment he understood that it was pointless to continue, the diamond was long gone from his sight.

Such a wave of logic kept him healthy at this point, because if he continued then he would probably knock himself out cold.

[Stay here until your stamina replenishes, or else you will suffer damage on your vital organs]

Such a warning had been repeated a few times so far, but of course the hero only listened now when he had no other option but to abide.

At the moment he felt too worn out to speak, so he had to embrace this conversation with the aid of a thought.

“My organs will get hurt either way, I haven’t eaten anything since like forever.” He pointed out.

And the system was instant to remind, [This hidden encirclement of various civilisations does not have a food source, so you’ll likely starve for a long time]

“Yeah no kidding,” He joked.

…

It took the sea-pancake nearly an hour to replenish his entire stamina. Normally the procedure wouldn’t take so long, no.

But he had overworked himself so much that his stamina-bar had gone below zero. And that itself took more time to recover from.

While he had lied in wait, the hero had the chance to think his choices over.

Since his emotional intelligence had been high enough, he managed to figure out the reasons behind his resistance.

Timmy figured out that his stamina went that low, all because he had been too egoistic to back down.

Now this aspect could be confused with will power, but his emotions were hurt thanks to the fact that he couldn’t keep up with the fast diamond; and such emotion pointed out towards ego.

He figured out that detail, and now the sea-disk wanted to figure out a way to push such hot-headedness away.

From a brief perspective, it would take a while to control this over productive emotion. Yet his self awareness was the first step towards fixing such a flaw, the system assured such an aspect too.

However, this problem could be pushed aside for now, it was a problem that he had to work through, over time.

As for now he continued to follow the snug tunnel that he had crashed in.

It took Timmy a moment to orientate himself, especially since he had spun just an hour ago; but he managed to find his way out.

After just a few minutes of travel, he reached the end of the tunnel and met with the same big door he had witnessed earlier on.

This time however, the dark-grey door seemed quite different in comparison.

Sure its darkened features were still evident, but there was another detail that made this scene both unique and pleasing to the naked eye.

In simple words, the entire top left corner of the door had shifted its colour.

A fourth of this big door was coated with the same colour which the diamond carried. More specifically, it had a discoloured shade of light blue.

And it didn’t seem like the door was affected by some sort of light either, it had genuinely changed in colour in some odd way.

The big diamond itself was in one of the four holes, the same ones which lied in the middle of the door.

Its spherical form fit perfectly in that spot, so the hero had no doubt that he had gotten the team one step closer towards progress.

Dana was close to the door for some reason, and it was clear that she was attracted by the diamond.

Once the hero approached the good lady, he asked. “What are you doing here? Couldn’t you find anything?”

“Yes and no,” She followed along.

And then specified, “The crystals you found brought me back here.”

“Oh so you were the ones who made those things swim?” Timothy asked.

In an instant the other specified, “Yes, you yell a lot so it was easy to figure out what you were excited about.”

The hero didn’t want to ask more regarding the matter, as he understood that this fine lady’s senses were beyond marvelous.

She didn’t seem any different in form either, so it felt pointless to waste time with too many questions.

Instead he shifted the topic towards the group task, “Tell me about the diamond sphere things, did you find any?”

“I found something that seems like what we’re looking for, but this thing is somehow causing illusions that are too strong for me to see through.” Dana revealed.