I'm a Stingray?

Absolutely staggered, he saw the decapitated hand itself, struggling to move around.

After doing what in some aspects seemed like a yoga stretch, the hand took a big leap and stood in front of Tim with the aid of the fore and middle finger.

Bizarre enough, it began to talk. "Why have you disturbed my slumber? Little one."

Without warming, the human hand thumbed the young stingray right on the noggin, further scolding. "This is my den and shit, why are you here?"

Feeling the radiance of submission of which the hand interjected, so he gave in all attempts to play it cool. "I'm definitely not here to do anything stupid. This place is weird."

"This place is my home! But I pretty much died haha." The deceased hand cited, even sat like a toddler who lost balance, rather adorable.

Pretending as if he didn't notice the obvious, yet glad that this hand was the only thing that didn't yell at him through the journey, Tim spoke. "Oh shit! How?"

Pointing behind it, the pigment pale hand specified. "I was exploring this place because of the weird gas. But like, died haha. My body is under that pile of rock over there."

Legitimately concerned, Tim blinked a few times before he asked. "Oh no. What do you plan to do about it? I mean, you got out but when will the rest of your body escape?"

Carrying a blank skin filled look, the hand expressed. "Well... I don't really need it. So I will just explore here for a while and then dip."

"Oh... looks like you've been around here longer than me. Can you tell me where all the pufferfish are at?" Good way to use this unusual friendship to the utmost advantage.

Trying to avoid looking suspicious, the system carrying creature came up with a grand idea. "I need to kiss them."

Letting silence stretch, he felt like the hand was giving a strong glare, but paranoia was shunned away when the unusual new friend added. "Sounds legit."

And then immediately broke out proper piece of advice. "The way is pretty much blocked, so you have to go around it to find a way in. Follow a pufferfish or something but be sneaky, they can eat your ass."

"Okay thank you. Sorry that you died and all." Tim expressed, swimming away through that greet and making for the higher parts of this mist.

...

His head attached to this mist's ceiling as if to a lover, Timmy's limited view was focused on what seemed like moving dots.

After getting all the way up here, a dot was all that one could see from up here, anytime a creature swam down underneath.

Now there is a certain reason why that happened. He was close enough to the bit of light that bursted out of the entrance, considering that he had swam so high.

And that light provides minor illumination that ranged away from the main one, shades descend to the darker depending how far away one would be from the light.

Well, Tim can mostly see dots swimming around the darker shade of this yellow illumination, so far he had counted 20 but yet they could be the same fish swimming in circles.

How much there were here wasn't his concern, Tim wanted to follow one of these enemies into success. The plan was to stink bomb this place, and that can't be done just against 5-10 enemies.

One pattern that had no chance to escape being noticed, was the routes these fish eventually followed.

The stealthy stingray had been here for almost an hour, and managed to patch up what this small number of fish were here for.

Guarding!

Yes, they were guarding this place, but repeated the same routine over and over in this specific spot and no other.

Tim went low enough earlier when he spoke to that decapitated hand, and then swam up. Although his memory fish poop sized, he doesn't remember running into any of these enemies on the way up.

Although in all aspects high, Timothy could puzzle everything together and think. "Why aren't they guarding anywhere else?"

[Can you hear me, guest?!]

"Yup yup yup I can." Tim repeated after a slight panic, unaware where this tone was coming from. "You sound pretty."

[Why haven't you answered? I've been trying to contact you over an hour now!]

Tad pissed of how this lady was expressing herself but yet feeling too nice to point it out, Tim answered the question instead. "I literally didn't hear anything. But you sound familiar."

[I'm the system that's in your head.]

[The nasty coral you consumed is messing with your brain.]

Wanting to keep this effect that provided grand levels of knowledge and communication, Tim added. "Oh the coraly coral. I kinda need it right now, still haven't bombed these pufferfish."

[Okay. Well I can't do anything about it anyway.]

[The coral has been identified as a drug. I have found where it is in your brain and what its effects are, the prime one being delusion.]

[The effects will wear off in about 2 hours. So better handle the task before that.]

[However those pufferfish discovered this monstrosity of a drug, it's giving you 100% protection from this deadly and rare underwater gas.]

"Yup them pufferfish are really smart... I can talk to corals now, but they yell a lot." But what young Tim didn't realise, was that his conversation here wasn't thought out.

But instead it was yelled out, in another perspective it would look like a stingray shouting at water. As he took a moment to look down, spotting 8 pufferfish near him became the inevitable.

Wanting further intel on such a situation, he tried to whisper. "Pretty lady system thing. Why are they staring at me like... motherfuckerly?"

[They want to start a cake bakery.]

[They want to kill you! Isn't that obvious?]

Such a result couldn't help making him think, "Dang, the cave ratted me out."