Chapter Ninety-Eight: The Artist of the Crocodile World

A chorus of alarm rose at once from his companions. They had never imagined that the moment they saw him return, they would react as though facing a mortal enemy, their cries turning sharper and more urgent.

The black-spotted one even sprang into the air, its narrow beak gaping as though about to hurl a fireball.

He paused, then understood.

In little more than ten days away, his appearance had changed too much.

Still, surely they could recognize his scent?

As expected, the elder crocodile was the first to sense something amiss. It sniffed the air, then let out a puzzled call.

He answered in the same language. Noticing the half-dead black bear at his side trying to flee, he casually lifted a claw and smashed the prey’s head apart with brutal ease.

Once they confirmed that this colossal figure truly was the third crocodile, the others rushed over at once. The little female, especially, behaved like a child, nudging the great head against his forelimb again and again.

After a while of companionable play, he formally told them about the journey ahead.

Though they still looked confused, none of them objected.

As it happened, they were already accustomed to moving from place to place. Deep in their minds, a hazy conviction had long taken root: following the third crocodile meant meat to eat.

So, under his lead, four crocodiles and a magpie once again set out on their migratory road. This time, they traveled openly and with great fanfare.

Along the way, aquatic creatures dwelling in the water sensed the aura he released and scattered in all directions.

Before night fell, they had entered an underground cavern to rest.

This place was far more spacious than their former nest, and after exploring it, the group took a keen liking to it.

The elder crocodile, in particular, developed a strong interest in the carvings on the stone walls and stared at them for a long time in solitary contemplation.

There was admiration in its beastly eyes.

Back in the hot spring valley, this fellow had already shown great interest in the murals he had drawn, often leaning close to the walls to look.

In particular, after swallowing a small piece of spirit stone some days ago, the elder crocodile seemed to have had its intelligence fully awakened.

Somehow, it had found a reddish-brown stone and, imitating his earlier manner, began to draw with careful control of its claws.

Though the lines were crooked and clumsy, one could still make out four crocodiles and the magpie. And afterward, it went on drawing more and more, all of them scenes recording daily hunts.

He naturally supported this hobby of the elder crocodile.

There was nothing wrong with a child who loved art. Perhaps one day it would even become an artist among crocodiles.

After settling the others in, he followed the underground current into a pool and dove nearly a hundred meters to the bottom. After devouring half the flesh of a mutated water serpent, he surfaced with seven or eight spirit stones held in his mouth and returned by the same route to the cavern.

The sight of the purple spirit stones on the ground sent the three crocodiles and the black-spotted one into excited cries at once, their eyes full of greed.

He extended a claw and assigned one to each of them.

Naturally, the spirit stone before the black-spotted bird was much smaller.

It was not that he did not want to give it more; he simply feared they would not be able to handle it.

His understanding of spirit stones was still rudimentary. He knew only that the energy within them was violent and mighty, capable of driving ordinary beasts into evolutionary mutation.

As for how many spirit stones the elder crocodile and the others could endure at once, he had no certain answer.

So, for the sake of safety, it was better to proceed gradually. In any case, there was a mineral vein beneath the deep pool, enough to provide all the spirit stones they needed for evolution.

So long as they required them, he could supply them without end.

Just as before, none of the others hesitated after receiving the stones. They swallowed them eagerly.

The little female crocodile was the first to react, opening its mouth with a sharp hiss.

Its beastly eyes soon turned blood-red, as if a blaze were roaring within its body, and the scales on its skin grew hot to the touch.

Then it charged about the spacious cavern like a mad thing, lashing its tail against the surrounding stalactites and stone pillars to vent the fever raging through it.

At the same time, threads of blood began seeping through the dark brown scales.

Seeing this, he was again glad that he had been cautious and had not rashly allowed them to consume too many spirit stones.

Next came the second crocodile.

Though the elder crocodile’s beastly eyes glowed a deep scarlet, it still maintained its reason.

It took a full half hour before the group gradually calmed once more, and the savage light in their eyes slowly faded.

Yet he could feel that they were no longer as they had been before. A certain transformation had begun within them.

Then the black-spotted bird folded its wings and landed on the ground, its eyes brimming with ingratiating eagerness.

After swallowing a spirit stone, the little creature showed no unusual reaction at all.

It seemed that its last evolution had been extremely thorough, leaving its body far more resilient.

He considered it, then slid over another stone.

Soon, the black-spotted bird began bristling once more and spewing fire. Clearly, it too had reached its limit.

As its body grew larger, the fireballs it spat had increased severalfold, now about the size of goose eggs.

Wait... something was wrong.

It had changed again.

He had not expected this at all. After swallowing the second spirit stone, the bird’s body underwent another mutation, seeming to become a giant fireball, or perhaps a fire bird.

Even from more than ten feet away, he could feel waves of searing heat crashing over them.

Red flames blazed across its multicolored black feathers.

He noticed clearly that this time the bird’s plumage did not rapidly char and turn to ash as it had before.

On the contrary, it seemed to be undergoing some kind of tempering.

Watching it like this, the little female crocodile’s eyes filled with a touch of concern.

He patted the small one’s head to comfort it.

This bird possessed extraordinary talent and great fortune; it would surely be fine.

In truth, he was now very curious about the magpie. It was no ordinary bird. Like himself, it might have awakened a bloodline return to its ancestral form.

Sure enough, after the flames had burned for several minutes, it returned to normal, unharmed in the slightest.

Then it came again, asking for another stone.

But he no longer dared to give it one, and simply swallowed the remaining pieces himself in one gulp.

After that, the four crocodiles and the bird made their home in the underground cavern, and life settled back into quiet routine.

Each morning, his first task after waking was to plunge to the bottom of the pool to mine spirit stones. The elder crocodile and the others each received one, while he swallowed the rest.

In just a few days, the bloodline return had already reached thirty percent.

Of course, his body was also growing at a startling pace, changing almost every moment.

Previously, because the water serpent pack had been present, the animals in the nearby forest had already been hunted down to very small numbers.

Now, with the arrival of the four crocodiles, they suffered even more.

After their bodies mutated, the elder crocodile and the others entered a rapid growth phase and needed large amounts of food every day to fill their bellies.

Fortunately, the underground river held plenty of fish to hunt, so there was no immediate shortage of food.

As for him, every hunt meant running for over a hundred miles before he could find something worth eating.

He did this partly, of course, to leave prey near their territory for the elder crocodile and the others, and partly because he had no interest in the flesh of inferior quarry.