Chapter Ninety-Nine: The Value of the Mutant Giant Crocodile

In the jungle, a brilliantly colored great cat opened its jaws and let out a thunderous roar.

As it roared, it crouched low, its claws digging into the earth, its spine arched like a bow drawn to full strain, ready to spring at any moment.

Yet in Lu Chen’s eyes, the beast’s cry was tinged with unmistakable fear, hardly befitting the king of all beasts.

With the onset of the Great Transformation Era, many creatures on Blue Star had not undergone mutation, but their bodies were nonetheless changing quietly.

Take the adult male Bengal tiger before him: large and powerfully built, with thick, muscular limbs, weighing perhaps more than three hundred kilograms. Even among tigers, it should have been a colossal specimen, more than worthy of the title of tiger king.

But compared with Lu Chen now, it was nothing more than a runt. More importantly, the ferocious, blood-soaked aura faintly radiating from Lu Chen’s body made this Bengal tiger instinctively tremble with dread.

The quadruped across from it could not be provoked...

Seeing that its roar had failed to achieve anything, the beast resentfully dropped its prey and turned to flee into the jungle.

Damn it... what a waste of feeling!

So much for the fabled twenty-kilogram rule of felines.

Lu Chen had originally expected a fierce battle. After all, in his previous life he had read that the tiger’s forepaws were the strongest among felines, with striking force said to reach a ton.

Who would have thought... the other side had backed down far too quickly.

He lunged and immediately pursued.

In a flash, the distance between them closed by more than ten meters.

Another blur, and he was already five meters behind it... even while still in midair, Lu Chen’s strong, powerful claws came crashing down.

Boom!

With a dull, heavy impact, the Bengal tiger king was sent flying seven or eight meters away.

Its tumbling body smashed through a tree trunk as thick as a bowl, then crashed into a patch of undergrowth, howling miserably.

It struggled to rise and flee, but could not even get to its feet. Soon it was vomiting blood and torn flesh from its mouth, and then fell silent forever.

Just now, Lu Chen had used the force of his claws to smash down from the air, like a thousand-kilogram boulder plunging at terrifying speed... the sudden eruption of power was imaginable. It had not only broken the Bengal tiger’s spine, but shattered its internal organs as well.

At last he had completed the tiger hunt he had longed for so deeply, yet Lu Chen felt no excitement at all.

So this was the tiger king?

A little overrated. Too weak, really.

He had not even started to exert himself, and the other side was already finished.

Lu Chen shook his head in silence, feeling more and more reflective.

The gap between mutated animals and ordinary animals would only grow wider from now on, until it became an unbridgeable chasm. Those animals that could not keep pace with the times would be abandoned by the times, even if they were once the king of beasts.

Lu Chen was very confident now. With the system’s support, he had already surged to the forefront of mutation and become Blue Star’s top predator.

It was no exaggeration to say that, aside from humans, he had no rival left on this planet.

Whether it was an elephant weighing several tons, a hippopotamus with a bite force among the most terrifying of all, or even a whale in the ocean—if he encountered them, Lu Chen could kill them all.

Of course, if those creatures mutated as well, that would be another matter entirely.

He lifted his head and glanced at the sky, then extended his sharp claws and patted the Bengal tiger’s hindquarters. Having satisfied his wish, he opened his mouth and began to feed.

“Bengal tiger, feline, Panthera genus, can provide 1,468 energy points...”

Though he had anticipated it, seeing the figure appear on the system panel still left Lu Chen faintly disappointed. As a tiger king of rarest caliber, a pound of its flesh contained less energy than that of a mutated wild boar.

Unfortunately, mutated creatures were still too few on Blue Star for now, and most of his food was still low-quality flesh. What was more, for the time being he likely would not be able to return to the deep pool to harvest spirit stones.

***

In the nation of Merigan, inside a spacious conference room.

More than a dozen people in suits sat upright around the table, their eyes fixed intently on the large screen before them.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the story begins a month ago. Several employees of Kerr Pharmaceuticals entered the primitive jungle of Matula in search of a rare plant called Blood Snake Orchid. It is said that the flowers of this plant contain an inconceivable energy, capable of forcing human cells beyond the limit of division and achieving immortality. However, that is not the point of today’s discussion...”

“After those people lost contact for more than half a month in the jungle, Kerr Pharmaceuticals came to us... Moreover, the emergency calls they made before disappearing mentioned an attack by an anaconda...”

“At first we paid it no mind and treated it as an ordinary search-and-rescue mission. It was not until three days ago, when we used high-altitude drones to search and survey the primitive jungle, that we captured images like these...”

After a brief introduction, the staff member in charge of the presentation pressed the remote. Several clear images immediately appeared on the big screen.

In the first image, a giant crocodile occupied almost the entire frame. Its dark, massive body, the high ridge of bone spines along its back, and its thick limbs delivered a tremendous visual shock.

The second image showed it hunting through the jungle. From the photo, it appeared that it had cleanly killed a Bengal tiger.

“Cran, everyone’s time is valuable. What exactly are you trying to say? And are you sure this is a crocodile, not a screenshot from some second-rate movie made by those film studios?” An old man tapped the table and asked in dissatisfaction. “How could a crocodile possibly hunt in the jungle, and its back is obviously modified.”

“That’s right, Cran. We don’t have time to watch your monster movie.”

“Do you take us for fools? That clearly isn’t a crocodile...”

The attendees spoke up one after another.

Cran raised a hand to quiet them, then replied with a smile, “What if I told you that this crocodile really exists? Or rather, what kind of investment value might it have?”

“How is that possible? Blue Star could never have such a monster,” someone immediately objected.

“That’s right, everyone. It is a monster! Let me show you another video. It was filmed two days ago when the high-altitude drone spotted it again. Since we were afraid of alarming it, we did not lower the flight altitude.”

The subject of the video was still the same huge crocodile.

This time it was in pursuit of several wild boars, as savage as ever.

In just over ten seconds, it had killed its prey.

After watching the video, someone at last asked with a serious expression, “Cran, are you sure these videos and images are real?”

“Yes, I am absolutely sure. In fact, I have even begun to wonder whether such an extraordinary monster might be a unique existence on Blue Star, and what kind of benefits it could bring the company.

Moreover, the place where this giant crocodile first appeared is very close to where the Kerr Pharmaceuticals employees went missing... So this transformation of its body is very likely connected to the Blood Snake Orchid. Of course, it is also possible that this crocodile was originally a prehistoric creature, and those employees accidentally trespassed into its territory before being all killed...”