Chapter 3163: Mama & Hatchlings

Date: Unspecified

Time: Unspecified

Location: Myriad Realms, Realm Of True Evil

As I studied the soul pathways of the skills etched into the shell, I slowly made my way inside, following their patterns and arrangements. I hoped they would eventually lead me to the shell’s core, or whatever had been powering it for so long despite the turtle that once owned it being long dead.

The view of Shell Island, as I had already started calling the forest-covered shell, was mesmerizing. Yet the beauty only made me more cautious about what lay ahead.

Roses came with thorns. That was simply how nature worked.

And nowhere was that more obvious than here, on an island underneath by a massive predatory forest that had evolved to hunt anything foolish enough to wander into its territory and surrounded by an ocean of lava.

However, one thing about the vegetation on the island surprised me.

The plants were gigantic by ordinary standards, but compared to the forest growing on top of the shell, they were practically Lilliputian. Whatever had induced the extreme gigantism in the trees above had clearly failed to spread its influence to the vegetation growing inside the shell.

I couldn’t help but wonder why.

Was there some deeper mechanism restricting its influence to the island ecosystem?

Considering that the entire island existed only because of the shell’s passive skills, that seemed like the most likely explanation. Whatever was inducing the extreme gigantism in the trees rooted across the shell was probably an effect produced by the shell itself or something hiding in it. For some reason, its influence stopped at the shell’s interior.

I would have to investigate further to find out why.

As soon as I crossed the pool of lava into the shell and toward Shell Island, at its shores I spotted the natives of the place, the very creatures the Dark Races had labeled as True Evil. They greeted me enthusiastically.

At first glance, they looked like lean, mutated turtles that had somehow been given two pairs of arms and the beak of a hawk.

They were quadrupeds, using their powerful legs and their longer upper pair of arms to move around, while their smaller lower pair remained free.

Their upper arms were considerably longer and more heavily muscled than their legs, giving them a distinctive posture. Their bodies naturally sloped downward from their massive, broad shoulders toward their lower hips.

Their heads rested low and forward on short, powerful necks, framed by massive sagittal crests rising from their skulls. A broad, flat shell covered their torsos and backs, shaped somewhat like an enormous segment oval shield.

From what I had read about them, however, the shell wasn’t merely a defensive feature, it was functional.

Looking at them, however, made me wonder how they were supposed to retract their massive frames into those large but surprisingly flat shells.

The group was waiting for me to cross the lava and enter what appeared to be a black-sand beach on the other side.

I stopped mid-flight, suddenly alarmed by the sight of so many True Evil gathered together. But after taking a closer look at their size, I realized they weren’t adults at all.

They were hatchlings.

Judging by their development, they couldn’t have been more than two or three weeks old.

Their mother had most likely laid the eggs somewhere along that black-sand beach. That wasn’t particularly surprising. True Evil eggs were extraordinarily tough, capable of surviving harsh conditions and even considerable physical abuse. They could also remain dormant for years before finally hatching, with some taking anywhere from two to five years.

If those had been adult True Evil, my body would probably have been ripped apart and defiled by now—

Before I could finish the thought, the entire world suddenly spun around me.

Or, more accurately, my head was spinning.

Then a massive scaly green palm grabbed it and hurled into the air before being caught between a massive, filthy beak.

Crunch.

The creature began chewing.

It didn’t swallow me. It simply kept grinding my head between its jaws with the rest of my body.

Judging by the sheer size of the creature and the fact that it had appeared without warning, I could only assume it was the mother of those hatchlings.

And judging by the way it was chewing me into paste, I had apparently just volunteered to become baby food.

Thanks to the Third Blood Rule Meaning I had comprehended, Blood Plague, I had long since evolved my Primordial Calamity Soul Gem beyond the traditional core structure, into countless nano-cores embedded within every cell of my body.

Only one of them served as my true Primordial Calamity Soul Gems. The rest were pseudo-calamity soul gems.

That allowed me to remain conscious even after my body had been reduced to the cellular level, let alone being chewed into a paste.

Without further ado, I conjured a Primordial Calamity Daughter Gem inside the True Evil’s throat and forced it down into its stomach.

After everything I had heard about the True Evils, combined with my own experience with them, I wasn’t willing to take any chances. Giving the Calamity Daughter Gem a head start inside its body seemed like the safest option.

Fortunately, my fears proved unnecessary.

The moment the gem took effect, the True Evil became one of my Calamity Daughter Gems.

Under my instructions, it stopped chewing the mangled remains of my body and spat the foul mixture of saliva and pulverized flesh into its hands.

I immediately conjured a new body and transferred my consciousness into it, converting one of my pseudo-Calamity Soul Gems into the new true soul gem.

With that, I had a True Evil of my own, and I was whole again.

After settling into a complete and functional physical body, the first thing I did was figure out how she had managed to ambush me without triggering my ’If You See Me, I See You’ skill.

The answer was surprisingly simple.

She had never seen me.

The True Evil had been hunting beneath the lava. When she heard the sounds of her hatchlings, she immediately rushed toward the surface. As she approached, her other senses detected my presence.

She erupted from the lava without warning, swallowing my body from the neck down in a single motion.

My head had been left spinning in the air for that brief instant, only for her to catch it and throw it in her beak and start chewing.

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