The thing that lunged from the tunnel was a thing of nightmares, a god-awful fusion of giant insect and reptile. The size of a wolf, it skittered forward on too many spindly, multi-jointed legs, its body covered in a glistening, slimy black shell. Two sick, glowing purple eyes, devoid of anything but predatory hunger, were locked on him, right above a maw dripping with corrosive saliva and lined with needle-sharp teeth. A Sewer Creeper, yes, but one that had been put through a meat-grinder of pure chaos and stitched back together wrong.
There was no time to analyze. It was already on them, its front claws slashing through the damp air.
"Rock Harden! NOW!" Lin Ke screamed, his voice a raw bark that echoed in the concrete tomb.
An earthy, yellow light flared around his Rock Vole a fraction of a second before the claws made contact.
SCREEEEEEECH!
The sound of chitin scraping across the super-dense shell was a physical pain, a high-pitched shriek of metal on stone that set his teeth on edge. The Rock Vole was blasted backward, tumbling across the slick floor, but its shell—already cracked from the tournament—held. It was now dented and deeply gouged, but it had held. This wasn't an arena. This was real death.
The creature gave them no time to breathe. It shrieked again, a wet, gurgling sound, and lunged, spitting a glob of that corrosive purple drool.
"Dodge! Roll into the water!" Lin Ke yelled, his mind a frantic storm of commands.
The Rock Vole, small and quick, obeyed instantly, rolling into the shallow channel of filthy sewer water. The acid spattered on the concrete where it had just been, hissing violently as it melted the surface into a bubbling puddle. Blinded by rage, the creeper plunged into the water after it. A fatal mistake.
"Slower in the water!" Lin Ke realized, his mind seizing the opportunity. "Use its back as a platform! JUMP! GO FOR THE EYES!"
The Rock Vole, impossibly agile, used the monster's momentum against it, leaping from the water right onto its slick back. Before the creature could register what had happened, it launched a point-blank Rock Throw. A sharp piece of stone, powered by desperation, slammed directly into one of the glowing purple eyes.
A piercing, agonizing shriek of pure pain echoed through the sewers as the monster thrashed wildly, its movements becoming clumsy and chaotic as it threw the Rock Vole off. But the damage was done. It was half-blind and panicked.
"Don't let up! Pin it! FULL POWER, TACKLE!"
The Rock Vole charged through the shallow water like a torpedo and slammed its entire body into the creature's wounded head. Already disoriented, the monster was knocked off balance, its skull cracking hard against the concrete edge of the channel. It gave one last, violent twitch, and then went still.
Silence. A deafening, ringing silence, broken only by the drip… drip… drip of water and the ragged, desperate sound of Lin Ke's own breathing. Adrenaline made his hands tremble uncontrollably. They had won. A messy, brutal, terrifying fight. But they were alive.
As Lin Ke cautiously approached the body, something unnatural began to happen. The grotesque flesh started to dissolve, melting away into a foul-smelling black sludge. He'd read about this. Corrupted creatures were unstable; their bodies couldn't maintain cohesion after death.
But then came something that wasn't in any textbook. The dark purple energy didn't just fade. It coalesced, pulling itself out of the dissolving goop, forming a small, unstable, shimmering orb of dark light that warped the air around it. What the hell is that?
Before he could process it, the Gene Editor flared to life, a brand-new interface overlaying his vision. He didn't read text; he perceived the orb as a knot of highly volatile, toxic energy. At the same time, a dormant subroutine in his Editor blazed into existence. New function unlocked: Purify and Absorb. A crimson warning flashed in his mind. Warning: Absorption carries a minor risk of systemic contamination.
Proceed?
His caution screamed at him, a cold knot of fear in his stomach. But his scientific curiosity, his raw ambition to hatch the Mythical egg, was a much more powerful force. This was a monumental, world-changing discovery. His will focused on the 'Yes' option like a laser.
The Editor pulsed with a brilliant blue light. A beam of pure energy, invisible to the naked eye, lanced out and struck the dark purple orb. The orb was dragged into the Editor's non-space, where Lin Ke witnessed it being torn apart, filtered through a matrix of light, and re-coded in a storm of blue data.
A calm, golden light bloomed in his vision, and a new resource materialized in his mental inventory, along with an intuitive understanding of its properties. Purification complete. Raw Corrupted Gene Essence (12 units) acquired. A high-potency catalyst for genetic editing and evolution.
Lin Ke stared at nothing, his heart pounding not from the aftermath of the fight, but from the earth-shattering implications of what he'd just done. He had found a way to turn the world's deadliest biological poison into his own personal rocket fuel.
The road to hatching his Mythical egg, a path that had seemed impossibly long, had just been given a dangerous, thrilling, and incredibly powerful shortcut. But a question lingered in the back of his mind, cold and sharp: what was the price of using a power born from such darkness?