A cold knot of pure, undiluted dread formed in Lin Ke's stomach as he knelt by the tracks. They were massive, less like footprints and more like craters pressed deep into the hard-packed earth, each one nearly the size of his head. The residual energy they gave off was a low, angry hum of chaotic power that made the fifteen units of essence he'd just collected feel like a child's handful of pennies.
The sensible part of his brain, the scientist that had aced a hundred exams, was screaming at him. Turn back. This is an unknown variable, far outside the predicted scope of a D-Rank zone. You have your data. You have your sample. Retreat, analyze, and return when your own assets are stronger. It is the only logical course of action.
But then another voice, the ambitious, reckless part of him that had chosen a "dead" egg over a guaranteed future, whispered a seductive counter-argument. A bigger creature means a bigger core. A much bigger prize. One single victory against whatever made these tracks could be worth ten of the smaller lizards. Maybe more. The greater the risk…
"What do you think, little guy?" Lin Ke murmured, his voice a low rumble, looking at the Rock Vole on his shoulder. "Should we see what's making these?"
The Rock Vole didn't hesitate. It puffed out its small chest, its body tensing, and let out a single, determined "Ji!", its bright eyes locked in the direction of the tracks. It trusted him. Completely and utterly.
That was all the confirmation he needed. "Alright," he said, a wry grin touching his lips. "You talked me into it."
He marked his position on his terminal and began to follow the trail, venturing deeper into the wilderness. The world around him started to get… wrong. The terrain grew more treacherous, the black rocks sharper, like broken teeth. The hardy shrubs were twisted into unnatural, spiraling shapes. The rocks themselves seemed to weep a faint, oily purple residue that shimmered under the light of the rising moon. The warm Jamaican night air felt heavy here, suffocating, and a palpable sense of malevolence hung over the landscape like a shroud.
Lin Ke moved with the quiet grace of a predator stalking its own, much larger prey. He wasn't just following tracks anymore; he was learning. His Gene Editor ran at full capacity, constructing a profile of his quarry from the forensic evidence it left behind. He saw the creature's estimated weight from the depth of its prints, saw the high potency of its corrosive acid from the melted rock formations, saw from the clear, repeating path that this was a territorial patrol route. This thing was the apex predator of this region.
By the time he'd been tracking it for an hour, he felt as if he knew the creature. He was building a perfect, digital ghost of it in his mind.
The trail ended at the base of a sheer cliff face, a dark fissure marring its surface like a jagged wound. The stench of corruption was a physical thing here, an acrid, gag-inducing smell of rot and acid that stung his nostrils. The tracks led right into the dark maw of the cave. Its lair.
His heart hammered against his ribs. He gave a silent hand signal to his Rock Vole, who immediately went still, its small body a perfect camouflage against the black rocks. Flattening himself against the cliff wall, Lin Ke crept toward the edge of the cave entrance, every nerve alight.
He peered inside.
The cave opened into a cavernous chamber, lit by the eerie, pulsating glow of corrupted fungi that clung to the walls like diseased organs. And in the center, a mountain of corrupted flesh and obsidian armor rose and fell with the slow, deep, rattling breaths of sleep. An Alpha Corrupted Stone-Lizard. It was four times the size of the one he'd fought, at least. A true monster, slumbering in the heart of its domain. The primal, lizard part of his brain screamed RUN.
But his scientist's eye, his predator's eye, swept the chamber, overriding the fear. And that's when he saw it.
Behind the slumbering Alpha, nestled in a pit of rocks and glistening slime… were eggs. A clutch of five of them, each the size of a football. Their shells were a sickly, mottled purple, and they pulsed with the same faint, malevolent light as the cave walls.
The Gene Editor flared, screaming new, unprecedented data into his vision. He wasn't just looking at eggs; he was perceiving nodes of immense, concentrated power. The embryos within were actively gestating, feeding on the ambient Abyssal Corruption, their cores a highly concentrated, albeit unstable, form of the very gene essence he was hunting.
His mission had been simple: hunt for a resource. Find some corrupted creatures, kill them, collect the essence. But this… this changed everything. He hadn't just found a monster. He'd stumbled upon a corrupted nest. A source.
This wasn't a hunting ground anymore. It was a gold mine.
And there was a dragon sleeping on the treasure.