The midday sun hung like a golden coin over the Great Savannah, but its light felt thin and fragile against the ancient canopy of the jungle, as it was still shrouded in darkness.
The King of the Jungle Lions—a titan of muscle and scarred gold fur—moved through the massive trees with a silent, heavy grace.
He was the law of this land, but today, the air felt wrong to him.
A column of black, oily smoke was rising from the North.
Using his movement skills, the King blurred through the trees, a golden streak against the green, he arrived at the banks of a river that sparkled with deceptive beauty.
This was the Bugs River, named for the millions of iridescent butterflies that danced above its surface, creating a literal fog of color.
But as the King looked closer, the butterflies weren't dancing.
They were fleeing.
On the muddy bank of the river lay a ruin that defied the work of the jungle.
It was a vessel of cold, jagged metal—a spaceship, its hull torn open like a fruit.
It hissed with a dying heat, the smoke smelling of ozone and chemicals.
The King stayed hidden.
He knew whose territory this was, this river belonged to one of the Ten Lords of the Jungle: The Mist Crocodile.
In the hierarchy of the new world, the Lords of the Jungle were second only to the Lords of the World.
And to the Lion King, a Lord was a wall that he was unable to overcome even with his tooth and mane.
Within two minutes, the air grew cold.
A thick, white mist began to bleed from the water's edge.
Instead of just covering the spaceship; it consumed it.
The mist was an erosive force, a biological fog that dissolved the metal and the grass until not a single grain of dirt remained unchanged.
The terrifying silence of the Mist Crocodile was absolute.
The King began to turn away, satisfied that the "Lord" had handled the intruder.
He would return to his Palace and prepare for the upcoming games.
"Sheeech!"
A sound like the earth splitting open stopped him in his tracks.
The center of the Bugs River erupted.
A massive whirlpool formed, dragging the mist and the butterflies into a watery grave. Then, the surface shattered.
A titanic body of water exploded upward, accompanied by a roar that shook the King's very marrow.
But it wasn't just water.
A geyser of blood followed, spraying across the banks and turning the crystalline river into a soup of deep, dark red.
The King's eyes widened.
Something was down there—something that didn't care about the Mist Crocodile's territory.
The silence of the jungle was gone.
And the hunt had truly begun.
[END OF VOLUME 1]
Final Thoughts on Volume 1:
[Hey, author here.
Not going to take much time, but first of all thank you for your support and reading it till now despite me being noob.
I started writing it... I guess 1 week or sometime before it, but still, i started writing it as a necessary procedure to cure my laziness because it caused me some serious problems, and now that i think about it, It was a funny reason.
At first I didn't think much about the novel itself and did it superficially but after seeing someone was reading it I tried to improve in every chapter, again thank you so much and you can ask questions in comment.
I will be editing previous chapters till Sunday, so the next volume will also start by Sunday.
But i believe that i will be unable to wait,
I guess!?
Again!
Thanks for reading, it worked as a miracle hard to describe.]