The creature’s blood drenched him head to toe. It didn’t matter — insect blood wasn’t toxic, and his visor and eye covers were sealed tight. Nothing got in.
The instant his feet touched ground he was already launching back up, driving in for a follow-up strike. Kill one first. Deal with the other after.
But the creature’s reaction speed far exceeded what he’d anticipated. Before he could complete his jump, it had already leaped clear — carapace spreading, two pairs of wings beating, carrying it ten meters straight up. While it was airborne, the second creature moved to cover, surging forward with its sickle-legs working in coordinated patterns — up, down, left, right, cutting from every angle simultaneously.
Shen Cong’s mind had gone very quiet and very clear. He assessed each attack and each defensive option with cold precision.
Seventeen-bull strength. Not just raw power — everything else that came with it. If he used it properly, he could meet these creatures head-on. He was a powerful lifeform capable of generating a pressure aura. What he needed now wasn’t to batter harder — it was to find his fighting instincts. To stop reacting and start hunting.
I have to reduce the pressure from both of them. Otherwise I won’t hold.
In that same instant, he remembered his new weapons. Pepper Water. Spiny spines.
The corrosive materials harvested from the Spicy Eye caterpillars had replaced Activity-Killer Venom and Super-2 Ant Acid as his primary area of research these past few days. He’d developed two delivery systems.
The first: Pepper Water decanted into glass vials, thrown by hand or launched with a slingshot, to drench the target.
The second: spines bundled tightly into small clusters, formed into blowgun darts, fired through a tube. On release, the bundle spread in an arc mid-air — a fan of corrosive needles. A needle storm.
More sophisticated weapons were still in the design phase. Limited materials, limited time. These would have to do for now.
He dodged an incoming strike, reached into his jacket, came out with three small vials of Pepper Water, and hurled them directly at the creature’s face.
The creature apparently had no idea what the vials were and didn’t bother deflecting something so small.
All three shattered across its head. Its eyes. Its mouthparts.
Hiss.
A sharp, piercing shriek. The entire head began to smoke. Both enormous compound eyes collapsed inward. Half the face — eyes and mouthparts together — began to dissolve.
Pepper Water. Absolutely savage.
But the creature was savage too. Eyes gone, half its face rotting off, it kept fighting purely by instinct — sickle-legs swinging in wide arcs toward where it had last sensed him, carving through the rock surface like it was soft cheese. It couldn’t hit him, but the sweeping strikes churned up a dense cloud of dust and debris.
Through the dust, the second creature came charging — taking up its partner’s position, cutting off Shen Cong’s approach to the blinded one.
They’re communicating. The positioning and coverage are too coordinated to be coincidence.
Two more vials came out. He threw them at the sighted creature.
It had learned from watching its partner. The sickle-legs came up immediately, intercepting the vials before they could hit its face. Pepper Water splashed across the Activity core surface of the sickle-legs.
Ineffective. The cores could handle it.
But Shen Cong had anticipated exactly this possibility — which was why he’d only thrown two vials this time, keeping something back. The throw drew the creature’s full attention upward. He drove low and in, going straight for its abdomen, blowgun already in hand.
The creature read the approach and leaped — ten meters straight up, instantly.
He didn’t slow down. He kept his momentum, shifted targets, and went for the blinded one instead. The needle storm he’d lined up for the sighted creature fired point-blank into the blinded creature’s face.
Crack. Thud.
The spines hit hard. The blinded creature’s already-dissolving face took a full spread of corrosive needles at close range. Thin wisps of smoke curled up from dozens of impact points.
This time, the damage reached the brain.
Fatal.
HISSSSS—
The blinded creature screamed — a continuous, frantic shriek — and began thrashing on the ground. The dense egg-clusters on its back ruptured one after another as it rolled, leaking pale white fluid. From its abdomen, thick yellow liquid discharged in a continuous stream that turned the stomach to look at.
Shen Cong felt nothing about the sight.
Strike while they’re down. That was his rule. Now was exactly the moment.
The sighted creature came back to earth and immediately answered the screaming with its own hiss, charging directly at Shen Cong to protect its partner. But the balance of the fight had shifted.
One creature dying. One creature fighting alone.
The threat was suddenly manageable. He engaged the sighted creature directly — and as the exchanges accumulated, he felt something opening up. His body was learning in real time, adapting to its own capabilities at a pace he hadn’t experienced before. Every difficult movement he’d only theorized about, he was now executing. Seventeen-bull strength, fully utilized.
He found the Ape King Long Blade where he’d dropped it and snatched it back up. Within minutes he was circling the creature, cutting it open with each pass, wound after wound accumulating across its body.
The creature read its own situation. It tried to run.
Shen Cong immediately pivoted to the dying creature and went at it — which made the dying one scream again, and the fleeing one came straight back, reversing course to rejoin the fight.
Devoted partners, are you.
He felt almost lighthearted. Ten minutes ago he’d been sprinting for his life. Now he was controlling the geometry of the fight, using one creature as leverage against the other. The reversal had been fast.
He didn’t let his guard down. Kept his focus absolute. Used their bond against them with each exchange, bleeding both creatures steadily.
Finally, the sighted creature had taken enough. It stopped responding to its partner’s calls and made a serious attempt to escape.
Shen Cong had no intention of letting it.
An injured creature with a brain was a future problem. It would recover, and it would remember.
Can’t let it go.
He pushed hard in pursuit, closed the gap on the slowing, heavily wounded creature, and launched himself — a full-extension leap onto its back. The creature spread its carapace, trying to buck him off. He drove the Ape King Long Blade deep into its back instead, gripped it, and wrenched the wound open.
The creature convulsed instantly, collapsing and rolling.
He was thrown clear. He shook his head, pulled himself up, and ran back in. Found the creature still twitching on the ground. Aimed for the head and hacked until it stopped.
It didn’t take long.
Two minutes later, Shen Cong limped toward Great Vajra dragging two enormous insect carcasses — each several tons of dead weight — while covered from head to foot in dust, mud, blood, and unidentifiable fluids.
The Old Pearl Mussel, exercising in its pool, sensed the commotion and immediately retracted its foot, shell clamping shut.
Thud.
He dropped the carcasses. Climbed back into Great Vajra. Sent up the DJI drone and ran a full perimeter sweep. Confirmed clear. Then exhaled, long and slow.
He sat down in the cab and didn’t want to move.
Two creatures, each over twenty meters long. Head-on combat, two-against-one. He could barely believe, now that it was over, how close the margin had been. Without the Pepper Water and spines — without that one moment of surprise that had blinded one of them — he genuinely wasn’t sure he would have come back.
“I need to do a full review.”
One minute of rest. Then he stood up, walked to the bathroom, stripped off the Half-Activated Armor, and started the bath. He let the heat work on his muscles while his mind kept running back through the fight — every mistake, every near-miss, every moment of hesitation across the past several days.
Only honest self-assessment produced real learning. Only real learning produced genuine caution. And genuine caution was the only thing, in this world, that kept you alive from one day to the next.
Survival of the fittest.
Nothing more to it than that.
(End of Chapter 207)