Book 6 Chapter 5.4 - Awakening
A giant mutated crab was currently crawling along the ocean floor, its movements unsteady and clumsy, even moving forward extremely difficult, let alone hiding itself to silently approach prey. Only one of its giant claws was still intact, the other broken in the middle, more than ten flesh feelers brandishing about from the opening. Meanwhile, underneath its mouthparts, the shell covering its body slightly opened, embedded within it was a green eye. This eyeball moved about slowly, the pupils dilating and contracting in an extremely strange manner.
If one could see the internal composition of the giant mutated crab, they would find that it had already completely changed, a small brain center appearing at the centermost area, able to carry out the most simple thoughts.
"Hungry…"
Whenever this thought arose, the eye would release a mysterious fluctuation that couldn't be captured by the naked eye. A bit later, there would always be a few deep sea creatures who would swim over, and then become prey for it who quietly guarded this place. The way it hunted was also completely different from normal; when the prey became alarmed by the giant claw that was still whole or when they released a vicious attack, the unremarkable broken giant claw's flesh feelers would suddenly extend and instantly wrap around the prey like a net, then a pliable and tough sharp-pointed tip would stab into the prey's body like a blade. The wall of flesh feelers would then divide into countless even finer blood vessels, wrapping around the prey's flesh and continuously devour it, replenishing itself in this manner. A fish that was twice as large as the giant grab could be sucked dry within ten minutes, not even the fish bones able to escape this fate.
The flesh and blood were melted down into nutrients, and then transformed into pure energy to supply the eyeball's needs. The broken-down fish bone sediments were then used to mend and complete its body. Soon after, a pipeline covered in hard exoskeleton grew on the giant crab's head. The center of this pipe was pitch-black like a cannon's barrel as it pointed forward.
The eyeball would automatically adjust the fluctuation it released based on the number and type of creatures that were summoned. Soon after, another large fish swam over. This time, the mutated crab's body trembled, and then the newly generated pipe fired out a bony outgrowth. As if it didn't receive any resistance from the seawater, it drew out a faint trajectory, nailing itself into the end of the scales beneath the large fish's fins. That was the weakest area on the great fish's entire body, this area usually covered by bony fins and scales, but while moving through the water, there would be a momentary gap when the wings opened slightly, this weakness fully exploited by the giant mutated crab. After suddenly feeling pain, the great fish frantically tumbled about, frantically flying towards the distance. However, after struggling only a few times, it lost its sense of balance, starting to continuously swim in circles, occasionally rolling up and down. Soon after, its belly pointed upwards. That body spur contained a powerful toxin, not something it could resist at all.
The giant mutated crab slowly and strangely crawled over. The brandishing flesh feelers wrapped around the dead large fish, and then after a few minutes, it was completely devoured. After the meal this time, the hunger in the eyeball decreased a bit, the giant mutated crab's internal composition starting to stabilize as well. At the very least, the imminent dangers had been somewhat alleviated.
The eyeball released a summoning ripple again, but this time, no prey came even after a long time. The ocean floor wasn't exactly a place flourishing with life. The eyeball realized this soon after. Towards survival and evolution, its instincts were exceptionally powerful.
Between 'need the ability to think' and 'need to become faster', the eyeball firmly chose the former. It could perceive the surroundings, analyze the environments it had visited, successfully capture prey, and make the most optimal decisions based on its present condition.
A new thought center gradually formed. After possessing two thought centers, it started to have leftover brainpower to think about how to modify this giant mutated crab it occupied. From the very depths of the eyeball, a symbol slowly appeared. Upon closer inspection, this was a three-dimensional symbol, its structure incomparably complex, moreover still continuously moving about and releasing all types of radiance. This was a symbol that contained tremendous amounts of information. The eyeball immediately acquired countless aquatic biological modification plans, the smallest change only requiring it to eat a small fish, the greatest modification requiring it to eat an entire giant whale! However, with the eyeball's current energy storage, it could only decipher an extremely, extremely small part of the information this symbol contained.
Now, with two thought centers, the speed of its body's modification would double.
Soon after, the giant mutated crab's exoskeleton became covered in cracks, starting to fall off. When large amounts of the outer shell came off, the tissues that were revealed underneath made it look quite similar to a somewhat strangely shaped fish. The parts of the exoskeleton that were retained turned into bony outgrowths that spread in all directions. In addition, every one of these bone pricks had a small hole at their very tips that could shoot fatal toxins directly into the enemy's body.
The giant mutated crab, no, it should now be called a mutated swordfish, slowly rose from the ocean floor, its sleek tail moving slightly. It then split open the seawater, quickly swimming towards the distance.
When its energy reserves were close to exhaustion, it finally found its next prey. It had long calculated that under its present circumstances, when all of its energy reserves were exhausted, there was a 99% chance of finding new prey. However, only when its energy was exhausted to about 99% did it find prey, this proving that its luck wasn't just a normal type of bad.
"This world does not like me." While devouring this food, the eyeball thought. However, it didn't feel too much worry towards this, instead feeling that it was extremely normal. No worlds liked it, but this didn't affect its actions, nor would it affect the results of its actions.
It had long grown used to this.
In other words, fate was already preordained.