Chapter 232: Eyes In The Water

Luring this thing out was going to be a problem if it didn’t take the first bait.

Tera opened a portal.

She placed the entrance a few feet in front of her and the exit before the water.

She then picked up a loose stone from the ground and tossed it through the portal. It sailed through the entrance, exited over the swamp, hit the water and skipped across the surface before sinking.

The surface went completely still after.

’Damn it.’

For a long, horrible moment, nothing moved.

Then the eyes appeared.

They rose out of the water slowly. They were two massive, bulging orbs breaking the surface like stones being pushed up from below. They were milky yellow with veins of dark green running through them, and they were fixed directly on her.

Tera stiffened.

She stared at those eyes, and those eyes stared back, and a feeling she hadn’t expected crept up her spine.

It felt like it was capable of rational thought.

And it was an unsettling kind of feeling that was different from staring into the eyes of the crazed dino from earlier.

[Host—]

’Stop.’

The system went quiet.

This was their arrangement. Tera had made it clear before she left. The system would not shout instructions during the fight. No tactical suggestions. No panicked warnings. No second-guessing her instincts in real time. The system had been hurt when Tera told it she didn’t trust it enough for that.

She needed no distractions.

All she required it to do was give her the data straight away, along with projections. That way she would know the system wasn’t giving her incessant ramblings that would distract her.

But that might not be necessary, as she had memorised the surrounding terrain. Every pit, every stake cluster, every safe zone and kill zone. She knew where everything was. She needed her instincts clear, not cluttered with a panicking screen in the corner of her vision.

Tera closed the portal, but those eyes still did not move.

She felt that sickening certainty creep into her gut again.

Were all corrupted beasts really brainless mutated monsters?

’It’s thinking...’

[Corrupted beasts do not possess rational thought as Host understands it]

’Then explain why it’s staring at me like it’s deciding something.’

[This is a common misconception with older corrupted beasts that have survived for extended periods]

[Their eyes can convey an intense impression of rational thought, but their behaviours are driven almost entirely by deeply hardwired instinct]

[This particular specimen has survived long enough to develop refined predatory responses]

[What Host is perceiving as intelligence is pattern recognition honed by years of successful kills]

[It is not thinking]

Tera wasn’t sure that distinction made her feel any better.

Her heart nearly stopped beating when she noticed that the beast had risen slightly.

’FOCUS!’ she thought to herself.

Because in the split second she had looked away from the screen, the beast had risen just a fraction. The top of its head was now visible above the waterline, a mass of rough, glistening skin covered in lumps and ridges that looked like they had been carved out of diseased rock. Slime trailed from its skull in thick, translucent ropes that dripped back into the water.

Tera’s stomach turned.

It was one of the most repulsive things she had ever seen. The skin wasn’t just rough, it looked very wrong. It was pocked and cratered and swollen in places, like something had been growing underneath it and pushing outward. The colour was a mottled grey-green that reminded her of meat left in the sun too long, and the texture caught the light in a way that made it look perpetually wet and raw.

She swallowed hard and forced her gaze to stay steady.

The very next moment, she felt a slight vibration rolling through the ground beneath her feet like something enormous had just shifted its weight. And it came from the direction of the swamp.

Tera’s eyes widened as the beast exploded out of the water.

She was outside its hopping radius, but she still darted back. Her stomach twisted with revulsion as she looked at the ugly thing that launched itself out of the water in a spray of dark liquid and slime.

Its bloated body arced through the air with a speed that something that large should not have.

It cleared the edge of the swamp.

It cleared the first line of bamboo stakes.

And it finally landed on a patch with no stakes, as if it had chosen the spot.

The impact shook the earth so hard that Tera stumbled sideways.

The moment it had landed, multiple arms shot out from its body simultaneously. Before Tera could even steady herself, those limbs lashed out at her with a speed that made the tongue from earlier look slow.

She threw herself sideways.

One limb slammed into the ground where she had been standing, cracking the earth. Another whipped past her head so close she felt the air displacement against her cheek. She hit the ground and rolled to get out of the way, the dirt scraping across her forearm as she dodged another arm.

Her heart was hammering so hard she could feel it in her skull.

It was shooting multiple arms at her constantly!

’DAMN IT!’

It was not even giving her the breathing space to focus and use the portal against it.

Tera immediately darted further out of range.

The beast crouched on the dry ground, its massive body heaving, already preparing to jump again. Tera rushed to another cluster of bamboo, but as she was about to use the portal, she stole a quick glance at the monster.

The moment her eyes landed on it properly, a wave of involuntary disgust hit her so hard her skin wanted to crawl. Up close, it was worse than the scan had shown her. The skin looked like it was rotting while still alive, and the chemical stench rolling off it made her gag.

Tera pressed her hand over her mouth and forced the nausea down.

She focused, ready to open a portal straight through its body, when a slight twitch ran through the beast. Tera tensed and moved on instinct.

She opened a portal near her and rushed through it. When she came out the other side into another cluster of stakes, she felt a sharp, searing pain in her right arm.