Over the wilderness, the sky was filled with countless stars, like brilliant diamonds set against a backdrop as black as ink.
For the moment, the perilous wilderness was silent, deceptively tranquil.
"WHOOSH..."
A sudden gust of wind swept through, making the leafy trees sway back and forth, their leaves rustling.
Unlike the searing heat of the day, the night wind was cool. As it slipped through the gaps in the leaves, it felt wonderfully refreshing against the skin.
A behemoth over twenty meters long passed through a spatial rift and arrived on Blue Star.
The brilliant moon hanging high overhead cast its glow upon the Red-horned Purple-scaled Lizard Beast.
The silvery-white moonlight seemed to flow like water, cascading over its body.
Its fine purple scales reflected the silvery moonlight, lending the Mutant Beast—a creature from the Otherworld beyond the spatial rift—an air of the sacred, masking some of its inherent ferocity.
However, the Red-horned Purple-scaled Lizard Beast was, after all, a supremely ferocious Mutant Beast. When it opened its mouth to roar, its true nature was instantly revealed.
"ROAR..."
The resounding roar spread in all directions, a sound saturated with unrivaled arrogance.
Several kilometers from the spatial rift, there was a large pond.
As night fell, a hazy mist had risen, shrouding the surface of the pond like a thin veil.
Suddenly, the resounding roar of a beast echoed from the distance. It traveled across the mist-shrouded pond, and as the sound faded, ripples spread across the calm surface of the water.
"SPLASH..."
Suddenly, the water of the pond began to churn, and moments later, a massive creature seventeen or eighteen meters long surfaced.
It had a long snout, with sharp teeth jutting from its jaws. Its bulging eyes were set on the sides of its head.
Green Scale Armor covered its back, its underbelly was white, and its tail was thick and long.
This massive creature was, in fact, a Crocodile Beast. After emerging from the pond, it quickly scrambled onto the bank, narrowing its eyes as it stared in the direction of the resounding roar.
"ROAR..." An even more resounding roar erupted from the giant Crocodile Beast’s mouth as a Spiritual Energy Wave pulsed from its body.
Tier Two Peak. This giant crocodile was a Mutant Beast at the Peak of Tier Two.
After the giant Crocodile Beast roared, another roar answered from the distance.
And so, separated by several kilometers, the two Mutant Beasts began a call-and-response of roars. They seemed to be communicating, but as time went on, the giant Crocodile Beast grew increasingly agitated.
Around the pond, countless small creatures—snakes, insects, and rodents—hid in the grass.
They were foraging in the grass under the cover of Night, their movements making only the faintest of sounds.
The giant Crocodile Beast that had suddenly climbed ashore from the pond let out roar after roar.
A terrifying aura radiated outwards, causing the small creatures hiding in the grass to tremble in fear. They fell silent, not daring to make the slightest noise, terrified that a single wrong move would anger the dreadful Mutant Beast and cost them their lives.
The more powerful a Mutant Beast, the stronger its sense of territory. The giant Crocodile Beast felt deeply offended that an uninvited guest had intruded upon its domain.
It first tried to simply order the intruder out of its territory, but this had no effect.
The intruder ignored its warning, brazenly remaining within its territory.
Worse, the intruder’s responses were filled with provocation, causing the giant Crocodile Beast’s rage to surge uncontrollably.
"ROAR..."
Seeing its warning ignored, the giant Crocodile Beast, burning with rage, let out a low growl. Then it began to move, charging swiftly toward the intruder’s location.
It would tear the intruder to shreds and make it pay with its life for invading its territory.
...
In the hazy Night, the Red-horned Purple-scaled Lizard Beast from the unknown Otherworld, having just finished its long-distance war of roars with the stranger telling it to get out, began to look around, curiously sizing up this new world.
It could clearly sense that the concentration of Spiritual Energy in this world was far lower than in its homeworld.
’Still, being able to travel to an unknown world through a spatial rift is quite a novel experience.’
’The Red-horned Purple-scaled Lizard Beast had only ever heard from its clan elders that spatial rifts leading to unknown Otherworlds existed.’
’It had always treated them as mere legends, never expecting to actually find one.’
’If I go back and tell my clan-mates about this, I’ll have some serious bragging rights.’
The Red-horned Purple-scaled Lizard Beast then strolled around the spatial rift. Just as it was preparing to return to its own world, it sensed a powerful Spiritual Energy Wave approaching from behind.
It turned to face the source of the Spiritual Energy Wave. A moment later, a dull thudding sound echoed from the distance.
"THUD, THUD, THUD..."
The sound grew progressively louder, a clear sign that the creature making it was rapidly approaching.
"RUSTLE, RUSTLE, RUSTLE..."
The tall grass rustled loudly, and a few seconds later, a massive figure burst from the brush, appearing before the Red-horned Purple-scaled Lizard Beast.
The giant Crocodile Beast had been seething with rage, but when it reached its destination and finally saw the enemy who had invaded its territory, it was a bizarre-looking creature unlike any it had ever seen before.