In the cave beneath the swamp, tremors echoed through the Stalagmite Hall.
Black Typhon had gathered his body around a five-meter-tall stalagmite. He had grown larger again, and the rock wall he once couldn't reach when coiled up now pressed against his muscles.
His new skin had been stretched apart not long after he shed it, and the old skin lay across his body like a drooping white veil.
The enormous creature was still asleep, growing in his slumber.
As a researcher at the Staff of Life institution, Famu quickly grasped the structure of Typhon's bones and muscles.
He had once relied only on his wits to survive and live better in the rainforest. Now that the power of the Child of the Earth had fallen into his hands, it was like handing a demon the key to unlock a seal.
The ancient, terrifying upright ape was about to work his miracles.
This was bound to be a long and complicated conceptual process. Out of a sense of ceremony and a researcher's habit, Famu decided to establish it as a project first, and call it—
"Dragonization Modification."
The client and contractor were one and the same, and his assistant was the Child of the Earth Furnace Core.
First, a blueprint rapidly took shape in Famu's mind.
He needed more fangs.
But fangs alone weren't enough for a snake. They were only the surface, seemingly the first step, but actually the last.
Moreover, synthesizing new skeletal structures and teeth was another major difficulty. The Child of the Earth performed minimally invasive surgery; it wasn't creative mode. Things that weren't there couldn't be generated out of thin air.
Typhon's skull was the most extreme movable skeleton among vertebrates. The quadrate bones could swing freely, the maxillae could rotate, and there was a hinge in the middle of the lower jaw. Its independent left and right halves were connected only by ligaments. This structure served to swallow large prey whole, at the cost of force being lost at each joint during a bite.
The first step of Dragonization Modification was to lock all those movable joints in place.
The muscle groups in the neck, the jaw muscles in the head, and the most central part of all, the spine, were all within the range the Child of the Earth could adjust in a short time.
In Famu's mind, a researcher in a white lab coat seemed to be pacing before a screen displaying an anatomical diagram of Typhon.
Bones, muscles, blood vessels, nerves—all these details slid across the screen, one image after another.
He was thinking.
He was excited because this required him to use his brain.
Life in the rainforest had made his muscles surpass his mind, but now his intellect had taken the high ground once more.
First, he would begin by adjusting the bones.
The vertebrae at the front of Famu's body began to differentiate, forming a distinct neck.
A Typhon had nearly a hundred vertebrae in its upper body, and roughly two hundred vertebrae in all.
Famu selected twenty vertebrae in his neck to lengthen, each one biting into the next. The interlocking vertebral joints unique to snakes were preserved and continually reinforced. Those paired concave and convex mortise-and-tenon joints allowed the neck to bend at sharp angles without dislocating, a feature of snakes well worth preserving just as it was.
Next came the cervical ribs. Each vertebra bore a pair of ribs, but if the long neck bent too far, those ribs would stab into his own nerves and blood vessels like thorns.
Famu shortened and flattened them, specialized the atlas and axis, and thickened the ligaments. This was equivalent to installing a shock absorption system, keeping Famu from injuring his own muscles when his neck shot forward at high speed to bite.
With the foundation laid, the Child of the Earth’s Furnace Core rumbled, and the nerve ganglia adapted to the improved structures.
Then came the head.
The quadrate bones needed to become fixed supports rather than movable axes. They had to be sturdy, or simply fuse with the squamosal bones.
Once the quadrate bones were fixed in place, the lower jaw joints would remain stable, and the maxillae would no longer rotate and fold.
The two halves of the lower jaw fused on the basis of the torque structure, and the central hinge vanished, leaving a bone rod resistant to bending.
The cranial sutures closed one by one, like the gates of a city dropping shut. The temporal region bulged, and the sagittal crest stretched across the top of the skull like a mountain ridge, providing enormous anchor points for the jaw muscles.
The Child of the Earth’s Furnace Core carried out the modifications according to Famu's blueprint, swallowing the enormous reserves of energy stored in his body to accomplish his goal.
Whether closing the bones or applying torque to the joints, these were all major modifications.
No Typhon would attempt this.
These giant beasts that ruled the rainforest used their cores for greater size, more powerful muscles, and healing ability.
As for the way they ate, they had all gotten by like this for so many years, and other species didn't necessarily have better feeding abilities than Typhon. On the contrary, the way snakes swallowed prey whole wasted none of its energy whatsoever—even the bones were digested.
Famu lay on the stone platform, listening to the sound of the sutures in his skull fusing.
The sound was fine and drawn out, like a tide washing over sand.
When the tide submerged the sand, the sound disappeared. From then on, his mouth could no longer open to a hundred and eighty degrees.
That sounded somewhat regrettable. Snakes fed with great efficiency, and giving up flexible jaws was equivalent to giving up an efficient way of eating.
But Famu didn't care at all.
What he needed was to be able to overcome the threat of an opponent his own size with an overwhelming advantage, or even kill that opponent.
He was turning himself into a terrifying biological weapon according to his own ideas. In the blueprint, well over half the purpose of Famu's current spine and biting system was to better pierce scales and muscle and bite through thick backbones.
In other words, to better kill other Typhon.
Time passed slowly.
The drought outside grew increasingly severe.
The water level in Blackwater Swamp had fallen enough for the entrance to Famu's rock crevice to be clearly visible.
Headscar passed by from time to time.
During the dry season, prey gathered together, which was good news for a Nightmare Leopard. He was living well and gradually growing larger, with broad, thick shoulders and back and a savage build. His fur had turned from gray-black to pure black, and his spots had become dark purple. He already bore a hint of a patriarch's ferocity.
Headscar came again today, standing in the shade of a tree and gazing out over the swamp.
The weather was so hot that the Orbital Ridge Crocodiles all lay motionless in the shade on the beach, unmoved even as otters nearby harassed them.
As Headscar watched, a fruit suddenly struck him on the head.
The green fruit rolled to Headscar's feet. He looked up and saw the old monkey hanging from the treetop.
Headscar lowered his head and ate the fruit. Not long ago, he had indeed eaten a rare feast. To keep other predators from snatching his food, he had eaten quickly, leaving his belly painfully bloated.
The old monkey had again seen that he had eaten too much and brought him fruit to help grind down the food.
After eating the fruit, Headscar slipped into the shadows.
An Orbital Ridge Crocodile lying on the beach opened its eyes. A pesky otter fell, its head smashed to pieces by a furry paw.
Headscar had hidden himself and ambushed the group of otters. The rest scattered and plunged into the swamp.
He carried the otter in his mouth to the tree, then turned and left.
The old monkey watched the solitary Nightmare Leopard and shrugged. The White-Faced Monkeys in the tree jumped down one after another and worked together to drag the otter's carcass up into the tree.