Liver Zone H-114514. A huge mouth lined with bony teeth rose from the black pool water.
Tom Pie had just started circling around the side when a long tongue wrapped around his ankle. The thing had been hidden beneath the lower jaw, sweeping along the pool's edge. By the time he saw it, he had already been dragged off the ground.
"You fucking had a trick like that too?"
He bent down and grabbed the tongue, his black claws ripping several bloody gashes into it. The monster recoiled in pain, pulling its tongue back—and flinging him straight into its mouth.
Two rows of bony teeth snapped shut behind him. Before Tom Pie's claws could catch a gap between the teeth, the muscles pressing down from the front crushed him into a foul-smelling passage.
[LV.39 Lord Rank Calamity Kin]
The red dot on the Gray-Black Quest Panel completely overlapped with his position.
This was the high-value bounty that had been hanging there for a long time. When he had first come to investigate, he had only been level thirty-two. He had watched the lord devour its own kind from afar, then immediately turned and left. For the past three months, he had been hunting nearby. Whenever the urge after Phagocytosis became too strong, he stopped and waited for himself to regain clarity. Only now had he ground his way up to LV.38.
They were both First Tier. With only one level between them, and with enough experience saved up, he had finally come back to make his move.
And the moment they met, he had been delivered straight into the thing's stomach.
The ground suddenly vanished beneath his feet. Tom Pie fell into a mass of mucus and quickly grabbed a raised bone plate beside him, supporting himself upright.