Crack!
Stone shards sprayed from beneath the slope of bones as another sickening snap of breaking bone rang out.
Every hair on Tom Pie's body stood on end. In a flash, he yanked his head back into the crevice, dug his right claws into its edge, and forced himself to stop breathing.
Whoosh—
A monstrous hand the size of a small truck, covered in gray-white, horn-hard skin, slowly reached up from the cliff below.
Clenched in that hand was half an armored insect, still thrashing wildly. Its heavy crystal carapace, tough enough to withstand bursts from a rifle, caved in and cracked between five thick fingers that looked carved from granite. Thick, foul-smelling, dark-green fluid gushed through the gaps like juice from a crushed berry.
Then a towering figure eight meters tall stepped around the bend in the rock wall, crushing debris underfoot. It looked like a stone demon from ancient times.
Its skin was as rough as sandstone weathered for ten thousand years. Mottled black grime accumulated over countless years of slumber clung to its back and massive shoulders. Most horrifying of all, a savage maw lined with interlocking ivory teeth split the center of its chest and belly!
Gulp!
The belly maw snapped shut like a grinder, chewing the half-eaten Tier Two monster, armor and all, into pulp before swallowing it!
Hot, sulfurous digestive saliva dripped from the corners of its mouth, eating into the hard dead shell beneath it and sending up curls of green smoke.
"Shit... those are the iron teeth, all right."
Tom Pie's heart hammered as he instinctively pulled up the system identification.
But when the string of glittering golden system text above the target struck his eyes, the muscles at their corners twitched. He froze as if lightning had hit him.
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