Growth and Slumber

The sun in the sky was so dazzling.

Yet to Kangqiao, it was filled with a sense of nostalgia.

The glaring sunlight made Kangqiao squint. He began observing the world before him.

The clouds in the sky were not particularly thick, but the air was still filled with a familiar scent of sulfur.

Turning his head slightly to look across the horizon, Kangqiao finally saw where the sulfurous smell came from.

Not far from Kangqiao, a single island in the vast sea was spewing billowing smoke.

However, there were no sparks in that smoke.

Thus, the surroundings remained fairly peaceful.

The seawater was calm, merely rippling slowly with the sea breeze.

Looking at the island and smelling the sulfurous smoke, Kangqiao once again swam toward it on instinct.

When he successfully climbed onto the island's shore, a pleasure that came from both body and soul immediately spread through him.

The entire island was extremely hot.

There were no plants at all, much less marine creatures.

Before coming ashore, Kangqiao could even see countless bubbles swelling up as the waters around the island continuously boiled.

The bubbles emerged from rocks and crevices on the seafloor, then burst upon the surface.

Such an environment naturally created a great deal of mist around the island.

Looking at the barren island and the rolling waters around it, Kangqiao decided to head for the volcanic crater at its highest point.

The intense heat here, along with the instinctive urging of his body—

Everything was telling Kangqiao that high temperatures might be the most beneficial thing for his growth.

Although the thought was somewhat absurd, recalling the past from his memories, Kangqiao—now restored to full mature rationality—felt that it all made perfect sense.

What species was he, exactly?

An ordinary lizard?

Looking at his limbs and the outline of his body, Kangqiao felt inexplicably helpless.

How could he possibly be an ordinary lizard?

He did not need air, and even intense heat posed no threat to him.

Could a lizard be like this?

Yet according to the memories of his previous life, no such creature existed in reality.

Not to mention that Kangqiao was now completely submerged in magma within a volcanic crater.

Yes.

Kangqiao was currently taking a magma bath inside the crater.

The magma made Kangqiao feel even more comfortable than the seawater had.

At one point, he was even comfortable enough to fall asleep.

When he awoke again, he exerted only a little strength before directly shedding a layer of skin.

Yes, after just one bout of sleep and waking, Kangqiao had begun molting.

And along with it, his body had grown by an unknown amount.

When he crawled out of the crater, his entire body even blocked its opening.

He had to squeeze for most of the day before finally managing to wriggle out.

Because he lacked any necessary reference points for comparison, Kangqiao could not estimate exactly how large he was.

There were no measuring tools and nothing he could use for comparison. The scale in his eyes was fundamentally different from that of humans.

All he knew clearly was that compared to before, he should have grown more than six times larger.

He could tell from a boulder near the island's shore. When he had first come ashore and looked at it, his body had been only around one-tenth its length.

But now, when he returned to the shore, his body was already more than half as long as the boulder.

Crawling before the boulder, Kangqiao pondered briefly before swinging a forelimb.

The claws on his forelimb carried immense force. With a crash, they gouged deep furrows into the boulder amid flying sparks.

Sharp!

Incomparably sharp!

Kangqiao raised his forelimb and stared blankly at the furrows in the boulder.

Had he completely turned into a monster?

He did not know whether to be happy or worried.

Faced with this barren world, with nothing but ocean surrounding the island, every day felt like a year to Kangqiao.

Since the world never changed, he could only find ways to entertain himself.

In the depths of the sea, Kangqiao went hunting again for the first time in a long while.

This time, Kangqiao caught two enormous marine creatures.

Of course, enormous only meant that they were about the size of his forelimb's palm.

Still, they should count as large creatures. Kangqiao had spent many days soaking in the sea before finding them.

One was the shelled creature Kangqiao had seen before—well, it should have been a trilobite.

The other was a huge Anomalocaris.

Bringing his two fairly decent prey ashore, Kangqiao returned to the crater and skewered their already-dead bodies on his claws, roasting them into cooked food.

Not bad.

After so long, eating cooked food again nearly brought Kangqiao to tears.

That was right, this was the flavor.

It was the taste of cooked seafood, delicate with a faint sweetness.

There was no need for salt, because marine creatures naturally contained it.

And that light saltiness made the flavor exceptionally fresh.

Unfortunately, for Kangqiao—

The trilobite and Anomalocaris were only so large. Even eating in the smallest bites possible, he finished them in five or six bites.

It felt like eating toothpick meat, though. There was far too little!

Having eaten cooked food again, food filled with nostalgic flavors, Kangqiao—now transformed into a foodie—once more rushed into the sea.

Big or small, he killed them all with a swipe of his claws.

Then he piled them together, carrying some in his claws and holding others in his mouth, bringing them all back to the island.

He kept this up for an unknown amount of time.

Only when a small mountain of seafood had piled up atop the volcanic crater did Kangqiao finally stop hunting.

The next task was simple.

He directly tossed vast amounts of seafood into the bubbling waters on one side of the island.

The seawater there was scalding, even boiling.

It was practically a natural giant pot.

After waiting a short while, without caring whether it had cooked through, Kangqiao swallowed it all in a single gulp—shells and innards included.

With his mouth full of seafood, Kangqiao finally felt alive.

As a monster transformed by magma, Kangqiao did not actually feel hungry simply soaking in magma.

But days without the pleasures of eating were truly too unreal.

They did not even feel like living as a creature.

For this delicious seafood alone, Kangqiao felt that being alive was wonderful.

His mouth was full of protein, and as the crisp shells shattered between his teeth with crackling crunches, it felt as satisfying as chewing cartilage. It was truly wonderful.

And so, the days that followed became simple.

When he was idle, he rested in the magma at the very bottom of the crater. When he craved food, he went hunting in the sea.

Until one day, long, long afterward, when Kangqiao felt increasingly sleepy and less and less willing to move, he finally fell once more into a long slumber within the magma.

During this sleep, his entire body underwent changes. His outer skin seemed to turn into a giant egg, or perhaps a cocoon.

Like a butterfly larva emerging in metamorphosis, when he awoke again, his body would surely take on a new form.

(Note: Godzilla hatchlings have lizard-like forms! Anyone who knows should know that. I remember seeing it in an encyclopedia before; even if not, just treat it as secondary setting.)