The Precious New Model

At that moment, Bai Chuan opened his panel once more.

Name: Bai Chuan

Race: King Cobra

Length: 5.3 meters

Lifespan: 7 years, 4 months

Points: 26 (61%)

Abilities: Final Growth LV2, Snake Venom LV2, Agility LV2, Strong LV2, Clairvoyance LV2, Scales LV2, Energy Saving Storage LV1, Danger Perception LV1, Flexibility LV1, Swimming LV1, Digestion LV1, Digging LV1, Heat-Sensing Pit LV1, Diving LV1, Underwater Breathing LV1...

Ability Structure Library: Python, Frog, Grasshopper, Vine Snake, Kite, Water Snake, African Spiny Mouse...

Editable...

Those were all the gains Bai Chuan had made over the past six months.

It was worth noting that the data displayed on his panel had finally become much more detailed. Now, he could clearly confirm his current size.

This ability had appeared one day over the past six months, when he'd watched himself grow bigger and bigger without knowing exactly how long he'd become, and had felt rather troubled by it.

To his surprise, the panel seemed to have sensed his frustration. When he opened it, it suddenly updated with a new feature.

That was the ability to measure his size.

This made Bai Chuan realize that the panel probably had many more hidden features he didn't know about.

For example, there was Agility LV1, which had appeared out of nowhere six months ago, as well as Scales, which had suddenly upgraded to LV2 sometime recently. Both had left him baffled.

Unfortunately, this thing was just an inanimate object. It didn't even come with an instruction manual.

Aside from that, his biggest achievement was finally building up 30 points over the course of six months.

However, he'd occasionally upgraded several auxiliary abilities during that time, such as the Heat-Sensing Pit he'd been looking forward to, as well as Digging and Diving. So in the end, he had only 26 points left.

Still, that was a particularly generous amount. After all, an LV2 ability was worth only two points.

The only slight disappointment was that, despite all this time, he hadn't found a single ability above LV3.

Considering that he was a King Cobra, a snake with practically no natural predators in the food chain, yet his abilities had only reached LV2, Bai Chuan made a guess.

Perhaps LV3 abilities were reserved for the overlords at the very top of the biological pyramid.

If things really were as he suspected, then LV3 might signify the power of a king.

After recalling all he'd gained during this time, Bai Chuan finally looked once more at the exceptionally rare model he'd been lucky enough to prey upon in recent days. It was a model he'd only finished analyzing today—

The African Spiny Mouse.

Even its name alone was intriguing.

For a time, Bai Chuan had wondered whether he was in the world he knew, or perhaps on another continent in the world he used to live in.

But the clothes worn by the human corpse he'd seen earlier had left him confused.

Unable to make heads or tails of it, Bai Chuan couldn't be bothered to dwell on the matter. Instead of wasting time on it, he might as well think about how to make himself stronger.

So why was this model so precious?

It all came down to its abilities.

Race: African Spiny Mouse

Abilities: Reproduction LV2, Olfaction LV2, Forced Shedding LV1, Regeneration LV1, Intelligence LV1, Digging LV1, Climbing LV1...

Many of the African Spiny Mouse's abilities were no different from those of the mice Bai Chuan usually saw. But it had two special ones: Forced Shedding LV1 and Regeneration LV1.

[Forced Shedding: When the host encounters a dangerous predator, it can forcibly shed most of the skin tissue on its body, drawing the predator's attention and allowing it to escape.]

[Regeneration: When the host is injured, it rapidly consumes biological energy to heal its wounds.]

The first ability wasn't much use. It was an ability for the weak. But the second one—Regeneration—

That was more than useful.

Regeneration!

It was an incredibly powerful ability that countless formidable predators could only dream of possessing.

In this dangerous jungle, even overlords at the top of the pyramid, such as tigers and brown bears, couldn't guarantee they'd never be injured. All they could do was be careful, careful, and more careful.

Because once they were injured, it meant they were in poor condition and their combat strength would plummet.

Then, whether they were fending off an attack by their own kind or hunting prey, everything would become much harder.

And if they were unlucky enough to suffer an infected or inflamed wound, even the King of the Jungle might meet his end.

After all, those microorganisms were the true killers that spilled no blood.

So, in the wild, keeping yourself safe came first.

That was why even the mighty King of the Jungle, the tiger, preferred to ambush its prey whenever possible.

Everything was done to secure the greatest reward at the lowest cost, without getting hurt.

Once they had the ability to regenerate, these overlords might even dare to meet their enemies head-on, trading wound for wound without the slightest concern about their own injuries.

Normally, those overlords avoided going all-out for fear of getting hurt.

They'd be lucky to bring out seven-tenths of their strength.

Only when cornered, as they made their final, desperate stand, would they unleash their full power.

But with this ability, those overlords could basically go all-out at any time, anywhere.

In short, this was an ability that made the strong stronger and the weak weaker.

The effect it had on different hosts was like night and day.

If Bai Chuan upgraded this ability, then at the very least, his ability to stay alive would skyrocket.

Just thinking about it was exciting.

This ability also added a few more safeguards to the plan he'd made for the near future.

The familiar process unfolded again. This time, two models shot into the air. One was the Kite model he'd upgraded before, which he'd caught again later; the other was the newly acquired African Spiny Mouse model.

Bai Chuan first extracted Regeneration from the African Spiny Mouse model, then placed it inside his own body. Perhaps because the ability was genetic and had no external body part, it began fusing on its own as soon as he put it in, with a compatibility of 90%.

Next, he took Strong LV1 (Chest Mutation) from the Kite model and placed it inside his snake body, a third of the way down from his head.

That was where the muscle would sit when the King Cobra raised its head and lifted the top third of its body, putting it close to the ground.

After endless experimentation, this was the best position he'd found. He hadn't upgraded it earlier because he'd been concerned about how Regeneration might upgrade, and feared the two abilities would conflict.

As the abilities fused, a huge bulge of muscle swelled up, while Agility LV2 on his panel dropped to LV1.

But Bai Chuan paid it no mind.

The next moment, he extracted Claws LV2 from the Kite model and placed it right where the muscle was.

In an instant, as the two abilities merged, a miraculous scene appeared.

I saw a few readers in the previous chapter wondering why Bai Chuan hadn't killed an ant and taken it back to scan it or something. Here's the explanation.

By then, Bai Chuan had grown to almost four meters long. He was still a snake with no hands or feet, attacking with his mouth, so killing an ant the size of a grain of rice was actually very difficult.

I don't know if you've ever really touched a snake. A snake's scales don't form a flat surface; they overlap, creating tiny bumps and grooves. With all those uneven spots, Bai Chuan could hardly crush an ant beneath his body.

Anyone who tried to crush an ant with a brick that looked flat as a child would know it doesn't work.

What about poking it with his head? That wouldn't work either. Anyone who's taken a close look at a snake knows its mouth can't close all the way like a human's. There's a gap where its tongue sticks out, and the tongue is very sensitive.

As someone who valued his life, Bai Chuan wouldn't risk poking an ant with his head when nothing outside was forcing him into a life-or-death situation.

Even if he managed to kill one by chance, it would be hard to take it back. As for holding it in his mouth, snakes' mouths are built differently from humans'. Humans have saliva and hands, so they can easily get something out of their mouths. But a snake could easily swallow it.

Nobody knew if a snake would get sick from eating something it shouldn't. Some ants were poisonous, and since they were out in the wild, they might also carry all sorts of strange microorganisms.

Bai Chuan didn't dare take that gamble. He could succeed by moving forward steadily, so there was no need to play the odds. Besides, he'd already discovered earlier that the panel's upgraded abilities could conflict with each other and needed to be compatible.