Swallowed in One Gulp

Virtual Space, the training grounds.

Boom! Boom!

Two figures flew backward-Luo Feng and Yang Zheng, both holding sabers. More than ten days had passed since the Spring Festival, and the two often arranged sparring sessions to hone their skills.

"Brother Yang, you're improving way too fast!"

Luo Feng put away his saber with a wry smile. With identical physical attributes, how much power they could draw from their bodies decided almost everything.

"Haha, keep working at it."

Yang Zheng smiled. To beat Luo Feng into accepting him as his senior brother, he had devoted most of his time to improving his physical power exertion.

Who said the first to join had to be the senior brother?

No, whoever was stronger was the senior brother!

"Babata, are you still collecting spacecraft wreckage?" Yang Zheng asked casually.

Lately, Luo Feng and Babata had been gathering spacecraft wreckage. The HR Alliance was collecting it frantically, and the wreckage stored by the Wang Family had also been bought up by the government.

"Of course!" Babata said, head held high.

"Sooner or later, you'll head out into the universe. That's where you'll really grow. Once we collect enough wreckage, we'll only need five or six years to finish building a spacecraft."

"That's too slow!" Yang Zheng shook his head. "There's a spacecraft in Ancient Civilization Ruin No. 12 that isn't too badly damaged. I took a look, and it should still be able to fly."

"Ruins No. 12? The one known as one of the death zones?"

Luo Feng stepped closer. Of the Ancient Civilization Ruins discovered on Earth, three had been designated death zones. Anyone who entered them was certain to die.

"Even the exterior isn't badly damaged?"

Babata pondered this. "In an environment like that, if even the exterior isn't badly damaged, then any internal damage should be repairable. Come on, let's take a look."

Building a spacecraft from scratch took both time and effort. If they had one that wasn't too badly damaged, they would only need to repair it before they could use it.

As long as it hadn't rotted down to an empty shell.

Night. The moon shone brightly.

Pitch-black seawater roared wildly, and the ocean wind howled beneath the darkened sky.

A deep-blue Triangular Fighter suddenly appeared above the surging waters of the Pacific Ocean.

Whoosh!

The hatch opened.

Yang Zheng flew out of the fighter and hovered above the ocean, looking down at the rolling waves bathed in moonlight.

"Ruins No. 12 is right below us!"

Yang Zheng became a streak of light and shot straight into the sea, continuing to descend.

He did not dive very quickly, because countless sea monsters roamed these dark depths.

Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!

As Yang Zheng descended in a streak of light, a thought sent more than a dozen throwing knives into motion. In an instant, they killed every monster within several hundred meters, staining the surrounding water red with blood.

Yang Zheng killed as he descended. Every monster that came within a hundred meters of him died in a single strike, including nearly ten lord-level monsters.

He soon reached the seabed at a depth of roughly five thousand meters. The terrain rose and fell like a mountain range.

"Yang Zheng, go down another thirty-three hundred meters."

Babata's voice rang out in his mind. Having Babata provide navigation certainly saved him a lot of trouble.

Yang Zheng plunged downward, piercing through the rock of the seabed as he sank. Soon, he reached his destination.

"Haha, Yang Zheng, we made the right choice coming here. It's actually this ship!" Babata sounded excited.

With this spacecraft wreckage and a potentially lightly damaged ship, returning to the universe was within reach.

"Follow my instructions. Let's go in!"

Babata had special scanning methods. After quickly and thoroughly scanning the entire mothership, Babata directed Yang Zheng through his mind, guiding him into the so-called Ruins No. 12.

A moment later-

Inside an enormous secret compartment sat a saucer-shaped spacecraft roughly a hundred meters in diameter.

The entire spacecraft was black. No one knew how many tens of thousands of years it had been sitting there, yet its hull showed very little corrosion. A Two-Winged Giant Dragon Emblem was even emblazoned on its black hull.

"Come on, let's go inside!"

While Yang Zheng was exploring Ancient Civilization Ruin No. 12, the large amounts of blood in the waters he had passed through finally attracted the attention of the ruler of the nearby seas...

A powerful king-level monster, the Cold Current Whale.

This Cold Current Whale controlled a territory spanning thousands of kilometers in the heart of the Pacific Ocean. Even among king-level monsters, it was exceptionally terrifying.

Roooaaar!

The enormous Cold Current Whale moved swiftly through the depths like a mountain range. Its body was over three hundred meters long. If it surfaced, it would look like an aircraft carrier from before the Great Nirvana.

Is a human slaughtering monsters in my territory?

You dare kill my underlings? I'll kill you!

The Cold Current Whale roared inwardly. As king-level monsters that surpassed lord-level monsters, some were even more intelligent than certain humans. Reports from the monsters under its command told it that a human had entered the area.

These waters were part of its territory. It only came out to patrol occasionally, and it had never expected to encounter a human.

As for humans...

The Cold Current Whale's heart was filled with hatred. Before the Great Nirvana, its mother had been hunted and killed by humans from an island nation. Later, that same nation had discharged polluted water into the waters where they lived.

During the Great Nirvana Period, they had attacked that human island nation and utterly destroyed it. Yet some people had escaped and still lived on land.

Hmm?

What species is that?

The enormous Cold Current Whale raised its head slightly and looked into the distance. An unknown reptilian creature, pitch-black and covered in black scales, was devouring monster corpses.

Its black body was about thirty meters long, with a pair of scaled wings and a slowly swaying, dragonlike tail. A single horn rose from its head.

Woo!

The mysterious monster abruptly raised its head. The instant it spotted the Cold Current Whale, it let out an excited growl.

Its scaled wings suddenly spread, and the mysterious monster streaked toward the whale in a blur.

Four limbs with claws-is it a land monster? Wings-is it a bird? What species is this?

The Cold Current

Whale was bewildered. Its enormous eyes, as tall as a three-story building, stared at the little creature about to dart up to it.

Thirty meters long?

It really was a little creature!

Though highly intelligent, it could not figure out what kind of monster this little creature was. It looked like a land monster, yet it had the wings of an avian monster and moved through the water as easily as if it were on solid ground.

What the hell is it?

The Cold Current Whale simply stopped thinking about it and opened its abyssal maw. The mysterious monster flapped its wings and charged straight inside.

Swallowed in one gulp.