Chapter 116 Before Dawn
In the darkness, a green pupil and a red one lit up. Under the faint red glow of the radiating clouds, a two-head giant lizard came out of the underground waterway and began its work of foraging.
It was a mutated lizard, about the size of a hound. Its skin was covered with scales which can refract lights of the environment, allowing it to blend with the surroundings. The high degree of concealment was still far to match with those lurkers who could completely became invisible.
The mutated two-head giant lizard had a sac-like organ in each of its mouth. This organ contains venom and burning fluid, and in the organ there was a small hole with the function of compression and extrusion. When the giant lizard needed it, the two heads could spit out poisonous spray and burning flames.
The two-head giant lizard was not an extremely powerful mutated beast. Due to the limitations of its physical structure, its battle radius was limited to an arc of three meters in front of its head. To the hunters who knew about the giant lizard, this mutated beast could be easily killed by slas.h.i.+ng its way from behind.
At the moment, the giant lizard was quickly crawling into a building. It was a residential building, at least twenty floors high. However, due to the baptism of meteoric rain and years of weathering, the floors above thesixth floor had become and collapsed. Now the body of the building was wedged into a supermarket across the street, forming a huge barricade.
The giant lizard"s nose was very sharp. They were born nearsighted, and their vision limit was the same as their battle radius. Especially in the dead of the night, the giant lizard"s vision would be greatly reduced. However, they have a keen sense of smell, especially the smell of blood.
It swam into the abandoned building, attracted by the faint smell of blood in the air.
Blood meant fresh flesh, and fresh flesh meant foods. To the giant lizard, which hadn"t eaten anything for three days, this was like a big meal. The giant lizard had thick meat pads on the soles of its feet, which could silence its movements. Soon, the giant lizard reached the fifth floor. There were four gates on both sides of the long corridor. The giant lizard was like a hound as it sniffed the air with its nose, trying to identify the source of the smell of blood.
At the end of the corridor, in front of a large door on the left, the giant lizard"s eyes lit up at the same time. It had already determined that the food was in this room. He arched his head and pushed open the doorwhich was ajar.
Half of the house was covered with rubble and bricks, and a thin line of blood ran from the window opposite to the street, all the way to the bedroom. The giant lizard followed the trail of blood to the bedroom, which was still intact. There was a person curled in the corner of the room. The smell of fresh blood came from this human.
The giant lizard swam toward him, and only when it got near did it realized that the human seemed to have fainted away. His chest rose and fell from time to time, indicating that he was not a corpse. To the giant lizard, an alive human was enough for it for a few days. Beside this human was a strange creature.
This round creature looked extremely weak, and the rhombus emblem on its forehead flickered with a faint green light.
When the giant lizard was starving, it also ate other mutated creatures, but now that there was an alive person in front of it, it was unwilling to try out the strange meat of the mutated beasts. Compared to the mutated beasts, the flesh of humans was more delicious, making them the food of almost all mutated beasts.
It swam silently towards the man in the corner, who was sitting on the ground, so that the giant lizard could easily reach the height of his neck. One of the giant lizard"s mouth was wide open, and its bared teeth could easily snap a human"s fragile neck.
However, at that moment, the human who was fainted away earlier suddenly opened his eyes.
The giant lizard instinctively sensed the danger and it had no time to retreat. The man grabbed the jaws of the lizard with both of his hands. His seemingly weak palm did not get scratched by the sharp teeth of the lizard when he tightly hold the giant lizard.
The human in the corner suddenly spat out a stream of hot air, and then his hands exerted tremendous power. He split it in two and broke the lizard"s mouth. The torn flesh splattered with turquoise lizard blood, and a few spattered on his lips. The man inadvertently licked it with his tongue, and then his eyes lit up.
When the giant lizard"s remaining head saw this expression, it panicked. He was very familiar with this kind of expression. Whenever he saw the food he liked, he would also reveal this expression. But as one of the heads fell into the human"s hands, the giant lizard had no way out.
The person who was sitting on the ground suddenly jumped up. He stepped heavily on the other head of the giant lizard and lifted it with his hands. The giant lizard only felt a sharp pain as the muscles between its two heads were torn. More blood flowed out of the lizard"s scales.
The person cried out in a low voice, and bit down on the lizard"s wound like a wild beast. The next moment, the giant lizard discovered to its horror that the blood essence in its body was constantly flowing into this person"s mouth.
The roles of the hunter and the prey reversed. The giant lizard didn"t expect that it would end up becoming its prey"s food.
It struggled with all its might, but this person"s hands and feet were like cast iron. Even with the giant lizard"s strength, it was still unable to break free. With the loss of blood, the giant lizard"s strength decreased. In the end, it gave up resisting, quietly waiting for death to come.
When he found that there was no more fresh blood in his mouth, Lingslowly let go of the giant lizard. The giant lizard was dead, its body lying limp on the ground, almost losing 90% of its blood.
If anyone saw Ling now, they would notice that his eyes were filled with a crazy look, just like those of a hungry beast. This expression lasted for a moment before it slowly faded away. When his eyes returned to their usual cold look, Ling looked at his hands and the corpse of the giant lizard on the ground in disbelief.
Ling only remembered when he woke up and saw the giant lizard, hebroke the lizard"s mouth out of self-protection. However, when the b.l.o.o.d.y and sour blood of the giant lizard entered his mouth and flowed into his body through his esophagus, his instinct sent out a signal of demand.
Having lost too much blood, he desperately needed fresh blood to replenish it. Thus, his instinctive reaction immediately overcame his rationality. This made Ling suck all the blood out of the giant lizard like a vampire bat. After eating a full meal from the lizard blood, he could clearly feel that the elemental energy in his body was constantly recovering.
There was a slight itch in the wound on his left arm. It was a sign of healing. Ling undid the bandage on his arm and the lost flesh was restored. The newborn muscles and skin were still slightly red, which would fade within 24 hours, and by that time, his arm would be looked as though it had never been injured before.
He moved his left hand, and the signal from his arm to his brain told him that, in fact, the function of his arm had not yet fully recovered. Whether it was the strength of the muscles or the reaction of the nerves, both decreased by 10% to 20% compared to normal times. Although the lost blood essence was replenished, the lizard blood was after all an alien. After absorption and decomposition in Ling"s body, less than thirty percent of it could be used.
This was not enough to allow Ling to recover all his essence. Right now, he looked like he had recovered most of his Essence. However, if he were to fight, he would not be able to unleash even half of his strength.
Ling looked at the tactical wrist watch which read 4: 23. Looking out of the window, the eastern sky was brighter than the rest, and dawn was around the corner. But before dawn, the world sank into the deepest darkness. The period of time, which was also the most dangerous time in the wilderness, Ling could clearly feel the p.r.i.c.kling sensation came from his skin. These dangerous signals came from the unidentified creatures that were almost everywhere in the ruins.
Now was the time when these creatures were the hungriest. He picked up Lala and prepared to leave. He did not want to be the food of mutated beasts, even if he was still very weak.