In the distance, beasts began to appear.
Different sizes, some massive, some fast, all savage.
A deer the size of an elephant ran, its stomach torn open, entrails dragging behind it,
dozens of hyenas chasing it down, fangs coated in blood, tearing into anything that fell.
A massive lion covered in lizard-like scales cut across the path,
opened its mouth, and shot out a fireball directly,
turning the deer and the hyenas into a single mass of flame. Nothing was left.
The birds in the sky didn't wait around either,
diving down suddenly, tearing into the wounded beasts,
the air filling with the sound of shredding and tearing.
Ground beasts screamed, some fleeing, some fighting back.
One of the giant snakes spat black venom from its mouth,
another beast fired off a bolt of lightning from its horns.
Fire, lightning, mud, shockwaves...
everyone using their Phantoms, either to survive or to kill.
The sky thick with smoke, the ground littered with still-twitching corpses.
Everything... no alliances. No order.
Pure, random slaughter.
And deep underground...
inside a narrow tunnel,
Shen Zuo was watching.
Waiting to survive the disaster.
The dirt above Shen Zuo began collapsing faster and faster.
The ceiling pressed down from above, and the walls on both sides crept closer and closer to him.
The tunnel kept shrinking, tighter with every passing second.
Shen Zuo didn't move, just tensed his muscles and pumped more energy into his hands, thickening the stone scales at the exact point where they touched the ceiling.
That single point was the only thing still holding back disaster.
Beside him, the food he'd carefully prepared was about to get crushed under the dirt,
so he redirected part of his protection toward it, wrapping it in a simple stone barrier.
The tunnel he'd dug in the shape of a Y
had now lost one of its branches.
The northern branch had been completely buried;
nothing remained but the narrow passage he was sitting in.
Silence, here, didn't feel like calm.
Every sound in the tunnel now... felt like a possible ending.
Shen Zuo cursed internally as he pulled out his bow and arrows first, then carefully drew the axe as well.
Every move was calculated, the space barely enough to work with, any mistake could mean an injury.
He reached toward the sword... hesitated...
then, after a moment of thought, put it back.
"The axe and the bow will do for now."
He said it to himself, tightening his grip on the axe, eyes scanning the narrow passage around him.
"If I'm going to die, I should at least go down fighting."
Shen Zuo thought, crawling out of the narrow tunnel, dragging his body slowly while the dirt pressed in on him from every side.
He started digging with his bare hands, no tool to help him, just his petrified fingers.
Long moments passed, but he finally reached one of the pits that had only been partially buried.
He took a deep breath, then began digging with everything he had left, digging to carve out an exit, to claw his way out of his temporary grave.
At last, Shen Zuo pushed his head out of the pit.
A faint smile started forming on his face... but it never finished.
A massive bird swooped down from the sky without warning, nearly tearing his head off.
Shen Zuo pulled his head back instantly, barely surviving, but the bird's talons gouged the ground above him and knocked a rock straight down onto his head.
His head took a hard hit, but he gritted his teeth, trying not to scream.
Shen Zuo lunged out forcefully, furious at the sheer absurdity the old men had put him through. He yanked the axe off his back quickly. Ahead of him stood a massive, dragon-like crawling beast, its deformed head covered in thick stone armor, short twisted horns, and rough scales covering its dense hide. Its eyes gleamed with savage rage as it growled harshly at the birds circling above it.
Shen Zuo attacked immediately, driving a powerful axe strike toward the beast's head. The axe collided with the stone armor, letting out a cracking sound, and though it didn't kill the beast, it left a crack across its skull.
The beast winced in pain but didn't go down, countering with a sudden lunge, trying to bite Shen Zuo.
At that exact moment, small black birds resembling crows swarmed around the beast and attacked Shen Zuo from behind.
Shen Zuo tried summoning his Rock Mutation Phantom as a shield across his back, and sturdy stone scales formed, offering partial protection. Even so, the scales couldn't block every attack; the birds' talons pecked and slashed at his face and body.
Shen Zuo took a heavy hit from one of the birds, leaving deep gashes in his right arm. Blood began pouring out, mixing with the dust of cracked scales.
Despite the pain, Shen Zuo stayed focused, striking back with his weapon, trying to push the birds off so he could face the larger beast.
"Damn it... this ferocity makes it look like these beasts haven't eaten in weeks!" Shen Zuo thought, watching the chaos around him, ignoring the blood dripping from his arm and the pain spreading through his body. "Were they planning this from the very start?!"
In the midst of the chaos, one bit of good news: half the small birds had shifted their focus back to attacking the wounded crawling beast. The lizard-like creature's cracked skull was bleeding heavily, drawing those creatures in as though they could smell death itself.
Shen Zuo swung his axe, shielding his head, then landed a direct hit on a black bird closing in, splitting it clean down the middle. Even the shock of its fall didn't stop the rest of the birds from attacking it without hesitation, tearing its body apart, ripping out feathers and flesh, easing the pressure on Shen Zuo for a few precious moments.
He didn't waste the opening, reaching out with his right hand, wrapped once again in the Rock Mutation Phantom, and grabbed another bird by the neck, squeezing hard enough to crack its bones under the scales. The bird let out a faint shriek before he hurled it violently backward onto the ground.
The dead bird immediately drew the attention of the other birds, who turned toward it instead of continuing to chase Shen Zuo.
Even though these birds were technically Level One, they ranked among the weakest of their kind.
But their sheer numbers masked that weakness.
In truth, one would quickly discover that "level" classifications don't carry much real value once a fight actually begins.
Beasts, though theoretically divided into levels, show their real differences not between one number and another, but between predator and prey.
You might see a weak bird classified as Level One, and a massive eagle at that exact same level, yet the gap between them is like night and day.
A Level Two deer could easily be crushed by a Level Two lion, simply because the predator was born to kill, and the prey was born to run.
Level means nothing once the fangs start tearing and the claws start sinking into flesh.
From above, the scene looked like some horrifying painting rendered entirely in chaos and screaming:
Roars cutting through the sky, wailing echoing in every direction, and countless dying cries.
Blood soaked the ground, and the lungs of fallen bodies had become nothing more than obstacles underfoot.
Prolonged starvation had stripped these beasts of any sense of fear or coordinated instinct.
But the real disaster wasn't the hunger, or even the mixing of different habitats...
Beasts from entirely different environments, conflicting hunting systems, clashing instincts...
all forced together into one shared space, and the result: a bloody, merciless frenzy.
In the middle of this hell, Shen Zuo stood gasping, standing over the headless corpse of a bird,
his stone-covered hand still bleeding through the cracks, though the sound of the birds had finally gone quiet.
He'd cleared out the last group that had been surrounding him, but... where now?
He looked up, found no way out.
Ahead of him, a battle raged between even more savage, unfamiliar beasts,
and on both sides, predators had turned on their own prey and on each other.
Every wrong step could be his last.
Trapped in the middle of hell with nowhere to go.
A corpse crashed down beside Shen Zuo like a thunderbolt, shaking the ground beneath his feet.
The feathers of the giant pink bird were soaked in blood, drifting around him with every gust of wind,
its torn wing trembling slightly, as though life itself refused to let it go easily.
Before Shen Zuo could even process the situation,
another bird descended from above, a calm but ominous dive.
It was about half the size of the corpse in front of him,
but it looked far more dangerous, with its rigid body, curved beak, and the head feathers standing up sharp like daggers.
Its features looked like a mix between an eagle and a hoopoe,
its gaze sharp, carrying none of the hunger of a hunt, only dominance.
It landed on the corpse without even sparing a glance at Shen Zuo,
and with a deadly kind of dignity, began pecking at the torn neck of the pink bird,
calm, almost ritualistic, more than it looked like actual hunting.
And with every peck, its eyes flashed a faint shade of blu
e...
And once the pink bird breathed its last, a Phantom emerged from its body, pink fading into white, scattered with dark red specks,
and it shot straight toward Shen Zuo at lightning speed!