It has been a few months since ELEVEN had hunted down and slaughtered those first four Skullcrawlers.
More soon appeared, often in batches as they soon replaced his established diet of beef.
Although cows had initially been used as bait for the Skullcrawlers, that practice was soon abolished in favour of just throwing them inside with no regard for what happened next.
As for ELEVEN, he was far from happy with this change.
Their meat was hard and bland; only after he used his boiling breath did their taste become bearable.
He especially hated the wiry tendons in their long limbs, and the tough bones that made up a large part of their anatomy.
Perhaps this was the reason why predators in the wild rarely hunted each other for actual sustenance.
The taste of the gluttonous lizard serpent was the opposite of what he had initially expected when he first saw them. ELEVEN had been too spoiled by the cultivated texture and flavour of grass-fed beef.
And yet, they just kept coming and coming without end!
ELEVEN knew very well who kept releasing those Skullcrawlers into his territory.
It was the humans, those hairless apes that always hid within their little boxes.
It wasn't a strange concept to him. After all, he wasn't blind, he knew where the cows that periodically appeared every few days in his territory came from—at least, before they stopped coming entirely.
They were led there to be sacrificed to him by the humans, most likely as offerings so that he wouldn't eat them.
That was how ELEVEN understood it.
After all, what other reason would they give a predator their own food?
And he was wise enough to be grateful for it, because frankly, ELEVEN didn't feel like he would even enjoy eating humans all that much.
They smelled like coal and nicotine, not exactly the most appetizing scent. He didn't believe that their taste would be any different.
But that was also exactly why he felt that it was perfectly reasonable for him to never stop complaining about it.
...Can't you give me better food? He wanted to say, but he never did since he knew it would be useless.
For all their shiny trinkets, those furless primates could never understand what he yearned to convey.
Their ignorance was extremely infuriating.
Fortunately, it wasn't all doom and gloom for the Dragon.
As it turns out, hunting prey much larger and much more capable of hurting him than a meagre cow had its own benefits.
The routine by itself was great exercise, and coupled with the sheer amount of protein he could wolf down after each successful hunt, which was every one of them, made the final result all the more obvious.
His physical condition had soared accordingly, with muscles tougher and stronger than before. His fast-twitch fibers had developed proportionally, enabling sharper bursts of speed, while the sustained training had strengthened his cardiovascular system, allowing blood and oxygen to circulate efficiently, thus granting him impressive stamina.
ELEVEN's regeneration contributed a large part to his fast development.
One must understand that, for any other animal, the amount of dense muscle that he has accrued in a few days would have required weeks or even months for them to see similar progress.
The essence of gaining strength was to destroy one's body on a small scale before rebuilding it at a gradual pace to withstand even stronger force.
But with his regeneration, ELEVEN skipped the 'gradual' part almost entirely!
Of course, there were still very tangible limits to his regeneration. It burned an insane amount of calories, increasing his appetite to a ridiculous amount.
Luckily, there was obviously a lot of meat to go around for him, even if they did taste like slop.
He also probably couldn't regenerate back if too much of his body were destroyed, or if his vital organs, like his two brains and heart stopped functioning.
Though he doubted Skullcrawlers would be able to reduce him to such a diminished state.
In addition to his improved physique, ELEVEN's combat experience and martial inteligence had naturally skyrocketed from the near-constant fighting.
It was getting to the point that he now considered the Skullcrawlers as a whole not much different from cattle. They were smarter, sometimes even cunning, but he has long become used to their usual tactics.
Which was why he was eager for the next opponent.
No matter how detestable the Skullcrawlers were in his eyes, ELEVEN felt a weird sense of gratitute towards them.
It was because, before their existence was revealed to him, ELEVEN had never felt much joy after his separation from the other Dragons.
He was, even if only a small portion in the eyes of the scientists, partly human.
And humans were prone to one base emotion known as boredom.
He was not a lizard that could be content with watching the world pass by so as long as his stomach was full. That was an important need that had to be fulfilled, but hunger was just one of his needs.
Living through the routines of his containment zone was by no means fun. It wasn't particularly horrendous, but it wasn't interesting either.
Prior to the arrival of the Skullcrawlers, ELEVEN's life had been one controlled by monotony, and he was living through the motions just because.
It didn't help that he was completely alone as well.
For a human, if they were to spend an entire month in solitary confinement, that would be considered torture.
What about if that same human was forced to live through that torture for 90% of his entire life?
It would be certainly be something, that's what it would be.
So in a twisted way, fighting those Skullcrawlers had actually made him less sad about his circumstances. Maybe that was just because of the adrenaline getting into his head, but ELEVEN would take anything at this point.
It was fun to kill and eat from them, that's why he laughed in the first place. That spark of genuine joy was the only speck of paint on his empty canvas of a life.
But he would not meet another batch today.
Because for the first time in months, ELEVEN would come witness to another change in his routine, one that would completely trump every other insignifant alteration before it.
This time, he was the one getting moved out from his territory.
It was so sudden that he was immediately startled when he woke up and found himself in another excavated cavern.
This one was significantly bigger than his old containment zone.
But just how did those humans move him without his notice?
Ingenuity.
That was the one thing that no other species could best humanity in.
ELEVEN spent most of his time sleeping anyway, and that was the best state for him to be in when they wanted to transport him.
When the Dragon was younger, simple doses of tranquilizer had been enough. But that was no longer the case, and that was within their expectations.
The human scientists had intentionally created him to be like that.
It would be really bad if tranquilizer still worked on the adult specimen. ELEVEN was bred to be a beast of war, after all.
As for how they found a workaround for this?
You see, there was a creature known as the Spirit Tiger, another species originating from Skull Island.
When that film crew went on their expedition to the island in 1933, the Spirit Tiger was one of the strange animals caught on film. Their illustrious white fur and elegant antlers made for a striking sight, but it hadn't been just their appearance that made this animal truly extraordinary.
Those in proximity to this large feline reported being momentarily transported into their happiest memories, as if they were drunk in euphoria.
When it first happened, the film crew had misinterpreted this as shamanistic magic and that the Spirit Tiger was capable of projecting a 'hallucinogenic aura' to lull its prey into a false sense of security as it tore them to shreds. That's why they named it the Spirit Tiger in the first place.
Of course, they were talking out of their ass. The Spirit Tiger was not any more capable of magic than any other species of large cat.
What made it unique was how it had evolved to survive Skull Island's harsh environment.
The 'hallucinogenic aura' actually stemmed from a symbiotic fungus colony that intoxicated nearby creatures, to which only the Spirit Tiger and its kind were immune due to their adaptations.
Small animals would actually approach the Spirit Tiger without fear in order to inhale the psychedelic fumes, having grown addicted to its effects.
After all, it would never hunt such small animals. There was little reason, given how that obviously wouldn't fill its stomach.
In return, those small animals would 'pay' by acting as scouts for the Spirit Tiger, alerting it of the location of bountiful prey and dangerous predators.
In other words, it was essentially nature's version of a drug lord.
And this drug became very useful for making sure ELEVEN stayed asleep when they hauled him over.
The Dragon none the wiser as he had been to immersed in his dream.
Which erupted into shock after he woke up.
"...Where am I?" The Dragon muttered to himself as his golden eyes scanned the nearby area.
It was different from his familiar forest.
Sand stretched across the land as far as the eye could see. ELEVEN's sense of stability was a bit disoriented from the texture of the ground, but he quickly adjusted.
There was sand back in his territory, just not this much.
"What's the reason for all this sand?" He asked himself with a grumble as he resumed walking. The Dragon would not find out the answer if he stayed put.
Yet he was careful with his steps as he gazed around with wide eyes. Deep chasms littered the dunes, making him feel like he could fall in at any time, and large mounds of rock stacked up to the sky, looking ominous like towers of darkness as they cast shadows through the expanse.
It was strange. This entire wasteland was strange.
Although it wasn't a complete desert, as there were trees and other vegetation strewn about, yet they looked dry and rigid, far different from his usual moist brushery.
A savannah.
He soon found some grace though as warm water met his skin.
A river stream, one leading upward to the other side of the expanse.
Great, now this was an environment he was more comfortable with.
ELEVEN submerged himself completely within the river before his dorsal plates penetrated the water's surface as he swam, resembling a shark's dorsal fin.
He opened his mouth as steam began to pour out, creating a vaporous mist that followed his trail.
It was better to be safe than sorry than get jumped by another gang of Skullcrawlers.
The swim was unremarkable for the most part aside from the new terrain. There were fallen logs that had blocked some of the stream, yet these obviously hadn't done much against his bulk.
However, after a dozen minutes of swimming up the stream, the Dragon would suddenly become very still as he sensed a familiar presence.
"That smell...?"
It was unmistakeable, and he soon found his entire world shrinking to only that scent and that scent alone.
Without a moment of hesitation, he left the safety of the water, attracted to the scent like fish to a hook.
And then he saw it as an uncontrollable grin stretched across his face.
A cow, his treasured meal.
He could barely contain himself, his mouth salivating at the prospect. After so long of having to deal with that disgusting snake meat, he could finally taste the effortless and explosive flavour of beef.
The cow looked as innocent as ever, munching on a dry bush as the mist rolled around it.
Only after a huge shadow fell from above did it bother to look up.
And look up it did as whatever it had managed to chew from the bush fell on the ground with a soft plap, its mouth wide open in shock.
The mist that had grown large covered a majority of ELEVEN's features, but what couldn't be hidden were the giant pair of golden eyes gazing right back at it and the gaping mouth filled with razor-sharp teeth.
His saliva began to drip down onto the cow as it finally seemed to sense its inevitable death and screamed.
"MOOO!"
It ran for its life, but it was already too late, far too late. Leaning in, ELEVEN went in for the kill as his mouth chomped hard...
On nothing.
"What—"
A red shadow had streaked past him, past his senses, and then stole the cow right from under his nose.
Literally.
The cow was lifted from the ground as he helplessly blinked.
Just from the force of that motion alone, it had instantly died, its neck having been snapped.
Clasping sharp around the cow's now dead remains were huge talons that dug into the soft flesh as ELEVEN's eyes widened.
The perpetrator could be best described as a giant bird, with everything that made him resemble a bird having been stripped away for the sole purpose of making him as deadly as possible.
His leathery wings were devoid of feathers, his sharp talons were long and twisted, and his pointed beak was adorned with sharp teeth. He was even covered in crimson plated scales, and had a yellowish underbelly like that of a dinosaur.
Indeed, he was the furthest thing away from a bird and he gazed back with a set of eyes not unlike ELEVEN's own, for they were yellow gold in colour.
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING!?"
ELEVEN roared in outrage as the perpetrator flashed him a distinct look of smug superiority...
And flew away.
***
Finally, chapter 5 completed. I have school again now, what a bummer.
What do you think of it? Is it up to your standards?
Please, do not forget of the Power Stones for our glorious book.