Chapter 81: A Major Choice

After more than a week without proper rest, Baichuan had finally slept beautifully once again.

In the middle of a sweet dream, he was suddenly startled awake by a light prickling sensation.

He opened his eyes, groggily raised his dragon head, and with that motion, the crab clinging to him was lifted along as well.

He looked around, wanting to see who had disturbed his peaceful dream, but found no target.

At that moment, another prickling sensation came from near his mouth.

Lowering his gaze, he finally spotted a crab currently pinching his mouth with its claws.

Unfortunately, his mouth seemed too large, and his hide was especially tough and thick, so the claws couldn't pinch through at all.

Seeing this, Baichuan was first stunned, then reacted — it had been a long time since any creature dared to touch his dragon whiskers, though he didn't have any yet.

He looked at this crab and suddenly chuckled softly.

Well, well, so it's you, you overbearing little rascal, disturbing my peaceful dream!

Baichuan, with a smile in his eyes, extended his sharp claw and grabbed it down.

Then, ignoring its waving claws, he stuffed it straight into his mouth and crunched it up, shell and all.

He was lying here sleeping peacefully, so since this ill-mannered crab dared to disturb his sweet dream, it should be prepared to become a meal.

Baichuan swallowed this ungrateful little crab in two or three bites.

Then he looked around — since he'd already been woken up, he didn't plan to sleep again.

Might as well get up and have lunch; his stomach was just growling with hunger.

Baichuan rubbed his empty belly and prepared to surface to see where he was now.

A few breaths later, he floated up and broke through the water's surface.

What met his eyes was a devastated beach — large numbers of tall coconut trees snapped in half, and the ground littered with all kinds of fish and shrimp.

This is?

Baichuan was stunned for a moment, then caught on.

It was probably the aftermath of yesterday's typhoon, but these fish and shrimp lying on the shore — should they be edible?

Thinking of this, he flicked his tail fin and swam straight toward the shore.

However, just as he was about to go ashore as usual, he paused.

He slowly turned around to look behind him, following his sharp dorsal fin toward the end, where a thick tail fin was dragging along the sand, carving a deep furrow.

At his gaze, it nimbly lifted up.

"Eh-oh."

Only now did Baichuan realize he was no longer what he once was — no longer the size of an ordinary snake, but possessing a massive, shark-like crescent-shaped fin.

This upright fin had given him tremendous assistance in the water, but once on land, it became a burden.

Well, it seemed he couldn't go ashore for now; better to obediently eat his fill beneath the sea first.

Thinking of this, Baichuan silently turned around and dove back into the water, swimming toward the school of fish he sensed.

An hour later, the well-fed Baichuan silently examined his massive tail fin and felt a bit of a headache.

He wanted to change it — for instance, into the soft, collapsible tail fin of ordinary fish that folds up out of water — but there were currently no fish with extremely fast swimming speed that had that kind of fin.

Those fish with soft tail fins basically had Swimming LV2, but the speed boost from Swimming LV2 was weak, and he had already been LV2 before, so it couldn't give him a major improvement.

For the moment, Baichuan found himself caught in another dilemma — a choice between the sea and the land.

Perhaps this kind of choice had already been made countless times by predecessors over the tens of millions of years of this planet's history.

Baichuan silently sighed. It seemed he couldn't give up the tremendous help this tail fin brought him in the short term — once he'd experienced the exhilaration of high-speed swimming, he couldn't go back to that leisurely pace.

In fact, he even found his current swimming speed too slow.

It seemed he could only compromise for now.

For example, adding a pair of hind legs and truly giving up crawling.

After all, he no longer relied much on land crawling speed. As long as his invisibility remained, along with his ranged Frost Ability and the subsequent venom attack.

He could completely abandon the path of relying on close-range predation on land.

Perhaps in time he would become a land-based ranged predator, engaging in close combat and tearing apart strong enemies.

But if that's the case, then Flight should also be pushed forward.

Even if he couldn't truly fly, gliding would still be faster than moving on the ground.

So, he would have to stay near the coastline of this unfamiliar island or continent for a while longer.

What he most needed to do now was quietly wait for his points to accumulate and review his previous gains.

After silently planning his next moves, Baichuan stretched out his body once more and slowly departed.

Since he was planning to stay long-term, he had to find a place to settle down.

……

Time slowly passed, and in the blink of an eye, a month had gone by.

Baichuan had finally saved up 19 points.

That day, having eaten his fill early, he once again impatiently curled up in his cave and opened the panel.

As the faint white light from the panel shone on his dragon head, the panel's information appeared.

'Name: Baichuan.'

'Race: Jiao Snake.'

'Length: 7.3 meters.'

'Lifespan: 14 years, 5 months.'

'Points: 19 (13%).'

'Abilities: LV3 Ability (expand), LV2 Ability (expand), LV1 Ability (expand).'

"Ability Structure Library (expand)."

"Kedianji..."

He paid no heed to these, heading straight for the Ability Structure Library and pulling out the bat's ability model. Along with the bat's ability model came the ability model of a peacock mantis shrimp.

This was something he had, on a certain day during this period of time, happened to find by chance in a crevice among the nearby reefs.

The moment he saw this little creature, with its dazzlingly beautiful shell built from red, green, blue, and many other colors, he immediately knew who this little fellow was.

A peacock mantis shrimp!

Now that he knew what it was, could Baichuan, who had long been yearning for its abilities, possibly let it go?

Of course he simply fired off a bolt of Electric Discharge, knocking it out on the spot and taking it away.

While pondering, Baichuan once again opened the bat's Ability Panel.

"Species: Bat"

"Abilities: Wing Hand LV2, Ultrasonic LV2, Ultrasonic Positioning LV2, Immunity LV2, DNA Damage Repair LV1, Symbiosis LV1."

He glanced at it, then extracted all of its abilities except "Symbiosis LV1" and placed them one by one into the positions he had long since decided upon within his own ability model.

Instantly, Baichuan saw his own ability model begin to undergo a massive transformation.

First, the back of his body at the position of his sharp claws began to bulge strangely. Then two thick skeletal frames burst through flesh and blood from the bulged area.

Next, upon these two upper-arm bones, the forearm, metacarpals, and phalanges began to emerge and connect, forming two thick, long Wing Hand skeletons atop his back.

Finally, two sheets of soft yet tough Membrane began to appear from the phalanges, spreading rapidly left and right toward the rear of his body, reaching two-thirds of the way down.

……

(End of this chapter)