Through the jungle filled with sweltering heat and humidity so thick it felt tangible, accompanied by the Mini Reapers.
Since I wasn’t seriously affected by the heat like humans and didn’t even need to breathe, exploring the jungle was quite enjoyable in its own way.
If I were human, I’d probably hate moving around in this hot, humid, sauna-like environment.
This jungle created by the Green Moon was full of fascinating things.
From giant ferns to twinkling star-shaped fruits.
Plus, all the animals inhabiting it were dinosaurs!
Except for the ugly T-Rex, it was truly a magnificent jungle.
But as evident from the T-Rex’s appearance, the dinosaurs in this jungle didn’t seem to be accurate recreations of real dinosaurs.
They were probably formed from people’s imagination and expectations.
There’s no way a T-Rex with feathers, lips, and a pot belly could be real!
If that T-Rex were real, the K-Pg extinction event must have happened because the T-Rex was too ugly.
Divine punishment, that’s what it was.
Is the T-Rex not showing up again?
I was currently wandering through the jungle, searching for a T-Rex.
It would be nice if the T-Rex I liked appeared, but even if it didn’t, I had come up with a useful idea.
This method was inspired by watching the Golden Reapers bully small dinosaurs to make dinosaur hats.
If the feathered, lippy, pot-bellied T-Rex appeared this time, I’d turn it into a proper T-Rex.
Just pluck out all the feathers, cut off the lips, and trim away the belly fat!
But no matter how much I wandered, there was no sign of a T-Rex appearing, so I decided to sit under a tree full of star-shaped fruits to rest.
I had been curious about the taste of these star-shaped fruits for a while.
I used Spatial Slash to cut a star-shaped fruit in half!
Then I cut the fruit into small pieces and popped them into the mouth of the Black Reaper sitting next to me.
Perhaps finding it strange that I was sharing food, the Black Reaper chewed the fruit with a very touched expression.
But the Black Reaper’s smiling expression quickly began to contort.
It was the Black Reaper’s cute reaction, able to transform its body in various ways.
Perhaps because the fruit was extremely sour, the Black Reaper squeezed its eyes shut and stuck out its tongue.
I lightly tugged on the Black Reaper’s tongue that was sticking out of its mouth.
Anyway, despite being a pretty, sparkling fruit, it seems it doesn’t taste good.
I put down the unpalatable fruit that had failed the Black Reaper test.
Then the Black Reaper made a ‘You tricked me!’ expression and lunged at me, biting down with a ‘chomp’.
As the Black Reaper and I were squabbling, the Golden Reapers who had been rolling around in the clearing started approaching with question marks floating above their heads.
It seemed they thought I was playing with the Black Reaper.
I isolated the area around the Black Reaper that was biting me with Spatial Slash, then conveyed my will to the Golden Reapers.
The Black Reaper is angry because I’m eating delicious fruit by myself.
While saying that, I distributed star-shaped fruits to all the Golden Reapers in the clearing.
That way, I was able to engrave in my mind the scene of the Golden Reapers sticking out their tongues and grimacing en masse.
Of course, afterward, the angry Mini Reapers clamped onto me like sucker fish for a while, but it was a satisfying prank.
Grotesquely twisted monsters began to emerge from the depths of the forest.
“Welcome. It’s been a while.”
“Welcome. It’s been a while.”
“Welcome. It’s been a while.”
Unlike the dinosaurs seen until now, these monsters didn’t look like proper living creatures.
The white outer walls of the control room were stained with dried blood.
A faint smell of blood wafted through the air.
Yet the voices of her colleagues sounded exactly the same and calm, which made the woman’s skin crawl even more.
Mingming’s attitude towards these monsters was different too.
While the Mingmings tended to avoid fighting with other dinosaurs, they strangely didn’t hide their hostility towards these monsters.
The woman hid behind Mingming’s soft back, which had grown larger, without taking her eyes off the bizarre dinosaurs.
Suddenly, the monsters closed their mouths and began to spin their heads around and around, around and around.
In one direction, continuously, continuously.
Until the ‘human head’ attached to the monster’s body, spinning continuously, couldn’t take it anymore and fell to the ground.
Strange-sounding words kept flowing from the human head that had fallen to the floor, and the monsters slowly began to move towards Mingming and the woman.
The woman, watching this terrifying sight, tightly grasped Mingming’s green grass.
At that moment, the monsters began to charge towards Mingming.
As Mingming let out a loud cry, emitting golden light from its eyes, sprouts began to burst from the ground and started to entangle the monsters.
The woman, who had been expecting Mingming to be just a slightly unusual creature with no special qualities, was shocked.
What Mingming had just displayed was truly an Object ability.
The woman felt a bit depressed, realizing she couldn’t call Mingming ‘Mingming’ anymore.
But the ropes made of sprouts couldn’t properly restrain the monsters, breaking whenever the monsters moved.
What followed was hand-to-hand combat between a raptor-like monster and Mingming.
The raptor’s hooked claws sliced Mingming’s skin, and Mingming’s giant hands crushed the raptor.
The battle, which seemed like it would continue until one side died, entered a lull as the raptors retreated.
Mingming’s skin was deeply gouged as if eaten away by sharp hooked claws.
So much blood flowed from these wounds that it formed puddles, enough to have killed a normal animal long ago.
Moreover, its size, which had been as large as an elephant, had shrunk somewhat.
The woman tried to stop Mingming’s wounds as it breathed heavily, but pressing down with clothing wasn’t enough to stop the bleeding.
On the other hand, the raptors with regenerative abilities were unscathed.
When bones broke, they branched out like trees.
When skin tore, it fused with nearby body parts.
When parts of the body disappeared, endlessly swelling blisters took their place.
Though they were becoming more grotesquely twisted with each regeneration, regeneration was regeneration.
As Mingming cried softly and looked up at the sky, darkness began to fall over the jungle.
The grotesque monsters also looked up at the sky.
It had been daytime until just moments ago, but now it had become night.
And in that sky, an unusually large green moon was rising.
I was riding a giant T-Rex wearing black armor, roaming through the jungle.
It was a ‘real’ Tyrannosaurus that I had found after exploring the jungle here and there.
Not a ‘fake’ with feathers or lips, but the real deal!
I was planning to turn fakes into real ones if I encountered them, but of course, it was better to meet the real thing.
My handiwork isn’t that great, so there was a high chance I’d make mistakes while performing T-Rex plastic surgery.
Of course, it was extremely difficult to tame.
True to its reptilian nature, this T-Rex kept trying to bite and refused to obey commands.
It was so violent that it would immediately show aggression even after being stabbed repeatedly with the Black Reaper Greatsword.
But I solved that problem with my brilliant mind.
Behold, the Black Reaper Armor!
Taming it by supporting its entire body with Black Reaper Armor, like an exoskeleton assisting movement!
No matter how strong a dinosaur might be, it couldn’t compare to a Black Reaper.
In reality, it was the Black Reapers moving the T-Rex now.
As I was riding around on the T-Rex like that, I heard the urgent will of a Golden Reaper.
When I turned to look, the Mini Reapers that had followed me were limp in the arms of the Golden Reapers.
What’s suddenly happened?
I modified the T-Rex armor a bit to make it like a bed, then laid the Mini Reapers down.
When I examined the collapsed Mini Reapers, they were all extremely drowsy.
Could there be some problem from coming out into space?
All the Mini Reapers except for the energetic Golden Reapers and the Black Reapers, who looked a bit tired but could still move without issue, had lost consciousness.
The little ones are sick….
The Golden Reapers were taking care of the Mini Reapers with worried expressions.
Feeling the gravity of the situation, I tried to open the Mini Reaper Garden, but it wouldn’t open.
It seemed to be because my power had significantly decreased in space, and we were in the Green Moon’s domain.
Either destroy the Green Moon or get out of space.
I had to resolve one of these two options.
Could the Mini Reapers break through the atmosphere?
If it were the Golden Reapers who were sick, I could just throw them straight to Earth, but this was a tricky situation.
At that moment, the Green Moon began to rise in the sky.
The monsters looked up at the sky.
From the sky, they could feel the gaze of the Green Moon, the creator of everything in this jungle.
The moon that had fled to space.
The moon that had preserved its power the most.
But the moon that had lost its ego.
Due to the battle with its old retainers that had been abandoned, the lost ego of the Green Moon was being reborn.
And from that gaze, they could feel that it had chosen them, not its old retainers.
The twisted flesh of the monsters chosen by the Green Moon began to tear and burst open.
What was completed was the most alien existence in this jungle.
A head that soared as if it would touch the sky.
Countless limbs made of bones from all sorts of creatures, tearing through and emerging from old flesh.
And that unfathomable power was flowing in.