Lin Xia estimated the Giant-Clawed Lobster’s combat style based on his experience with the mutant crabs. After all, they were both seafood—no, crustacean marine life—so their methods of attack were bound to be similar.
But he was wrong.
The reason the Giant-Clawed Lobster was rated as an R2 level, surpassing the sea crabs, was not only because it possessed the crab’s formidable defensive power, but also because it had an agility that completely defied its massive weight. Carrying a force capable of crushing anything in its path, it sliced through the turbid water and swept straight toward Lin Xia’s waist!
“Watch out!”
Chi Zheng violently yanked Lin Xia out of the combat zone.
Wary of Chi Zheng, the lobster did not dare to advance, but it was unwilling to give up the prey right at its mouth. Thus, it began moving back and forth along the ramp again.
Lin Xia panted heavily, trying his best to calm his erratic breathing.
Just moments ago, the surface of the water had been torn apart by the raw power of the Giant-Clawed Lobster, sending a wall of muddy waves crashing toward him. The premonition of death had practically slapped him across the face.
Just a little more, just a tiny bit more!
The moment he was dragged into the water, the Giant-Clawed Lobster’s sharp teeth would have clamped down on his body. With a bite force capable of easily crushing a fire hydrant, his bones wouldn’t have stood a chance.
He was almost instantly killed by the opponent!
However, it wasn’t a total loss; at least he had figured out the Giant-Clawed Lobster’s behavioral patterns. Before this lobster launched an attack, its tail would twitch violently. It would then continuously exert force using three of its five pairs of abdominal legs as fulcrums to support the swinging of its two massive claws.
This structure was incredibly fragile. If even one leg or one side of those three pairs was damaged, the Giant-Clawed Lobster would instantly lose its support. At that point, if it continued to swing its giant claws recklessly, it would easily lose its balance, flip over, and end up with its back facing upward.
Don’t ask Lin Xia how he figured it out; he just knew.
“Again!”
Holding the triangular blade, he was about to charge forward again when Chi Zheng grabbed him.
“Xiaxia, don’t push yourself!”
“I’m not pushing myself.”
Lin Xia wiped the rainwater from his face.
“Even though this thing is strong, I know how to deal with it. Trust me.”
Since he put it that way, Chi Zheng couldn’t stop him any further. He merely stepped forward to stand even closer to the front than before, causing the Giant-Clawed Lobster to instinctively begin retreating.
Yet, it could not overcome its urge to feed. Seeing its prey approach once more, the Giant-Clawed Lobster’s gluttony ultimately won. It began churning the water, preparing to repeat its old trick.
Lin Xia rushed forward, diving downward the exact moment the wave was about to hit. The turbid, foul-smelling wastewater instantly flooded his nose and mouth as a massive claw scraped past his side. Forcing his eyes open, he identified a faint red glow in the water as the compound eyes of the Giant-Clawed Lobster. Using the ramp’s guardrail as a shield, he bypassed the lobster’s giant maw and attempted to position himself completely underneath its abdomen.
Accomplishing this movement in the water was far from easy.
The lobster’s giant claws stirred up whirlpools, and his body was involuntarily swept along by the waves. Using both his hands and feet, Lin Xia rolled and kicked through the waist-deep water like an agile loach, repeatedly trying to get close to the lobster’s most vulnerable belly.
At the most dangerous moment, a claw slammed down less than half a meter from his shoulder. The water shot up into the air, mixed with fragments of sand, stones, and concrete, raining down heavily. Lin Xia’s forehead was instantly sliced open, leaving two bleeding cuts.
“Xiaxia!”
“Don’t come over!”
Lin Xia shouted to stop Chi Zheng from moving.
“I can do it! I’m about to see its crystal core!”
Dodging another fatal strike from the claw hammer by a hair’s breadth, Lin Xia fiercely wiped the foul water from his eyes.
He was certain he had just severed the fourth left leg of the Giant-Clawed Lobster. Right where the leg closely connected to the abdomen, amidst the gaps of the nodular carapace, he caught a vague glimpse of a deep, ghostly blue light. It was cold, yet carried a sense of fluid energy.
The Giant-Clawed Lobster’s crystal core isn’t in its head?!
There was no time to overthink, because the lobster had already launched another attack.
It seemed enraged by the wound on its abdomen. Its massive right claw reared high into the air, bringing down a crushing momentum as it slammed down. The turbid water surface was pressed into a massive vortex by its terrifying strength.
Now is the time!
Lin Xia’s focus reached an absolute peak. The trajectory of the lobster’s movement seemed to deliberately slow down in his eyes. The abdomen, no longer shielded by the giant claws, was exposed once more. The stretching of the muscles fully extended the abdominal carapace, revealing that cold, yet completely unignorable ghostly blue light!
Let’s do this!
There was no time to weigh the options. A ruthless determination to risk it all instantly overrode everything else.
Instead of retreating, Lin Xia advanced, diving down again before the giant claw could smash into him. Having clashed with the opponent for several rounds, he could now perfectly avoid the point of impact. The hand gripping the triangular blade was as steady as a rock. Channeling all his strength and will into the tip of the blade, he utilized the momentum of his forward plunge to stab fiercely into the ghostly blue light in his field of vision!
Pfft!
An extremely bizarre, skin-crawling puncturing sound echoed. It felt like piercing through a hard crystal encased in some sort of gelatin.
But that wasn’t enough.
Lin Xia continuously shifted his angles, pressing his entire body weight onto it while carefully avoiding the giant claws that the lobster was instinctively flailing out of pain. It was no easy feat, but he managed to pull it off before running out of oxygen!
Buzz—!
An incredibly intense pulse of energy suddenly shot up through the triangular blade. Lin Xia’s arm went numb instantly, and half of his body felt as if it had been struck by lightning, sending a sharp, severe pain straight to his brain. He could no longer hold onto the triangular blade; the web of his hand split open, and blood seeped out, dyeing the surrounding water red.
“Screeech—!!!”
The Giant-Clawed Lobster let out a heart-wrenching, agonizing shriek! The sound was sharp and piercing, penetrating the dense curtain of rain as it echoed out toward the city district. Its hill-like body convulsed violently. The high-raised giant claw froze mid-air before crashing into the turbid waves one last time.
Boom!!!
The concrete ramp could not withstand such force and directly collapsed by half.
Chi Zheng had already dragged Lin Xia out of the water early on. Taking a few leaps up onto a relatively safe rooftop, he looked down to observe the situation below.
The three-meter-tall Giant-Clawed Lobster had now become like a sunken reef. Most of its body was submerged in the muddy water, with only its left claw slumped over the surface, twitching in spasms.
But it was useless. Its crystal core had been destroyed, and what remained were merely the peripheral nerves that hadn’t completely died yet. Although Lin Xia’s battle had been brutal, it was an indisputable, overwhelming victory!
The young boy was entirely drained of strength, collapsing into his companion’s arms while panting heavily. The cold air mixed with a heavy, fishy stench rushed into his lungs. Every breath was painful, serving as a reminder of just how perilous the fight had been.
“I want… I want to see the crystal core in its abdomen…”
Lin Xia closed his eyes, recalling the electric shock-like sensation from earlier, and a strange feeling suddenly cropped up in his heart.
He had killed plenty of mutant seafood, but this was the first time he had experienced such a sensation. He really wanted to see what the crystal core of this Giant-Clawed Lobster looked like.
“I’ll dig it out for you.”
Chi Zheng propped Lin Xia up against a wall, took the triangular blade down the ramp himself, and dragged the three-meter-tall giant lobster straight up.
He plunged the triangular blade into the lobster’s abdomen and abruptly exerted force with his arm.
With a crisp crack, the joint of the lobster’s abdominal armor was completely pried open, revealing the internal soft membrane of the inner carapace. Moving the blade carefully along the edge of the inner membrane, he then peeled back the tough inner lining with his bare hands, exposing the lobster’s core.
Inside the claw shell, just above the tail area, an irregular, pigeon-egg-sized dark blue crystal was embedded within the grayish-blue flesh. However, this crystal had already shattered. The fragments were embedded all over the lobster’s flesh, no longer emitting any ghostly blue light.
“It’s shattered. The energy dissipated.”
Chi Zheng shook his head. Using the tip of the triangular blade, he meticulously picked out all the fragments and laid them out on the ground one by one.
Lin Xia touched a fragment. It was cold to the touch and carried a strange sense of energy, but it was entirely different from the electric shock sensation he felt the moment he pierced the crystal core.
Is it because it broke?
Thus, he submitted it for a one-click collection. Sure enough, the item entry for the “crystal core” showed it as damaged, and the recovered energy was only 10%, which actually wasn’t as much as what the giant claws yielded.
However, there was an unexpected pleasant surprise. The lobster’s meat was recognized as an ingredient. In particular, the meat in the giant claws and the tail presented a bizarre, almost snow-like crystalline white color. The texture was fine and tight, even giving off a jade-like luster under the dim light.
Lin Xia reached out with his uninjured left hand, his fingertips brushing against the cool, premium jade-like claw meat. It felt firm and elastic, carrying the chill of the ocean tide.
“How strange. The Giant-Clawed Lobster smells so foul and fishy, yet its meat is rated even higher than the hind leg of the Sac-Gland Tiger. Furthermore, ordinary humans can consume it.”
Lin Xia clicked his tongue in wonder as he looked at the one-click collection report.
This was the first time he had seen the vending cart state that humans could eat a mutant creature. But since it had passed the system’s inspection, it had to be true. He wondered if there was any difference between this mutant lobster and a regular lobster.
Of course, as a poor youth from the Fourth District, Lin Xia had never eaten a regular lobster before. Therefore, he decided that tonight’s dinner would be lobster, so he could taste it as soon as possible!
“Plus, this thing is incredibly heavy. Just one piece weighs a good 130 to 140 pounds. With two giant claws and one lobster tail, the 500-pound ingredient collection task is easily completed just like that?!”
How could that be called an easy completion…
Chi Zheng silently treated Lin Xia’s wounds.
Had he known this thing was so valuable, he would have gone down into the water himself to kill a few. He could handle the one-click collection job too, and his knife skills were much better!
“It’s fine. Eat as much as you want; there are plenty more of these things in the water,” he muttered, sounding a bit stubborn.
“We’ll keep this Lobster King for ourselves to eat and nourish your body. As for the ingredients for the task, we can just catch some ordinary mutant lobsters. It’s just the hole-in-the-wall diner district anyway; they don’t deserve to eat high-end ingredients.”
“Ordinary mutant lobsters and the Lobster King belong to two entirely different tiers of creatures. If we eat the Lobster King, the ordinary mutant lobsters will still count as unused in this world.”
Huh? It could be calculated like that?
Lin Xia’s eyes widened in surprise.
Even though he actually thought the same way, Chi Zheng putting it into words like that was a bit too blatant! Wasn’t he afraid the task would fail?
Oh, right. The Lobster King and mutant crabs were indeed different, much like the Sac-Gland Tiger and a local ordinary mutant tiger. Even though they were both tigers, they belonged to completely different species.
Chi Zheng’s logic wasn’t wrong at all.
Thinking this way, Lin Xia suddenly began to look forward to tonight’s dinner.