One hundred meters…
The black monster didn’t notice, still standing motionless by the water’s edge.
Fifty meters…
It vaguely sensed something, its face showing confusion as the nail-like outer skull covering rotated slightly like the hands of a clock.
Twenty meters…
The Demon Crow sniffed out scent molecules that didn’t belong nearby. Strands of them dissolved in its olfactory mucosa, electrical signals racing through its neural network. After a delay of just tens of milliseconds, they converged in its brain.
The next moment, the spherical compound multi-perspective network formed by over a dozen eyeballs locked firmly onto the human lolita disguised in dead leaves and moss, hidden in the soft humus!
“Hee hee…”
Ashley grinned.
She knew scent detection was unavoidable. She dropped the disguise, shifting from a prone position to a crouch. Her left hand covered her mouth, her right pressed to her waist.
“Ga—”
The Demon Crow suddenly unleashed a high-frequency shriek that pierced the eardrums!
Its neck stretched forward, half its body protruding from the rocky platform, resembling a black triangular fighter jet—not just in shape, but emitting the rumbling tremor of jet engines!
Centered on the sharp, elongated beak extending from its outer skull, the air in the surrounding conical area exploded. Transparent shockwaves layered and collided, shattering and spraying outward like needle clusters. Tree trunks were struck, sending puffs of dust flying!
The crows circling overhead were caught in the calamity. In this heaven-shaking shriek, they fainted one after another, plummeting like dumplings in a pot.
This was the origin of the Shriek Devil Crow’s name.
The demonic sound pierced the ears, shaking the cochlea to cause vestibular dizziness. The terrifying vibrations could even penetrate to the brainstem, disrupting the central nervous system’s functions.
To Ashley, this shriek resembled the roars from Monster Hunter, but this was reality—no invincible frames or actions to negate the control. It was an almost unsolvable ability.
Hit at close range, Ashley immediately felt an unbearable sharp pain deep in her head, like a pointed awl thrusting in and twisting!
Her vision blurred, her body went limp, and warm blood wormed its way from her nose to her lips.
Damn, just as bad as I imagined…
The museum’s data had been detailed and accurate, and Ashley’s judgment was sound. This level of high-frequency sonic boom wasn’t enough to knock her out.
But that utterly terrifying Great Raven took to the air right after the shriek!
It was hard to imagine how a behemoth over two meters long and weighing hundreds of pounds could dance in the sky, but with a whirl of its wings, it bounced upward as if on springs, riding the updraft. It lowered its body in midair, hovered briefly, then shot forward like a rideable wave missile with secondary propulsion, blooming a ring of white shockwaves in the air!
Oh crap, this is way too terrifying!
Ashley’s scalp tingled. Even though everything was part of the plan, she’d hesitate if asked to do it again.
The surging airflow whipped like a frenzied lash, plowing up the humus and exposing the black soil beneath. Tree bark cracked, wood chips sprayed, pine needles rained down.
The massive monster hurtled toward her with terrifying ferocity!
Without preparation, under the shriek’s influence and unable to move, she could only watch herself be pulverized.
But Ashley had covered her hand with an open bottle of smelling salts—the one extorted from the community hospital.
The smelling salts stimulated her breathing, flooding her brain with oxygen in an instant. The dizziness recovered rapidly!
The sunset’s dim glow outlined the Shriek Devil Crow’s terrifying silhouette in backlight, now right in front of her, blotting out her vision and exuding suffocating pressure!
The gale billowed, shock currents surged, but the lolita’s unassuming little body didn’t sway in the slightest—like a pillar standing firm amid the rapids!
Her stray hairs whipped in the wind, her pupils flashed. At the critical moment, she raised her Finger Gun upward!
Drew her gun!
Faster than the quickest cowboy!
Boom!
The crude, brutal gunshot echoed through the valley!
The Demon Crow’s charging form halted abruptly. The bullet’s horrific kinetic energy turned it from motion to stillness in an instant!
One shot to bring it down!
Since it was kinetic impact, not a supernatural ability, she couldn’t use Gun Counter. Instead, Ashley used Time Bird to copy the impact energy and fire it back. The two canceled each other out—the Demon Crow might as well have smashed head-on into a version of itself at the same speed, stifling a massive choke.
Ashley let out a breath of relief. Thank goodness for the smelling salts; otherwise, that shriek-plus-flesh-bomb combo would have turned her into meat paste.
Everything was within calculations…
Her calves trembled as she thought it.
The startled crow flock circled the sky like a flowing patch of black ink, their shrill cries echoing through the valley as if mourning their king’s fall.
The lolita’s small face was cold and stern as she walked straight toward the monster, which had smashed a shallow crater in the humus.
Her expression grave, she first took an enzyme spray from her waist pouch and coated her palms evenly.
Then, she parted the metallic-sheened strange crow feathers with both hands. From the center of its chest, roughly at the midsternal line, she formed her fingers into a blade and thrust straight in!
Under the enzyme’s catalysis, the muscles and soft tissues separated softly and intact, effortlessly dismantling the bones without breaking a single blood vessel.
Ashley had a wondrous feeling: in this world, creatures’ bones and muscles were like mechanical parts—suitable for disassembly and reconstruction.
With her small hands, she completely removed the Demon Crow’s abdominal ribs and the keel that sealed the chest cavity—a large piece of pale, triangular bone plate steaming with white mist in the cold wind.
This was the chest cavity’s shield. Once opened, a bizarre scene came into view!
Deep inside, numerous red protrusions formed a spherical nest. Countless earthworm-like red bugs curled and tightened, wriggling unnervingly.
So, the Blood Buds pecked and swallowed by the Demon Crow still lingered in its stomach, unabsorbed. Instead, they had eerily fused with its digestive organs—no rejection, forming new mucosa and muscle layers like a soft, wrinkled blood-red fruit, exuding an eerie and evil aura.
But staring longer, it seemed beautiful and powerful, mysteriously alluring. It could even digest certain biometals to reinforce bones.
An unremarkable crow, some fungi wriggling in rock crevices—simple combination, yet leaping to the top of the food chain.
They were mutualistic symbionts, like Venom and Eddie, not parasites that “use and discard” their hosts.
Kneeling on the ground, Ashley pulled several brown glass vials from her waist pouch—these were pre-mixed family secret medicines. She murmured to herself.
“Supernatural means ‘spirituality.'”
“‘Spirituality’ is the accumulation of life’s sparks before wisdom forms.”
“Spirituality gathers, ignited by a ‘miracle,’ resulting in ’emergence.'”
In simple terms, any lifeform containing supernatural power had the embryo of intelligence and could be communicated with through special means to convey requests.
The common method used artificial neural fibers like hair strands, precisely embedding the roots into brain tissue and using the other end for micro neural signal exchange—like old game consoles linking via data cables.
But such neural fibers were exorbitantly expensive, no mass-produced versions, only custom from cutting-edge labs.
Ashley was self-aware; her current wallet couldn’t afford it.
So she used a folk method—feeding blood.
She sliced her finger and dripped it onto the scarlet fruit.
Ashley judged it an order-side organism; order-side tended toward entropy reduction, chaos-side toward increase.
If the Blood Bud were chaos-side, it wouldn’t form mutual symbiosis with the Shriek Devil Crow.
This wasn’t mere feeding—the calories from a few drops were limited—but expressing communication intent through fluid exchange.
Slicing off a chunk of flesh would work better, but it wasn’t necessary.
Sure enough, after wriggling to absorb the blood, the Blood Bud quieted. The mysterious fluctuations it emitted softened, submitting to a higher intelligence—tamed.
Ashley’s heart settled a bit. She politely bowed to it.
Then, she set about removing the redundant organs and tissues from the crow’s body, reconstructing muscle connections, modifying the ribs to rotate along the spine’s transverse axis…
While she busied herself with cadaver crafting, on the opposite hillside, a sinister, icy gun barrel emerged from a pile of dead grass, its crosshairs trained on her little head.
