During the three months that the mating season would last, the only work of the female Centingers was to collate the points accumulated by all the male Centingers. But that didn’t mean they wouldn’t explore the immediate vicinity of their location when intrigued.
The Rooster Tribe settlement was located close to the Angan River. Hence, the two female Centingers that had camped there sensed the Rockatrice’s presence and approached the region. They were feeling mildly bored and hence intended to use a strong opponent like the Rockatrice as a target practice.
A casual artillery strike later, all the Slump Lizards within the settlement were killed. The two female Centingers soon made their way to the lake and stared at the floating corpse of the Rockatrice. Its blood had leaked into the lake and polluted it, giving it a pungent stench.
The two female Centingers looked around and spread their Prana around, failing to detect anything worth noticing. They did detect an egg deep inside a cave, but it was beyond their reach. Moreover, nothing worth their attention was registered from the egg. It hadn’t even hatched after all.
Followed by a swat of one of their centipede upper bodies, the boulder blocking the cave’s entrance was sent flying. But the entrance was too narrow, preventing the Centinger’s centipede upper body from entering it.
Since the egg was beyond its reach, the Centinger stopped trying to target it. It then looked around and noticed the vantage point given by the hill range, allowing it to survey the entire region more easily.
With an altitude of six hundred metres on flat lands, it was enough for the female Centinger to even make out Ellora City’s shadow far away.
The two female Centingers discussed among themselves and decided to camp in this region. At least, they could keep watch on some of the battles from this place, instead of the bottom of the Angan River.
A few minutes later, the two female Centingers retracted their Prana, casually lying around the lake as they played with the Rockatrice’s corpse.
The moment they retracted their Prana, Inala sighed in relief. When they tried to detect using their Prana, the Prana Bomb was able to absorb faint traces of the Prana they had released.
Through it, Inala knew that they were keeping their detection means activated. And the moment his Prana Bomb stopped absorbing Prana implied they had stopped using their detection means.
He stealthily shattered the Prana Bomb and took in long breaths, feeling almost suffocated before. If he hadn’t bent space within his lungs and inhaled a large amount of air, it would have been impossible to remain confined for extended durations.
‘Do I attack them or not?’ He wondered, hesitant. Had there been just one Centinger, he could have made plans accordingly. But facing two of them would be a death sentence.
The moment a single of their artilleries strikes him, his defences would come undone and he’ll be incapacitated. He wouldn’t be able to recover fast enough before more strikes from the Bone-Melting Artillery impact him.
Death was guaranteed in such a situation. But upon noticing that the two female Centingers intended to remain next to the lake, Inala had no other choice but to face them.
Otherwise, he would be trapped in his current location until the mating season ends. And if his location were to be revealed, the two female Centingers would attack him. Currently, they hadn’t targeted the egg—the Prana Bomb he hid within—only because it didn’t pique their interest.
But once they sense his existence, they would unleash an artillery strike on the settlement walls and bring it down in a matter of minutes. They had such fearsome firepower.
Once that happens, Inala would have nowhere to hide. In the open plains, he became an easy target for their artillery strikes.
‘I need to kill them somehow.’ He thought, spending a few minutes on it when he got an idea, ‘Alright, that will work.’
Immediately in response, the Empyrean Zingers in his biome got to work. Inala swallowed the Empyrean Zinger King who took action upon arriving at his biome.
It grabbed an Empyrean Zinger and activated Mystic Bone Art on it, forcefully changing its body shape. Unable to bear the burden, the Empyrean Zinger died.
Soon, the Empyrean Zinger King created a Sumatra Zinger. Upon observing that it was functioning properly, it began to create more Sumatra Zingers, stopping only after creating twenty-four of them.
In the meantime, Inala morphed a Prana Bomb into a drill and began to silently drill a path to the lake. Two hours later, he finished making a narrow path that was only wide enough for a miniature Empyrean Zinger to crawl through.
Inala spat out a Prana Bomb whose space was compressed inside. It slowly enlarged and shattered, revealing twenty Sumatra Zingers and twenty Empyrean Zingers.
One by one, the Empyrean Zingers reverted to their original size, compressed space in their stomachs to swallow a Sumatra Zinger, and then took on their miniature forms. One after another, the twenty miniature Empyrean Zingers crawled through the narrow tunnel and entered the lake, spreading out in response.
An Empyrean Zinger stealthily crawled out of the lake and sneaked onto the body of a sleeping Centinger. It took some time and reached the top, taking out its Sumatra Zinger that began to suck in air. 𝒩𝑂𝚟𝗅xt.𝗇𝓔t
Ten minutes later, it was full of compressed air. Loading a Prana Bomb inside, the Empyrean Zinger remained in its miniature form and pointed the nozzle towards the eyes of the Centinger.
Boom!
The Prana Bomb had been infused with all the Empyrean Zinger’s Prana, raising its weight to two hundred kilograms. It slammed into the Centinger’s eyes and brutally crushed the organ, causing the area to cave in response.
Right after shooting a Prana Bomb, the Empyrean Zinger swallowed the Sumatra Zinger and collapsed the gravity inside its stomach, causing a singularity, as a result of which its body deformed and shrunk to the size of a grain.
It all happened in a matter of seconds. By the time the Centinger woke up from the impact and spread its Prana around, it failed to detect any other living being in its vicinity. Its two eyes had been destroyed by the attack; it seethed in rage.
The Centinger surged Prana to the wounded region and began its recovery process, glaring at the other Centinger who looked around in confusion. Its Prana was robust as in a matter of minutes, it had regenerated the eyes, since they were just nerval appendages extending from its actual eyes.
So, healing it wasn’t tricky. After glaring at the second Centinger for a couple more minutes, it closed its eyes and resumed its sleep as there wasn’t much to do at present. Tallying the points would only happen at a later date, so it had no work at the moment.
But a few minutes later, there was another powerful impact, shattering its face once again, blinding it a second time. The Centinger unleashed its Prana promptly to detect the perpetrator but still failed to find anyone else, only sensing the second Centinger stirring up in response to the sound.
When the same happened the third time, the Centinger pounced on the second Centinger, engaging in a battle.
