Chapter Twelve: Bargaining for the Beast's Hide, Part Two

“That, too, I can do, though not with a hand as powerful as yours,” the creature replied at once.

Jing was already bursting with delight. “Good. But while you help transform us, could you also transform our two divine beasts at the same time? Would that be possible?”

The other seemed to imitate human laughter, letting out two long, rolling guffaws. “Of course. In truth, they do not need my energy to be altered. If they simply devour some of that fellow’s body beneath the ground, that will be enough to make them much stronger. Their bodies can absorb from his flesh whatever they require.”

Glutton could not help growing excited as well. “Then when do we begin?”

“Once my children have dragged the underground fellow’s main body up from beneath the earth, I will notify you.”

Glutton frowned slightly. “Mr. Horn, the self-destruction of our human starship is tremendously powerful. If your children are too close, then perhaps—”

He was worried that when the ship exploded, the creatures outside, the ones tugging at the long vines and the vessel, might suffer heavy losses. Hearing the other call those monsters its children, he could not help feeling uneasy.

After a moment’s thought, the creature said, “There is no need to worry. Just carry out the self-destruction at the proper moment. Their casualties are not worth concerning ourselves with.”

The ship was slowly hauled ashore by the monsters from the Weak Water Lake. The true body of the long vine clearly possessed no intelligence at all. It was unwilling to abandon the ship, yet unwilling to let go of the monsters it had ensnared. So it could only follow slowly, inch by inch, being dragged up from beneath the ground.

Gradually, a milky-white crystalline mass, as large as a small mountain and tens of meters across, slowly emerged from the Weak Water Lake.

The mass was covered in countless long vine-like tendrils, which should more properly have been called roots. The vines wrapped around the starship and the monsters; yet even so, they were not even a third as many as those covering its own body.

Once more than half of the root-like body had risen above the surface, Jing gave a long sigh. “My heavens. What kind of plant is this? How can it be so huge?”

Before Glutton could answer, the cosmic beast, which had remained silent until then, took up her words. “Its existence predates mine. There is nothing strange about its growing this large. At the very least, I know that there are three even larger and older ones on this planet. It is only that those three are far more powerful than it is. I did not know in advance that you humans could use this kind of fire. Moreover, that flame seems to deal a strange and tremendous blow to its kind. Otherwise I would have had you move your human ship to one of those three.”

Glutton could only shake his head with a wry smile. This cosmic beast, though it possessed intelligence no less than a human’s, was clearly not very mature in its thinking.

He had no choice but to say, “Mr. Horn, there are some things I must say now. Although the flames we used inside the ship were very effective against these vine-like things, I cannot guarantee that the ship’s self-destruction will produce the same effect as that kind of flame. That was only our guess.”

The other clearly understood Glutton’s meaning. After several long laughs, it said, “You are more honest than my last human friend. I like making friends with honest humans.”

Glutton smiled.

Once the enormous root mass had been fully dragged clear of the lake, the vines beneath it clearly could no longer resist such tremendous force. Yet they were still foolishly unwilling to release the prey they had caught, and could only be slowly dragged ashore.

Seeing that foolish root mass, Little Flower seemed to be stirred by some indescribable emotion. Perhaps it was because the two of them looked so similar in appearance.

Little Flower emerged from behind Glutton’s neck, shook its head, which still looked utterly miserable, and said, “How can it be so stupid? It still doesn’t know to let go at a time like this.”

Once the huge root mass had been completely dragged out from underground, the monsters rushed off toward a plain far from the Weak Water Lake.

The ship being hauled along was like a tin can tied to the back of a wedding car.

The iron-hard ground of Forgotten Star scraped constantly against the ship, and the sparks that flew up were dazzling to the eye. On this barren world, those sparks might well have counted as a rare and beautiful sight.

But Jing and Glutton inside the ship were the ones suffering. The violent shaking nearly knocked Jing senseless.

After the root mass and the starship had been dragged to the center of the plain, the life pod rang with the cosmic beast’s urgent voice. “Quickly, use the fire, or that fellow will burrow back underground again.”

Before Glutton could speak, Jing had already pressed a device hanging around her neck.

At once, the ship began to shudder violently. There was no countdown, no buffer period of any kind, not even what Glutton had imagined would come before it. But that only made it feel more like a final measure. Once it reached the stage of self-destruction, the faster it came, the better.

Glutton did not understand the principle behind the mother-and-child ship’s self-destruction, but he could feel the life pod he was in shaking nonstop. After several minutes of trembling, a tremendous boom rang out, and the life pod actually became still for a moment. Only after the blast did the shaking start again.

No one knew how long passed before the trembling finally ceased once more, and Jing at last opened the beautiful eyes she had kept tightly shut ever since the self-destruct began.

After opening them, Jing actually asked a question that left Glutton utterly baffled. “Fatty, are we still alive?”

It was only many years later that Glutton learned by chance that the self-destruction of a mother-and-child ship could fail and blow up the smaller vessel along with it. The odds were frighteningly high, nearly one in ten. The newest models had an even higher failure rate.

When he found out, Glutton gave Jing a savage scolding.

Before Glutton could reply, the cosmic beast’s long laughter echoed through the cabin, after which it said, “My two human friends, you may come out now.”

The two looked at each other. Jing opened her protective barrier first, then helped Glutton out of his as well.

One after the other, they stepped out of the escape pod.

Outside, the scene bore the marks of a violent explosion. A circular crater, several thousand meters wide and dozens of meters deep, had appeared before them. The life pod now sat in the very center of it.

The cosmic beast floated quietly in the sky in front of them.

Beneath it hovered the root-like body, now stripped of all its vine-like tendrils, bare and still slowly writhing.

The cosmic beast’s voice sounded again from above. “Human friends, I will absorb it first. After that, I will help transform your bodies.”

As the words fell, the root-like mass floating in the air was sliced cleanly into two by a strange flash of light and shadow. One half flew straight toward the cosmic beast high above.

No one knew how the cosmic beast did it, but before the half-root mass could even come close to its body, it had already turned into a skyful of pulpy liquid. The cosmic beast then plunged headfirst into that mass of juice.

In less than half an hour, the liquid that had enveloped the cosmic beast disappeared without a trace.

After absorbing all of it, the cosmic beast opened its eyes once more, which had been only faintly slitted before. A flash of light that made Glutton and Jing both tremble at heart passed across its form, and then its eyes closed again.

The cosmic beast was now entirely different from the creature it had been before absorbing the liquid. Its body had become one size smaller, but the horn on its head was longer and thicker, and the large head beneath that horn had also grown much larger. To Glutton and Jing, it now looked as if the proportions of its head and body were completely out of balance.

With its eyes closed again, the cosmic beast gave several more long laughs. “My lovely human friends, thank you for what you have done for me. If there is a chance in the future, I hope we can cooperate again.”

Of course there could be no problem with that. Not to mention what benefit such cooperation might bring afterward, merely becoming acquainted with such a powerful cosmic-level beast was already a profoundly worthwhile thing. As for the starship required for that cooperation, Glutton and Jing did not care about it in the least.

From the situation just now, as long as there were wormholes in this Forgotten Star region that a large starship could pass through, such ships could be used to hunt these long-vine plants. A mother-and-child ship was not even necessary. Using a few starships as bombs would not be difficult at all for Glutton and Jing.

The cosmic beast did not wait for Glutton and Jing to say anything.

As soon as its words ended, Glutton felt his head grow dizzy. He sensed the energies of Little Flower and Little Black within his body being yanked out by some bizarre force.

A cry of alarm came from Jing beside him. Clearly, she had suffered the same fate.

As soon as Little Flower’s true body emerged, it erected a wall of vines between Little Black and Jing, blocking all of the black mist in liquid form that had surged out with Little Black’s body.

When the vine wall formed by Little Flower’s own body finally fell away, Jing and Glutton both saw the other’s divine beast and cried out in shock.

Jing’s divine beast was actually a long snake nearly ten meters in length, its body as thick as a water bucket.

That, of course, was not strange. Many humans possessed snake-type divine beasts even longer and larger than that.

But from the waist upward, Jing’s beast had a human body identical to that of a real person. More than that, its outer appearance was that of a very beautiful woman.

Jing’s divine beast, like Little Flower, seemed to possess remarkably high intelligence. After taking shape, she actually cried out and clutched tightly at her own proud chest.

Jing was clearly also stunned by Little Black’s enormous mouth, which was now several meters in diameter. In particular, the pungent smoke constantly rising around Little Black’s body filled Jing with both curiosity and fear.

Women are often even more curious than men. Before Glutton could even ask her what was going on with her divine beast, Jing had already cried out first, “My heavens, Fatty, is this a twin divine beast? I’ve actually seen a twin plant-type divine beast!”