Chapter 70: LEVEL 2 ABNORMAL HIGH EATER: THE TANKER.
The tremors grew violent.
Johnquis slowly turned around, feet sliding slightly on the smooth stone. Cracks spiderwebbed across the glowing floor like lightning frozen in time. The light dimmed beneath his feet, pulsing in warning, flickering like a heartbeat skipping out of rhythm.
Then the center of the chamber erupted.
KRRAAA-KOOOM!
Chunks of glowing rock blasted upward as the floor split open. A massive shape surged from the depths, dragging with it slabs of stone, broken roots, and shards of radiant crystal. Water that had been perfectly still now scattered in every direction, spraying across the dome like rain flung from an explosion.
A thing rose from the earth—towering, hunched, yet steady. Like a mountain forcing itself upward through the ground.
Johnquis stumbled back. The chain in his hand clinked softly, taut with tension. His body locked into instinct, eyes fixed on the impossible on the impossible shape rising before him.
The silhouette grew slowly, towering—easily twice his height. It wasn’t just coated in stone. It was stone. A living mass of fused rock and mineral, crusted with glowing gems and jagged ore. Limbs like columns. Hands thick and crude, shaped more like blunt siege weapons than fingers. Its entire body was a fusion of hardened resin and blackened muscle, wrapped in layers of crystalline armor that pulsed with a strange inner light. Sharp crystals jutted from its spine like thorns on a buried god.
Its face—if it even had one was buried beneath a mask of jagged stone shards, each a different kind of rock, fused together like some cruel mosaic. Then its eyes opened, cold, glowing violet. The same color all Eaters shared.
That was the only thing proving it wasn’t just some ancient statue come to life. It wasn’t a goddamn rock. It was an Eater.
It breathed. It was watching Johnquis. And it was hungry...
Johnquis’s vision flared with a sudden system ping: