Short-tailed Croc

**Short-tailed Croc** are crocodiles whit sharp teeth, required water and constant care, if they are not in their natural habitat.

The short-tailed croc had a full body of armor, and was unusually strong.

**Short-tailed Croc;** First Form: live totem, can be upgraded. Success Rate: 54% (The weaker the totem, the higher the probability of success). Potential Points Consumption: 300%.

**Abilities:** Bite, Guise/Camouflage.

## Deep Swamp Croc

As the adjustment of the potential points took place, the short-tailed croc started having shivers all over his body. His figure expanded rapidly, growing longer and bigger. From two to three metres, it grew to exceeding five metres, almost filling up the whole hall on the first floor.

As the crocodile’s hide on it's back grew dark and darker, a line of black, sharp spikes started forming in the middle. The giant crocodile opened it's jaw, emitting a horrible stench. Within ten seconds, its size grew from two, three metres to exceeding five metres. Other than that, there weren't much changes to it's appearance.

All of a sudden, Garen noticed something peculiar. The giant crocodile opened it's big jaw, as if it wanted to show him something. He peered into the crocodile’s mouth. It startled him when he saw a red, snake-like tongue. On the top of the tongue was a needle-like, meaty organ.

**Deep Swamp Croc;** Evolved form of Short-tailed Croc, Second form live totem, can be upgraded. Success Rate: 24%. Potential Points Consumption: 500%"

**Abilities:** Explosive Strike, Iron Hide, Parasitism.

**Parasitism:** The deep swamp crocs in the olden days contained a huge amount of various parasite larvae in their body. Once an enemy is bitten, the larvae can be injected into its body. In a short span of time, the enemy will experience excruciating torture, which will eventually lead to death. After dying, a swamp parasite will emerge from the corpse to fight for the crocs. Note: A deep swamp croc can only cultivate three parasites per day.

He sat up in an instant, sensing two more little dots in his detection that were moving together next to the Deep Swamp Croc. Could it be a parasite?

#### Parasites

The Deep Swamp Croc was surrounded by two black beetles, about half a person tall. The beetles were glistening bright, their outer shells reflecting light like a mirror under the moonshine. Their heads didn’t have eyes or noses, but a large mouth full of sharp teeth, with a white snake’s tongue poking out from it intermittently.

They were just like two round balls. They pushed their bodies forward, letting their mouths chomp down on flesh and blood, pulling the food into their stomachs. The two parasites actually worked together to take down a dead baby, their fighting power was formidable. So those are the Deep Swamp Croc’s parasites?" Garen carefully felt the Croc, and instantly discovered the minute connections between the Croc and the beetles.

He had observed a little just now, and concluded that the parasites were equal to a Form One Totem, and a rather fiercer Form One totem at that. It was just slightly weaker than a Unihorn Lizard, and already made a decent guard.

## Dual Headed Salamander

The Deep Swamp Croc’s icon disappeared, and was replaced by a new unknown icon. Roar!!! The Deep Swamp Croc could not help itself and roared softly, as its body began to turn into a dark brown colour. Its body started to expand as well, and it grew from its original five meters, immediately lengthening to six meters, seven meters, eight meters…

The Deep Swamp Croc’s body expanded and soon reached the maximum capacity of the room. Garen stared at it with his mouth opened and his eyes dazed, as it broke the window frame and jumped out of the window, falling into the garden below. Its body expanded endlessly, as it had finally underwent many years of growth in this short space of ten seconds. Garen stood at the window that had just been broken open, and bent his head downwards to look outside.

The entire ten meter length of the garden was now almost fully occupied by the Deep Swamp Croc’s body. It had grown to almost fifteen or sixteen meters in length, and possessed a seven to eight meter wide body, resembling a large dinosaur from the Jurassic period. The strangest part was that its initial head had grown in a slightly crooked manner, while an extra clump of flesh had grown on its right shoulder. The clump of flesh kept growing rapidly, transforming into something new. Finally, it grew into a large head that was the exact same size of the Giant Croc’s original head. Bang bang!!

It was unknown when an extra pair of large feet had grown from the Giant Croc’s abdomen, and were now violently stepping on the ground. The six legs supported its large body altogether. Finally, it completed its evolution, and had transformed from its original crocodile-like image into a salamander. Its two heads began to snap their big mouths in opposite directions, as its large mouth roared silently. Shh… Both of its mouths exhaled a large gust of smelly wind. Garen finally snapped out of his state of shock. He looked at the brown Dual Headed Salamander below and realised that his Potential Points had been well-spent.

This sixteen meter long terrifying beast crawled around in his garden, looking as if it were a giant dinosaur from the past. Its size appeared to be slightly bigger than the White Bat that he had encountered earlier.

"Too bad it’s not a Form 3 Totem, but a mere Silver Totem instead!" Garen lamented as he looked at the Totem Pane in his field of vision, looking at the icon section carefully. The icon of the Deep Swamp Croc had really been changed into the Dual Headed Salamander’s image.

**‘Dual Headed Salamander:** The Form 3 evolution of the Deep Swamp Croc, Third form creature, Final form cannot be upgraded.

**Ancient informative message:** This terrifying beast existed in the ancient Behemoth era, which was at least twenty million years ago. They were the overlords of the amphibians, and possessed great strength as well as unmatched defenses. They generally live in dark, damp maze-like caves underground, and have a strong territorial sense, and are extremely possessive.

**Abilities:** Digging maze-like caves, Life Biting (Creatures that are bitten by its left mouth will unconsciously allow their life force to flow into the body of the beast, creating a healing effect)

**Dragon skin** (Strong dragon scales that are able to prevent damage inflicted by most weapons and sharp teeth).

**Dragon roar** (Loud roar that will cause deafness and dizziness in all surrounding creatures, in order for the slow-moving Salamander will be able to catch up to its prey and swallow them).

**Parasitism:** The Dual Headed Salamander can lay its parasitic eggs inside the bodies of its enemies, causing painful injuries, and finally creating a single-headed ferocious Form 2 **Deep Swamp Croc.** The rate of egg production is one per week.

The Deep Swamp Croc could create Parasites on its own, while this Dual Headed Salamander could create more Deep Swamp Crocs.

## Eight Headed Dragon

The ability to swallow unseen, terrifyingly formidable power, impressive elemental resistance, and Life Tear, the ridiculous ability that will boost its own life force.

The same scenario happened. The strength attributed climbed upwards from 6.66. In a brief moment, it exceeded 8.00 and was still swiftly increasing..Garen was delighted and was eager to test the effects of the change in strength. Suddenly, a bored, low growl came from the back of his mind.

His blood red core totem - the Dual Headed Salamander emerged from his back. The 7-8 metre tall blood totem twisted and roared towards the sky. There was ball of flesh emerging from the Dual Headed Salamander’s body, from its back part near its neck. The ball of flesh grew and expanded. Finally, with a tearing sound, the ball of flesh tore apart and another dragon head appeared. It was then Garen noticed that balls of fleshes were growing on the salamander’s back as his strength attribute increased.

The balls of flesh grew more and more, bigger and bigger, like a fast-forwarded movie. The balls of flesh grew a rate visible to the naked eye. They would then tear part, forming wet, new dragon heads. One by one the new heads emerged. Until after the eighth head, things came to a halt. The eight headed salamander’s size had evidently increased. From a height of 7-8 metres to 10 metres and eventually twelve metres. Its twenty-metre long body looked exactly like a red mountain.

At this point, the strength attribute had increased to 14.00. The limit of the body was 10.00, but the increase of the gigantic creature wasn’t included in the limit. Garen was delighted. Whether it was the salamander’s change or him surpassing the limits of the attributes, there seemed to be an unknown connection. While Garen was delighted, he also faintly realized. This method of totem combination seemed to be far stronger than the way of the Luminarists.

The improvement of the host’s body could even affect the core totem. This was mind boggling.

Its strength kept increasing until 14 before coming to a pause, and the Dragon’s heads stopped increasing once it reached eight. However, there was a new bag of meat on its back, suggesting a possibility of having a ninth head.

Garen observed that the existing nature of this Dragon was rather elusive as it didn’t have an actual body. The eight headed dragon indeed did not have an actual body, as it didn’t interact with everything else. However, the strength he could use from the Dragon would increase greatly when it appeared. The strength he could put out was twice the strength before he released the totem.

Garen named this new creature as the **Eight Headed Dragon**. Although he named it as such, anyone would have assumed that the ninth head would come out sooner or later, due to the bag of meat on its back.

The second head of the **Dual Headed Salamander** had the **Life Tear** ability but the remaining new heads didn’t seem to have any unique ability. Perhaps it’s due to it not having an actual body or some other reason that these new heads didn’t have other ability, and all of them had the **Life Tear ability**!

As these heads were born, Garen could feel that **Life Tear** had been enhanced to an incredible level. Although he didn’t know the extent of this effect, he believed that it should be at least 6 times stronger than the original Life Tear, and it shouldn’t be weak no matter how he looked at it.

What the evolved Eight Headed Dragon brought to Garen wasn’t just an enhanced strength, he had also a new ability -- **Gravitational Vortex.**

With his grey robe on, Garen reached out his right hand and flicked his finger. An invisible vortex was shot up and floated in front of him no more than one meter away. This vortex was about one meter in diameter and rotated the air surrounding it, attracting everything from its surrounding. There was an unknown hole in the center of the vortex which lead to an unknown space. Garen counted that he could released eight of these vortices at the same time, which was the same number as the heads of the Eight Headed Dragon.

These eight vortices rotated at a high angular velocity, resulting in the formation of a strong whirlwind causing huge amounts of items flying towards the vortices. It was like a powerful tornado. In a blink of an eye, large amount of shirts, wooden racks, scientific equipment and nutritional wastewater were absorbed into the vortices. What was left in the hole was those items that were hard and solid.

As Garen dissipated the vortices, he rubbed his stomach with a weird expression, as he felt that something had entered his guts. He felt that those items that were absorbed into the vortices were transported into his stomach. It seemed that those items had been refined and turned into nutrients and entered his body. "Could it be that these eight vortices are the Eight Headed Dragon’s mouth?!" Garen guessed.

He then started to analyse these eight vortices in detail. After some time of experimenting, Garen finally understood the theory behind these eight vortices. It was the same as he imagined. These were all the mouths of the Eight headed Dragon, and they could swallow everything from the outside world, including rocks, debris and some dangerous sharp weapons. Furthermore, the debris that it swallowed could turn into pure energy and replenish the totem power.

## **Nine Headed Dragon**

A bit of fresh blood leaked from the mark between Garen’s brows, and he looked at God Cloud, who was far away in midair. Garen raised a pointed finger at him. A giant scarlet silhouette appeared behind Garen. The attribute points that he had accumulated over a long period were all instantly added to Intelligence. The Eight-headed Dragon roared ferociously, the growth on its back popped, and a golden colored dragon head shot out, ferociously rushing towards the chains.

Roar!! The golden dragon head howled, the other eight dragon heads regained their vitality and simultaneously flew towards the sky-filling chains. In that instant, the Nine-Headed Dragon clashed ferociously with the countless chains. Numerous dragon roars and the clashing of chains filled the air around them. A loud thump echoed throughout the snowy mountain cap. The large snow cap exploded, bringing down large volumes of snow, crushed boulders and uprooted trees.

From afar, it seemed as though the white mountain top was sliced by an unfathomable force; it's broken upper half exploded into countless bits of debris. A giant red nine-headed dragon was entrenched in the mountain top, its nine heads howled all at once. Countless chains were bound onto it, much like a trapped demon dragon from the folklores!

**Core totem - Nine-headed dragon:** Evolved creature from the ancient creature Eight-Headed Dragon, perfect genetic organism. Theoretical Form 4 creature, ultimate form not upgradeable.

**Information on Ancient Genetics:** In the Luminarists’ records, the Nine Headed Dragon is one of the organisms with the strongest survivability in the ancient era. They possess 8 extremely vicious sub-heads and one main head. Each dragon head has differing abilities, although they were mostly related to poison. Each of the dragon heads has a different poison ability, and ruled over the ancient era for tens of thousands of years. However, due to the extinction of the Nine-Headed Dragon’s food sources, the Nine-Headed Dragons fell into decline, and was evicted from the position as the apex predator of the food chain.

**This terrifying menace possesses strong poison.** It was ugly, but extremely possessive towards objects that are aesthetically pleasing. They are attracted towards beautiful things; whether it be beautiful flora, fauna, or serene environments and its creatures. They would normally inhabit the side of a lake on a bed of gems. Even though they are distant relatives of the multi-headed salamanders that dug out underground mazes, as the top-dogs of the food chain, they never had the need to hide in a cavern underground, instead preferring to bask under the sunlight, cleaning its dragon scales. According to the Luminarists’ research and deduction, this kind of apex predator should turn out to be extremely narcissistic.

**Abilities:** **Void Whirlpool** (extends the dragon head, bringing it greater reach and tearing down prey. In the Nine-Headed Dragon’s eyes, enemies mean food! This ability allowed for its prey to be slaughtered and devoured straight away).

**Nine Lives** (Must be killed nine times before it completely perishes, each time requiring the opponent to slice off all nine heads at one go, otherwise the heads will continuously regenerate; a nightmare for any opponent).

**Dragon Skin** (Strong dragon scales that are able to prevent damage inflicted by most weapons and sharp teeth).

**Berserker’s Howl** (After the inducing concussion, temporarily increases all dragon heads’ abilities for 155 seconds, attack and speed increases by 30% at the same time).

**Vitality Tear/Life Tear/Life Biting** (Creatures that are bitten by a head will unconsciously allow their life force to flow into the body of the beast, creating a healing effect. Life Tear had been enhanced to an incredible level. Although he didn’t know the extent of this effect, he believed that it should be at least 6 times stronger than the original Life Tear/Life Biting, and it shouldn’t be weak no matter how he looked at it).

**Rotting Poison Mist** (A blood red, potent poison that can break down and decompose most of the organisms in the world).

**Virus Parasitism** (The Nine-headed Dragon does not possess the parasitizing abilities like the salamanders living underground; it hates everything filthy and ugly, but.had another type of extremely horrid parasitizing ability, which allowed it to inject live bacterium into the enemy’s body, continuously absorb the enemy’s life force, ultimately transforming it from the inside out into an aesthetically pleasing - the **dragon minion**).

Looking through all the information, Garen knew these messages were sorted and collected by the ability within his memories, which meant that he had known some of the facts partially; while the rest were derived by the ability itself.

In reality, the Nine-headed Dragon’s strength is not completely known to its full extent. For instance, for its final ability, Virus Parasitism, the exact product of what was named dragon minion, even Garen didn’t know, the ability also hadn't managed to detail it properly.

He looked at the end of Nine-Headed Dragon’s Nine Lives abilities, and there was an additional blood red symbol which looks like an icon of the eight-headed dragon: it was a status icon. **‘Nine Lives’ Status: Eight Lives.’**

Garen tried focusing on this ability. In five whole seconds, the Nine Lives ability actually had some movement. The eight lives symbol slowly got blurry. His potential points also slowly decreased. Garen’s heart flustered, he knew it was working. The potential points kept dropping for 20 whole points before it finally stopped. In the end, the eight lives symbol lit up again, but instead eight dragon heads, there were nine.

In his consciousness, the dragon head on the far left was slowly turning normal, becoming lively, like all the other heads again. Garen exhaled in relaxation. Twenty points to recharge one life, this is really worth it.

### Virus Parasitism

Because his evolved Nine-Headed Demon Dragon was incomplete, because his ancient Nine-Headed Dragon lacked blood, he was only able to forge one with **Demon Dragon** abilities.

The Demon Dragon was actually a parasitic life form, because after it killed its enemy, it would preserve a large part of its opponent’s corpse, and within fifteen minutes, it would place its parasitic seeds into its opponents flesh to reanimate it, and turn it into the Nine-Headed Demon Dragon’s war tool.

As for the Demon Dragon’s self-beautifying exterior, that was merely an additional characteristic. Moreover, the beautifying aspect was something that was slowly perfected over time, and not something that could be achieved quickly.

Of course, Garen was not hoping that the beautifying would have any additional effects. He definitely did not harbor any longing for the ancient Nine-Headed Demon Dragon’s aesthetics, and as long as it maintained its current state, he would already be very satisfied.

Looking at Ivycius in front of him, Garen felt that they had some blood relations, as if they were close brothers, and moreover, he could now control his opponent’s body the same way he controlled Silver Totems.

#### Communication

His heart and throat started to vibrate as he produced a small vibration outside of humans' audible range. The vibration could penetrate through everything and the distance it could travel was astonishingly far.

"Ivycius, I'm currently at the Royal's Vault. Please send some men over."

This was a unique way of communication between Garen and the **Demon Dragon**. Although the range was limited, it was not a problem if it was within the Kingdom. He soon received a response.

"Alright. My disciple is on the way there along with fifteen totem users. You should have enough support and they should arrive in twenty minutes."

Garen stopped his vibration.

## Links and References

1. ↑ Chapter 283
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Chapter 284
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 Chapter 289
4. ↑ Chapter 290
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Chapter 299
6. ↑ 6.00 6.01 6.02 6.03 6.04 6.05 6.06 6.07 6.08 6.09 6.10 6.11 6.12 6.13 6.14 Chapter 310
7. ↑ Chapter 368
8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 Chapter 362
9. ↑ 9.00 9.01 9.02 9.03 9.04 9.05 9.06 9.07 9.08 9.09 9.10 Chapter 363
10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Chapter 398
11. ↑ 11.00 11.01 11.02 11.03 11.04 11.05 11.06 11.07 11.08 11.09 11.10 11.11 11.12 11.13 11.14 Chapter 399
12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 Chapter 430
13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 Chapter 437