Chapter 15: The Third Enhancement—Increasing Tonnage for Defense

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With these ten thousand system coins, Rod could perform a ten-pull and obtain ten monster fragments, each one completely random.

There was also an extremely small chance of drawing a complete monster, but it would almost certainly be one of the lowest-level creatures. Monsters of terrifying strength were impossible to obtain this way.

To acquire fragments of higher-level monsters, he would first have to upgrade the shop.

Upgrading the shop to the intermediate level required one million system coins. The requirements for even higher levels could not be viewed until they were unlocked.

An intermediate shop could unlock more powerful monsters, and there was even a minuscule chance of drawing other special items.

Aside from obtaining a second monster by drawing monster fragments from the shop, Rod’s other option was to strengthen Red King directly.

Besides enhancing its body and increasing its height, there was also the option of strengthening its energy-beam abilities. Elemental skills, such as the most basic elemental attack—flame projection—required ten thousand coins.

Performing such an enhancement would consume one bodily-strengthening opportunity and one height-increase opportunity for Red King.

However, the original Red King was merely a monster of rock and earth. Almost all of its abilities were concentrated in its physical body. Even if Rod enhanced it with a fire-based skill, he estimated that Red King’s overall strength would not increase by much.

More importantly, the Tyranids had rampaged across the universe for countless years.

If they were afraid of fire, the human forces would have dealt with them long ago. The Tyranids would never have become the greatest enemy in the galaxy.

As for the other powerful energy-beam abilities, Rod could not afford them.

Forget it. He would save these coins to strengthen Red King.

If Red King fought until every enhancement opportunity had been exhausted and the swarm still refused to retreat, Rod would have no choice but to enhance the monster’s power himself and then find a way to reach the escape pod.

The two Sisters’ desire to obtain his genetic seeds had given Rod a new idea—a plan that would make the surviving humans beg him to let them aboard the lifeboat.

By then, the sky had already grown fully bright. Red King’s body had once again been ravaged by the Tyranids. Both of its enormous feet were crawling with insects, while countless expendable creatures risked being crushed beneath Red King’s feet as they swarmed forward.

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They ceaselessly gnawed at Red King’s feet, leaving its once-gigantic soles a bloody, mangled mess.

Red King’s thick tail was one of the swarm’s primary targets. The enormous appendage had already been severed and was rapidly devoured by the insects.

This was the third time Red King had lost its tail. One of its hands had also been completely eaten away by the countless creatures.

Its injuries were even more severe than before. Swarms of Tyranid forces had already covered its entire body.

The monster’s stamina had been completely depleted. It could no longer shake off the insects covering it, and before long, Red King would be swallowed beneath the tide of the swarm.

Only about eighteen hours had passed since Rod summoned Red King during the previous day. There were still roughly six hours to go before a full twenty-four-hour day had elapsed.

Rod had already used two enhancements to keep Red King alive. If an ordinary Ultraman warrior had been placed in the same situation, failing to kill Red King within seconds would have meant being slowly worn to death by it.

Yet the Tyranids remained ferocious beyond measure. They truly were an incomparably powerful interstellar race. Had any other monster been placed in this situation, it probably would have been overwhelmed by the Tyranids’ sea-of-insects tactics without Rod’s cheat-like enhancement and healing abilities.

Without the slightest hesitation, Rod once again chose to strengthen Red King’s body. This time, he spent two thousand system coins, causing Red King’s weight to soar by three thousand tons, bringing it to twenty-six thousand tons.

As its tonnage increased, a golden radiance once again burst from Red King’s body. The giant monster seemed to have been reborn. Its physique became far denser, every inch of it covered in bulging muscles instead of looking like a mass of tires crashing into things as it had before.

Both arms grew thicker. Its enormous tail swept back and forth, instantly flinging the insects from its body.

With the increase in mass, Red King’s combat power became even more ferocious, while its defensive strength rose dramatically. As every aspect of its physical attributes improved, the hide covering its body also hardened considerably. Before this, the insects had still been able to tear through Red King’s skin.

But after its weight increased to twenty-six thousand tons, Red King no longer feared attacks from low-level Tyranids. The strikes of those lesser creatures could not even pierce its monster hide.

Even when vast numbers of swarm creatures surged forward to bite it, they could only shatter their own mouthparts or damage the hardened biological weapons in their grasp.

Some of the ranged attacks likewise ceased to have any effect on Red King’s new hide.

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The Tyranids also discovered that the giant had undergone a third enhancement—and that it seemed to be deliberately targeting their attacks.

Compared with the humans, the swarm forces were far more capable of understanding just how terrifying this giant monster truly was.

The forces committed since the beginning of the battle were even more enormous than those expended to conquer the planet itself, and the swarm had received virtually no biological-material replenishment.

The creature had even found a way to consume Tyranids that their kind could not comprehend. The Tyranids’ regard for Red King grew more intense by the moment.

Watching from a distance, the commander of the human Polar Warrior Regiment, the Great Sister, and the Astra Militarum commissar all stared in astonishment at Red King, which had once again become vigorous and full of life.

New measuring instruments had been placed before them. Over the course of the night, the humans had recovered a large quantity of equipment from the former military base to observe Red King.

Among them was a biological-mass detector. With this instrument, the humans finally understood where Red King’s previous improvements had manifested.

“The defense of this Titan organism has become even stronger. Its mass has clearly increased. According to the earlier readings, its weight was approximately twenty-three thousand tons. It has now reached twenty-six thousand tons. As for the previous two enhancements, we cannot determine whether its weight changed during either of them,” said the Sister responsible for recording the data.

It was indeed astonishing. This enormous Titan organism had existed for less than twenty-four hours.

In that brief time, its weight had increased by three thousand tons, bringing comprehensive improvements to its body. Its strength and defense had both become far greater.

“However, its height has not changed this time. It remains approximately forty-seven meters. We should continue observing it more closely. We only detected a change in its height during the second enhancement. There seemed to be no change during the first, but it is very possible that its mass increased instead.”

When this Titan organism’s body first underwent a transformation, it might well have been an increase in its mass. The humans simply had not used instruments to measure it at the time.

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