King, Queen and Jack turned into streaks of bronze, unfurling their wings to block off the fish-frog's ascent.
The trees of this forest were incredibly sturdy, they hadn't broken even after the bronzed's mother kicked his billion jin body into one. So, Dyon knew it would be too dangerous to allow the fish-frog to begin to use them as a springboard.
The bronzed didn't have the ability to fly, likely because they were too heavy and their wings weren't strong enough yet. However, they could use jump and glide techniques under Dyon's control.
Just like all the others, the fish-frog fell under the sharp teeth, horns and wings of the bronzed.
Dyon gave the four of them over 90% of the corpse, taking only what he could digest before their next battle. He was known for being a great eater, but much like the meat of the Embryonic Infernal Beasts, this meat was also difficult for Dyon to digest.
But, that was when he began to observe the bronzed and his eyebrows perked upward with interest.
'They're circulating their blood on instinct to make digestion faster. It seems Queen has additional paths… If my guess is correct, those additional paths help during pregnancy. It allows her to store and compress the energy to be excreted instead of diffusing it into her own body like her mother once did for her.'
Other than being interested, Dyon didn't feel anything else. After all, beasts and humans didn't share the same blood vessel paths. Dyon likely didn't have the ability to replicate the feat.
In his mind, he was solely focused on reaching 500 000 000 jin. When that happened, he could finally start using Orcus' divine grade body refinement technique. But, that was when he froze and looked down at his own body.
He had only just been observing the four bronzed, but the meat he had eaten was digested before he even realized what happened. It most definitely shouldn't have been that fast.
That was when Dyon realized… The Titan path was meant to turn the weak human form into the strong beast form. It seemed he hadn't taken that as literally as he should have.
...
The crunch of shattering rocks reverberated through the cave. After defeating the fish-frog, much like Dyon had done previously, he entered its lair.
Like the bull-bird's underground cave, the fish-frog chose to build its home underground as well. Though, the term 'build' might be too heavy handed. From Dyon's understanding, the sturdiness of objects in this world was far too high. Digging into the ground was nigh impossible.
Dyon's divine sense solved the mystery as to why this was the first time he entered. Every inch of the soil beneath their feet was saturated with energy stones of all kinds. This evolved even the trees that bore their roots into the ground to inconceivable levels.
The underground caves were sporadic and Dyon had reason to believe that they were naturally occurring.
If he had to give a reason, it was likely because having a land be too rigid wasn't a good thing. It was the same reason why building a tower entirely of stone was foolish. The slightest quake could break everything. The caves acted as points of flexibility.
This wasn't all either, the caves also acted as a way to vent the pent up energy within the ground below their feet. Just from a cursory guess, Dyon believed that this land likely suffered from eruptions of geyser-like energy due to this built up pressure. These eruptions were what formed the underground caves.
Of course, these were all guesses. Until Dyon witnessed it for himself, it would remain this way.
The bronzed dug their sharp claws into the energy stone filled walls. Underground caves were some of the rare instances where it was actually possible to dig these energy sources out. It seemed the four of them loved to munch on these stones as much as they loved to eat the meat of their fallen enemies.
Though, from what Dyon could tell, they could no longer evolve from eating these essence grade energy stones. It seemed he had one more reason to find a source of saint grade energy stones. Not only did he need to heal his arm, he had to find these four a path toward further evolution.
After clawing out the easily accessible energy stones, Dyon stopped the bronzed from going any further. There was no point. They could claw away from days more and not retrieve a single more stone, the walls were too sturdy. There was only a thin layer of accessible stone within these underground caves.
Dyon carried out a few dozen after allowing them to eat a few. He used a creation array to form a makeshift wagon he attached to Ace's back before moving on to the next target his divine sense locked on to.
If Ace had any real intelligence, he'd probably be dissatisfied that he was being used as a mule despite being the strongest of his siblings. But, he seemed happy to fulfill all of Dyon's tasks because he got food without having to risk his life. They still were quite simple-minded despite being smarter than their mother.
This process continued onward for several days as they battled all sorts of creatures. Under Dyon's guidance, Ace wasn't forced to act even once, but Dyon also couldn't find any suitable creatures to add to his hoard either.
Dyon was incredibly selective with his targets. He chose territories far from human settlements so they would be less likely to notice a change. In addition, he stopped bothering with weaker targets after their flesh stopped being as effective for him. During the first few dozen, Dyon was receiving several thousand to tens of thousands of jin per meal, but that took a significant downturn after a while.
As of now, opponents like the fish-frog might give Dyon an extra 10 jin if he was lucky.
It was only later that Dyon realized that it wasn't necessarily the caliber of opponent, but the type of opponent he was facing as well as the kind of meat he was eating.
