Chapter 628: Close Call

Sage suddenly regretted not having a big clock to toss into the Leatherback’s mouth, but he was also lacking the lifelong grudge. As if sensing his thoughts, the giant crocodile burst forth from the water, following up the sudden snap of jaws with a full body lunge. Throwing itself out of the mile wide river and jumping towards him with jaws stretched wide.

Not wanting to be made into a snack, Sage used Stormsbreath, and Divine Breath in combination with the Fluid Power Lines to release jets of air from his limbs, propelling him through the sky to jet out of reach. Adding a little jet propulsion to his double jump. It didn’t give him as much upward force as the jump, but the sustained airflow helped control his horizontal motion. He had wanted to try such a maneuver, and unfortunately, he found it greatly lacking in comparison to using Cosmic Traction.

I got to use the double jump and hold at least once, that will have to do.

Even if Cosmic Traction was a great expenditure of energy, he had two cores now, his Qi regenerated even faster than it ever did. Divine Breath on the other hand took time for him to collect and compress air. If he blew it all on a single evasive maneuver, what would he use to attack later? With that thought in mind, Sage landed on the far bank of the river and used the last of his air reserves to propel the sticky ball at the end of a line of silk, aiming at the crocodile’s tail as it spun around. With the leap strike unsuccessful it flopped back into the water and spun around to dive back down. During that spin, the thick line of silk attached to its tail. Given the size of his spider body, the thinnest silk line he could spin was about two inches thick, and it pulled hard on the Leatherback, arresting its momentum. A strand of hair was about twenty times thicker than a strand of spider silk, and it was said a strand of silk was five times stronger than steel of the same thickness.

Of course, these little factoids were from Earth, and the supernatural qualities of cultivators and the beasts they fought threw all these truths for a loop. Even if Sage spent his time researching the strength of his spider silk, it wouldn’t tell him anything about his enemies. At this moment, he was digging his legs into the ground, tearing up the bank of the river as he pulled on the line to interrupt the crocodile’s attempt to swim away. A big crocodilian like the Diamond Eyed Leatherback got most of its swimming power by undulating back and forth similar to a snake. While it could also paddle with its legs, most of its strength came from its powerful tail. By anchoring himself on the ground, Sage had much greater leverage than the Leatherback and turned the tables.

Pinning the tail of a snake will not stop them from whirling back to strike you, but what it does do is stop them from escaping. He couldn’t stop the croc from trying to swim away, but by tugging at the line, he could interrupt the swish of its tail and reduce its power. When the croc recovered and made a hard full body pull, he let it, giving it more line, then when the resistance weakened, he started reeling it in, climbing further up the bank.

Heh, fishermen have used fishing rods to pull in thousand pound tuna and giant sharks. You think you can eat me just because you’re bigger?

A croc was definitely harder to handle with a fishing line than a fish. Once you got a hook in their mouths, they had little methods to deal with it, swimming and pulling till they exhausted themselves and got reeled in. Objects in the water were about thirty percent lighter than normal, and that was without considering that the crocodile was aquatic and could float near the surface. A fisherman just had to resist a fish’s swimming power and the strength of its body whipping back and forth. It was a little more difficult with this croc.

After pulling a few times and not making much progress, it curled upon itself to try and bite free of the line, but Sage was waiting for it to show itself and he shot another sticky line of web out to attach to it just as it bit through the cable on its tail. With the line stuck to its nose, it spun in place to catch the line between its teeth, but Sage used his wire manipulating techniques to make the line of silk dance out of its grasp. Its jaws snapped and the silken line twirled like a rope being coiled and wrapped around the crocs snout a half-dozen times. The croc started to panic, rolling rapidly, using the highly practiced main killing move of its kind. A croc killed many creatures by latching on, then pulling them into the water and rolling. Their prey would be confused and disoriented, losing track of which way was up. Their confusion caused them to drown quickly and once they were dead the croc could take their time tearing the carcass apart.

It was too bad the ‘death roll’ did little for the giant Diamond Eyed Leatherback. Despite the calm river looking like it had turned into violent rapids, it did little to free it from the silk line. When it rolled the same direction as the tie around its snout, Sage let it add more layers, when it rolled the other direction he manipulated the wire to stay in place. Rolling back and forth, the croc did little but tire itself and seal its mouth tighter. It tried to roll back and grab the line with its clawed toes, but Sage pulled on the line and used his Spirit Power to make it dance out of its grasp.

This fishing technique was already something that the Swamp Genesis Spider was experienced with. Any of the huge sea beasts that tried to break into its swamp would be caught and slowly toyed with until they either broke away and escaped, or were pulled into the spider’s web to join its food supply. Sage’s wire controlling techniques only made it worse, and the crocodile was as good as dead once its initial ambush failed. Especially when Sage used the silk as a medium to transfer his Poison Qi. The poison rapidly drained the monster’s stamina and shortened the fight that might have taken days or weeks of attrition, into just an hour. The crocodile only got more and more pathetic as time passed, until it finally floated listlessly on the surface, a look of defeat in its eyes.

The croc's jaws had snapped shut with terrifying force, enough to cause a sonic boom and Sage could sense a sort of crushing law as they did. It was an ambush hunter and all of its power was put into making an instant and immediate kill. Even if the scale was bigger, it was still a crocodile. They might have powerful bite force, but it was only for closing the jaw, the muscles related to opening them up were not nearly as strong. Sage came down towards the bank of the river and pulled the croc to the shoreline. As they neared each other, his giant spider body leapt into the air, dodging the sudden charge of the mountain sized crocodilian. Even with its jaws sealed it still had an armored body with sharp spines, and a massive bulk that restructured the landscape when its body block failed. It tripped and skidded across the ground, digging a trench that would soon turn into a lake or marsh area in the future. Where a normal person might cause a small divot in the ground by kicking a rock, their two gigantic bodies could build or destroy whole ecosystems with inadvertent actions.

After making its final attempt, Sage threw out a few more silk lines while in mid-air, launching them with bursts of air. He anchored the line on the ground at two sides, strapping the croc to the ground to restrain it so he could move in and wrap it into a giant cocoon. Then, with it completely incapacitated he finally sent it into the area that the Soul Clone had been preparing for the second half of the battle.

Others would hunt Demonic Beasts to collect precious resources, but he aimed to turn them into allies.

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