Chapter 124: Arc 4: Chapter 12: 95084

Skull Island may be called an island, but it's much larger than the average island.

With Merlin's assumption, it would take 7-10 days for normal people to walk around this island. And there is plenty of different terrain on this island, including forests, hills, swamps, and high mountains. 

Such diverse terrain added with the enclosed ecological system caused many creatures that did not exist outside to exist here.

Kong was just one of the miracles given birth by this island.

A white tiger was currently lazily walking by the river. It looked like a tiger, but it was 3 times larger than a normal tiger; it was 4-5 meters tall and was 12 meters long if one included the tail, with estimations that this creature weighs 5 tonnes.

Yet it was near silent when it walked, like a silent hunter, its yellow pupils contemplated its surroundings like it was patrolling its territory.

"Kack"

Following a faint clicking sound, Merlin who was hidden on a tree acquires a picture of the tiger drinking water.

He records the data of this terrifying hunter in his notebook, this was a part of his evaluation of Skull Island. Next to Merlin's hand was Professor Serizawa's notebook which he took smoothly as he left a day ago.

In this notebook about Skull Island, Professor Serizawa had a detailed record of the habits of many creatures on this island.

Like the large white tiger before him, in the professor's notebook, he calls it 'Holy Tiger'.

Supposedly in the legends of the local natives, this type of tiger was 'a wind elf', it moves silently and was as fast as lightning, like a killer elf in the wind.

There weren't that many holy tigers, which was normal.

Tigers were creatures that move alone, there were at most 30 holy tigers according to Skull Island's size; they each have their own hunting grounds and were listed third in Skull Island's food chain.

Kong was undoubtedly the top of the food chain, then there were the numerous amounts of Skullcrawlers which hid underground, followed by mutated creatures like Holy Tigers and Mother Longlegs.

The food chain of this island was weird but complete.

And it was due to this that this island could exist in isolation from the outside for hundreds of thousands of years.

Merlin writes down his conclusion in his notebook then glances at the holy tiger that was sun-bathing on a rock by the river. He turns around, carries his bag, and disappears into fog.

There was little time for Merlin to freely explore so he could only quickly explore the entire island like so and record the terrain along with the locations of the creatures, this was SHIELD's first valuable research data on Skull Island.

Merlin follows the steep cliff upwards and reappears atop the mountain peak, he gazes at the terrain of Skull Island; since he had already explored the 4 different terrains of the southernmost area, it was time for him to go back.

And as Merlin mapped out his path, a sudden vibration in the distance draws Merlin's attention.

In the super sight granted by his second sight, Merlin easily discovered a creature large creature moving in the large lake between the canyons.

It was the mysterious Kong!

This attracted Merlin's attention.

He had been looking for Kong's tracks over the last day, but that gorilla was good at hiding itself; its nest must be somewhere hidden somewhere amongst the mountains, so even an experienced explorer like Merlin needed to spend some time searching for it.

Merlin aerosolized and spreads out towards the canyon, he carefully hid himself as to not get detected by the sharp Kong.

He gazes downward from mid-air and sees the gorilla seemingly cleaning itself with the lakewater in the lake.

"Mmm, a gorilla that likes to be clean."

Merlin comments so.

He was like an invisible voyeur hiding in mid-air while watching the king of Skull Island bath.

But to be frank, it's quite boring watching a gorilla bath.

Merlin reevaluated Kong's height and arm span and took several pictures of this juvenile titan from different angles; over the past dozen minutes, Kong had caught several odd-looking fish from the lake and had laid them aside.

This should also be hunting.

"Just like Serizawa had recorded, it prefers fish, maybe even fruit as food."

Merlin records the details in his mind, a few minutes later, Merlin frowns as he detects a large underwater creature approaching Kong from the other side of the lake, it seems that it's treating Kong as its prey.

This makes Merlin interested.

On Skull Island, Kong practically has no natural enemy, what exactly is this underwater creature? Quite the big appetite it has?

He turns around and looks back at Kong, it seemingly did not sense the approaching danger and had begun playing with water.

But this was all just on the surface.

Merlin could see Kong's straightened legs under the water and moving ears, this means that this cunning gorilla is prepared to hunt.

It acted so unsuspectingly to lure the underwater creature near it!

"Fwala"

Two blood-red tentacles full of suckers agilely entangles on Kong's legs like a hunting viper, the massive force from underwater caused Kong is stagger.

Another two tentacles speed out from the water and entangle Kong's arms, dragging it into the water.

It was now that Merlin could finally see the true face of the attacker.

It was an odd blood-red octopus, kinda like a King Squid, but it was far larger than the biggest underwater creature known to man.

Including its tentacles, it was not much smaller than Kong.

Just from its size, the two are of the same level, but Kong was still growing; once it matures, this underwater octopus would surely not stand a chance against Kong.

Yet even now, this underwater octopus was having difficulties battling the juvenile Kong.

The already prepared Kong was having a tug of war with the underwater octopus, it grabbed onto the tentacles entangling its arms and leans its large body forward, and following several roars, the octopus that tried to drag Kong into the water and pulled out of the water by Kong with brute strength.

The scene looked just like the battle scene between the gods in Norse mythology and the sea monster Kraken.

The agile gorilla turns around, grabs a sharp rock from the water, and smashes it down at the octopus while roaring.

One hit, two hits...

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As the lakewater splattered, the blood that splattered across the lake caused a chill to run down Merlin's spine.

He knew that this reckless octopus was dead.

Kong soon tears the octopus apart, it takes the lifeless tentacle entangling its arm and rips a part of it; like a Korean eating raw squid, it places the blood-red tentacle into its mouth and munches, a hint of satisfaction appears on its human-like face.

Like a foodie enjoying a delicacy.

Kong drags its trophy and throws the large, lifeless octopus onto the beach, The gorilla walks towards the forest next to the lake, finds a tough-looking tree trunk, pucks it out, and removes all the branches.

It strings the octopus onto the tree trunk, then strings the fish it had caught before on the other side of the tree trunk; then, while carrying the tough tree trunk, it travels across the lake and soon disappears into the mountains.

Merlin reappears on the beach, he takes a test tube and collects some of the terrifying octopus' blood and tissue samples.

He then quickly spread out and follows behind Kong from afar in an attempt to find its nest.

But as he followed Kong across the mountains, something else grabbed Merlin's attention.

He stops following Kong and descends into a valley north of Skull Island.

The valley was well-hidden and was enshrouded by some strange fog, Merlin stands at the valley entrance, he could feel the high temperature of the valley and the seemingly poisonous fog.

He extends his finger and taps on the necklace on his neck, Carol's face mask quickly covers onto the lower half of Merlin's face.

He aerosolized and slowly assimilates into the canyon enshrouded in fog, a few minutes later, Merlin discovers something surprising.

Two skeletons.

Large, Kong-like skeletons were scattered across the valley. The skeleton's externals were fairly complete, but there were bite marks on these bones.

Merlin even found some disgusting food remains between the skeletons.

This proves that there are other creatures in this valley.

Merlin also discovers multiple poisonous gas-filled passages that led underground, the passages were dark, and not even with a flashlight could one see the bottom of the cave.

Merlin reaches out and touches the soil of this cave that led underground, he recalls the guesses Professor Serizawa's assumed to him on the road.

"The existence of titans proves that the theory that the Earth is hollow is true. There must be passages leading to the hollow world in the mantle layer, Skull Island's neverending typhoon is caused by strong airflow...there may be a passage that leads to the underground world on this island."

"So..."

Merlin squints his eyes, he looks at the tunnel before him and says:

"This is the entrance to the new world?"

"How shabby, a mule's burying place is better than this."

Merlin shakes his head, and then, he leaps into the tunnel.

It would be suicide for normal researchers to drop into this 70 degrees slope of a tunnel alone, not to mention this place is located in the center of Skull Island, and Kong which has a strong sense of territory would not allow outsiders to enter here.

But for Merlin who had special abilities, he could find the way back regardless of where this tunnel leads to.

He aerosolizes and follows the dark cave all the way down, the darkness could not cover his sight and there were no secrets about the surroundings in Merlin's eyes. After descending for nearly 10 minutes, Merlin arrives in an empty underground cave.

He did not show himself, instead, he cautiously observed his surroundings.

An indescribable stench diffused this cave, and Merlin was no stranger to this stench.

It was the stench of Skullcrawlers, this shows that this place is where the Skullcrawlers live underground.

The temperature here was somewhat hot, perfect for those ugly lizards to live and reproduce.

A few minutes later, Merlin arrives deeper into the cave, he stands on a dent and looks down; in the cave down below, some smaller Skullcrawlers were feasting on the corpse of a dead Sker Buffalo. At the entrance of the cave was a larger Skullcrawler resting in an odd posture.

Its size was larger than the 7 Skullcrawlers he and Kong had killed at the swamp, and its skin color was not greyish green like the other giant lizards.

The color patterns of its skin were of a deeper color, the claws it used to support its body were much larger, the bone plate on its face was thicker, and the tail behind its back was full of black bone plates and bone spikes, looking to be very oppressive.

This should be the leader of the Skullcrawlers.

Merlin did not alarm this giant beast that was not to be trifled with, he records the living environment and characteristics of this beast and explores deeper into the cave.

There was a much broader tunnel at the very bottom of this cave, and where the tunnel and cave intersected, Merlin discovers a lot of scattered skeletons; in fact, this place was like a warzone for beasts as there were torn scales and body parts scattered across the area.

Most importantly, in this place full of bloody smell, there were not just the skeletal remains of Skullcrawlers, there were also multiple skeletal remains and torn flesh that belonged to other creatures.

Merlin squats next to the large skeletons, he touches the terrifying bite marks on the skeletons, these bite marks were even thicker than his finger, and the skeletons were illuminating bits of fluorescence.

He could imagine how fierce of a beast battle had happened here.

And from the semi-weathered skeletons, the war here had not just happened once. The Skullcrawlers who laid their nest here seem to battle with the underground creatures that storm out from the underground world on a fixed basis.

Merlin stands up and collects several skeleton samples that were still fairly complete, he looks around as he had finally uncovered the other secret of Skullcrawlers.

These demon-like creatures weren't just the destroyers of Skull Island's food chain, they were also an important node in a larger ecosystem.

They survive and reproduce here, although they go for hunts on the surface, they also prevent the invasion of the underground creatures to the surface world, like a biological wall that separated the surface world from the underground world.

"Nature's uncanny workmanship."

Merlin exclaims so, he takes out his camera and takes a picture of the cave that was covered in skeletal remains that also led deeper underground. He also recorded the skeletal pile around him and marks down the location of this tunnel in his notebook. 

And then, he gave this tunnel a name.

95084.

 

 

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