Zed advanced swiftly toward the cavern, dispatching Devil Serpents en route. Even Capture Level 70-80 beasts posed little threat—let alone these Level 50-60 serpents.
Yet as he neared the cavern's heart, an oppressive aura thickened—the lingering presence of the Original Species.
Though it has been millennia, its skeleton radiated primal dominance. With a Capture Level exceeding 5,000, it dwarfed even the Sixth Continent's Seven Beasts, rivaled only by the Eight Kings. Such entities left indelible marks: the Horse King's hoofprints still haunted Toriko, and this serpent's bones exuded fading but palpable dread.
Zed's Gourmet Cells (barely Level 50) strained under the pressure—proof of its erosion over centuries. Within millennia, even this remnant would crumble to dust.
Zed froze at the sight: a gargantuan skeleton, half-buried, dwarfing the Devil Serpent swarm coiled around it. Skeleton Moss cloaked the bones in eerie bioluminescence, casting the chamber in sickly green.
The serpents—thousands—writhed into a colossal serpentine mass, their three-eyed heads bristling outward like a grotesque hydra. Even Zed, seasoned as he was, recoiled at the nightmare tableau.
His Food Honor masked his presence; the swarm remained oblivious.
Studying the skeleton, Zed marveled. Its scale defied logic—how could the Deer King's Food Forest harbor such titans? A pocket dimension, he concluded. Only spatial manipulation explained housing beings larger than continents.
Zed's Gourmet Cells surged as he faced the seething mass of Devil Serpents. Their clustered formation invited annihilation.
"Black Thunderbolt!"
A spectral Gourmet Demon loomed behind him, crackling with obsidian lightning. The serpents reacted too late—Zed unleashed the torrent, striking the serpentine sphere.
BOOM!
The blast atomized weaker serpents, reducing them to ash. Sturdiest survivors lasted mere seconds before the Leader Slime-infused energy charred them to cinders. None escaped; Capture Level 60+ meant nothing against Zed's full-power assault.
Zed salvaged intact carcasses for his System Space, discarding lightning-scorched remains. With the swarm eradicated, he turned to the Skeleton Moss blanketing the ancient bones—untouched for centuries.
Then, a discovery: Devil Serpent Eggs nested within the skeleton's ribs. Most measured one meter, but a central egg spanned three, its vitality pulsing fiercely.
"A Bloodline Reversion?" Zed mused. In Toriko's world, ancestral traits sometimes resurged—like Terry, the Battle Wolf clone whose descendants vied for Eight Kings status. This egg might hatch an Original Species heir, a living relic of the serpent's primordial glory.