Arthur slumped against the flat boulder, his chest heaving. The warm light of the Surgeon’s Domain was gone, leaving only the harsh, flickering orange glow of the cooling mud furnace. His Stamina was critically low—sitting at a dangerous 15 out of 100. Every muscle in his human torso ached with a dull, heavy throb that threatened to drag him straight into unconsciousness.

  But Second didn't rest.

  The newly evolved Deep-Stalker stood motionless at the edge of the crude palisade. His traditional eyes were milky white and entirely blind, but the massive, violet eye embedded in his chest was wide open. It pulsed with a faint, rhythmic light, slicing cleanly through the impenetrable, suffocating gloom of the alien forest.

  Arthur forced himself upright, his grip tightening around the raw tang of his new cleaver. The acid-quenched metal felt unnaturally heavy in his exhausted state, but the thick, alien muscle fibers woven into his forearms locked around the steel with absolute, unyielding certainty.

  "What do you see?" Arthur rasped.

  Second didn't speak. He raised a whip-thin, shadowy arm and pointed three long claws directly into the dense, violet tree line. He let out a low, clicking hiss.

  First immediately stepped forward, hefting his massive bone mace. The thudding of the Mapinguari heart in his chest accelerated, echoing like a war drum in the quiet camp.

  Arthur squinted into the dark. He couldn't see anything past the first row of twisted, thorny trunks. The night in this world wasn't just an absence of light; it was thick and suffocating.

  Then, the System chimed. A blue notification shattered the darkness in Arthur's peripheral vision.

  [Warning: Hostile intent detected.]

  [Approaching Entities: 6x Carrion-Stalker (Lv. 3 - Pack Hunter)]

  Arthur spat a curse into the dirt. The blast furnace. The massive pillar of white fire and the overwhelming stench of the Mapinguari's boiling acid must have acted like a lighthouse beacon to every predator within miles. They hadn't just forged a weapon; they had rung the dinner bell.

  "Stand to!" Arthur roared, his voice cracking through the camp.

  The lesser Kobolds, still terrified from witnessing the brutal surgery, scrambled for their bone knives and backed up against the safety of the ravine walls.

  "First, hold the gap," Arthur ordered, stepping up beside the massive Elite at the entrance of their crude wall. "Do not let them break the line."

  First grunted, planting his heavy, reptilian feet wide in the dirt.

  From the darkness, a low, warbling howl echoed. It didn't sound like a wolf; it sounded like two pieces of grinding glass. Out of the shadows, the first creature stepped into the dim light of the dying furnace.

  It looked like a starved, hairless hyena, but its spine was lined with jagged, translucent spikes. Its jaw unhinged slightly, dripping a foul, black saliva that hissed and smoked as it hit the dirt.

  Behind it, five more pairs of glowing yellow eyes ignited in the dark tree line. They were circling, looking for a weak point.

  Arthur raised the heavy black cleaver. He was running on absolute fumes, but he had a blade meant for butchering, a Vanguard built for slaughter, and a Scout that could see in the dark.

  Second shifted his stance. The massive eye in his chest suddenly flared a blinding, intense violet. His Thermal Paralyzing Gaze locked directly onto the lead Carrion-Stalker.

  The beast froze mid-step. Its muscles locked up completely, a high-pitched, panicked whine escaping its throat as it was paralyzed by the overwhelming sensory input of the Level 8 gaze.

  Arthur didn't hesitate. "Break them."

  First didn't roar. He didn't waste the breath. The heavy, thudding heartbeat of the Mapinguari echoing in his chest drove him forward like a battering ram.

  He closed the distance to the paralyzed Carrion-Stalker in three massive strides. He brought the heavy bone mace down in a brutal, two-handed overhead arc. The impact was sickening. The Stalker's spine snapped with a sound like a dry branch, driving its jagged, translucent spikes straight into the black dirt. It didn't even have time to whimper.

  [Carrion-Stalker (Lv. 3) killed. Experience awarded.]

  The instantaneous death of their pack leader broke the remaining five out of their hesitation. They didn't retreat; the starvation in their glowing yellow eyes overrode their survival instincts. They scattered, moving with terrifying, jerky speed.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Two of the hairless beasts lunged at First, their unhinged jaws snapping at his thick, reptilian scales. The Elite Kobold simply absorbed the hits, his augmented hide deflecting the glancing bites as he swung his mace in wide, sweeping arcs to keep them at bay.

  The other three ignored the massive Vanguard entirely. They moved like liquid shadows, darting around First’s flank and charging straight for the dying light of the furnace. Straight for Arthur and the huddled lesser Kobolds.

  "Second!" Arthur barked, his vision swimming slightly as his low stamina caught up with him.

  The Deep-Stalker didn't need the command. The massive violet eye in his chest swiveled with sickening fluidity, locking onto the fastest of the three approaching beasts. The thermal gaze flared again. The Stalker's momentum betrayed it; as its muscles locked up, it tumbled forward, skidding across the dirt and crashing hard against the palisade wall.

  That left two.

  Arthur stepped into the gap. His human lungs burned, and the system warnings flashed faintly in the corner of his eye, but the dense, cable-like muscles in his forearms felt perfectly rested.

  The lead Stalker leaped from ten feet out, its jaw opening impossibly wide, dripping black, smoking saliva.

  Arthur didn't try to dodge. He planted his rust-red, scaly feet, tightened his unnatural grip on the unhandled tang, and swung the heavy black cleaver like a baseball bat.

  The acid-quenched iron met the leaping beast in mid-air.

  There was no resistance. The heavy, brutal weight of the blade, driven by the harvested strength of a Level 8 aberration, sheared straight through the Stalker's shoulder and deep into its ribcage.

  The beast hit the ground, but it didn't die instantly. It thrashed wildly, trying to snap at Arthur's leg. But the black metal had left a gift behind. The edges of the deep wound immediately began to hiss and bubble. The Minor Corrosive Bleed from the acid-quenched iron ate into the beast's exposed flesh, turning its frantic thrashing into a spasming, agonized death throe.

  [Carrion-Stalker (Lv. 3) killed. Experience awarded.]

  Arthur ripped the blade free, breathing hard.

  The last Stalker saw its pack decimated in a matter of seconds. Survival instinct finally cracked through its hunger. It dug its claws into the dirt, halting its charge, and spun around to flee back into the violet treeline.

  Before it could even take a step, a blur of shadow detached itself from the palisade.

  Second moved with complete silence. His whip-thin arms wrapped around the fleeing Stalker's neck from behind. He didn't have First's raw power or Arthur's iron, but he had something else. His long, black claws found the soft, vulnerable gaps beneath the beast's jagged spinal spikes and dug in deep.

  A sharp, violent twist, and the Stalker dropped like a stone.

  [Carrion-Stalker (Lv. 3) killed. Experience awarded.]

  Back at the entrance, First finished off the final two with a pair of crushing, methodical blows that left craters in the dirt.

  Silence rushed back into the clearing, broken only by the crackle of the blast furnace and the hissing of the corrosive acid still eating away at the Stalker at Arthur's feet.

  [Combat Concluded. Calculating Experience...]

  [Host Level Up! You are now Level 6.]

  [+5 Stat Points Available.]

  [Stamina Restored to 100/100.]

  The wave of absolute, refreshing energy washed over Arthur, instantly erasing the bone-deep ache in his chest and the swimming blur in his vision. He let out a long, slow breath, resting the flat of his bloody, acid-stained cleaver on his shoulder.

  They hadn't just survived. They had utterly slaughtered a pack of fast-attack predators without taking a single casualty.

  Arthur looked at the five fresh carcasses bleeding out into the dirt. His eyes narrowed. He didn't see threats anymore; he saw raw materials.

  Arthur didn’t immediately move to butcher the carcasses. He opened his interface, the pale blue light reflecting off the dark, acid-washed steel of his cleaver.

  [Unallocated Stat Points: 5]

  He had survived the fight, but barely. His human torso was still the weak link in his chimera physiology, and complex surgeries were draining his stamina too fast. He needed a deeper well, and he needed a sharper mind to map out the complex xenotransplantation he was about to perform.

  Allocate 3 points to Intelligence.

  Allocate 2 points to Constitution.

  A cold, stabilizing wave washed through his chest. His lungs felt larger, his heartbeat slower and more rhythmic. The cognitive blast of his Level 20 Intelligence instantly dissected the scene in front of him, categorizing the slaughtered Stalkers not as corpses, but as a catalog of biological assets.

  He walked over to the largest of the dead beasts. He knelt in the black dirt and used the tip of his glowing scalpel to pry open its unhinged jaw. The black, smoking saliva was secreted from two swollen glands tucked beneath the tongue. He moved down the creature's back, tapping the flat of his blade against the translucent, jagged spikes lining its spine. They were incredibly light, but hard enough to deflect a glancing blow from First's mace.

  "Bring them," Arthur ordered, not looking back.

  The two remaining lesser Kobolds from his original porter team crept forward. They didn't need to be told what was happening. They had seen First become a towering Vanguard, and they had just watched Second paralyze a monster with a glance. They looked at the dead Stalkers, then looked at Arthur, their eyes filled with a desperate, starving hunger for power.

  They lay down in the dirt side-by-side.

  [Notice: Subordinate Consent acquired x2.]

  [Initializing Surgeon’s Domain: Cooperative Multi-Target Mode.]

  [Current Stamina: 100/100.]

  The golden, sterile light of the Domain erupted, pushing back the oppressive shadows of the violet forest. Arthur moved with absolute, terrifying clinical efficiency. He didn't have the time or the high-tier cores to turn these two into Elites, but he could turn them into lethal shock troops.

  He started with the Stalkers. His scalpel blurred, rapidly excising the translucent spinal spikes and the toxic salivary glands from the beasts. He dropped the biological harvest into the sterile silver tray floating beside him.

  He turned to the first Kobold.

  [Proposed Material: Carrion-Stalker Spinal Spikes & Toxic Gland (Lv. 3).]

  [Integration Target: Forearm Radius/Ulna and Mandible.]

  [Cost: 40 Stamina.]

  Arthur made two long, deep incisions down the Kobold’s forearms, exposing the pale bone. He took the jagged, translucent spikes and forcefully slotted them directly between the radius and ulna, using the glowing blue thread to bind the foreign keratin to the host's skeletal structure. The golden magic flared, searing the spikes into place so they protruded outward like wicked, organic arm-blades.

  Next, he forced the Kobold's jaw open, making a precise cut under the tongue. He buried the Stalker's toxic gland directly into the soft tissue, splicing the alien venom ducts into the host's saliva glands.

  He immediately pivoted to the second Kobold, repeating the brutal, bloody process with mechanical speed. Slice, anchor, bind, fuse. The heavy stamina drain hit him like a physical blow, dragging his reserves down to a dangerous 20 out of 100, but his newly leveled Constitution kept his hands from shaking.

  He tied off the final golden suture and stepped back.

  The Domain shattered.

  The two Kobolds convulsed in the dirt as the System violently forced their primitive biology to accept the foreign weapons. Their pale scales darkened to an ashen gray. The translucent spikes jutting from their forearms elongated and sharpened, humming with a faint, predatory vibration. As they gasped for air, thick drops of black, smoking saliva dripped from their jaws, sizzling angrily against the dirt.

  [Target Integration Rate: 92%.]

  [Subordinate Evolution Triggered x2.]

  [Race Updated: Kobold (Venom-Skirmisher Variant - Advanced)]

  [Level: 3]

  The two new Skirmishers pushed themselves off the ground. They didn't have the sheer mass of First or the silent, eerie grace of Second, but they looked incredibly dangerous—feral, fast, and armed with natural, toxic weaponry. They clicked their jaws together, testing the acidic venom, then turned and bowed their heads to Arthur.

  Arthur looked at his small army. A heavily armored Vanguard. A thermal-tracking Scout. Two venomous Skirmishers. And he was their chimera king, armed with an acid-washed cleaver of alien iron.

  He looked toward the dark, suffocating treeline of the violet forest. Let the Carrion King send his horrors.

  The Surgeon was ready to operate.