Chapter 23
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Chapter 23: How Many Hundreds of Millions of Years Did I Sleep?
The process to grow larger was long and dull. Throughout this tedious time, Trilobite drifted in a half-asleep state.
Countless dreams surged over him like tides before slowly fading away.
Some dreams vanished without a trace, leaving no memories.
Others featured that young lady who always appeared in his dreams.
Trilobite felt like he was playing one of those mobile games where you raise idle characters—especially when he "touched" her with an invisible hand and she responded with shy blushes.
If he pushed further, she’d make all sorts of flustered gestures…
Often, Trilobite refused to wake, lost in this bizarre "game."
Only two things could rouse him: relieving himself and eating!
He’d dug a "small room" connecting to his "main bedroom" via a corridor.
As his size increased and excrement piled higher, he kept expanding the toilet until it nearly matched his main bedroom.
During rare waking moments, Trilobite stared at the enlarged toilet and mounds of dirt-covered excrement in disbelief.
"Wow!?"
"Am I actually a genius at making compost?"
But after some thought, he accepted it—more eating meant more waste.
Truthfully, his feeding never stopped during this period.
Every so often, an Anomalocaris or other odd creatures would drift overhead, tauntingly swimming near him. Like the worms he’d encountered after first transmigrating, they attacked the little blue dots on his head as prey.
Forced awake, Trilobite would hunt.
He thanked his little blue dot allies for luring prey to him again and again.
Though amazed by the foolishness of these Anomalocaris and odd creatures, he gladly devoured their flesh.
None stood a chance against his ever-growing size. Their flesh provided Chaos Energy, letting him subconsciously acquire more physical upgrades.
Anticipating future battles with armored foes like sea scorpions or nautiluses, Trilobite invested in armor-piercing capability—specifically by growing slightly protruding upper and lower jawbones.
These guillotine-like structures granted him piercing power.
His very species transformed from these upgrades!
【Current Form: Eastman Fish Shape】
【Status: Full】
【Magic Power: 3000/3000 (Regenerates 25/minute)】
【Chaos Energy: 22/1000 (Insufficient to access evolution interface)】
【Skill 1: Flip the World Off (100 Magic Power cost)】
【Skill 2: Ball Joint Armor (100 Magic Power cost)】
【Skill 3: Unavailable】
“Um…”
“Eastman fish, huh.”
“That’s an old predecessor of the horror fish family.”
Many people equated horror fish with Duncker’s fish, but horror fish was actually a family, while Duncker’s fish was just one genus within it.
The horror fish family had other members, and the Eastman fish was one of them—a “predecessor cousin” that resembled Duncker’s fish but wasn’t particularly outstanding in any way.
This creature typically measured about 1 to 1.5 meters in length, with the largest possibly reaching three meters.
On the Eastman fish, Duncker’s fish-like “guillotine” structure of “incisor teeth” was taking shape; though those were actually elongated jawbones.
Its armor-breaking capability was developing!
If he encountered a soft-shelled strange prawn again, slicing it clean through would be certain!
The dual-limbed aberrant bug would now die quickly and cleanly.
But this time, Trilobite felt he’d met a worthy opponent!
“Boom—!”
Trilobite’s body suddenly shot upward, violently flipping the unsuspecting enemy.
His powerful jaws clamped down hard on the opponent, but…
“Creak—!”
The sound of sliding “incisor teeth” echoed.
Trilobite realized his short, guillotine-like mouth could neither slice the enemy in half nor grip its shell firmly.
“Huh?”
Trilobite grew more alert.
“This was real armor!?”
“No longer the squishy bodies of strange prawns?”
“Or the soft flesh of squids?”
“Had the world changed?”
He strained his low-resolution calcite compound eyes to focus.
Though his enlarged body made the once-oversized eyes relatively smaller—with no resolution improvement—closeness made resolution irrelevant.
“This was…”
“A sea scorpion!?”
“Damn!”
“Had he slept through an entire era!?”
Trilobite recalled being pestered by odd creatures like strange prawns before, occasionally facing ancient squid ancestors.
But now, he’d skipped the Ordovician’s hornstones and nautiluses entirely, landing straight in the Silurian sea scorpion era!?
Oh my, how the times had changed.
Taking advantage of Trilobite’s shock, the sea scorpion he had bitten managed to escape.
However, the "sea scorpion" swam very slowly now.
It seemed to have sustained serious injuries.
At last, Trilobite could fully see this creature’s true form.
Its front body was thick, but it tapered sharply at the waist, and a long tail at the back dragged a slender stinger, somewhat resembling a crab with a scorpion tail.
Its appendages were not as unchanging as those of Trilobite; instead, they had undergone several rounds of specialization.
The pair near the mouth had evolved into fin-like structures that helped it swim.
The front pairs, besides having specialized small pincers for crushing food, also included four pairs that turned into terrifying pincers covered in sharp spikes!
"This is a horseshoe crab."
The horseshoe crab was not the dominant eurypterid of the Silurian, but a type of largely smaller carapace crab.
Their strength wasn’t in combat, but in grabbing ecological niches.
The Mass Extinction at the end of the Ordovician had severely cut Trilobite’s family tree, and when the Trilobite family emerged from the extinction, ready to branch out again, they found they had arrived late…
Horseshoe crabs, which had popped up from nowhere, had already taken most benthic ecological niches.
With their specialized appendages and relatively advanced feeding structures, they easily beat Trilobite, leaving him in a marginal role.
While this showed the horseshoe crab’s power in survival and niche competition, it also proved their combat ability was quite weak.
Just think about what ecological niches Trilobite held: scavenging trash, sucking worms, filtering plankton, and grazing seaweed…
What a bunch of small fry!
How dare they leap before horror fish?
Relying on their thick armor, right?
"Do you think my jaw is fake?!"
"Kill—!"
"Whoosh—!"
Trilobite lunged forward, his Big Mouth clamping hard on the body of the "horseshoe crab."
"Zzz—zzz—!"
The horseshoe crab struggled constantly, jabbing its poisonous stingers into the Eastman fish’s body.
But…
"Clang!"
"Bang!"
It couldn’t pierce the enemy’s armor!
The edge of layered armor was clear!
Shield fish, with both armor and jaws, seemed like fighters born to topple the tyranny of sea scorpions.
These armored giants had been swept away by their forerunners—the shield fish!
The shield fish cleared the path for their cousins, the bony and cartilaginous fishes, leaving them a world without sea scorpions, while they faded into dust and rock.
Later sharks and other big predatory fish ditched heavy armor because they no longer faced armored sea scorpions with huge pincers and stinger tails.
Every time Trilobite thought about this, he sighed.
"Ah, now’s not the time for sighing!"
Trilobite loosened his grip slightly on the horseshoe crab.
But he didn’t mean to free it.
"Ah—oooh—!"
"Hiss—!"
The Eastman fish stopped attacking the armored body and bit off one fin-like pincer.
And this was far from over!
"Ah—oooh—!"
Another bite took off the stinger tail.
"Ah—oooh—!"
Another fin-like pincer was ripped off!
"Ah—oooh—!"
A spiny pincer was gnawed away.
…
Bit by bit, Trilobite chewed off the spiny tail, the pair of fin-like pincers, and the four pairs of spiny capture pincers.
The horseshoe crab was whittled alive into a "horseshoe stick"!
