The storm broke behind him in a veil of receding thunderclouds, and ahead stretched a land so untamed, so violently alive, that even Mark felt a pulse of primordial recognition vibrate through his core.
Here, the ground steamed with heat from subterranean vents, the trees grew twisted and gnarled like ancient bones protruding from the earth's crust, and the very air was thick with the metallic tang of blood, decay, and the roiling scent of predation.
Skull Island.
The name did not appear in his mind as a word or memory, but as a truth, whispered from the very stones beneath his slithering limbs and from the screeches of the canopy dwellers who took flight at the slightest tremor in the jungle.
Something about this place was wrong; or perhaps it was right in a way the rest of the world had long forgotten. This was a place where survival wasn't just a daily game; it was a religious rite.
Mark pressed forward, his slick mass flowing across the jungle floor like a living tide of muscle and hunger, limbs gliding over moss-slicked boulders and roots the size of fallen trees. Birds squawked and darted away in panicked flocks as his enormous bulk tore a path into the ancient forest; but Mark didn't pay them any attention.
He was focused, locked into something far more enticing. He could sense them before he saw them; the distant vibrations through the soles of the earth, the low-pitched rumbles echoing between his bones and the ground, the faint stink of scales and warm blood.
Then they emerged. At first, just one; a pale, bipedal reptilian thing with sunken eyes and jaws that seemed too wide for its skull. Its limbs were long and grotesquely flexible, its hide tight over muscle and bone.
But more followed. Two, four, six.
All slinking from the jungle shadows like predators sniffing out an intruder. Their tongues flicked, their tails lashed, and their claws scraped against the basalt rock with impatient hunger.
Mark surged forward with all the grace of a thunderclap. The first one leapt, but it might as well have tried to tackle a mountain; Mark's tentacle met it mid-air with a sickening crunch, flinging the thing sideways into a boulder where it cracked apart like a brittle shell.
The second and third lunged in unison, but his rear limbs snapped around them like vices, crushing their ribs before dragging their spasming forms toward the yawning slit of his mouth.
They died screaming.
[New Genetic Material Acquired: Cranilux Saurivorus (Skullcrawler)]
[Potential Traits Catalogued:]
[Terrestrial Stability Matrix (Level 1): Improved postural equilibrium on uneven terrain, providing balance and motor efficiency in bipedal or multi-limbed locomotion on land.]
[Reproductive Reconfiguration: Oviparous Protocol (Level 4): Internal gene-splicing will generate functioning female reproductive structures and ovipositor-compatible musculature for asexual or sexual reproduction via egg-laying.]
Mark paused, mid-swallow, as his mind processed the implications of the second trait, '...Eggs?'
The thought echoed in the recesses of his consciousness like a poorly delivered punchline to a cruel joke. He turned his senses inward briefly, scanning the vast inner expanse of his shifting biology, and sure enough; there were emerging pathways now, dense strands of code and tissue restructuring in anticipation of a reproductive protocol he had never considered.
A sigh escaped him, closer to a pressurized exhale from his spiracles than anything human.
'Wait... I don't have a dong?' The realization struck him harder than the Skullcrawlers had.
Frustration bubbled in his core, 'What the hell even am I anymore?'
Still, he steadied himself, mentally gritting his metaphorical teeth, 'Doesn't matter. I'll get male organs too eventually. Hell, I'll get whatever damn parts I need; I'll become everything.'
The Skullcrawlers didn't care for his internal identity crisis. More came in the dozens. They charged from the canopy like a wave of teeth and talons, their bodies coiled with coiled hatred, their minds primitive and singularly focused; to kill the invader. M
ark welcomed them. They scratched at his armoured hide, but their claws barely left a mark. They tried to circle him, but his limbs spanned too wide, his reach too far, his strength too vast.
He crushed one under his bulk like a boot on wet paper. He coiled three in his grip and tore them apart in one brutal twist. He launched another into the air and speared it mid-descent with his barbed tentacle, pinning it to a tree like an insect on a spike.
They kept coming.
He kept feeding.
[Additional Genetic Material Acquired: Cranilux Saurivorus]
[Genome Saturation: 85% — Evolution Threshold Approaching]
[No new traits unlocked — Duplicate Code]
[Additional Genetic Material Acquired]
[Genome Saturation: 88%]
[No new traits — Redundant Data]
[Additional Genetic Material Acquired]
[Genome Saturation: 91%]
[No new traits — Redundant Data]
It didn't matter that the abilities stopped appearing. Every carcass devoured brought him closer. Every meal was a step. Every scream was a hymn to the god of evolution, and Mark was its prophet.
Finally, as the last Skullcrawler twitched its final breath beneath his crushing weight, Mark swallowed the last of its mutated flesh and let the silence return.
That's when he noticed. Something had been watching. Across the clearing, just past the smouldering remains of broken trees and twitching limbs, a colossal figure stood partially obscured by mist and branches.
It was massive; nearly as tall as a skyscraper and shaped like a man but covered in hair the colour of storm-clouds and ash. Its eyes glowed softly beneath a heavy brow. Its fists were clenched.
The creature was not afraid.
Mark's heart thrummed. Another giant monkey, another apex, another genetic feast waiting to be carved. He could barely contain the grin that stretched across his ever-shifting maw.
'Oh yes~' he thought, 'This island just keeps getting better.'