Chapter 30 Battle of the Five Scrubs

"A watch?" Lin Shen was a little surprised.

He initially thought whatever Qi Guan had tightly clenched even in death must've been something incredibly valuable. Unexpectedly, it turned out to be a watch—a relatively cheap-looking digital watch, at that.

Its strap, casing, and face were all black, with only white numerals displaying on the screen.

"Could this watch have some sort of special sentimental value to Qi Guan? If I get the chance, maybe I could return it to his family," Lin Shen murmured, picking up the watch to examine it further, only to find that the time displayed was somewhat off.

"00:00:07. Is this thing broken?" He glanced up at the sky. It clearly wasn't nighttime yet, so how could it possibly be midnight?

As Lin Shen scrutinized the watch, its timer continued to count down.

6… 5… 4… 3… 2… 1… 0…

Suddenly, when the timer hit zero, a voice broadcasted from inside the watch: "User death confirmed… Detecting new user… Binding successful… Teleport countdown begins in 10… 9… 8…"

The display on the watch changed to 00:00:10 and began ticking down rapidly by the second.

"What the hell!" Lin Shen frantically flung the watch away.

Even after hitting the ground, the watch continued its countdown. Lin Shen instinctively backed up, putting as much distance between himself and the watch as possible.

But just as the timer hit zero, Lin Shen's surroundings seemed to twist and warp in an instant.

The sky, mountains, trees, flowers, and earth—all of them distorted together and started spinning wildly in Lin Shen's vision. After the dizzying chaos, Lin Shen felt his head splitting in pain, followed by a sudden gravity pulling him down. Unable to resist, he collapsed on the ground, his body weighed down as if crushed by an immense force.

Planting his hands firmly on the ground, Lin Shen exerted tremendous effort to slowly push himself upright. The oppressive weight pressing down on him made standing nearly unbearable, his quivering leg muscles threatening to buckle at any moment and send him crashing down.

"What the hell is going on?" Lin Shen froze in shock at the sight before him.

The familiar mountains and ravines were gone, replaced by stretches of white sandy beaches and an expansive blue ocean.

The beach was teeming with steel-bodied creatures—gargantuan sea turtles with steel spikes jutting out of their shells, each the size of millstones. They were sprawled across the shore, seemingly preoccupied with their own activities.

As Lin Shen materialized nearby, hundreds of Steel Thorn Turtles turned their heads in unison to focus their gaze on him.

Swallowing hard, Lin Shen instinctively raised his hand to rub his eyes and confirm whether he was hallucinating.

But even the simple act of raising his hand felt inexplicably sluggish, as if his movements were delayed relative to his thoughts.

Before his hand could reach his eyes, Lin Shen noticed the black electronic watch now fastened securely to his left wrist.

His first reaction was to remove the watch, but as his fingers touched the strap, the cold monotone of a synthesized voice emerged once again.

"Teleport cooldown in progress. Forcefully removing the teleport device will initiate an additional teleportation. User will sustain irreversible damage during teleportation."

Lin Shen froze, his hand immediately halting mid-motion. Qi Guan's horrifying injuries flashed through his mind.

"The wounds on Qi Guan's body—could they have been caused by this irreversible damage?" Lin Shen shuddered at the thought, opting to leave the watch untouched.

If an Alloy Level Mutator like Qi Guan ended up that mangled, what kind of fate awaited him, a baseline human with no Base Mutation? Would he be reduced to a bloody pulp in the blink of an eye?

The watch now displayed 71:59:54, its countdown steadily ticking away.

"Does this mean the teleport device can only be used again in seventy-two hours?" Lin Shen tentatively speculated.

There was no time to delve further into the matter. The Steel Thorn Turtles, briefly stunned by Lin Shen's abrupt arrival, were now furiously crawling towards him. Judging by their hostile expressions, you'd think Lin Shen had just desecrated their ancestral graves; their collective intent to tear him limb from limb was unmistakable.

Lin Shen wanted to run, but just taking a single step proved overwhelming—his entire body felt encumbered to the point of immobility.

With great difficulty, Lin Shen fumbled at his belongings, managing to retrieve his Pet Key and Pet Capsule. Before the Steel Thorn Turtles could close the gap, he hurried to summon his Heavy Armor Beast into action.

The Heavy Armor Beast, under Lin Shen's command, clamped its jaws onto Lin Shen's chain mail, hoisting him onto its back.

Lin Shen clung tightly to the creature's neck, gripping it with all his might.

The Heavy Armor Beast let out a thunderous roar, its alloy-strength legs—thicker than an elephant's—crashing down onto the nearest Steel Thorn Turtle.

Crunch! Crunch!

The sound of steel shattering echoed out as the Steel Thorn Turtles' spikes and shells were crushed underfoot, spilling silvery liquid in every direction.

Lin Shen could distinctly feel that the Heavy Armor Beast's speed had noticeably diminished, and the Steel Thorn Turtles seemed slower as well compared to other steel-bodied creatures Lin Shen had encountered before.

"Is it the gravity?" Lin Shen pondered, just as he felt a vibration from the watch strapped to his wrist.

Glancing down at it, he saw that the display no longer showed a countdown but a steady stream of text.

"Steel Thorn Turtle, steel-bodied lifeform killed… Steel Thorn Turtle, steel-bodied lifeform killed…"

As the Heavy Armor Beast continued stomping, new text updates rolled across the watch's screen, tracking its progress.

In this battlefield, the Alloy Level Heavy Armor Beast was like a tiger unleashed on a herd of sheep, slaughtering the Steel Level Steel Thorn Turtles in a one-sided massacre.

Somehow, despite their obvious disadvantage, the Steel Thorn Turtles charged at it with reckless abandon, unafraid of death, as though impatient to live their next lives. One after another, they met their end beneath the beast's feet; in mere moments, twenty to thirty had been mercilessly crushed.

Lin Shen, initially puzzled by their refusal to retreat, suddenly caught sight of something in the sand where the Steel Thorn Turtles had been clustered. In a flash, it all made sense.

Scattered across the sand were shallow pits, some partially exposed, containing clusters of eggs the size of ping pong balls.

"So that's what's going on—they're laying eggs. I've stumbled into their communal hatchery!" Lin Shen realized.

Seeing the Base Mutation Eggs nestled within those pits gave Lin Shen an idea. *If I could take these eggs back, it might turn out to be a lucrative haul.*

The Steel Thorn Turtles appeared to be prolific breeders. Even from a cursory glance, each pit seemed to hold at least seven or eight eggs. With so many pits scattered around, there could easily be over a thousand eggs total.

*But can the teleport device transfer all of them back? And what about the materials from the Steel Thorn Turtles? They might not be exceptionally valuable, but there's plenty of them—it'd still fetch some money.*

Lin Shen was in the middle of weighing his options when the Heavy Armor Beast let out a painful howl.

Lin Shen looked down and gasped in alarm. One of the Steel Thorn Turtles had survived something no others had—it was holding onto the Heavy Armor Beast's leg, its steel spikes piercing right through the beast's alloy limb.

"What's going on here?" Lin Shen stared at the Steel Thorn Turtle below. By all appearances, it seemed no different from the others in size or shape, completely unremarkable at first glance.

But how could a steel-bodied creature's spikes penetrate an alloy lifeform?

Surprised and unsettled, Lin Shen glanced at his watch, hoping for its usual informational prompt about the Steel Thorn Turtle, only to find a series of unrelated entries instead:

"User: Non-Mutator low-level lifeform.

Strength: 5.

Speed: 5.

Durability: 5.

Toughness: 5.

Theoretical maximum life expectancy: 100 years.

Base Mutation Talent: None."

Lin Shen froze for a moment. "This 'non-Mutator low-level lifeform'—could it be talking about me?"

On second thought, it made sense. A perfect stack of fives? A textbook weakling.

And for better or worse, these stats represented the peak of physical conditioning for an ordinary human—results painstakingly achieved after years of consuming large quantities of Base Mutation Fluid.