I Don't Agree to the Terms
Chapter 60: The Giant Chameleon, An Omen of the Crazy Era

Chapter 60: Chapter 60: The Giant Chameleon, An Omen of the Crazy Era

Shutting the door, Gu Shanhai suddenly felt as if there was a gaze watching him from behind.

When he turned around, he saw nothing, yet the feeling of being watched didn’t disappear.

An ordinary person would certainly not have noticed; however, his senses, including his sixth sense and intuition, were incredibly acute, and he instantly pinpointed the source of the gaze.

It was coming from outside the window, something that seemed to have an appetite for him, which made him uncomfortable.

"Am I that unlucky? No sooner had someone come to report than I was targeted?"

Gu Shanhai didn’t know if it was his bad luck or if there was something about him that was attracting the other party, but he knew one thing for sure; this was probably not going to end well.

He ambled over to the window and started noticing some abnormal fraying in the emptiness outside.

"To tell you the truth, you’re still too green." Gu Shanhai reached out and pierced through the anomaly, and a large amount of blood sprayed out instantly.

The moment the creature was attacked by Gu Shanhai, its invisibility failed due to the intense pain, and a large... chameleon appeared.

"Ah, I really thought your ability was invisibility; I didn’t expect it to be more of an enhancement type," Gu Shanhai realized he had been hasty in defining it.

It was because it had enhanced its body that it was able to break through its original size and also strengthen its inherent ability to become invisible.

"But your invisibility still has many flaws, such as the circulation of your blood, the sound of your breathing, your heartbeat, and so on; they’re poorly managed. Even if you turn invisible, you’re just handicapped, and if someone has thermal imaging or the like, you’ll be easily exposed." Gu Shanhai dragged the struggling chameleon inside.

Being a cold-blooded creature, chameleons could only regulate their body heat through their behavior or by absorbing warmth from their environment; their ability was not invisibility, creating significant vulnerabilities.

Swoosh~

Its tongue, sharp as a sword, tried to pierce Gu Shanhai. This was the chameleon’s primary mode of hunting, and after its body had been enhanced, its attack was even more formidable.

But it was effortlessly blocked by Gu Shanhai’s Magic Domain.

"It seems you have an enhancement-type ability ranging from E to D grade. The power is quite decent; had it been an ordinary person, they would have been pierced by your tongue and left with a bloody hole."

Gu Shanhai casually grabbed the creature’s tongue. There was a difference between enhancement-type and basic abilities—the former were comprehensive, while the latter were specialized.

The mutant chameleon was swiftly subdued by him; he landed a punch on its head, knocking it unconscious. As for the wounds, he didn’t bother with them since they were already regenerating, albeit slowly compared to specialized abilities—but there was no longer any danger to its life.

"Not smart, prefers human flesh, hmm, that’s a bit strange." What puzzled Gu Shanhai was its preference for eating humans. Normally, the mutant chameleon should be eating cats and dogs, not targeting larger humans—it defied logic.

"Wait, too hasty."

Gu Shanhai took out his phone and searched. The latest big news had changed as well, with numerous reports of deaths among plants, animals, and insects topping the headlines.

No, it wasn’t that the chameleon wanted to eat humans; other animals were also awakening, but the death toll was extremely high.

He grimaced, cursing inwardly that this apocalyptic instance of Utopia seemed to be turning into an ecological collapse.

With such a low survival rate, he wondered whether the deity among humans, who had not yet awakened, could turn the tide.

It seemed likely that soon they would be faced with wilderness survival, a drastic shift in the scenario.

While fighting mutant beasts was still manageable, the real crisis now was not from the beasts themselves, but from the scarcity of food and water sources.

"Just thinking about it is disturbing... I need to hurry up and develop multiple abilities." Gu Shanhai felt disadvantaged at the start of the game; just a few days earlier, everything had been normal.

"Though there are no ability users, mutant beasts... should still be useful, right?"

As for the future direction of the Holy Federation, he had no way of intervening. The butterfly effect triggered by the ability core was a shadowy manipulation of "The First Epoch"; he couldn’t just blow up the ability core because of his weak presence—after all, he hadn’t even seen it before it exploded.

"The downfall of the future iron-blooded Utopia might just be the work of ’The First Epoch’..."

Gu Shanhai’s brow twitched; he had reason to suspect that this world had been devoured completely by "The First Epoch" because it no longer held significant value in the later stages.

No wonder the Holy Federation had been so peaceful at the start; it was likely because no players had completed the main storyline.

Now that he had triggered the main storyline, causing the Holy Federation to enter an apocalyptic era, it appeared to be the real intention of "The First Epoch," not the supposed era of abilities.

As for the abilities themselves, perhaps they were a mechanism of mass extinction, with the surviving ability users being the result of their own adaptive evolution.

"Fuck, even in my previous life, it was a pitfall; such a major storyline and no players triggered it. That’s right, initially, the ability core was held by the Holy Federation and then transferred to the deity among humans. By the time players grew up, they didn’t need these trivial benefits. Naturally, it became an area where players entered to gain talents, spend money on materials, and upgrade their talents, hardly anyone delved deeper."

Capturing a newbie world’s task wasn’t as lucrative as tackling a high-end world’s missions; the difficulty wasn’t much different, but the rewards were substantially better.

Dragging the chameleon into his mobile laboratory, he then buried himself in research.

"With a sample, many things can be seen more clearly; too bad it’s not an ability user, just an ability beast." First, Gu Shanhai injected the chameleon with a sufficient dose of anesthetic, coagulant, and so on. He owed much to Te Kelei’s flesh fusion experiments; since Te Kelei experimented with all sorts of animals and naturally included chameleons, he could make use of that.

"Overall, does it seem more like an adaptation after mutation, rather than evolution? No wonder my own flesh was collapsing."

"Could I create a survival of the fittest ability that allows me to evolve indefinitely? Well, no, that’s not possible; that would be asking for trouble." Gu Shanhai’s idea was enticing; such ability sounded powerful, but the reality wasn’t as rosy as imagined. This irreversible evolution would alter him into a terrifying mutant with severe side effects.

Just like if he were to enter water, he would evolve to adapt to aquatic life, drastically altering his body. But if he returned to land, he would evolve again—not back to human form, but from his aquatic form into another land-based form.

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