The law of the jungle.
It is only natural for the strong to prey upon the weak.
[Black Piranha LV8]
The piranha, clearly thinking of me as prey, gnawed on my tail.
I immediately whipped my tail like a lash.
The force generated by my long tail was stronger than I expected. The recoil sent the piranha soaring high into the sky.
Not missing the opportunity, I tensed my legs.
I was standing on a single lotus leaf.
Any violent movement would send me plunging into the water.
If I were an ordinary lizard, that is.
I kicked off the edge of the lotus leaf and leaped into the air.
Even for a piranha, whose bite force is said to rival a shark's, out of the water it's just a fish.
Moreover, we were now in mid-air, not even on land. The creature was, quite literally, defenseless.
"Gekek!"
I gathered the force from my kick-off into a single point.
My piercing momentum was aimed at the piranha's belly.
If I were to name this move, it would be something like the Little Dragon's Heaven-Ascending Strike.
Thwack!
Its hang time in the air was extended.
The creature was the same size as me. I knew this attack wouldn't be enough to finish it.
At this rate, it would just fall back into the water and escape.
I spun my body and struck it down with my tail.
Crack!
A duller thud echoed this time.
It was what you'd call a direct hit to the bone.
No, since it's a fish, it must have been a fish bone.
The purpose of this attack wasn't just to deal damage.
My goal was to change its landing spot.
Thump!
Knocked aside by my tail, the piranha fell onto the ground.
Not yet dead, it thrashed about, desperately trying to get back into the water.
Crunch!
But now that it was on land, it was doomed to be trampled by my Little Dragon's Monarch's Walk.
Hmph.
Such a worthless thing, trying to mess with me.
I slapped the dead piranha with my long tail.
It had gnawed on my tail and left a wound, but it didn't hurt much.
A gecko's tail regenerates on its own. Even though I had become a basilisk, I still retained that ability.
Seeing as the Wall Climbing skill was still there, I knew I could use my previous traits despite the change in my feet's structure.
This meant that even if I evolved one step further and became a Big Basilisk-saurus, I could still perform eccentric feats like running on water and scaling walls.
Slap, slap.
After giving the piranha a "massage" for a while, I grabbed its fin to drag it to my hideout.
And in that moment, the water erupted.
Splash!
Piranhas, presumably its comrades, revealed themselves.
[Black Piranha LV4]
[Black Piranha LV5]
[Black Piranha LV7]
Their levels were lower than the one I caught, but there were many of them.
Three in total.
I'd already made a sufficient haul.
There was no reason for me to fight them.
I planned to give them a little threat and leave.
Ruuuumble.
I felt an energy from the depths of the pool.
It was an energy similar to that hot thing latent within me.
I could feel it instinctively.
Something big was coming.
Kwoooosh!
As it revealed the upper half of its body above the water, the recoil created a massive splash.
[Black Piranha LV10(+)]
After all that posturing, it's just another piranha.
"Gekgek."
I was a little disappointed.
I started to leave without a second glance.
…Wait, why does that one have a '+' after its name?
Isn't that what I had before I evolved?
And it looks a bit strange, too.
If the others were typical piranhas, this one was closer to a koi carp.
Its color wasn't black at all, but red.
What the hell is it?
I wanted to grab its whiskers and demand to know its true identity, but fighting four piranhas at once was too much.
I wrapped my tail around the piranha I'd already caught, securing it.
They cut through the water and charged at me.
It seemed they'd noticed I was trying to escape.
Foolish creatures.
Like a small dragon taking flight, I leaped over them.
This was the Little Dragon's Heaven-Ascending Steps.
"Gekgek!"
I let out a satisfied laugh and fled to my hideout, stepping across the water.
*
I reached my hideout, maintaining strict vigilance of my surroundings.
I could hear the sounds of their frustration all the way from here.
If I had stayed on the water, they might have been able to catch me.
But I made active use of the terrain.
Stepping on water, climbing onto reeds. Leaping into the air, then stepping on water again.
It was a path that fish could never follow, a path unique to a basilisk lizard.
"Gekgek!"
The long-awaited moment had arrived.
I glanced at the plump piranha.
My mouth was watering.
I wanted to devour it right away, but I am a cultured lizard.
Snap.
I carefully removed the piranha's scales.
In my previous form, I would have had to handle it with my small snout.
But I was no longer a gecko; I was a basilisk.
There were many changes from my gecko days, but the most prominent was that my whole body had become more elongated.
The most noticeable change was my arms.
No, it would be more accurate to call them forelegs.
Before, I could only use them as forelegs.
They were short and stubby, and waddling around was the best they could do.
But now it was different. I could crudely imitate human actions.
I removed the scales in a cultured manner.
Truthfully, descaling it was the height of luxury.
The preparation process was quite difficult.
Any other lizard would have chosen to poke a small hole and eat from there. A slightly larger one would have swallowed it in one bite.
But I am an intelligent, elegant lizard.
The ingredient before me was none other than a fish.
It was an ingredient on a whole different level from the crispy spider-brand bug jerky and the bug tartare with its horribly popping texture.
It would be delicious boiled in a spicy fish stew with plenty of gochujang, or braised with radishes. It would also be fantastic deep-fried into a fish cutlet.
And if I added french fries to that…
…I had no such options right now.
The only choice left for me was to eat it raw.
Still, eating fish raw is basically sashimi.
I lifted the descaled piranha with both hands.
Chomp.
I opened my snout wide and took a huge bite of its flesh.
Munch, munch.
"Gek!"
I couldn't help but let out a cry.
Is this really what fish tastes like?
The subtle sweetness of the flesh.
This flavor, similar to red meat, characteristic of red-fleshed fish.
Perhaps because it was a carnivorous fish, it didn't have that earthy taste typical of freshwater fish.
It was chewy and intensely sweet.
Taking a huge bite of the fish also contributed to the taste.
Chomp.
It was a satisfaction incomparable to thinly sliced sashimi.
Crunch.
In an instant, I'd devoured the entire piranha.
[Your level has increased!]
The level-up was just a bonus.
It was a great shame there was no spicy gochujang sauce or wasabi, but the taste was beyond compare to any bug.
[You have acquired 「Gourmet LV1」!]
「Gourmet LV1」
The more delicious food you eat, the easier it is to gain inspiration.
Now they're giving me all sorts of things.
Inspiration, huh? Is it something like enlightenment?
I scratched my head with my long tail.
Now that my stomach was full, it was time to make use of this 'inspiration' or 'perspiration' or whatever.
Let's assess the situation.
First, this world is full of dinosaurs.
At first, I thought I'd fallen into the Paleozoic Era, but that wasn't it.
There were creatures here that didn't exist in the Paleozoic.
A fantasy world with dinosaurs.
Seeing as I had a status window and skills, I thought that was highly likely.
But that didn't seem to be it, either.
The inner core the spider fed me and the footwork called Little Dragon's Heaven-Ascending Steps.
Putting it all together, I could tell this world was a martial arts novel.
Scratch.
I scratched my brilliant head with my tail.
So, what can I do?
No matter how much I thought about it, an answer didn't immediately come to me.
What does it matter if this world's genre is fantasy or martial arts?
Right now, I'm just a lizard.
A very small and fragile lizard.
Worrying about what this world is is something I should do after I get stronger.
And I know how to get stronger here.
Leveling up.
Of course, that's not all.
More important than leveling up was evolution.
I've only evolved one step from a gecko, and life has already become this much easier.
It was a 'special evolution,' something unlocked by meeting certain conditions.
Special evolution.
I need to dig deeper into this.
Just as the Sprint skill was a condition for evolving into a basilisk, it was highly likely that other skills were conditions for evolving into other creatures. Now was the time for me to learn as many skills as possible.
Because the more options, the better.
If I eat a lot of poisonous bugs and gain related skills, I might be able to evolve into something like a Komodo dragon.
I need to learn skills to achieve special evolutions.
In other words, I need to experience as much as I possibly can.
I've roughly decided on a course of action.
Now, there's one more thing to worry about.
And that's the inner core.
Even if I reached the max level, I couldn't evolve right away.
'A spiritual energy settles in your body.'
I was only able to evolve after seeing that message.
In other words, I need to consume something like an inner core to advance to the next stage.
This was the problem.
I don't know where that spider got those things, but inner cores are fundamentally rare items. There was a high chance I wouldn't find one even if I searched for the rest of this lizard's lifespan.
Hooo.
Where the hell am I supposed to get an inner core?
Splash!
The piranhas I saw earlier were still swimming furiously in the distance, as if they were still angry.
I envy you.
All you have to do is swim around without a thought in your heads.
You could never understand the troubles of a higher lizard like me.
Ruuuumble.
Now they were protesting violently, even creating a waterspout.
Who do they think they are, dragons?
"Kwaaaak!"
A loud noise echoed.
I looked up and saw some toad hopping all over the place.
"Gekgek!"
Scram while I'm asking nicely.
If you don't want to incur the wrath of a Green Basilisk LV2, that is.
If I weren't already full from the fish, I would have hunted that toad right now.
"Kwaaaak!"
I'm only holding back because its strange golden hue makes it look unappetizing.
Sigh.
"Groooan!"
Now what?
On the opposite side of the toad, a large golden turtle was crawling around.
It was rolling its body around, poking into every nook and cranny.
Did I pick the wrong hideout?
"Gegegek!"
Let's have some quiet!
To think creatures like that are my neighbors.
I have the worst luck.
Sigh.
I let out a long sigh.
I wish an inner core would just fall out of the sky.