Chapter 0039 The Giant Crocodile Meets Its End

The monster had yet to arrive, but its gaping maw announced its presence first! The Swamp Giant Crocodile King flung open its massive, blood-red jaws, which towered higher than a man. Its terrifying, unevenly spaced fangs resembled a row of daggers, all thrust downward and bristling with lethal sharpness.

With its astonishing bite force and sheer physical might, this defenseless human apprentice would likely be torn apart in an instant. Yet, to the beast’s surprise, the apprentice spun around, hurled the old hag in his hand straight into its mouth, and twisted his body in a bizarre contortion, slipping free of those monstrous jaws in the span of a heartbeat.

A muffled crunch sounded. The old hag’s wiry, resilient body was bitten cleanly in two by the Giant Crocodile King, and thick, fetid black blood oozed down its fangs.

The Crocodile King let out a roar of disgust. Although, as a magical beast, it could consume almost anything, it had no appetite for the creatures living so close by. Even from a monster’s perspective, these old hags were far too foul. Only in times of extreme famine would it consider eating one or two to stave off hunger.

Shaking the mangled corpse from its mouth, its eyes—each as large as a bronze bell—immediately locked onto a fleeing human figure. This apprentice was not very fast, stumbling and tripping over hidden pools as he ran.

The Crocodile King growled with delight, lumbering after its prey like a moving hill, flattening everything in its path as it followed the apprentice’s route. Despite the terrain, it was actually a little faster than the human and quickly caught up from behind.

But no matter how it lunged and snapped, the strange, human-shaped figure always managed to dodge its jaws by the narrowest of margins. This only made the beast ever more enraged, its attacks growing faster and more frequent.

At last, in a successful lunge, the Crocodile King crushed the creature’s arm in its jaws. Yet, to its confusion, what filled its mouth was not the taste of flesh and blood, but the gritty sensation of earth. The torn robe fell away, not revealing a human, but an exceedingly strange anthropoid mud golem.

With a hiss, the Crocodile King instantly realized it had been tricked. It launched itself at the bait with murderous intent, determined to tear it to shreds.

Since its disguise had been seen through, the Earth Golem shed its cumbersome robe and unleashed its full power, engaging the clumsy Crocodile King in earnest combat.

Being an aquatic monster, the Crocodile King moved with ease in the filthy swamp, as if swimming through water. On solid ground, however, its massive body became cumbersome. Covered in thick, armored scales, it resembled a rampaging war machine, smashing through brush and snapping dead trees, leaving deep gouges in the soft earth.

Yet its attacks were focused almost entirely on its head and tail. Most of its offensive strength was concentrated in a fan-shaped area in front of its head. Within that range, its savage bites and charges could drive any foe to despair. Even with its tail, every whip from that scaly length could shatter bones and rupture sinews.

But between its fore and hind limbs, along its flanks, lay a blind spot—neither head nor tail could reach it. If an enemy slipped into this zone, the beast would have to clumsily twist and shuffle its body, trying to bring its target into range.

The damned golem had seized upon this weakness, darting straight for its flanks and unleashing a flurry of attacks there.

Time and again, the Earth Golem hammered at the Crocodile King’s armored ribs with heavy fists, supplementing its blows with stabbing earth spears. But to no avail—the thick scales shrugged off all attempts at harm. The Crocodile King cared nothing for such paltry wounds, only spinning in frustrated circles, snapping its jaws sideways in a vain effort to dislodge the tenacious golem.

Yet the golem moved in perfect concert with the beast, always just out of reach.

The heavy armor was both protection and a curse for the Crocodile King, severely limiting the mobility of its jaws. The enemy was so close, but like a donkey circling a millstone, it simply couldn’t reach.

Though the Earth Golem now held the upper hand, Grim—controlling it from afar—showed no sign of joy.

This won’t do.

Unless the golem could break through the beast’s scales, it would never inflict enough damage to tip the fight. Things would only end in a stalemate, each side unable to overcome the other. The Crocodile King, blinded by rage, kept wrestling with the golem; but once it calmed down and retreated to its familiar swampy waters, the golem alone could never hope to stop it.

Fortunately, Grim had already thoroughly studied the strengths and weaknesses of the Crocodile King. At his command, the Earth Golem stopped wasting effort on the beast’s armored body and instead began unleashing "Earth Spikes" beneath it.

Most of the Crocodile King’s body was covered in thick scales, making it highly resistant to physical attacks. But not everywhere—the belly remained a vulnerable spot.

The erupting earth spikes delivered both physical and earth-elemental damage. However, as an earth-elemental creature itself, the Crocodile King was highly resistant to such magic, rendering that portion of the attack moot.

Even so, the sheer physical trauma made the beast grunt in pain.

In the magical swamp, there were few monsters capable of striking the Crocodile King’s weak points through its armor, which was why it ruled as the undisputed overlord of these waters. Yet today, this troublesome golem was making it suffer as never before.

Stung by pain, the Crocodile King suddenly remembered it possessed a similar innate ability. With an angry hiss, it raised its head, and a thick wave of earth energy surged around it.

"Quagmire Spell."

Grim clenched his fists, scrutinizing the monster’s innate magic. The moment he realized it was a quagmire spell, he couldn’t help but shout in excitement.

Wonderful! This Crocodile King is as good as dead!

Honestly, if the beast’s innate power had been an earth-type attack or a defensive enhancement spell, Grim would have recalled the golem and fled without hesitation. But the quagmire spell meant his chances of victory had soared to seventy percent.

Sure enough, as Grim cheered, a comical scene unfolded on the battlefield.

Within a fifty-meter radius around the Crocodile King, the ground instantly turned into a churning, liquid mire. For most creatures, this would have been a deadly trap—one step and they’d be sucked down, helpless. This wide-reaching control spell, paired with the Crocodile King’s terrifying physical might, was the secret of its dominance.

Unfortunately—tragically—the Earth Golem was itself an earth-elemental being!

To it, the quagmire was no different from solid ground. Its heavy body seemed to lose all weight as it strode across the flowing sand, not even leaving a dent.

Thus, upon this rippling, shifting mudflat, the two earth creatures enacted a deadly game of cat and mouse.

The golem had abandoned its ineffective earth spear assaults and now focused on driving earth spikes beneath its opponent, casting one every eleven seconds or so. Since the spell affected an area, the golem didn’t need to know the precise location of the Crocodile King’s soft underbelly—so long as it was close, the beast suffered.

After a quarter-hour of this, the Crocodile King began to falter, its movements slowing as pain wracked its body.

Unable to land a single blow, while its own chest and belly endured relentless agony, the beast’s rage only grew. Yet its animal cunning warned it: if this continued, it would die at the hands of this small adversary.

No longer willing to fight, the Crocodile King turned and began dragging itself back toward the distant swamp.

But Grim had anticipated this. As the beast laboriously turned, it discovered another black-robed figure barring its way, clutching a strange, spider-shaped artifact.

With its keen sense of smell, the Crocodile King detected the long-missed scent of flesh on this new enemy and let out a furious snarl. Facing the architect of today’s ordeal, it lunged, intent on battering its way home.

But in the next instant, a mass of white webbing descended, clinging to its short, thick forelimbs. At the same time, a flaming arrow shot forth, striking the upper part of its long, flat snout—right where its head and eyes were.

The Crocodile King snapped its eyes shut. Even its eyelids bore a layer of fine scales, but pain flared across its brow as wild fire engulfed its head.

Its forelimbs ensnared, its eyes burning with pain and unable to see, the beast’s movements slowed. The Earth Golem’s attacks grew only more frequent.

Grim had spared no expense for this fight. Each single-use web artifact was costly, and every one he used made his heart ache. But to maximize the beast’s entrapment, he kept activating them, binding all four limbs.

The Crocodile King’s raw strength was immense—at least a rating of fourteen. With such power, each web could restrain it for no more than six or seven seconds. If Grim hadn’t kept pelting its eyes with flaming arrows, blinding it and confusing its path, the beast might have broken through and escaped to its lair.

Yet, with such precise coordination, after a bitter siege of nearly fifteen minutes, at last the earth spike pierced the Crocodile King’s chest and belly, hidden beneath its massive body.