It's not surprising that David was shocked by what he saw. Not to mention that he was a half-baked terrorist who joined the terrorist organization halfway through his career by cheating, swindling, and stealing, even the ruthless bandits like Markram were stunned by what they saw.
Apart from the two unlucky guys, fourteen out of the remaining fifteen people were rubbing their eyes. They all suspected that their hallucinations were caused by their brains being unable to see women for a long time in the forest, which was why such an incredible scene was appearing before their eyes.
However, after rubbing their eyes, they discovered that apart from the half of their companion's body that was left on the ground being gone, the monster was still on the shore, but only half of its body, which was as big as a small mountain, was exposed, while the other half was hidden in the water.
The words "Beware of ferocious beasts" suddenly appeared in Markram's mind. He recalled the warning sign he had just seen and stepped on. Only now did he realize how much he had to pay for questioning the truth of something without any basis.
"ah!"
Markram suddenly let out a howl. These two men were his brothers-in-arms who had followed him for many years and had escaped the joint attack by the US and Russian governments, but they never expected to die in this damned forest.
Although he was terrified of the horrific creature, the tragic death of his brother ignited Markram's fighting spirit. After a howl filled with grief and rage, he shouted, "Full fire! Shoot in the eyes! Monte, load the grenades! I'm going to blast this bastard apart..."
Although the gunfire hadn't done anything to the prehistoric crocodile, Markram really didn't believe that the monster's eyes could stop bullets. If that were the case, he would definitely throw away his gun and run away.
At Markram's roar, the team, which had been spreading out in a fan shape, surrounded the monster. The sound of various guns rang out, causing the nearby jungle creatures to flee for their lives.
There were quite a few sharpshooters in this team, including Markram, who basically shot every time at the crocodile's two lantern-sized eyes. If he couldn't hit such a large target, it would only prove that his identity as a former Russian special forces instructor was a sham.
Just as the bullets left the barrel, the giant crocodile seemed to sense something, and its eyelids suddenly drooped. Markram's first few bullets all hit its eyelids.
If they could damage the monster's eyes, and then hide in the nearby jungle, they could easily kill this "Godzilla-like" behemoth. Several people cheered as the bullet hit the eyelid.
About thirty meters away from the giant crocodile, one of the team members, seeing what appeared to be blood flowing from beneath the monster's eyes, shouted, "Ram, well done..."
"Isolde, watch out!" Just as the thug turned around and gave Markram a thumbs-up, the captain's voice suddenly rang in his ears.
Just as Isolde was about to turn his head, he heard a whoosh of wind in his ear, and then he felt as if he had been hit by a train traveling at 200 kilometers per hour, and his whole body was thrown into the air.
Isolde's tragic ordeal was not over yet. After being inexplicably thrown more than ten meters into the air at an angle, a huge, funnel-shaped mouth awaited him below. Isolde, whose bones were broken from the impact, did not even have time to scream before his body slid down his throat and into the giant crocodile's body.
"Crocodile...crocodile..."
Just as the giant crocodile's tail, hidden in the water, suddenly lashed out at Isolde, everyone saw clearly that this... was a gigantic crocodile, though it was more than a hundred times larger than an ordinary crocodile.
Seeing yet another brother perish in the giant crocodile's jaws, Markram's eyes bloodshot. He roared into his earpiece, "Monte, what the hell are you doing? Are you blind? Smash it to pieces!"
"Roger that, Captain. I'll blast it to pieces..."
Monte's voice came through the headset, followed by a loud bang. The giant crocodile's massive body seemed to have been hit by something, and it was jolted back several meters. At its tail, a ball of fire exploded.
"hit……"
Before the cheers could even be heard, the people around realized that the grenade's power was not as great as they had imagined. The grenade that exploded on the crocodile's tail only managed to tear open the crocodile's scales, leaving a wound two or three meters in size.
For a crocodile larger than three luxury buses, such wounds, though painful, are by no means fatal. The successive injuries have enraged the crocodile, causing it to move its four claws rapidly.
"ah!"
Monte, who had just fired the howitzer and hadn't even had a chance to observe the results, suddenly felt everything go black. The giant crocodile, which had been thirty or forty meters away, was now right in front of him.
Before Monte could react, his upper body was bitten by the giant crocodile. As the crocodile's head was raised high, the enormous bite force caused his lower body to fall to the ground. His legs, severed at the waist, were still twitching on the ground, while his upper body, covered in ammunition, had disappeared.
"Shoot into its wound..."
The brutal fighting drove Markram to a bloodthirsty rage; the deaths of his old comrades nearly drove him to madness.
When people are under extreme fear or intense crisis, they generally have two reactions: one is to turn around and run away and surrender, and the other is to fight to the death. Markram chose the latter at this moment.
The remaining dozen or so people formed a dense metal storm around the giant crocodile's body, unleashing a hail of bullets. Without the protection of its scales, the crocodile's lower body was riddled with bullets, and its movements gradually slowed down.
However, its body was simply too large. The person furthest away from it was only a short distance away with a single exertion of its limbs. The giant crocodile, which became increasingly ferocious amidst the gunfire, swallowed six more people into its belly in succession.
"Ah, Captain, I don't want to die, I don't want to die!"
A scream came from the giant crocodile's mouth. A team member who had no time to dodge was bitten through by the giant crocodile. His body was pierced through by the cone-shaped teeth.
Upon seeing that the person being swallowed by the giant crocodile was a member of the team specializing in explosives, Markram, who was almost desperate to kill the crocodile, suddenly shouted, "Lambert, blow it up!" Perhaps it was an instinct developed from a lifetime of handling explosives, but after Markram's voice fell, the seven remaining people on the scene noticed that a wisp of blue smoke was coming out of the giant crocodile's mouth.
Chapter 1266 The Mantis Stalks the Cicada, Unaware of the Oriole Behind (Part 1)
Before Lambert's body slid into the crocodile's throat, he detonated all the solid explosives he was carrying. The smoke from the fuses drifted out of the crocodile's mouth.
For this enormous prehistoric crocodile, the fuse burning in its throat was merely a little hot. After swallowing the creature, it turned its attention to the other people.
The giant crocodile didn't know how many years it had lived in this forest, but this was the first time it had suffered such harm. Almost in a frenzy, it, like Markram and the others, was bloodthirsty.
The crocodile's policy has always been that a dog that bites doesn't bark. Although it's no longer ambushing, it hasn't made a sound from beginning to end, only cruelly carrying out its killing spree.
"Da da... da da da..."
This was already the third magazine that Markram had emptied, but these 6.92mm bullets were like tickling the monster; even when they hit the area blasted open by the grenade launcher, they only slowed its movements down slightly.
"Damn it, get out of my way..."
Just as Markram was loading the fourth magazine from his waist, he suddenly found himself in darkness. The sunlight overhead seemed to be blocked by something. Markram knew that death... had finally found him.
Just when Markram was almost in despair, he suddenly heard a "boom..."
With a loud bang, following the explosion, a series of muffled explosions seemed to follow, much like a chain reaction of blasts on the Iraqi battlefield.
Although Markram reacted quickly enough to roll to the ground as soon as the first explosion rang out and tried his best to roll in the opposite direction of the giant crocodile, he still felt a numbness in his back and a shockwave of blood that sent his body flying far away.
"puff……"
Upon landing, Markram was covered in blood from head to toe, making it impossible to distinguish between his own vomit and the blood from the crocodile's exploded body.
Markram was actually quite lucky. Just as the crocodile was about to swallow him whole, the explosives and grenades that Lambert had set off detonated inside the crocodile's stomach.
If Lambert were the only one carrying bombs and explosives, he might not have been able to blow the crocodile apart. However, the crocodile had already swallowed 10 fully armed men, each of whom was carrying ample ammunition and grenades.
Lambert's detonation of solid explosives acted as a trigger, igniting all the ammunition lodged in the corpses within the enormous stomach.
Countless bullets flew through the giant crocodile's belly, and grenades exploded inside it. Even this invulnerable prehistoric monster was torn to pieces.
The giant crocodile lay motionless on the lakeshore, its massive body like a small mountain. Its scales were riddled with holes, and palm-sized scales were scattered all over the ground.
Chunks of flesh and blood were scattered on the ground from the giant crocodile's body. Blood gushed out from its huge wounds like a fountain, forming a small river on the ground that flowed into the lake behind it.
Fish from the river gathered on the bank, devouring the crocodile's blood as if enjoying a feast. The former overlord of the lake had now been swallowed by small fish.
"Cough cough, Stephen, shoot a few more shots into the wound, see if it's dead..."
Markram, who was vomiting blood repeatedly from the shockwave of the explosion, no longer had the strength to pick up his submachine gun. The courage he had shown earlier had vanished after surviving the crocodile's jaws. The clear lake water and blue sky stirred his will to survive.
"Da da... da da da..."
A burst of thirty bullets rained down on the giant crocodile's riddled body, each one tearing into its flesh. The prehistoric monster, which had just been wreaking havoc, lay motionless on the ground, clearly dead.
Markram breathed a sigh of relief, looked around, and couldn't help but feel sad. Of the more than ten brothers who had followed him through thick and thin, now only seven remained, including himself. As for David, who had led them to the "path of light," he was not among these seven.
The scene was too chaotic, and Markram didn't know if David had been swallowed by the giant crocodile, so he shouted loudly, "David, where is David?"
"Ram, I'm...I'm sorry, I...I didn't know there was such a monster here..."
David's voice came from behind a big tree more than 20 meters away. The guy's pants were still wet from being scared. The scene just now had really terrified him.
"David, this isn't your fault..."
With the help of one of his men, Markram stood up and said with a ferocious expression, "Damn it, blame the person who left the sign. Why didn't they explain it more clearly?"
There are some people in this world who are self-centered no matter what they do. If they get credit or benefits, they keep them all. If they make a mistake, they can always find a way to vent their anger.
Zhuang Rui kindly wrote warning signs and put them up there, but Markram didn't take them seriously at the time. Now that he has suffered heavy losses, he blames Zhuang Rui for not explaining things clearly.
"Yes, find those two guys, and we must skin them alive..."
When David heard that Markram didn't blame him, he immediately started using his silver tongue to appease his men. When you've lost a battle, it's important to do some mental work.
He was heartbroken too. These ruthless bandits were his core members. To gain a foothold in Africa, each one was crucial. Losing so many people at once raised questions about their future survival.
"puff!"
David was walking toward Markram when he suddenly felt something burst under his foot. He looked up and saw a human eyeball. He turned pale with fright, and his cool crotch almost got rained on again.
"Ralph, go and cut some meat. After we eat, we'll go inside the castle and take a look..."
To hide his unease, David yelled at his younger brother. To be fair, the boy was quite lucky; he hadn't even lost a hair in the carnage.
Upon hearing David's words, Markram nodded repeatedly: "Yes, roast it and eat it. Damn it, I'm going to pull out all its teeth to remember my brothers..."
However, these guys seemed to have forgotten that the giant crocodile had just swallowed more than a dozen of their brothers. Although it wouldn't have digested them so quickly, the explosion just now had already pulverized the people in the giant crocodile's stomach.
In other words, the flesh and blood of the giant crocodile are ultimately infused with the blood of its brothers. A group of people with a conscience would certainly not think of eating the flesh of a giant crocodile.
For these guys who walk on the edge of death, at times, let alone eating crocodile meat that might contain the flesh and blood of their own brothers, they might even eat living people. Ralph immediately took a dagger and started cutting meat.
Even though the castle ahead might hold immense wealth, the shadow of death silenced the group, now reduced to only eight men, and they found even the most delicious crocodile meat utterly tasteless.
"Damn, this is a big event...it really is a big event..."
The scene that just happened, though only a few minutes long, was breathtaking for Peng Fei, who was watching from afar. If it were made into a movie, it would be a hundred times more exciting than any disaster film in history.
The ferocity of the crocodile far exceeded Peng Fei's imagination. These living people were as vulnerable as puppets in front of it, and its sharp teeth easily tore them to pieces like chewing biscuits.
The weapons in the hands of these well-equipped guys, apart from the grenade launcher which caused some damage to the giant crocodile, were completely unable to penetrate the crocodile's scales.
If Lambert hadn't detonated all the explosives strapped to his body beforehand, causing an explosion inside the crocodile's internal organs, even if the entire team had been wiped out, they probably would have only inflicted minor external injuries on the crocodile.
After seeing that things had come to a close, Peng Fei silently slid down from the tree, preparing to return to Zhuang Rui's side. He was afraid that Zhuang Rui would hear the gunshots and come here, and that he would definitely clash with these ruthless guys.
"Huh? Holy crap, it's not over yet?"
Just as Peng Fei was about to turn and leave, he suddenly noticed out of the corner of his eye that the vines at the very top of the castle seemed a little different from before.
"Damn, the giant python has come out too? This guy really knows how to pick his timing..."
At the very top of the castle, a serpent head the size of a millstone slid down the city wall like a ghost. This giant python itself had a dark body, intertwined with dark green vines, making it difficult to spot even in the daytime.
Unlike the fleeting glimpse last night, Peng Fei saw it much more clearly today. The giant python in the binoculars was more than two meters thick and covered with palm-sized scales, just like the legendary dragon.
Where the python crawled, there were some transparent liquid substances that shimmered in the sunlight; these were secretions unique to snakes.
"This is going to be good..."
Seeing that the direction the giant python was crawling in was where the prehistoric crocodile lay dead, Peng Fei couldn't help but grin. He quickly turned around, scrambled back up the tree on all fours, and lay down comfortably to watch the show.
Anyway, according to Zhuang Rui, they could leave the jungle by helicopter that night, and Peng Fei didn't mind experiencing the cruelty of the jungle law one more time before leaving.
"Damn it, this is a classic case of the mantis stalking the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind! How could this giant python be so cunning?"
The bloody slaughter by the prehistoric crocodile and the actions of the giant python could not escape the notice of Zhuang Rui, who was several kilometers away.