Two yellow eyes hung in the black water. Neither blinked. Below them, a row of jointed mouthparts clicked fast enough to send a tremor through the salt water.
Pei Jing sank two inches into his stance, letting his boots settle in the iron dust. He finished turning toward the two yellow eyes. The scrape came from the legs braced below them.
A shell eighteen feet wide. This spirit crab had ten walking legs in addition to its two claws. Each walker was as thick as a fir trunk and had a point that went into the quartzite. Barnacles and tubeworms covered the back. One of the claws weighed at least twelve hundred pounds.
A Deep-Sea Razorback Trench Crab at the peak of Tier Two. It must have lived under the plateau, feeding on the dust that came off the meteorite. To the crab, he was another creature that had come into its feeding ground.
The right claw lifted and snapped shut. Blue light flashed between the pincers. A shock rolled through the water and cut a trench in the loose rock.
Pei Jing let it lift him. He rose six feet and turned sideways to the rush of water. The claw passed through the space he’d been in and cracked the bedrock beneath him.
