Such a powerful punch had only left a shallow imprint and a web of cracks.
This alone was enough to show that the materials on this planet were far denser than those found elsewhere.
Under eighty times Earth's gravity, the density and mass of all matter were vastly greater than on Earth, so Lucas was not particularly surprised.
Soon, Lucas raised his palm and aimed it at the rock wall. A beam of energy flickered into existence.
The moment the beam struck the rock, it was like a hot knife cutting through butter—the surface began to melt rapidly.
Lucas stepped forward one pace at a time, never stopping the beam, using it to continuously carve and melt a passage ahead.
In barely ten minutes, he had created the entrance to a cave.
Hela, watching from behind, felt little emotional fluctuation.
She had lived alone in Hel for a thousand years and had long grown accustomed to solitude and deathly silence.
At times, she could only anchor her emotions in her hatred of Odin and her craving for war and conquest.
In the centuries that followed, she had even spoken to the dead, pouring out her thoughts despite knowing they could never understand.
Yet now, as she watched the man's back, a strange sense of relief quietly rose in her heart.
Eighty times gravity did not matter—sooner or later, she would adapt.
The monotony, the barrenness, the absence of vibrant scenery also did not matter. At the very least, this place still offered a brilliant star-filled sky, something Hel lacked.
What truly terrified her was loneliness.
And now, there was at least one intelligent being beside her—someone she could speak to.
At that moment, a smile appeared on Hela's face for the first time in over a thousand years.
Though stiff from disuse, it was a genuine smile from the heart.
---
"All right, the resting place is ready," Lucas said as he stepped out of the cave and turned to Hela.
"Choose any room you like. I'll take the other one."
"I'm going to confirm the safety of this planet now. I'll be back later."
Turning around, Lucas broke into a light jog, then slowly rose into the air and began his reconnaissance.
Watching his figure grow smaller in the distance, Hela murmured softly,
"Be careful."
Flying through the air, Lucas continuously scanned the ground below with his Ki, leaving markers along the way.
If they were going to live on this planet for an extended period, he needed to understand it thoroughly.
About five hours later, Lucas returned to the surface.
From his exploration, the planet was much like the Moon—desolate and silent, with no liquid, no vegetation, and no signs of life.
The planet orbited a star slightly larger than the Sun. Due to its own mass, it did not rotate to counteract gravity.
As a result, like the Moon, one half of the planet was locked in eternal daylight, while the other half lay in perpetual night.
Standing before Lucas was the boundary between the two.
After glancing at the pitch-black half, Lucas chose to stop and first restore his energy.
About ten minutes later, he stood up again and stepped into the eternal night.
No light reached this region; everything was pitch-black.
It was as if an invisible membrane sharply divided day and night, with no gradual sunrise or sunset like on Earth.
And then—
"Wait… why has the gravity increased again?"
Lucas was stunned.
Normally, a planet's gravitational pull should be relatively uniform unless something abnormal was at play.
When his AI finished calculating the data, it revealed that the gravity here had reached ninety-three times Earth's.
Even after adapting to eighty times gravity, Lucas found this difficult to endure.
Once gravity reaches a certain threshold, even an increase of half a unit can be enough to crush a person's vital functions—let alone more than ten times.
Fortunately, Lucas's body was not something that could be defeated by ninety-plus gravity alone.
Taking a deep breath, his physical body began gradually adapting to the new environment.
At the same time, Lucas raised his guard.
His Ki surged and quickly entered a combat-ready state.
He continued advancing deeper into the darkness—but after barely ten seconds, he suddenly stopped.
Within his perception, a life signature appeared ahead, then abruptly shifted to another position, its movements erratic and difficult to predict.
For the first time, Lucas encountered a living creature on this planet.
It moved at terrifying speed—so fast that even his enhanced dynamic vision struggled to lock onto it.
Boom!
While Lucas was airborne, he suddenly gained altitude. In the next instant, a figure burst out of the ground and shot straight toward him.
The explosive sound was like an arrow released from a bow—this, in a gravity environment approaching one hundred times Earth's.
If such a creature were on Earth, its speed would be utterly inconceivable.
With a heavy impact, Lucas was slammed backward by the sudden attacker.
He flew seven or eight meters before crashing into a low hill, finally stabilizing his body.
"What the hell is that thing?"
With no light available, Lucas relied entirely on energy perception to discern its form.
The creature resembled a giant scorpion, with an incredibly smooth carapace and a tail-like appendage clearly designed for attack.
Without hesitation, Lucas flung out a Ki blast.
With a resonant hum, it struck the scorpion-like monster head-on.
The flash of light was like a rising sun, briefly illuminating the surrounding terrain.
Boom!
Yet the scorpion creature emerged completely unscathed.
Lucas frowned slightly.
That Ki blast should not have killed it—but at the very least, it should have injured it.
Then the creature rushed in.
When Lucas punched its shell, a violent recoil surged back through his arm.
That carapace was likely harder than diamond.
"So it's a biological armor formed under extreme gravity," Lucas assessed quickly.
"And it can perform ultra-fast short-distance bursts within a fifteen-meter range."
His thoughts moved fast—but his attacks moved even faster.
After tanking a punch and realizing Lucas couldn't easily kill it, the scorpion creature grew even more aggressive.
Using its short-range mobility, it launched a series of ferocious charge attacks.
Each impact slammed into Lucas's body, producing repeated sounds like metal colliding with metal.
_____
T/N:
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