The moment Ken saw that massive claw, he realized that the vision he was witnessing was from the mutated giant eagle's perspective—and it wasn't in real-time.
In other words, what he was seeing was a memory from the eagle.
Ken tried to understand the mechanism of this. Typically, animal memories were stored in the neurons of the brain, and he had only consumed a small amount of blood, not the eagle's brain. How could he be seeing its memory? What was the principle behind this?
Setting aside his curiosity about the science behind it for now, Ken couldn't ignore the important details hidden in the brief moment of footage.
The rabbit inside the torn garbage bag seemed to be the one he had killed while drinking blood earlier.
Ken couldn't help but think of the vampire legends he'd read in various novels—how those bitten by vampires didn't die but were turned into vampires themselves. It was as if the vampire's saliva carried a virus that transformed those who were infected. Could it be that the eagle mutated because it had eaten the rabbit that had come into contact with his saliva?
But Ken quickly dismissed that theory for two reasons:
When he drank the rabbit's blood, he always drained it into a container, never allowing his saliva to touch the rabbit.
The claws in the footage were already massive, indicating that this was the mutated eagle, not the one he had encountered before.
Ken pondered the surroundings in the footage and determined that it must have been a garbage dump. Perhaps the mutated eagle had found the rabbit and become interested in it, and then, driven by hunger, had approached him?
But if that was the case, why didn't the eagle just attack him directly? Why the strange behavior of catching rats and dogs?
Could it have been trying to lure him into a trap by creating these distractions? The dead rat he found and the unusual scent left behind by the eagle could be explained by coincidence. If the eagle wanted his attention, it would have tossed the dead rat onto his balcony. Moreover, if it wanted to attack him in a secluded place, the small mountain he'd been visiting at night would have been a perfect spot.
Ken realized that, like him, the eagle was a creature that had mutated for some unknown reason.
As for why it was attacking him, after tasting the eagle's blood, Ken understood—it saw him as food.
He also realized why the dead rat had been left untouched: the eagle, much like him, had a mutated digestive system and only drank blood, not eating flesh.
Its enormous size was clearly a result of this mutation.
The eagle had thrown the dead rat into the mountains and the husky's body into the lake, perhaps trying to destroy the evidence.
Ken glanced at himself in the moonlight—his body covered in dirt and blood, his T-shirt discarded, standing there shirtless. If anyone saw him on the street, they might call the police or post a video on social media.
It was already past midnight, but the streets were far from empty.
And when he returned to the neighborhood, the security guards would definitely take notice, something he didn't want.
After some thought, Ken walked to the lake nearby and jumped into the shallows, immediately sinking into the mud up to his waist. He used the lake water to wash off the blood, then climbed out of the water. His pants were caked in mud, and the blood stains were no longer visible.
When he returned to the neighborhood, his disheveled appearance drew an odd look from the security guard at the entrance.
Ken gave a wry smile. "I went for a run and fell into the lake."
The guard stared at him, confused, before looking at him sympathetically as Ken walked past.
Returning home, wet and covered in mud, Ken quickly threw his soaked clothes and shoes into the trash bin, then took a quick shower before sitting down at his laptop.
From his search, Ken learned that the largest eagle in the world, the Bald Eagle, had a body length of 70-77 cm and a weight of 1.5-5.5 kg. While this was large for a bird, it was still several sizes smaller than the mutated giant eagle he had encountered.
He found some birds that could grow to 1.5-1.6 meters long and weigh dozens of kilograms, like ostriches and emus, but these birds couldn't fly due to their size.
Ken continued searching for images of large eagles and found that the mutated giant eagle's appearance resembled the Ulin Owl, which had a large, round head with pronounced facial disks and no ear tufts. However, compared to the Ulin Owl he found in pictures, the mutated eagle's feathers were much darker and lacked any white spots. It was harder to spot in the dark, especially when hiding.
Such a massive eagle appearing near a city would undoubtedly attract a lot of attention.
With so many cameras on the streets and almost everyone carrying a phone capable of taking pictures or videos, it would be easy to capture footage of the eagle.
Ken expanded his search using keywords like "giant bird," "huge eagle," and "mutant bird" on local forums and social media in the nearby cities, but found nothing related to the mutated eagle.
However, he did find a post on a forum in a neighboring town, where someone claimed they had seen a person standing on a tree near the village at night. When they tried to shine a flashlight on the person, they disappeared.
From the description, Ken thought it was likely the mutated eagle. He himself had almost mistaken it for a person in a coat standing in a tree. Unfortunately, the person had been too slow to take a photo.
Based on his previous observations of the mutated eagle and the one-second clip he saw, Ken believed that the eagle had an intelligence far beyond that of its kind and was deliberately avoiding humans. It likely only appeared at night, near the outskirts of the city, and hid in secluded places during the day to avoid detection.
This eagle had either only recently mutated and grown to this giant size, or it had lived in deep forests for years, evading humans. If it had been living near the city for a long time, it would have been difficult to completely avoid human attention.
If the eagle had come from deep in the mountains, what had brought it out? Had it sought out the rabbit corpse in the trash, or had it simply stumbled upon it by chance?
These questions still had no answers.
What Ken did know, however, was that he and the eagle were now both prey to each other.
Ken was deeply interested in the eagle, thinking that it might hold the key to understanding his own mutations.
Of course, he was also very interested in the eagle's blood. He was sure that its blood would provide far more energy than the blood of rabbits, chickens, or ducks he had previously consumed.
According to his usual pattern, he would feel hungry today and drink blood. He had already bought three rabbits, and this time, he would increase the amount of blood he drank, taking two rabbits' worth of blood.
He could begin the blood-drinking process now, and if the cycle remained the same, he would wake up in about 25 hours, right around the time he could go out and look for the mutated eagle again.
With more blood consumption, more mutations would follow, improving his strength, recovery, and sensory abilities—enhancements that would be useful in the inevitable confrontation with the eagle.
But Ken also worried—what if, after the intense battle that night, the eagle became frightened and gave up on him as prey? What if it retreated back into the mountains, making it impossible for him to track it?