FREE USE in Primitive World - Chapter 229: Night In The Forest

Chapter 229: Chapter 229: Night In The Forest

“Alright then,” Sol whispered into the misty gloom, his crimson eyes burning with absolute, unwavering resolve. “Time to take some risks.”

He took exactly five confident, ground-eating strides toward the darker, denser horizon.

Then, he stopped.

The perpetual, silver-green twilight of the Great Orrath canopy wasn’t just dimming anymore, it was actively dying, the tiny slivers of sky visible through the overlapping, silver-green leaves were rapidly deepening from a dusky violet to an absolute, suffocating ink black darkness.

The shadows stretching out from the massive, skyscraper-sized roots were rapidly lengthening, swallowing the faint, ambient light of the jungle. The temperature was plummeting, turning the damp humidity into a bone-chilling mist.

Sol’s gamer instincts… honed by thousands of hours of survival RPGs and endless NovelFire tropes… threw up a massive, flashing red stop sign in his mind.

Wait a minute, Sol thought, his boots sinking slightly into the cooling moss. I might have a heavily mutated, Golden Liquid core and absurd physical stats, but I am still in a high-level, uncharted zone. No matter what world you are in, the jungle at night is infinitely more dangerous than the jungle during the day. And in a primordial death-world where insects melt deer into soup? Running around in the dark is just asking for a Game Over.

During the day, the predators relied on sight, speed, and brute force. At night, the true nightmares woke up… the ambush hunters, the ethereal beasts, the toxic swarms that actively hunted by thermal heat and essence signatures.

Even though his Golden Liquid core hummed warmly in his chest, passively feeding him energy and keeping exhaustion at bay, his mind was still human. He had spent the last several hours fighting giant acidic ant, a panther, Black-wolves and other beasts. He needed to process the day, organize his thoughts, and reset his mental fatigue.

“The spirits can wait until morning,” Sol muttered to himself, pragmatically altering his immediate quest objective. “Rule number one of the wilderness: don’t get caught on the ground after dark.”

He was entering the true deep woods and to face the stronger beats, he needed to be mentally sharp. So, he decided to look for a safe place to spend the night.

Deciding to scout for a vantage point, Sol approached one of the colossal, purple-barked trees nearby that functioned as the pillars of this jungle. Its trunk was as wide as a fortress wall. Channeling a fraction of his heavy essence into his arms and legs, he jumped. With his enhanced physical strength, scaling the massive trunk was effortless. He didn’t need branches, he simply channeled a fraction of his heavy essence into his fingers and boots, gripping the deep, jagged fissures in the bark and climbing the vertical expanse like a seasoned mountaineer scaling a rock face.

He moved silently, ascending dozens of feet in just a few seconds, moving with the terrifying speed and agility of a predatory spider, completely bypassing the lower branches where the canopy predators liked to stalk.

He climbed for several more minutes, the ground disappearing into a sea of dark fog below him. As he neared the upper-middle section of the canopy, he paused, clinging to the bark to scout the surrounding area.

Through the thick, silver-green leaves of an adjacent giant tree, he finally spotted it.

About fifty yards away, near the top of a particularly massive Void-Oak, there was a natural hollow. It was a dark, recessed opening where a massive branch had likely snapped off centuries ago, leaving a cavity in the main trunk.

It seemed doable, so Sol perfectly calculated the distance and the wind resistance. He pushed off his current tree, soaring through the damp air in a massive, terrifying leap of faith. He crashed through the canopy of the Void-Oak, snapping a few minor branches, and landed heavily on the thick, petrified wood just below the hollow.

He immediately activated his Crimson-Sight and peered into the darkness of the cavity. He sniffed the air and checked the edges meticulously.

Cold, Sol noted with satisfaction. No claw marks. No thermal signatures. No residual spiritual density. No bones or acidic slime near the entrance.

It was completely devoid of animal traces. No giant birds or arboreal serpents had claimed it. It was a blank slate.

He climbed up to the lip of the opening, only to realize that while the hollow itself looked deep, the actual entrance was far too narrow for his broad, heavily muscled shoulders to squeeze through.

“Nothing a little remodeling can’t fix,” Sol muttered.

He drew one of his balde. Knowing the mundane stone would shatter against the petrified wood of a Great Orrath tree, he flooded the blade with a dense layer of his Golden Liquid. The edge glowed with a faint, heavy, golden aura.

He jammed the knife into the wood and began to carve. The reinforced blade sliced through the ancient, purple-black timber like a hot scalpel through wax. He worked quickly and quietly, shaving away thick slabs of bark and wood until the opening was wide enough.

Sol slid inside.

The interior of the hollow was surprisingly spacious, completely insulated from the damp heavy air of the jungle. It was a natural, dry cavern suspended hundreds of feet in the air. The wood inside was smooth and dry, smelling faintly of old dust and rich, spiced sap. It was easily large enough for him to stand up completely straight, and more importantly, he could lay down without having his boots hang out of the entrance. It felt like a high-altitude vacation spot.

“Not a bad starter base,” Sol grunted approvingly.

He spent the next few minutes cleaning it up, kicking out centuries of accumulated dead leaves and loose wood chips. He then carefully scaled down a few branches to harvest a bundle of massive, fern-like leaves that felt as soft as velvet… making absolutely sure they didn’t possess microscopic teeth or flesh-eating spores before bringing them back up.

He layered the giant leaves across the dry wooden floor, creating a thick, surprisingly comfortable makeshift bed.

Finally, Sol sat down on his leaf mattress. He let out a long, heavy exhale.

For the first time since he had entered this primitive jungle, he actually had a moment to completely relax his nerves. The constant, razor-sharp tension that had gripped his muscles since he entered the Great Orrath finally began to uncoil. He had time to actually relax his nerves, albeit just a bit.

He unstrapped his bone armor, letting it clatter softly against the wood, and leaned back against the curved inner wall of the tree.

He pulled the waterskin from his belt and took several long, greedy gulps of the cool, metallic-tasting water. He dug into his woven pouch, pulling out a strip of the heavily salted Essence-Meat and a glowing, cyan Star-Fruit.

The meat was tough and tasted vaguely of copper, but it was packed with dense calories. The Star-Fruit, however, was incredibly sweet and tart, bursting with a refreshing juice that instantly cleared the fatigue from his mind and instantly replenished the minor mental fatigue of the day’s constant Crimson-Sight usage.

As he ate, Sol shifted his position, leaning against the edge of the carved opening to look out over the Great Orrath.