FREE USE in Primitive World

Chapter 224: Chapter 224: Hostile Ecosystem

The deeper Sol ventured into the Great Orrath, the more he realized that human imagination was a woefully inadequate tool for grasping true scale.

In his past life on Earth, when he sat behind a glowing monitor reading and watching epic fantasy novels and movies, he had spent countless hours reading and watching descriptions of primitive, unbroken wildernesses.

He had read a world in his mind where there were no sprawling kingdoms of stone, no civilized cities with cobbled streets and kings on velvet thrones. There was only the massive, endless jungle, and the independent, intelligent humanoid races that formed warring tribes beneath its canopy.

But reading about a massive jungle was one thing, actively trying not to be eaten by it was another.

The Great Orrath was terrifyingly alive. As he moved North by Northeast, the bruised-purple trunks of the ancient trees grew so wide that he doubted whether they could even be classified as trees anymore.

The canopy above became an impenetrable ceiling of overlapping, silver-green leaves, completely blocking out the sun. The only illumination came from the ground up… clusters of bioluminescent fungi that clung to the massive, coiled roots, casting eerie, shifting pools of cyan and violet light across the forest floor.

It was a hostile, primal ecosystem that operated on a single, brutal law: eat or be eaten.

He spent the next few hours fully immersed in stealth mode. His muscles moved with predatory silence, his boots gliding over the damp moss without breaking a single twig. He was like a ghost walking through a graveyard of giants.

He saw things that made his brain spin with inspiration and sheer terror. He bypassed a grove of weeping willows whose drooping branches were actually thousands of thin, carnivorous tentacles, currently slowly digesting the suspended corpse of a massive boar.

He hid behind a root system as a herd of six-legged, deer-like creatures thundered past, their antlers sparking with raw, untamed lightning. They were clearly Essence-Born, but they were herd animals. Sol let them pass. He wasn’t here to farm low-level herbivores.

He still didn’t fully understand the complete rules of his transmigration, or the true nature of the artifact that had been responsible for his arrival… Orphos… but he knew that in a primitive world, power was the only absolute truth. If he wanted to survive, build his own foundation, and maybe even thrive among these warring tribes, he needed an anchor that could handle the sheer, crushing weight of his Golden Liquid core.

By the fourth hour of his expedition, the ambient environment began to change.

The low, constant hum of the jungle… the clicking of insects, the distant roars of predators, the rustling of leaves… started to fade. It didn’t taper off naturally, it dropped dead, as if a thick, invisible blanket had been thrown over the area.

Sol stopped. His boots sank slightly into the moss.

“The classic apex predator radius,” Sol sighed helplessly, his grip tightening on the heavy Void-Oak shaft of his spear. “When the ambient mobs go quiet, you’ve crossed into a boss room.”

He activated his Crimson-Sight, the colorful, bioluminescent world washing away into a stark, thermal landscape of spiritual density. He scanned the massive trunks and the thick canopy above. At first, he saw nothing but the ambient, cold blue of the ancient wood.

Then, the smell hit him.

It wasn’t the fresh, ozone scent of raw essence or the damp smell of moss. It was the heavy, metallic stench of dried blood and rotting meat.

Sol moved forward cautiously, stepping around a massive fern, and entered a wide, natural clearing.

What he saw made his eyes narrow into dangerous slits.

It was a territorial marker, and a profoundly arrogant one at that. In the center of the clearing, the massive corpses of five Blood-Apes… yes, the exact same Omen-Blood species that had nearly torn Varn’s chest open back at the Grove… had been brutally piled up and wedged between the massive, jagged roots of a dead tree.

Seeing that their flesh was still intact, it was clear that they had been slaughtered. Not for food, but for display. Their four muscular arms hung limply, their chests ripped open, their cores completely devoured.

Someone is flexing, Sol thought, stepping closer to examine the gruesome pile. He reached out and touched the torn armor of one of the apes. The cuts were incredibly clean, requiring immense physical power. An Omen-Blood or even a Lord-Beast. And it’s strong enough to casually hunt Blood-Apes for display.

Before he could plan ahead, his Crimson-Sight suddenly flared violently.

A massive thermal signature, previously masked by the ambient temperature of the canopy, suddenly spiked into existence directly above him. The damn fucking predator hadn’t just arrived, it had been sitting there the entire time, perfectly camouflaged, waiting for the prey to step into the center of its dining room.

Sol froze for a fraction of a second. He didn’t look up, not that he even had the time for it.

Trusting the screaming warning of his intuition, Sol threw himself backward, abandoning his stealth entirely to kick off the ground with explosive, superhuman force.

CRASH!

Where Sol had been standing a millisecond prior, a creature landed with the concussive force of a falling meteor. The impact shattered the massive roots where the apes were piled, sending a shockwave of dirt, moss, and ape blood exploding outward in a perfect ring.

Sol slid backward on his boots, his obsidian spear already leveled, his Golden Liquid surging aggressively to meet the threat.

As the dust cleared, the king of the territory revealed itself.

It was a feline, or well, at least it looked like one, as it was built like a siege engine. It was easily the size of a modern car, its body covered not in fur, but in interlocking, overlapping plates of dark, metallic scales that gleamed like polished obsidian. Its massive paws ended in claws that looked like blackened steel scythes. But the most terrifying feature was its tail… it was long, prehensile, and tipped with a massive, spiked club of condensed stone.