Chapter 153: Into The Jungle

Even though there were three stars hanging lazily overhead, their light could still not completely pierce the heavy and thick leaves of the forest. 

In fact, I would have gone as far as saying it was far more like a jungle than the verdant oaks and trees I was used to walking through forests in the countrysides of the UK. 

"I don't like it in here," I said under my breath, my voice hushed and tense. 

Something had the hair on the back of my neck and down my arms standing up on end. I didn't know if it was just because I was walking through a dark and gloomy jungle or if there was something actually out there, but something had me seriously on edge. 

"No, neither do I," Yr'Arl replied, going so far as to drop his usual formal greeting, "My predatory senses, passed down through many millennia of evolution, are telling me that something is stalking us."

Well, that was a terrifying thought. 

What would be daring enough to try and track two beings who were incredibly strong such as me and Yr'Arl? 

The only thing that would do something like that was something confident that it could at the very least pick one of us off to be devoured somewhere in the jungle, which wasn't exactly a comforting line of mental deduction. 

"You wanna do a scan for nearby life signs or something?" I asked, that was still something that I hadn't managed to get the hang of. 

"That could alert the creature to the fact we know it is following us," Yr'Arl said, "It might then take that as an opportunity to attack us." 

I swallowed hard. We had no idea what the creature was, or how powerful it was, but I was sure that together we would be able to fend it off. BB was sure that we should be way stronger than anything else in the area, and that was enough reassurance for me. Sort of. 

<You'll be fine,> BB said, drawing out the last word as if to punctuate just how uncertain everything was. 

"The creature is going to end up attacking us anyway, if we figure out where it is and how strong it is we could get the jump on it and make our escape," I said to Yr'Arl. 

Even if the creature was stronger than us, if we attacked it out of nowhere with our full force then there would be a chance that we could at least stun it long enough to make our escape. 

"Very well, Squadron Leader Jacob Lyre," Yr'Arl said, before linking his hands and beginning to chant under his breath. 

It was interesting to note that, when I took control of the situation, he started referring to me by his formal address again. Maybe taking control made him feel a bit calmer about things, I'd have to keep that in mind for the future. 

As he chanted a small circle of burning white energy began to manifest around his fist, slowly growing both in rotational speed and in size, until eventually it blasted outward in a flash of light and wind, illuminating everything around us. 

"Behind you, act immediately," Yr'Arl snapped out, at exactly the same time as I heard a rumbling growl from directly behind me. 

There was no time to push BB down into Syncro mode, if I took the time I'd probably have my head bitten off, so instead I'd just have to rely on my own newly enhanced levels of speed and strength. 

I turned on the spot and unleashed a punch so hard and fast that it broke the sound barrier as it flew, cracking through the air and then hitting… absolutely nothing. 

The creature jumped back and landed on the trunk of a tree. 

It looked alien, that was for sure, like nothing I had seen on Earth. 

It was a quadrupedal creature and had a long winding tail, so in some ways it resembled many predatory species from back on my home world, but that was about where the similarities ended. 

At the end of the creature's four legs were raptor-like claws with three toes at the front and a strange tentacle-like appendage at the rear. It was those tentacles that were allowing it to stay on the trunk of the tree, anchored into the bark like little grappling hooks. 

The creature had no fur or feathers, it skin was scaly and smooth, a dark grey and very clearly thick with armour. 

Its legs and body were also heavily muscled, each twitch of the creature caused a ripple through its strong muscles, they looked strong enough to rip anything apart. 

The strangest part of the alien predator, though, was its neck and its head. 

The neck jutted out of the body at least a foot and was also laden with incredibly strong muscles. The head then emerged from the neck as if the neck and the head were actually one and the same, a bony carapace revealed by thick flaps of scaled skin that flared out and in with each breath. 

The mouth of the creature was more beak than anything else. The hooked bone was lined with razor sharp teeth, if they were to chomp down on something they would have a lot of trouble breaking free. Finally, there were the three tongues, waggling in the air as it sniffed. 

A notable exception to the creature's physiology were its eyes. There weren't any. The creature was completely blind, and going by the depth of its breathing and the waggling of its tongues I could only imagine that it was tasting the air to try and ascertain where we were. 

If it were blind there was also a very high chance that the creature would have excellent hearing, and of course it had some kind of manna sense as well since it was able to know and understand that Yr'Arl had cast a location spell. 

It was quick. It was smart. It was incredibly strong. 

And we were going to have to fight it.