Vol. 3 Chap. 126 Woof Woof

Vol. 3 Chap. 126 Woof Woof

Truth felt a creeping shortness of breath. He was in the middle of a forest, on the side of a mountain, and he felt claustrophobic. Trapped on his little island of rock in a sea of horrors. Watching the little creeping worm things wriggle along the side of the rock. Some starting to creep up the rock, before sliding down again.

Im just a part of the rock. Im just a tree. Nothing to see here. Im not even a bird. I am totally not worth noticing. There is no I here at all. There is just rocks and trees.

He focused hard on not breathing. He could hold his breath for ten minutes, easily. Longer, even. Tens of minutes, maybe. So he didnt have to breathe now. He controlled every tiny muscle in his body. He could even stop his own heart if he had to. So he could be perfectly still. Perfectly still.

Truth forced his attention to little details. Was he radiating heat? Maybe? Probably? He did his best to seal all the heat inside himself. He could seal in cosmic energy, so he could seal in heat. It might hurt him, but he would live.

Anything with heat vision would see a lumpy shape move from thirty seven degrees down to the comfortable twenty one of the ambient air.

Scent? He had relied on the Blessing of the Silent Forest to let his scent blend in with the world around him. He leaned into that. Rather than trying to vanish entirely, he allowed himself to smell like the forest. He smelled like pine, and mountain air, and the early days of summer. Like a timeless moment, existing from before the advent of humanity on this world, or after its passing.

He didnt stop his heart. He wasnt sure he could keep his balance perched on the rock, and the little transparent threads were seething all around. He could force it to slow. Slower and slower. Forcing his body to calm down. The thing with the glaring eyes would tire soon enough, or simply go back to hiding. Either way, he would wait for the eyes to close. nove(l)bi(n.)com

The wind stirred the pines. No birds called, no animals rustled through the undergrowth. Even the insects had gone quiet and still. Whatever it was that hid here had driven them all away. Or destroyed them.

He didnt wonder what it was. He did his best to forget that he even existed.

The alien eyes darted around. Interrogating everything. Examining every errant breeze. The w-shaped pupils shrank, or grew, or even elongated, seemingly turning the entirety of the eye into a hungry little mouth. Other than their jerky movements, there was no indication that anything unnatural was there at all. It was just a rock. Just another innocent part of an empty forest.

The line between predator and prey was thin. Quite often, it was a question of who pulled off the ambush best. The hidden monster slowly started to close its eyes again. Stillness returned to the forest.

Truth held his breath for as long as he could, but eventually, breath and consciousness both had to make their return. He let it come slowly, softly. No sudden gasps for air. Just gentle, small inhalations and exhalations with the stirring breeze.

He did not think for a single second that thing was asleep, or that it was any less attentive now that its eyes were closed. It was just hiding. Waiting for something to set foot in its trap.

Truth started carefully looking around. His first instinct was to use the trees, but presumably there was something nasty on or in the trees too. Anyone willing to stick whatever this was here was not going to just ignore the vertical side of things.

He carefully looked behind him. Did he see the transparent worm-things? Maybe. They were damn hard to see even for him. So maybe touching them wasnt instant death, or perhaps they had to be activated by the eye-thing. They hadnt triggered Incisive until he saw the eyes, but could be just alarmingly good stealth.

And, why this was just occurring to him now he couldnt say, but what level was Starbrite when he came to this planet? Must have been pretty high. Level eight? Nine? He couldnt possibly have been lower than Level Seven or he would have been exterminated before he had a chance to grow. He might keep very quiet, but there were some extremely motivated people looking for him.

And now he had built his little nest in a volcano that was a tourist attraction in two countries.

There was something there and he just wasnt seeing it. No one else was seeing it either, which wasnt reassuring. If they had seen it, they would presumably be doing something more drastic than fucking around playing spy games. The phrase Strategic scale curses came to mind, as did high tier summons.

But no. No, they just stuck a wannabe maintenance tech in a tree and called it a day. He glared at the mountain. There continued to be no big metal hatches sticking out of blindingly white concrete pads.

The wind stirred the needles, making the trees shiver and hiss. Nice afternoon, really. The gentle swaying of the branches was soothing. He needed soothing.

Truth felt defeated and angry. Defeated, because how was he supposed to search? And angry, because this was obviously, manifestly, dumb. Spell resistance notwithstanding, this was dumb. At the very least they should be able to tell him how to get into the base. But no. Even with all the this cost a life secrets on Merkovahs information crystal the exact location of the entrances were not known.

The wind picked up a bit. It was gusting solidly now. Still nice, but now it was downright windy. His tree was swaying a bit. If anything, it made the forest even prettier to watch. Even if it looked like some of the trees just vanished, you knew it was a trick of the light. Your eyes deceiving-

Truth slowly blinked. He rotated his head and stared hard at a very particular pine tree. A strong gust blew again, and once again, the play of light and shadow-

No it fucking didnt, that tree just vanished and something is trying to make me think it didint!

He glared at it, trying to force himself to see through the illusion. It occurred to him that, other than Obliteration, he didnt have a good illusion cracking ability. And if he used Obliteration, they would definitely know he was here.

He did not want to play Forest Friends With Dr. Sun and his Neverending Needles. He would be quite happy if he never saw the good doctor ever again.

The glaring continued. He was trying to determine the shape of what he was looking at, but had to rely on things suddenly vanishing and his mind loudly informing him that everything was fine. The going was slow, and worse, it was inconsistent. The invisible part was in a consistent location, but appeared to be very irregularly shaped. He could spot some low ridges and a lumpy sort of central mass. He couldnt connect it into any sort of coherent shape.

A gust of wind blew particularly hard, and a rotten tree limb fell onto one of the little ridges. Eyes opened in mid air. A few dozen, then hundreds. The invisible mass slipped into visibility for a moment.

Just a moment. And it was still too long.

It was a blob of some dark viscous fluid, unnamable organs bobbing inside of it. The w shaped pupils were not truly pupils or even part of real eyes. They emerged from pustules, the nauseating thing extended from its main body. The long ridges were likewise pseudopods, stretched wide across the forest floor. As one such pseudopod was hauled back into the main body, Truth saw that attached like millions of exposed capillaries were all the little glass worms. All part of the enormous thing, which covered ten square meters of the side of the mountain.

The rock covered with eyes he saw before wasnt even a guard dog. It was one of the guard dogs pups.