Territory (3)
Whether beast or man, territory is an intensely sensitive matter.
For humanity, viewed on a grand scale, it translates to one's country and sovereign soil; on an intimate scale, it is one's home. Among the essential needs of food, clothing, and shelter, none can be neglected, but shelter holds singular responsibility for safety. Without a roof over your head, you are left defenseless against natural disasters and unforeseen calamities. In that sense, whether human or beast, claiming a territory of one's own is an absolute prerequisite to leading a secure life.
Even humans grow defensive or hostile when an uninvited stranger wanders into their living room. How much more volatile would wild beasts be? My expedition into the woods hadn't been a whimsical stroll; pinpointing the gorillas' territory was paramount to our survival.
Come to think of it, between the Owlbear and the Mad Dogs, isn't territorial conflict basically constant out here?
I had set out with bold resolve, but concerns gnawed at me from every angle. First and foremost: what had become of the territories once ruled by the now-slain Owlbear and the Mad Dogs? I had mulled it over countless times, but until recently, nothing blatant had stood out. There was that kangaroo lounging inside the Owlbear's old cavern yesterday, but the creature had bolted the second it caught sight of me.
Now, the reality was finally sinking in: other predators would inevitably encroach to claim the vacant ground.
The saber-toothed tiger had been a monstrosity we only barely managed to fell thanks to Fast Tree Sloth's intervention. Had I been alone, I would have died ten times over. If something has the sheer nerve to muscle into what used to be that saber-tooth's hunting grounds... It might have challenged the tiger while it was still drawing breath. Or perhaps it had already established itself as the undisputed sovereign of this entire sector.
Well, I've been diligently marking my own territory too.
Not that I meant it in any dignified sense—I just relieved myself wherever was convenient out here. Still, I liked to believe my scent served as a modest territorial claim.
And this here is the Owlbear cave.
Retracing yesterday's footsteps, I arrived at the cavern's yawning mouth. The original plan had been to use this location as our staging post for reconnaissance.
"Kkyu! Kkyuu!"
Before Wonmo decided to dash headlong inside, that is.
I called after him in a panic, but the little ball of fluff had already vanished into the shadows. Shaking my head, I hurried into the mouth of the cave after him.
"Kkyaaaah! Kkyaaak!"
Barely a moment passed before Wonmo came tumbling right back out, screeching at the top of his lungs. From the sheer panic plastered across his furry face, something was definitely lurking within.
I gently stroked the shivering cub until he calmed down, then cautiously peeked inside.
"Whoa."
I could immediately see why Wonmo had lost his nerve. What occupied the gloom was anything but ordinary.
The kangaroo from yesterday. It was hopping around in there—except the problem wasn't a solitary beast, but an entire mob of them bouncing across the stone floor. By all appearances, they had formally laid claim to the cavern as their new den.
My worst fears had materialized. A kangaroo mob had moved in to fill the vacuum left behind by the Owlbear.
Wait... do kangaroos even live in an environment like this?
Maybe it was just my Earth prejudices talking, but back home, kangaroos were indigenous to open plains and arid brush. Granted, so long as there were greens and foliage to graze on, there was no biological reason they couldn't thrive here, but seeing them bounce through a damp, subterranean cave felt bizarre all the same.
My bewilderment aside, I chose to withdraw quietly. Picking an unnecessary brawl right now would only drain my energy, and there was plenty of unfamiliar terrain left to scout.
To escape this forest eventually, I'll have to cross through various beast territories...
That realization weighed heavily on my mind. Any route out inevitably meant trespassing on another apex predator's turf. If my luck soured, I might end up fighting a brutal gauntlet against the lords of successive domains. To prevent that exact nightmare, gathering intelligence beforehand was paramount.
Wait a minute. Come to think of it...
I glanced back toward the entrance of the Owlbear's nest. My thoughts drifted to Lyse Kraone, the original owner of the journal I had recovered from the stone crevice.
How in the world did that man manage to live inside an Owlbear's den? Did he hole up here before the beast ever arrived?
Perhaps Allfather would shed some light on that mystery later.
Gazing one last time at what was now the Kangaroo Cave, I moved along. I still hadn't gauged where the gorilla territory truly began. Following the river upstream seemed like a logical baseline, but even that remained ambiguous.
The river itself could be part of their domain.
It was safer to treat this as an open-ended patrol to map the perimeter. If we crossed paths with any droppings, I could halt immediately. Besides, I had a splendid sniffer dog—or rather, a sniffer bear—at my side, so spotting sign should be trivial.
"Sniff, snuffle."
"Hey, hey! Wonmo, no! That's yucky, spit it out!"
Not that I had asked him to root out toxic mushrooms. Terrified he might gobble down some psychedelic fungus, I hastily hauled him away.
From that point on, I blazed the trail meticulously so we wouldn't lose our bearings. As we pressed forward, the terrain began subtly transforming around us.
This isn't just a forest anymore... it's practically a jungle.
The broad leaves took on an increasingly deep, saturated emerald hue, and thick blankets of moss clung to every surface. What was more, where the ground had previously alternated between loam and stone outcroppings, it was now an impenetrable web of colossal, serpentine tree roots. Even the forest air shifted tangibly—particularly the humidity. The crisp, slightly dry breeze from earlier had given way to thick, sweltering moisture.
I didn't feel a spatial boundary shift, though?
Unlike Across the River, where the landscape warped into something alien and unnatural over the span of a single trench, this transition felt entirely organic. You simply walked along until you realized: Oh, I'm deep inside a jungle now.
I debated turning back, but decided to explore just a little further.
"Holy mother of... shit."
Moments after making that choice, I stumbled upon a brand-new species. Crawling diligently along the damp earth was a creature whose silhouette was undeniably that of a snail. The problem was its sheer, staggering mass.
Its spiraled shell alone was vastly taller than I was, to say nothing of the glistening, fleshy body hauling it forward.
Is this what those snails from MapleStory would look like in real life?
Watching a gastropod larger than a grown man slither through the underbrush was sickeningly surreal. Yet curiosity twitched alongside the revulsion. How on earth did a creature so massive and slow survive without being devoured instantly?
There's bound to be a good reason.
Best not poke it to find out. Leaving it to mind its own business was the smartest play. I skirted wide around the snail as it crept along at a pace rivaling a sloth, but before I had walked twenty paces, the secret to its survival presented itself.
Hssssssss—
"......"
The slime trail trailing behind the gastropod was a chemical hazard. Every blade of grass in its wake had liquefied into frothing slurry. To make matters worse, even the loamy soil beneath was boiling away, pale plumes of acrid white smoke curling into the air.
It was either an absurdly concentrated venom like the Golden Poison Frog's or a viciously corrosive acid. Given a snail's physiology, its entire mucous coating was likely saturated with that lethal brew. Any predator reckless enough to take a bite would probably dissolve into soup from the inside out.
...I'm calling this thing the Acid Snail.
Praying it didn't possess the ability to spray that fluid from its mouth like the frog, I put as much distance between myself and the monstrosity as possible.
After combing further through the humid jungle without turning up any other notable anomalies, I finally resolved to turn back.
Do the gorillas not live in this sector after all?
Either they nested much deeper in, or I had picked the wrong bearing entirely. With Wonmo failing to catch any distinctive scent trails, the outing felt like a bust.
Still... plenty of daylight left.
Checking the clock on the Gallery interface, it was only half past two. Since I had planned to scout until five at the latest, I could afford to search a little longer. As a precaution, however, I chose not to venture deeper into the dense jungle. Stumbling into a troop of martial-arts-practicing gorillas by accident would be catastrophic.
"Hm?"
Just as I set my mind on heading back, something caught my eye. A massive tree whose trunk was deeply indented right at its core. In a brutal proving ground like the Forest of the Four Seasons, gouges and claw marks on timber were a dime a dozen, but the marking carved into this particular trunk stood out glaringly.
Wait... is that a palm print?
The imprint of an open palm was stamped cleanly into the thick bark. Whatever had left it, one thing was certain: it hadn't belonged to a normal human. What kind of ape it was from was beyond me—I wasn't a primatologist. But two facts were immediately obvious: it was vastly larger than my own hand, and its proportions were entirely non-human. The palm region was disproportionately broad compared to the thick fingers, and the overall impression was easily more than double the size of mine.
...This might be their territorial marker.
Staring at the crater-like depression where my entire hand could comfortably nestle, I formed a grim hypothesis. If this was truly a marker left by the gorillas, clearing out of this perimeter immediately was the only sensible choice. Wandering blindly risked walking straight into an ambush.
Are there any other signs nearby?
Still, a stubborn desire to get a firmer grasp on their boundary held me back. I couldn't afford to run scared at a single handprint and accomplish nothing. Just as I turned my head to inspect the periphery—
"Huh?"
My fingertips brushed against another depression. Beside the massive palm print, another impression was carved into the bark. The tree trunk was so enormous I had nearly overlooked it.
Yet what stopped me dead in my tracks was the nature of the print itself.
This... this looks like an actual human hand.
Pressed right beside the giant paw was a substantially smaller handprint. While it was still somewhat larger than mine, it fell squarely within the range of an unusually large human hand. For a fleeting second I wondered if it belonged to an adolescent gorilla, but dismissed the thought.
The fingers are too long.
The slender digits were distinctly elongated. Placed side by side, the anatomical contrast was night and day. Could it have belonged to Lyse Kraone, who had met his end at the hands of the gorillas? No, that didn't feel right either. For reasons I couldn't quite articulate, the two prints radiated a strange sense of camaraderie—almost as though two companions had stamped their hands into the wood to commemorate an unbreakable bond.
After inspecting both impressions intently, I captured a photograph with my interface. I'd post it on the Gallery later.
It looks fairly old... but who knows?
Whether it had been left by a human survivor or some bizarre mutant hominid remained an enigma. Swirling with questions, I made my way out of the jungle. It wasn't safe to linger any longer.
I've got plenty to chew on; better head back to the shelter.
Much as I wanted to press further, the discovery prompted a change of plans. I had uncovered traces that strongly hinted at a survivor—and someone other than Lyse at that.
How on earth did someone end up leaving joint handprints with a gorilla?
Chewing on the baffling mystery, I retraced my steps to the shelter. Stepping back into camp, a heavy wave of tension snapped and drained right out of me.
"Hm?"
Yet something felt off. A subtle prickle of discord struck me. What was this dissonance? It was hard to put my finger on. The place was intensely familiar, yet subtly wrong—as though various items had been nudged out of alignment.
Why is the laundry collapsed on the dirt? Did I fail to secure the line properly?
The clothes hung along the drying line lay strewn in a heap across the ground. The position of the iron drum seemed faintly askew, and the charcoal container looked disturbed. Signs of an unwelcome visitor littered the campsite, instantly sending my guard shooting up.
Is someone inside?
Peeking cautiously into the cave, I saw nothing stirring. For a brief second, I thought an intruder was lying in wait. Rubbing the tense nape of my neck, I stepped inside, slowly lowering my guard.
Yet the moment I crossed the threshold, the feeling of wrongness hit me ten times harder. No, it wasn't just a vague feeling anymore. An entire item was missing.
"Huh?"
I kept my supplies meticulously organized so everything was easy to find at a glance. Because of that, spotting what was gone took less than a heartbeat.
"What the hell? Where did the Inedia Pills go?!"
The Inedia Pills had vanished. The entire sack of them. Since the pills were Fast Tree Sloth's staple diet, I always kept them tucked away in a designated spot. For the whole sack to have vanished meant only one thing: someone had broken into my shelter and made off with the Inedia Pills.
It struck me as absurd that thieves existed even out here in the wild, but then again, it wasn't unprecedented. During that torrential downpour a while back, hadn't a raccoon tried to pilfer our Inedia Pills? Of course, that particular raccoon had received a swift, merciless beatdown from Fast Tree Sloth and ended up straight in Wonmo's belly.
"......"
Hearing that the Inedia Pills were gone must have shaken him to the core. Fast Tree Sloth slid down off my back at the absolute highest velocity he could muster outside of an active combat situation. Then, he stood frozen, staring blankly at the empty patch where his beloved snack sack used to be.
A palpable aura of desolation and incandescent fury radiated from his furry frame.
Just who on earth had stolen the pills? Stranger still, not a single other supply had been touched.
Did they leave footprints?
Culprits always left a trail behind. Leaving Fast Tree Sloth to smolder in silent rage, I headed back out to the entrance. Scouring the earth inch by inch, fresh tracks I hadn't seen before leaped out at me.
I should take a picture and post this on the Gallery.
Whoever the culprit was...
I've never seen Ppareumbo this pissed off before.
That thief was a dead man walking.
At that very same moment, somewhere deep in the jungle.
"Ooh-ooh-ah! Ooh-hoo!"
"Ooo-ooo-ooo! Oo-hoo-hoo!"
An unseasonal, raucous feast was underway among the gorillas.