Welcome To (1)
Life in the Forest of the Four Seasons was a never-ending parade of grueling trials.
Whenever exhaustion pushed me to my limits, I would collapse in the cave, resting the entire day away or nursing my battered body back to health. I recharged in my own solitary ways, occasionally circulating the Mind Cultivation Method to steady my core.
I rarely smoked, however. I had made it an ironclad rule never to indulge unless I was thoroughly wrecked—both in flesh and in spirit. Only when body and mind were pushed to the absolute brink would I allow myself a puff.
Fzzzt!
And right now, I met every single condition. Striking the Ignition Stone, I brought the small flame to the tip of my cigar. The ember caught, curling thin ribbons of smoke into the air, and I pressed the rolled leaf between my lips, taking a long, deep drag.
Far from acrid, a crisp, clean fragrance surged into the depths of my lungs, scouring away the lingering haze.
"Whew."
With the World Tree Leaf Tobacco resting loosely between my teeth, I exhaled. A pale plume billowed forth, drifting and dispersing into the damp cave air. The smoke cleared my head a fraction, though the tangled knot of worries in my mind refused to unravel completely. If I had my way, I would have kept my distance from tobacco altogether, but right now, sheer willpower wasn't enough.
I still have to clean up the gorilla corpses. And there's no telling when the rest of their troop might retaliate... Haah...
Thanks to the Elixir, my shattered ribs had knitted back together reasonably well. My physical stamina hadn't been drained to the dregs, leaving my body relatively spry, but my thoughts were a chaotic mess. It was this unrelenting pressure that had driven me to reach for the cigar in the first place. There was simply too much about those beasts that didn't add up.
Who in the world taught them martial arts?
I could look past the fact that they wielded tools. Allfather had warned me about that beforehand, and in a way, their fixation on clumsy weapons had made them easier to read and counter. But the gorilla executing genuine martial arts was an entirely different beast. That creature had been an absolute nightmare to fight.
The creature had married the terrifying raw mass of an ape with the fluid, supple grace of refined technique. Every single blow it delivered was lethal. If I hadn't spent so much time honing my reflexes against the Fast Tree Sloth, my skull would have been caved in on the spot.
Putting all the clues together, there's no doubt about it. The person who left that handprint on the tree trunk is the one who taught them.
Keeping the cigar clamped between my teeth, I methodically sorted through the facts. To uncover the full truth, I would eventually need to scout their territory. Even if I had managed to capture the Leader Gorilla alive, it wasn't like the brute could talk. Then again, inability to speak aside, their intelligence was alarmingly high. Moving beyond mere tool use to grasp the principles of martial arts was living proof of that.
Just how smart do you have to be to learn martial arts as a wild animal?
In martial arts, a good teacher was crucial, but the student's aptitude mattered just as much. The word "talent" didn't exist for nothing; without a spark of it, a practitioner was doomed to run in place forever. A bizarre, unnerving thought suddenly crossed my mind: Could that gorilla actually be more talented in martial arts than I am?
...What a truly psychotic forest.
A hollow chuckle escaped my lips. I took one last, deep pull from the tobacco, letting the cool smoke wash over my palate before blowing it out into the cavern. Dwelling on the apes wouldn't solve anything right now; I needed to focus on the immediate chores at hand.
Wonmo is... fast asleep.
Having suffered serious injuries for the very first time in his young life, Wonmo was now curled up on his sleeping mat, dead to the world after receiving treatment. Usually, he slept sprawled out on his back, limbs thrown wide in careless abandon. Now, he lay curled tightly into a protective ball. Clearly, having invaders storm his sanctuary had rattled him, forcing his instincts to stay coiled and ready to spring at a moment's notice.
Even our camp isn't safe anymore.
There was no guarantee the gorillas wouldn't return. They had even managed to plunder my stash of Inedia Pills, making this a grave crisis. Nor could I simply leave someone behind as a guard; even for Fast Sloth, staying alone held too much risk.
In the end, installing a proper gate isn't an option—it's a necessity.
And not just any wooden barricade, but something monstrously sturdy that an army of gorillas couldn't shatter. To withstand that kind of punishment, it would have to be forged from solid steel. My only real option was to commission the Dwarf to craft the components, leaving the final assembly to me.
A few chunks of Orichalcum should be more than enough payment, right?
Drawing one final, savoring breath from the cigar, I opened the wooden storage box. I tapped the glowing ash into a stone tray, drew my combat dagger, and cleanly sliced off the charred tip. There was still enough leaf left for a few more sessions. World Tree cigars were exceedingly rare, and I had to ration them strictly.
Damn, it really does taste incredible, though.
If my supply ran out, I would have to negotiate with Let's Grow Trees. I had no idea what she might demand in return, but I would cross that bridge when I reached it.
Gathering a shovel and several heavy-duty tools, I stepped out into the open air. The gruesome aftermath of the skirmish immediately met my eyes. The clearing was strewn with dead gorillas, but the most jarring sight of all was the headless ape—the one Fast Sloth had decapitated in the blink of an eye.
First, let's snap a few photos for the Gallery.
With a mountain of questions burning in my chest, documenting the scene was vital. I took clear shots of the battlefield, the corpses, and the crude clubs and stone tools the beasts had wielded before getting down to the grim business of cleanup. Given the sheer bulk of each ape, even hauling them around promised to be a backbreaking ordeal.
Should I just bury them?
Digging a massive trench and dumping them inside was by far the cleanest solution. It saved me the trouble of dragging individual hundred-kilogram carcasses all the way to the river. Wandering upstream with blood dripping all over the place was practically an invitation to an ambush, especially when the escaped Leader Gorilla might already be rallying another pack for vengeance.
Butchering them... feels wrong.
These weren't simple predatory beasts like the sabertooth tigers; they were primates, which made the thought of carving them up deeply unsettling. Besides, several of the corpses were already mutilated beyond recognition. A burial pit was the only sensible choice.
I started by dragging the heavy bodies into a central pile. Finding the severed head of the decapitated gorilla took an annoying amount of rummaging through the blood-spattered brush.
I need to dig the pit far away from the camp.
I wasn't crazy enough to bury a mass grave right on my own doorstep. I needed a secluded spot well outside the perimeter, dug deep enough that scavengers wouldn't catch the scent of rot and unearth them.
This clearing should do.
I chose a broad, open patch of land behind the cavern ridge—a spot spacious enough to serve as a back terrace. Planting my boots into the earth, I began excavating a massive trench. Hauling the ape carcasses over one by one was grueling, tedious labor, but there was no shortcutting the task.
It took roughly an hour of nonstop shoveling and hauling before the final body was buried beneath packed earth. If my physical attributes hadn't skyrocketed thanks to the elixirs and cultivation, the task would easily have eaten up half my day.
Wiping the sweat from my brow, I pulled up the Gallery interface to share the harvest.
[Photo: Dead gorilla sprawled on the grass]
[Photo: A massive ape collapsed face-down]
[Photo: Carcass surrounded by splattered blood]
[Photo: Decapitated corpse carefully framed to hide the gory neck stump]
[Photo: Array of crude wooden clubs and sharpened stones used by the apes]
[Photo: Bodies gathered in a pile before burial]
Took down the gorilla troop that came to rescue their hostage.
Their leader was among them, but that one managed to get away.
The crazy thing is, the leader was using something that looked like actual martial arts. Is that even remotely possible? ;;
Looking at this, it's pretty much certain that someone taught them.
The moment the post went live, the forum exploded into chatter, each user weighing in from their own perspective.
Seeing an ape brandish martial arts was astonishing, but the tool usage was just as chilling. Why had humanity climbed to the undisputed peak of the food chain on Earth? Because we harnessed tools. It was a stroke of fortune that these gorillas had only used crude wooden bludgeons; had they formed a phalanx with spears, I would have faced an uphill slaughter.
And then there's the shadow lurking behind them...
A "master" who instructed these beasts unquestionably existed. The million-dollar question was whether that master was still breathing today. The gorillas had viewed me strictly as an enemy from the start. Had a living human been guiding them, they surely would have exhibited at least a flicker of curiosity toward another member of their teacher's kind.
Furthermore...
I glanced over my shoulder, my gaze settling upon the Fast Tree Sloth. Even though we had successfully handed the gorillas a decisive beating, the loss of his beloved Inedia Pills seemed to hang heavily over him. Ppareumbo looked thoroughly drained today. Unfortunately, conjuring fresh pills out of thin air wasn't within my power.
More than that, one question gnawed at me endlessly: Just what kind of entity was Ppareumbo that an entire pack of intelligent, martial-arts-wielding apes held him in such absolute terror?
That primal dread had shattered their morale from the opening second. That psychological advantage had saved my life.
"Ppareumbo."
"..."
"Just how absurdly strong are you that an entire troop of gorillas trembled at the sight of you?"
I was consumed by curiosity regarding his past. Ppareumbo was powerful—far beyond anything my mortal imagination could measure. He treated someone of my caliber like an insignificant pest, and among the savage gorillas, he reigned as a living embodiment of terror. What in the world had this creature been doing before I arrived in this forest?
"..."
Instead of an answer, Ppareumbo turned his head slowly, fixing me with an unblinking, serene stare. His calm expression seemed to say, Do you truly wish to know?
Holding his gaze, I offered a steady nod. We had spent less than a month together, yet I had grown capable of discerning his basic intent.
Scritch... scratch...
Extending a long, curved claw, Ppareumbo began etching lines into the dirt floor. I leaned in, focusing intently on the ground. True to his sloth nature, his movements were agonizingly sluggish, but I waited with patient reverence.
Wait... hold on. He knows how to draw?
I stole a quick side-eye at him. On the outside, he was undeniably a tree sloth, but at moments like this, I genuinely wondered if a human soul was piloting that furry husk. Then again, much like the evolved gorillas, he might simply have developed extraordinary intelligence along a different evolutionary branch. In the Forest of the Four Seasons, nothing was truly beyond belief. Better not to overthink it—racking my brain over high-level anomalies only gave me a pounding headache.
Scritch... scratch...
Ten minutes trickled by, and an identifiable image gradually emerged from the dust. The very first figure Ppareumbo sketched was himself. Long, sweeping arms compared to stubby legs, prominent hooked claws at the tips of his paws, and that perpetually serene, half-smiling expression. Anyone could tell at a glance that it was Ppareumbo. But he didn't stop with a single figure.
Two, three, four... until there were ten distinct sloths drawn across the dirt.
It looked just like a portrait of Ppareumbo's family.
Tap, tap.
With the tip of his claw, he lightly tapped the smallest sloth in the cluster. It was his way of indicating, This is me.
I nodded softly, signaling that I understood.
So he had a family... But where did they all—
Before my thought could finish forming—
Skrrrrch!
A single, violent gouge ripped across one of the drawn sloths. The harsh line carried an unmistakable meaning: death.
Skrrch. Skrrrrch.
Methodically, with deliberate slowness, Ppareumbo slashed through every single drawing in the group, sparing none except his own tiny figure. Only when the claw cut cleanly through the last sloth standing beside him did his arm come to a halt.
The grim tableau painted a stark history, allowing me to piece together a clear hypothesis. First: Ppareumbo had not always been alone. He had belonged to a pack of his own kind. Second: that entire pack had been slaughtered to the last member, leaving him as the sole survivor. And finally, the perpetrators behind the slaughter were...
"...Was it the gorillas?"
"..."
Ppareumbo offered no verbal response. He simply stared down at the scarred earth, his expression unreadable. But that quiet stillness was an answer louder than words.
Ppareumbo's family had fallen before the gorilla troop. Only Ppareumbo, the solitary survivor, had endured.
A pack that produced a monster as strong as him... got completely wiped out?
That meant the gorilla troop was vastly more terrifying than I had ever dared to conceive. Or, if that wasn't the case...
The master who taught them martial arts personally fought at their side.
Neither possibility offered even the faintest glimmer of comfort.