Animals Harmless to Humanity (1)
That’s the first time I’ve ever seen the Heavenly Demon get so thoroughly tilted.
I couldn't help but chuckle as I scrolled through the Heavenly Demon’s latest forum post. It was a detailed progress log on cultivating the medicinal herb I had sent her—specifically, the miracle weed wildly effective against hair loss.
I didn’t know the full extent of its potency yet, but even the Heavenly Demon’s closest aide had openly hailed it as a genuine miracle. And honestly? For a cure targeting alopecia—an incurable plague notorious across worlds—a miracle was an understatement.
They’ve got high-tier magic and holy power, yet they still can’t cure baldness? What kind of absurd world is this?
Hair loss was truly the most horrific affliction known to mankind, second only to dementia. Because it was genetic, some poor bastards could look at their fathers’ receding hairlines and foretell their own grim destinies before hitting puberty. Even worse was atavism, where a recessive gene could leap across generations just to ruin your twenties without warning.
Well, at least my hair is still hanging in there... for now.
Ever since I’d woken up trapped in the Forest of the Four Seasons, my shed rate had skyrocketed. Even if it grew back quickly, strands of hair were constantly scattered across the cave floor. It had to be stress-induced alopecia brought on by extreme, round-the-clock survival panic. If Wonmo hadn't been here acting as my living emotional support animal, my hairline would’ve retreated straight to the back of my neck by now.
Then again, even if I went completely bald out here, it wouldn’t really matter.
Properly cultivating and mass-producing that herb was going to take considerable time. We had observed its effects right away, but no one knew what hidden side effects might crop up down the road. That was precisely why I had entrusted the distribution rights to the Heavenly Demon.
Part of me had wanted to post it directly to the Gallery to draw as many extradimensional survivors and buyers as possible. But if an unforeseen side effect surfaced, the backlash would be catastrophic.
A discovery like this needs to spread through the right channels to do the most good.
For now, my top priority remained escaping this forest. The Heavenly Demon was bound to subtly leak rumors that the miraculous root had originated from the Forest of the Four Seasons anyway. All I had to do was hold out, survive, and chart as much of this untamed wilderness as I could.
Crackle—snap.
Pulled back to the present by the popping embers, I pulled my eyes away from the fire. Near the hearth, my companions were huddled close, basking in the radiating heat to dry off. Ludwig and I dried quickly enough, but the fur-covered members of our party took forever.
Wait... Ppareumbo isn't just fluff, is he?
It had been Ppareumbo’s very first bath. With his fur soaked flat against his skin, the physique underneath was awe-inspiring in several terrifying ways. His upper torso tapered into an absurdly broad, inverted-triangle silhouette, and his lower limbs were thick trunks of dense muscle completely unbefitting a sloth. No wonder the guy could accelerate to demonic, sound-breaking speeds at the drop of a hat. Thank God I had never tried to get cheeky with him.
Tomorrow, I need to head back to the Squirrel’s territory.
Lying down, I mentally mapped out tomorrow’s agenda. First on the checklist was checking in on the Squirrel. I wanted to see how the expansion work was progressing, but more importantly, I intended to turn that grove into a forward staging ground. Turning it into a forward base meant we might need to camp and prepare meals there on longer expeditions. Setting up a secondary base right now would save us an immense amount of grief down the line.
Under normal circumstances, I'd need the Squirrel’s explicit consent, but...
Slipping him a fresh Inedia Pill would solve that instantly. Besides, he already adored the World Tree sapling we planted there. Even so, proper diplomacy was necessary. After all, setting up an outpost there was basically asking to rent space in someone else’s living room.
Safety comes first, no matter what.
Yesterday’s run-in with that bizarre, upward-flowing waterfall and the aquatic horrors lurking inside had driven the lesson home. If an anomalous phenomenon presents itself, throw a rock at it first. Never settle for one test—probe from every angle until absolute safety is verified.
The real headache is that even with all that caution, death traps are littered everywhere.
Nothing could be done about that. I just had to learn through grit and personal experience. With every passing day, the pages of my survival journal grew thicker. After penning the final entry of the night, I tapped into the Gallery. Scrolling through the forum before bed had become my personal sleeping pill.
Right on cue, an intriguing thread had landed on the recommended feed. I clicked immediately to see what it was about.
The answer is none other than the Dinosaur.
Not their modern descendants like drakes or wyverns, but pure, unadulterated prehistoric dinosaurs. They have literally never harmed a single human being in recorded history.
Their awful reputation is entirely because their worthless descendants kept acting up, dragging their ancestors' names through the mud.
Huh, they have dinosaurs in their dimensions too?
Then again, this was a fantasy universe where dragons—basically colossal dinosaurs with wings—soared through the clouds. Throw in magical breath weapons, and dragons were essentially dinosaurs 2.0. Beside them were drakes, basilisks, wyverns, and a dozen other subspecies. Most creatures sharing that silhouette were considered their evolutionary descendants.
Back on Earth, weren't modern birds their closest living relatives?
My memory was a little hazy, but that sounded about right. I watched the self-proclaimed archaeologists and biologists trade academic insults for a few minutes before chiming in myself.
Classic Gallery. Watching them spout nonsense in an endless stream of consciousness never failed to make me grin. I browsed a few more random threads before setting the interface aside and pulling up my blanket. The rest of the crew had finished drying their fur and was settling in for the night.
Not a bad start. I wish every day were this peaceful.
Setting aside that abomination dwelling beneath the upside-down waterfall, of course. Or anomalies with terrifying, reality-bending powers like that damn Squirrel. Honestly, I vastly preferred monsters that relied on raw, unrefined physical mass. When it came to sheer weight class, I didn't lag behind anyone anymore—a fact Ludwig himself had certified.
...Except that waterfall leviathan. That thing doesn’t count.
That thing occupied a realm of its own. And it wasn't the only one; the giant crab and colossal crayfish slugging it out by the lake were straight out of a kaiju movie.
Yeah, there’s no winning against things like that.
Weight class be damned, keeping my head down and walking softly was the best survival strategy. Casting aside any lingering arrogance, I closed my eyes and let sleep claim me.
Morning arrived quickly, heralding a brand-new day.
“All right, people. Today, we’re heading back to the Squirrel’s grove. We’re going to turn that area into our multi... wait, our front yard... no, what was the word?”
“#%%%.”
[He says ‘an outpost.’]
“Right, an outpost! We’re setting up a forward outpost there.”
I briefed the team on our operational plan. Ludwig, ever the pragmatic veteran commander, gave it a moment of serious thought before nodding his approval. It seemed he agreed with the strategic value. All that remained was making the trek. I packed our tools into the spatial backpack and handed it over to Ggobongi, finalizing our departure preparations.
“Let’s move.”
[Must we truly embark on such trivial manual labor?]
I blithely ignored the solemn voice of Cain grumbling from the pendant hanging against my chest and stepped onto the trail. Thanks to the trail markers I’d carved into the tree bark yesterday, retracing our steps wasn’t difficult, though I smoothed out a few winding detours along the way. Before long, the familiar murmur of the river reached our ears.
“Ribbit.”
“Ribbit. Croak.”
“...What in the hell are those?”
Clustered along the riverbank was a gathering of frogs. At a glance, their mottled green skin and bulging eyes resembled common pond frogs, but their dimensions were completely out of order. The golden frog we’d encountered previously had been roughly the size of a small terrier, but the creatures sitting on the bank ahead of us were the size of bulls.
I wasn't exaggerating. They were literally as large as full-grown cattle. For a second, I thought my depth perception had malfunctioned.
“What on earth are those things?”
[They appear to be frogs.]
“I have eyes, Cain. I know they’re frogs. Do you know what species they belong to?”
[Do I look like a naturalist? How would I know the specific taxonomy of mundane amphibians? Had they been fiends or monsters, perhaps.]
Mundane? Those things look like straight-up monsters to anyone with working eyeballs!
I was reluctant to provoke a herd of cattle-sized amphibians, but fortunately, we had a biological trump card on our payroll.
“Tyrano, you’re up.”
“Chirp!”
A baby dragon—an apex predator whose bloodline struck terror into the hearts of all terrestrial beasts. At my command, Tyrano puffed out his chest and swaggered toward the riverbank with supreme confidence, tail held high.
“Ribbit.”
“Croak, ribbit.”
THWIP! WHIP! SCHLICK!
“SCREEEEEECH?!”
In the blink of an eye, three fleshy, whip-fast tongues shot across the grass, wrapped tightly around Tyrano’s torso, and reeled him in like a hooked trout. It seemed the universal intimidation aura of dragons didn’t apply to amphibians. Or maybe their tiny amphibian brains were simply too smooth to process existential dread.
“Hey, you overgrown toad bastards! Let go of my kid!”
Seeing Tyrano bound and dragged through the mud, I erupted in panic and charged forward with weapon bared. The moment my murderous aura flared, the bull frogs instinctively registered that a true apex monster had arrived and hurled themselves into the churning river, splashing out of sight.
I nearly lost Tyrano to river vermin. Who would’ve guessed there were creatures out here that genuinely didn't give a damn about dragon lineage?
“Tyrano! Are you alright? Are you hurt anywhere?”
“Ppii-waaaagh!”
Tyrano burst into tears and threw himself into my arms. He was completely slathered in thick, sticky frog saliva, but I didn't care. Soothing the traumatized hatchling came first. As I rubbed his back, I threw a venomous glare at the river current.
Note to self: stay as far away from the river as humanly possible.
Once Tyrano finally calmed down, we pushed deeper into the woods toward the Squirrel’s territory. The complete absence of other predators along the route suggested that the rodent’s claimed boundary was extraordinarily vast.
“Chitter!”
“Hey there, little guy.”
We arrived at the clearing to find the World Tree sapling standing tall. Whether through the Squirrel’s obsessive caretaking or sheer mystical vitality, the young tree seemed to have grown visibly thicker in just twenty-four hours. I fished an Inedia Pill out of my pouch and held it out enticingly.
“Hey, Squirrel. Hate to impose, but would you mind if we set up a little camp around here?”
“Chit?”
“Well, the thing is...”
I laid out the proposal as clearly as possible: we planned on frequenting this sector, and we wanted permission to renovate a small corner of the clearing so we could rest and prep food. We didn’t need an entire lodge—just a covered dining area and a secure perimeter would suffice.
At first, the Squirrel eyed me with deep suspicion, his whiskers twitching erratically. But then...
“I’ll give you more delicious treats just like this one.”
“CHIRP!”
The moment high-grade snacks were guaranteed, permission was granted on the spot. In the Forest of the Four Seasons, food—especially gourmet magical rations—was the undisputed universal currency. Besides, as long as he had his beloved World Tree sapling, the Squirrel didn't care what else we did.
“Alright, team! Let's get the foundation cleared and start construction on the outpost!”
“And you?” Ludwig gestured.
“I’m going to scout the immediate perimeter. We need to map out any lurking hazards nearby.”
Even if this was officially the Squirrel’s domain, there was no telling what horrors might be nesting just beyond the boundary line. Ludwig nodded, finding the reasoning sound. With the camp construction underway, I set off into the untamed woods, secretly hoping to stumble upon another patch of miraculous herbs like yesterday's haul.
If anything dangerous sneaks up, Ppareumbo will probably sense it and back me up.
Keeping my senses sharp, I parted the dense foliage and pressed forward. After a short trek, the subtle environmental shift became obvious.
The trees out here are massive.
Compared to the woods surrounding our home shelter, the trunks here were twice as thick and soared far higher into the sky. The canopy was woven so tightly that sunlight barely penetrated the leafy roof, plunging the undergrowth into dim twilight. In an environment like this, ambushes could come from above just as easily as from behind.
Rustle—
A sudden scraping sound echoed through the undergrowth to my right. My boot froze mid-step. Raising my round shield to cover my vital organs, I turned my head toward the noise, my kinetic vision straining against the shadows.
Rustle—snap.
The disturbance grew louder, dry twigs cracking beneath heavy weight. I braced my stance, muscles coiling like steel springs. The bushes parted violently, and—
Poke.
A snout edged through the leaves. It bore the distinct silhouette of a reptile: slate-grey scales, a blunt jaw, and tiny, beady yellow eyes.
“...Tyrano? Why the hell are you out here?”
Assuming the hatchling had sneaked away from camp to follow me, my guard slipped for half a second.
Crush—
The creature stepped fully out of the thicket. But something was horrifically wrong. Its eye level kept rising. It rose past my waist, past my chest, past my shoulders, until its beady gaze was looking down at me from above head height.
And the rest of its anatomy? Its torso was colossal, dwarfing Tyrano by orders of magnitude. Sprouting from its chest was a pair of comically stubby, two-clawed forearms, while its hind legs were thick, muscular pillars resembling ancient tree trunks.
“...?”
What?
When did Tyrano lose his wings and hit a massive growth spurt?
No... wait. That’s not a dragon at all!
Before my brain could fully process the biological anomaly standing before me—
Slurp.
The creature’s thick, muscular tongue slid across its scaly maw, glistening with saliva. It was staring directly at me with the unmistakable hunger of an apex carnivore sizing up a midday snack.
Realization hit me like an artillery shell.
“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me...”
The beast towering over me wasn't Tyrano.
It was an actual, honest-to-God Tyrannosaurus Rex.
It was somewhat smaller than the fossilized giants recorded on Earth, but there was no mistaking that terrifying morphology. Even if it was some obscure prehistoric sub-variant, one undeniable fact remained:
“ROOOOOAAAARRRRRGH!!!”
This bastard was a genuine dinosaur.
The T-Rex unhinged its massive jaws, revealing rows of serrated, dagger-like teeth, and lunged straight for my skull. I slammed my boots into the earth and threw my shield up to meet the crushing charge.
Harmless to humanity?! Docile vegetarian my ass!
I was about to thoroughly debunk that brain-dead forum post through involuntary firsthand field research—or this overgrown lizard was about to claim its glorious First Blood against mankind!