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Chapter 126: The Lay of the Land
🕑 Added 2023-03-06 17:36:00 +0000 UTCThe dragonfly shot at Jack like an arrow the size of an adult human. He turned around as fast as he could, but not fast enough. A set of sharp mandibles snapped at his arm, ripping off a good chunk of skin on the way.
“Holy shit!” Jack shouted, both in pain and surprise. He tried to grab its tail, but it was long gone. It flew behind a tree and disappeared. His ears were still buzzing, and he didn’t know if it was due to actual buzzing or because its wings had passed right next to his head.
Brock pointed at Jack’s arm, making worried noises. Jack took a glance. “I’m fine,” he said. “Tis just a scratch.”
It really was. A long red line crossed his forearm, but it was shallow. His regeneration would handle it. It wouldn’t cure Jack’s anger.
“The fucker!” he shouted through gritted teeth, inspecting the surroundings. “It was such a happy moment, Brock. You said a second word! That’s worthy of celebr—”
The buzzing intensified. The dragonfly shot at them from above, this time aiming at Brock. Perhaps it realized Jack was tough prey. But Jack was ready. He pivoted and smashed his knuckles into its face, hitting it so hard that the insect burst into a shower of gore around his arm. Only half its body remained, a broken, bleeding husk that fell to the ground.
“That’s what you get,” he told it, glaring. “Nobody touches my little bro.”
Thankfully, the dragonfly had been pretty light, so his hand remained whole. It just bruised a bit. Compared to the maiming from fist-crashing into the space monsters a few hours ago, this was nothing.
“Yes!” Brock cried out, raising his arms in celebration. He pointed at Jack’s biceps and made faces of admiration.
“Of course I am,” Jack replied smugly.
Hints of movement interrupted them. The grass blades were swaying without wind. Jack and Brock backpedaled.
Brown-black shapes slowly came into view. It was the conqueror ants from before—five of them. They had probably noticed something and came to check.
The moment they found the dragonfly’s corpse, the leading ant’s antennas waved frantically. A light, stinging smell, like the remains of lemon juice, assaulted the noses of Jack and Brock, who watched from the distance. It was slightly unpleasant.
The other ants apparently thought otherwise because they crowded the first like there was no tomorrow. One of them grabbed what remained of the dragonfly between its mandibles, easily carrying it despite the size difference, and started walking back—probably heading to its nest.
The rest of the ants fanned out and started searching the area. One of them stared at Brock. He and Jack didn’t wait to see what would happen. They bolted away.
The ants searched around for a bit more. Then, not finding anything else, they returned to their lines. Jack watched them from behind a leaf the size of his torso. Even the waterdrops were larger here. He saw one the size of his closed fist.
“Are there only insects around here?” he asked. “No, it cannot be. We heard a deep roar before. That wasn’t an insect.”
Brock nodded in acceptance, then pointed upward. Jack followed Brock’s finger with his eyes.
“The treetops,” he said. “Good idea. We can survey our surroundings from there. Let’s go.”
Defeating the dragonfly easily had curbed his fear a bit. Gan Salin had also mentioned that this ring shouldn’t be too difficult for him, as long as he was careful. The ants were only F-Grade, too; he could take them by the dozens if needed. He’d avoided them just for the sake of caution.
No other insects or animals appeared as Jack and Brock made their way to the nearest tree. It was a monumental column of wood and bark reaching higher than trees had any right to. Jack had to tilt his head all the way back, and he still couldn’t see its top.
The prospect of climbing this tree reminded him of the endless stairs just before.
“Well,” he said, lifting his sleeves, “no time like the present.”
And so began the climb.
Jack wasn’t a climber before the Integration. He still wasn’t. However, his physical strength was way greater than his body weight would indicate, letting him move easily on the almost vertical trunk.
Thankfully, there was no shortage of outcroppings or handholds. The bark was rough, reminding Jack less of a tree and more of a climbing wall.
It still wasn’t easy. His first goal was the tree’s lowest branch, a highway of wood stretching over his head, but even that was far away. He kept his body close to the trunk to defend from the wind gusts. Halfway up the climb, he even saw a termite—an F-Grade insect that thankfully ignored them.
Brock, on the other hand, was right at home. He dangled from outcroppings with one hand, jumped from one handhold to the other, and generally ran circles around Jack. He seemed glad to be the better party for once. Jack had the strength to do those things, too, but not the skill. He re-appreciated just how useful his Fistfighting skill—and the subsequent Iron Fist Style—was, for giving him the skill to go with his ever-increasing stats.
When he took a glance behind him, he saw an endless forest stretching to the distance. The trees were enormous, and they were many. He also saw multiple insects going about their business, including ants, beetles, and bees.
If this place has wasps, he thought, I’m fucked.
Regardless, he kept climbing. When he finally reached the first branch, he was panting. It must have been a thousand feet in height.
Not bad for an amateur climber, he thought with pride. Perhaps I should get a skill about this. Then again, immortals can fly.
“Are you okay, Brock?” he asked, wiping the sweat off his brow as he looked at the brorilla.
Brock looked back and raised a brow. “Bro.” he said, as if he meant, you can’t be serious.
“Yeah, yeah. I know.” Jack looked up. He wasn’t slow in climbing, but Brock was at least twice as fast. The problem was, Brock wasn’t nearly as strong as Jack. A random dragonfly here could be a mortal opponent. They had to stick together. “Two minutes of rest?” he asked.
“Yes,” Brock replied, eager to use his shiny new word. Jack noticed that his accent was a bit hard, like he was saying every word with a frown.
Nothing attacked them on the branch, which was a welcome change of pace. Two minutes later, they set back out.
The branches were more densely arrayed now. Jack took his second break on what he estimated was two thirds of the way up—already so high that there might have been clouds if this was Earth. But there weren’t any clouds here, only moisture.
Where does it come from? he wondered. If not above… Could it be from below?
The higher they went, their view broadened, but they remained under the forest’s canopy. Then, they entered it, and were enclosed in the tree’s foliage. All they could see was leaves.
The climb went on. After the first half an hour, Jack had fallen into a rhythm: reach, grab, pull, repeat. He didn’t need to think as much now, besides keeping an ear out for any suspicious buzzing.
He used the time to consider this forest. This ring, really.
Everything was enlarged here. By a lot. His inner scientist yearned to explore the inner workings of this. Jack recalled the knowledge stored in his brain after years of study.
Higher oxygen ratio leads to larger species, he remembered. Most animals can’t handle this, but insects can. Arachnids, scorpions, and all their relatives too. But not larger animals. A magnified elephant would just collapse under its own weight. So would a dog, probably.
That explained why he had seen only insects so far, though the roar from before remained a mystery. Insects had highly durable bodies and could handle an upscale. Most larger animals, not so much.
Am I in the insect kingdom? he wondered. I bet I could outline ten publications in a day if I wanted to.
He wouldn’t do that, of course. Becoming a superhuman immortal sounded more important than getting a slightly higher h-index.
However, one thing kept bugging him—pun intended. Earth, by itself, had endless diversity when it came to insects. Ants alone had ten thousand recorded species, including many exotic variants. So why did all four insect kinds he’d observed so far—ants, dragonflies, bees, and termites—resemble their Earth versions so closely?
Had they managed to converge? Were insects, the hallmarks of evolution, just moving in circles? Were they adapting too much, but only the most resilient variations would survive the eons?
Or were they moved here from somewhere else?
The galaxy’s history went back a million years, and Trial Planet preceded it. A million was a lot by human standards, but it was nothing compared to the endless eons that Earth had weathered. Just the dinosaurs were eradicated sixty-five million years ago, and life had existed on the planet for billions of years. If Trial Planet had been established a few million years back, at what evolutionary stage had its original inhabitants been?
Or, a less scientific theory entered Jack’s mind, is there magic at play?
This nested planet was absolutely not natural. It was artificial, and there had to be some sort of magic holding it steady, or it would just collapse in on itself. What if there was also magic that kept the rings relatively unchanged over the eons?
If Trial Planet was an ancient testing ground, as Jack assumed, this would make sense.
His ruminations were cut short when he entered a new, thicker layer of leaves. Climbing became more difficult. Brock let out an exclamation from somewhere above. Jack accelerated, eager to see what made Brock so excited…
…and broke through the leaves. He was in the sky. And he lost his breath.
The tree they’d chosen to climb had been one of the tallest ones. He could see the forest stretching around him, a canvas of fluttering green. Leaves swayed in the moist wind, while winged creatures he couldn’t identify—either birds or insects—swirled in the distance.
The ceiling stretched over his head, still impossibly high. It was the underside of the planet’s surface layer, stretching endlessly in all directions. He knew there was a curve, but he couldn’t see it. From where he looked, it was perfectly straight, its ends lost in mist.
The shiny mushrooms hung from the cave ceiling like a host of miniature suns, and brown stone columns rose intermittently from earth to heaven, like toothpicks supporting a mountain. Jack could see dozens of them. Across the planet, there must have been tens of thousands, if not more.
“Just… Just who could create such a thing?” he asked aloud. The wind grabbed his hair and pulled it back, exposing his full face to the view. Jack took a deep breath. His lungs filled to the point of almost bursting. He felt so energized.
He then paced himself, remembering that too much oxygen was not good.
Brock was by his side, and he pointed in one direction. Jack turned his gaze over.
A few miles away, a massive mound of upturned dirt rose between the trees. It was shorter than them, of course, but it still resembled a large hill in size. It was an anthill. Its surface was teeming with black workers, rushing everywhere in semi-orderly lines. There must have been hundreds of them, possibly thousands, and even more inside the nest.
It seemed extremely dangerous.
According to Gan Salin, large landmarks—like this ant hill—indicated the position of tunnels heading down to the next ring. But Jack didn’t want to infiltrate an oversized ant colony. He’d just have to find another landmark.
He looked around. He found none. He looked back at the ant hill.
“Oh, fuck me.”
