"I will not hurt you, it is not my nature," a voice spoke in the darkness, a creature swiftly flowing through the obscurity of the smoke between trees.
Yeah, that's definitely what something that doesn't want to hurt you looks like.
After a while of quietly watching it, it disappeared, letting out another screeching scream that tore through the smoke, threatening to slice through Sunny's eardrums.
Echo location, Sunny concluded.
If whatever that thing was had the freedom to make such noise in the woods then it either had to be the only creature in there or it was the apex preditor, having no need to remain silent under fear of anything else.
The latter was most probable. The woods were massive, and with the town of Flowwood being so close to them, if it had to leave in search of food it would most definitely hit that town first.
Unless, of course, it was a herbivore. Sunny couldn't dare take the risk, so he decided to believe his first thought.
The thought, however, brought him yet another predicament; there must be other creatures in those woods.
When he came in he only knew about one. Now he had to look out for multiple.
Sigh.
Before he could leave his hiding, Sunny paused for a moment. He didn't really know just where exactly Luna was. He couldn't just walk around such dangerous surroundings without a proper bearing.
After a while of thought, he concluded that he had to do the one thing that he possibly could.
After another round of assessing the surrounding, he shut his eyes, trying to pull himself into the spectator room.
He couldn't.
He couldn't concentrate well enough under the fear of leaving himself completely vulnerable.
"Fuck."
He sat for a moment, rethinking the decision to enter the woods. This had to be perhaps the most idiotic thing he had ever done.
Suddenly, he noticed something at the corner of his eye. He noticed a silvery glue on one side of a tree bark. After a better look, he realised most trees had the gum residue on the same side.
Immediately, he realised, from the information about the world he had gathered, all records of trees that wide and tall with silvery glue had the glue on the west side of the tree. He also remembered that the smoking woods were on the east of Flowwood.
As he thought of this, another memory unfolded from something he hadn't paid much thought to. While he was in the spectator room trying to find Luna he got the flashes of her after moving away from the town. He saw it clear in his memory, as though he was seeing it a second time.
Therefore, he concluded that he had to head eastwards. He could use the trees as bearing in his walk.
Finally, he had a proper direction as to where he was supposed to be going.
He only wished the spectator room hadn't been wrong.
The woods were eerily quiet. There were no sounds of critters or anything. Due to this, every step Sunny took felt like he was yelling for creatures out there to come for him.
Still, he couldn't just remain in hiding forever. If he did that he could find himself surrounded then there wouldn't be anything he could do.
After another while of walking, he soon came to realised that leaving for the woods without having eaten or carrying rations with him wasn't the best idea.
There were some berries growing wild in the undergrowth but was he really willing to risk getting poisoned in such a place?
What had his life come to? Sunny wondered as he deviated from his path, seeing razor thin threads intertwined between trees in a broken web.
Seeing this, Sunny immediately analysed the scene, realizing that there had to be a spider creature close together with something much stronger which had broken the web.
As he thought this, he remembered that the path he was following was the same one the bat had flown towards. Consequently, he concluded that the bat was the one that had broken the web.
The strings of the webs were thin and very strong, he realised it when he managed to get close and try cutting a string using Orion's dagger only for him to fail.
If the bat could destroy such a thing then that could have been a confirmation of his theory. With such power, it had to have been the apex preditor.
But then again, Sunny wondered, if it was the apex preditor then it would have taken the spider immediately it ran into the web.
He immediately confirmed his theory, noticing a blueish fluid drenching the ground.
It was still warm.
As he thought of the scene that had ensued, with the spider getting caught and taken away, he thought to himself. The web had been made in such a way it would be used to catch other creatures. Creatures that probably now knew the spider was gone. Creatures that now could come out any moment and catch him if he stayed there, wasting time.
Before he could leave, something was coming, so he instinctively hid, waiting for it to pass.
When it got close to the blue blood, however, it immediately deviated from it's path, hurrying down another route.
Could it have been a mistake?
No, Sunny realised something so obvious he almost laughed at his own insolence. The spider might have been dead but the creatures in here we're blind. They relied heavily on sound but that didn't necessarily mean they lacked a sense of smell.
In an environment where sight was out of the question, of course smell would still be heightened even if not to the same extent as hearing. And if any creature that got close to him only smelt the spider, a creature that had made the entire part of the woods quiet and made other creatures avoid it, then they would very much avoid him.
With a wide grin, Sunny almost couldn't believe how smart he was. This blood was without doubt the perfect camouflage, until he had to hide from something stronger that actively hunts the spider. Then the blood will be a bell attached to him like cattle.
Of course it wouldn't be that simple.
He sighed.
But still, he thought again, the web was out in the open, with the spider having been caught in the open, because there were no damaged trees showing signs of the bat having gone in search for it.
It it had any active predators then it wouldn't be casually in the open, would it?
If it had the luxury of being in the open while everything else was quiet or hiding then most definitely it had to be superceded by the bat only.
And with such reliance on echo location, the bat wouldn't have too strong a sense of smell, would it?
It couldn't have everything, the world had its way in balancing.
With that conclusion, he smeared himself in the blood. He didn't rush, he had realised that it would be a while before any other creatures got close to the spider's blood, even if it was just blood. This was the power of fear. A power he was now harvesting for his own.
Following his path, Sunny encountered another problem in his mind, one he hadn't thought of prior of smearing himself with blood.
We're there any scavengers in these woods? If so, were they brave enough to go for him covered in the spider blood? Was he now just a walking dinner bell?
He knew back in his world vultures would very easily swarm the carcus of a lion. Did the same truth apply here as well? He wondered.
Barely keeping track of where he was walking towards, with his brain shrouded in thought, Sunny suddenly found himself standing before a creature, eight legged with the front two on the ground, four on tree barks and two high in the canopy.
"Ah shit."