Ch 88

Chapter 88

Gilded Apes are lumbering, land-bound Monster Beasts. The odds of them climbing trees are slim, and they shouldn’t loiter in the branches.

“It’s also reasonable to assume they rarely look up. Corpsewood has no predators which could threaten them.”

With those thoughts, Wolf scaled a tree, sticking to the canopy once more. He moved through the treetops for a few seconds before stopping. He focused on his senses, his nose catching a mixture of sweet floral scents, listening to sounds of jungle’s wildlife.

It’s different from before?

“Birds are chirping and insects are buzzing. Harmless reptiles and amphibians are creeping around. I’m not even certain they are Monster Beasts, maybe low stages of Qi Gathering, but they are thriving here.”

The apes are keeping their predators at bay. While they care about competition, these little critters don’t bother them at all. They can survive here, just like in the outer ring.

“Doesn’t matter,” Wolf dismissed thoughts of jungle fauna’s delicate ecology, focusing on practical problems. “I mustn’t disturb them. Birds screeching or flapping their wings could alarm the Gilded Apes.”

Sudden silence, too. But even if they hear me, what can they do to me here?

“I don’t want to find out.”

Having decided on a course of action, Wolf crept forward, noting bird nests and insect hives. However, he soon realized the small animals sought the safety of slender, leaf-covered branches over the thick bare boughs he preferred to traverse.

Wolf believed he had figured out his surroundings and what he should do, when, a kilometer away from the moat, the dense shrubbery below changed. The tightly packed Crimsonbriars gave way to Hazelberries. The three-meter-tall bushes intertwined with their neighbors, keeping neat, five-meter-wide empty spaces between rows.

Wolf awakened his senses for an instant, before sending them dormant once more.

No berries.

“The bushes are in bloom or budding. More importantly, those bare patches are too regular, they appear like orchard alleys.”

Wolf reexamined the forest floor, looking into the distance for a split second before his pupils widened.

It’s a maze?

“Or a labyrinth, I can’t tell from up here. And look! What’s that dark patch over there?”

Wolf awakened his senses, but the dark-brown mound remained a dark-brown mound. He hesitated for a moment before changing course to check.

A minute later, Wolf stopped.

A Whiteflame Honeyeater? He gaped at the giant Monster Beast feeding on nectar. Its hundreds of nimble white proboscis stole his attention momentarily before he realized something was off with the beast.

Its back is riddled with scars.

“Someone ripped its claws, and Hazelberry bushes grow in neat rows, planted with enough room for a Whiteflame to pass without damaging them.”

This is a plantation?

“I think it’s both a honey pasture and a plantation.”

I’ve read multiple accounts of Monster Beasts protecting precious plants, tending to them, and devouring them once they mature. However, I’ve never heard of them enslaving other Monster Beasts.

“Enslaving? Really? Are manlings enslaving sheep?”

Thoughts churned and clashed in Wolf’s mind, a practical one beating his academic curiosity. “If this is a farm, where’s the Gilded Ape in charge? There must be an overseer.”

Wolf looked around, finding no shiny yellow apes in sight.

There’s no way they camouflaged themselves that well.

“Enough with the definite statements, keep an open mind. It’s not impossible they are hiding, but it’s unlikely. Again, nothing hunts them, and Whiteflames have low intelligence and poor perception. Gilded Apes have no reason to hide from them.”

But these Gilded Apes are strange. I didn’t consider it back then, but they should favor moving around on four legs, yet they left prints with hind legs only, wielding clubs for reach and added power. They didn’t infuse them with Qi, but those boughs were tough in their own right and needed no reinforcement.

“It’s probably the Mind Clearing Lotuses. They expand souls of manlings, I see no reason they shouldn’t have the same effect on Monster Beasts, helping them attain higher sapience.”

While his mind raced, Wolf’s eyes followed the Honeyeater. The beast spread its hair-thin tubes and stabbed them into the delicate flowers, gathering nectar as it slowly advanced down the path the apes had made for it.

Wolf was about to leave, when a sudden thought struck him. Wait.

“Where’s the Whiteflame’s lair?”

He snuck through the branches for a quarter of an hour before finding the amber dome. He crept down the nearest tree and went into the tunnel, reaching a cavern smaller than the lair of the Whiteflame he had killed before hunting Marie.

Nothing? He stared at the pieces of broken light-orange resin stuck to the far wall where the honeycombs once stood.

“Makes sense. Gilded Apes probably harvest them on regular basis.”

Dejected, Wolf left the cave and returned to the treetops’ safety.

Should I search for honey?

“I have enough honey. What I need the most is to cultivate. In several months, when I have three functional Mental Aspects, I can explore, cultivate, and perfectly control my body at the same time. Until then, I should head to the center and increase my realm as much as possible.”

I don’t believe I will recover that fast, and checking won’t change anything, except waste Anima and delaying my recovery.

Wolf sighed and continued his journey towards the center. Six hours passed, yet the only evidence of Gilded Apes’ existence were sporadic abandoned nests made of dry leaves.

This looks like the safest place in Corpsewood.

The jungle echoed with nearby squeals immediately following Wolf’s thought.

“I just had to jinx myself like that? It’s a good thing I didn’t consider I’m certainly the first manling to reach Corpsewood’s crux and how nobody can beat me to it.”

Wolf disregarded the superstitious thought and crept towards the source of the screams.

It sounds like a pig being butchered.

Wolf moved forward for ten minutes. The squeals had long since died before the terrain below changed again. The ground was clear of shrubbery and other undergrowth, divided into square segments by five-meter-thick trunks of giant trees like the one he stood on.

A pair of two-meter-tall wild pigs dwelled within each square cage, and two golden-furred apes walked the wooden walls, tossing fruits and roots to the pigs.

Wolf gaped. I can’t believe it. Gilded Apes really are evolving, taking the steps which would make them like manlings. They protect the fringes of their territory with a moat and Crimsonbriars, while in the center they have pig farms, Hazelberries, and Whiteflame Honeyeaters. They turned their surroundings into farmland.

“It’s ironic, isn’t it? Corpsewood looks like Boreo’s sole wild patch, besieged by the endless cultivated fields, yet at its heart, Monster Beasts turned it into a different sort of farm.”

Yeah, it is. Wolf nodded in a daze, still trying to process the meaning of the sight before him.

Does that mean we are Monster Beasts with great potential for growth?

“I don’t think so. We have huge biological differences. For starters. we don’t have nubs. We use cultivation to emulate them by transforming our bones into one, meaning we lack an innate organ with Qi storage function.”

Wolf remained still, watching transfixed as Gilded Apes each dumped an armful of food to the voracious pigs before moving on. As they approached the next cage more feed appeared, filling their arms, and Wolf almost toppled over.

Ten! They have holdingrings?

“They can use them?”

He gulped, his eyes glued to the golden giants walking the wooden wall and feeding their farm. He awakened his senses, but could not spot the rings.

“Their thick fur probably obscures the holdingrings. I have to find a well stocked library, or some other repository of knowledge. Ten know how many wonders I’m unaware of if random monkeys can overturn my understanding of the world several times in a handful of hours.”

Wolf spent half an hour watching, but the Gilded Apes did nothing else to amaze him. He was about to leave when a pair of pigs started fighting over food. An ape took two seconds to summon a club into his hand and smashed it into the trunk, showering the bickering pigs with wood chips.

“Oook,” it yelled, and the pigs cowered, retreating several steps.

“That almost sounded like ‘Don’t make me climb down there!’”

I need to be careful. What if they laid traps or alarms in the treetops?

“It’s still unlikely. They haven’t looked up once since I’ve been watching them.” Wolf kept observing for another fifteen minutes, but no new interesting incidents happened.

I wonder whether they have built a settlement? Do they have social strata and some sort of class segregation?

“I don’t think exploring those is important enough for me to waste time on. Someone probably documented such trivia, and cultivation is my primary concern at the moment.”

Fine, fine. I’m going. Wolf tore his eyes from the ape farmers and headed deeper into the jungle, wondering the fresh surprises Gilded Apes had in store for him.

Please report us if you find any errors so we can fix it asap!