Nameless moved through the forest being extra careful of his surroudings.
This part of the forest looked a lot more like a jungle than a forest forcing his to shapeshift as two more eyes appeared on his face, one above and one below his main eye.
These eyes helped with infrared and heat vision as well as to cover the blind spots of a human's vision.
Nameless was also curious about what the environment looked like, apparently the farther away from the Tree of eternal life, the more populated the forest was, as if the tree had a repelling effects on them.
The beast tide happened in this part of the forest first but this also meant that this part of the forest would be the first to recover.
Nameless moved through the jungle.
He first spotted the moth-like alienoid beings he had seen before sucking on a fungus, they had what seemed like very small sensory quills as ears and a weird moth-like fur. it seemed as if they were putting their tongues into it and sucking on nectar.
It didn't take long for him to spot the alienoid monkey-like being of before, two minutes passed before it jumped chasing the moth-like creature.
Nameless followed, the chase was fierce as both creatures used the environment to their advantage, the moth-like creature would go under small fallen branches as well as try to find small holes to hide in the trees, it also could jump fast and use the environment.
The monkey was in no way worse, always following the slightest movement, not being shaken by all the attempts at throwing him off, the moth creature could even escape Nameless's awareness for a few moments but the monkey-like creatures chased it before it finally jumped, its hands however were too small to catch it.
As he looked, he could see two pair of hands that were below the main ones extend like rubber and catch the moth-creature before the monkey catched up and tore its head off.
As the monkey-like alienoid being was eating, Nameless hid his presence with his mental energy, waiting for it to eat its meal, as he approached it, his hand shapeshifted into the birds eagle-like claws before he stabbed its chest.
The monkey tried to resist but it had just been digesting and with powerful claw, it could only look at light faded from its eyes.
"I've been feeling a little hungry these day, hey will, is this safe to eat?"
"Yes, it is safe to eat, better consumed raw."
"I see."
Nameless used his claws to gut the creature before removing its fur and taking out the meat, as he was doing so he couldn't help but ask a question.
"For some reason, this claws are way weaker than the bird that chased me as if they were just a replica."
"It is a matter of course, it is already a miraculeous thing that you can shapeshift into a beast just by looking at it, transformation path cultivators have to kill the beast with their own hand after a very long period of watching its behaviour, replicating it and trying to understand it. They also need a corpse to examine, touch and know. Transformation path is a very hard path to cultivate."
"I see, so I just need to have a corpse, haha, here, I have one."
Nameless touched and examined the monkey's unique hands, extending them himself and trying to understand them for eight minutes before he dropped the corpse.
"Let me see."
He focused his mind on the sensation getting a mental image of those extendings hands before he jumped towards a branch!
Pshiiiii
a weird sound resounded and small hands appeared on his lower chest on both sides extending before gripping the branch!
He tried pulling himself up, the rubbery hands shortened pulling him upwards towards the branch but the hands were too strained by his body weight, after he got on the branch, he deactivated the transformation.
"Mmm it seems they don't suit me much, hey will, can you try and take the mental image of these hands and scale them into one that suit this bigger body, do it for the bird claws as well, you can remove any unecessary thing but keep the main function of them. Can you do that?
"I can but I will need your mental image as well as some of the perceptions of what it's like to be in your body."
"Okay."
In his sea of consciousness, a few big drops emerged from the sea and entered the purple will.
Nameless on the other hand, continued gutting and dissecting the creature before he put some of the meat in his mouth and chewed on it.
"Disgusting!"
The flesh tasted as weird and uncanny as it looked.
He asked : "The flesh doesn't taste well and is even crunchy, is there a way to atleast remove the disgusting taste."
The taste was so bad that didn't notice a small beast core that had formed on the ground.
The will answered "The fungus plant that the polyphemus moths eat from has a nectar that they drink that can act as a sweetener, with a chemical reaction it can transform the meat into a delicacy as well as predigest it, the vervet monkey loved the taste of the polyphemus for this specific reason."
Nameless moved taking the meat and submerging it into a nearby fungus that looked-like container for the jelly golden fluid.
He put the meat inside before he noticed the beast core. He casually threw it in his mouth eating it.
The meat remained for a few minutes in the fungus before he tasted it.
"Delicious!"
The meat was juicy and even melted in his mouth, let alone the taste which is full of a flavours similar to honey in his previous world, it felt like honey with meat yet the taste was superb."
"Wait, where does this fluid come from? it doesn't look like this fungus makes it." He asked, however he received no response, it seemed the will was too busy.
He checked the fungus and the trees surrounding him before an idea came to him, he lifted his head and to his suprise there was a giant jellyfish like plant that was slightly far away that had that same substance underneath its unmbrella-shaped bell.
"It's finished."
"Hehe, just in time, send me the designs."
Drops of water emerged from the purple will as they entered his illusory figure in his sea of consciousness.
Immediately, he received a design for the bird claw, the claws no longer looked deformed with seven toes, it now fit perfectly his human fingers, they also were sharper.
The first claw replica was already deeply flawed
"You sure this would work for the hands, it seems a very different design which might be impossible to imagine and trasform into."
"Although its power is weaker and the design is different, I'm sure if you try hard enough to visualise it, it would grant you greater mobility, and greater mobility in this jungle-like forest is the difference between life and death."
"I understand, I also like them this way better."
Nameless jumped but this time there were no hands in his lower-chest rather his own hands stretched catching the branch before pulling himself to it!
"It's much smoother, well done!"
"The stretching has a limit of 3 meters, be careful if you abuse it going over the limit you might injure your hand's ability to recover."
Nameless jumped a few branches upwards using this new ability of his, he now longer needed to jump on the branch to move in the forest, he could stretch his hands to grasp the branch and swing to the next one.
He grasped a big branch before swinging high in the air doing all kinds of maneuvers with his new ability, even reaching the hardest branches nearly effortlessly.
Nameless had unconsciously reached the jellyfish-like plant that floated in the air.
"What is this?"
"It's a flower jellyfish fungi, it can take the breaths and chemicals released by the divine trees to turn them into this nectar, it also acts as a filter to the environment by consuming waste matter in the air. Its nectar is also a great food the polyphemus moths."
He looked at it, it would move just like a jellyfish, it looking like a pump or a jellyfish swimming in the sea despite being in the air.
She continued : "It's similar to the amanita mushrooms except they take wasted matter from the ground and the humidity in the air to survive while filtering the wastes in the air and the wastes of the ground from corpses and beast feces. It reproduces by leaving spores which other animal can feed off."
"What a unique ecosystem!"
Nameless ate the rest of the meat before he moved on his way, the sun had already began setting before but now the night had already arrived.
Nameless moved in the dark forest as beast sounds echoed, he could hear cricket sounds, frogs and birds sounds interruped with all types of unique beast howls at times...
'I need to find a way to be safe in this environment, I also will either have to find a secure shelter or stay awake at night and take naps in the morning. I can't be ambushed like I was last time while asleep.'
Nameless moved on the top of the tree from branch to branch with the white moon with planetary rings in the background.
He moved rapidly taking up speed, he didn't use his new ability for now, he needed to survive tonight and it would be better to use it in emergencies.
He didn't feel nervous like last time, the eagle claws were stronger than the knife he had used, he could one shot those small beasts but there was still a problem, that was the black beast.
"Hey, I have questions I need answered, also introduce me to this ecosystem tonight, and do mention if you know any safe space to avoid beasts tonight."
"There is a cave, not very far away from here, I will point you to its direction, as for questions, do ask."
He thought for a bit before he asked : "What was that dark alien beast that nearly killed me before?"
"It was a peak rank 4 dark abyssal hyenah, a beast of space path and darkness path."
"three paths?! isn't that impossible? I've been willing to ask for a long time, what do you mean by path?"
"Think of them as the elements of the world and the path one can cultivate and walk on. There are multiple paths of the Grand Dao. The dark abyssal hyenah is a space path beast meaning it has laws of space ingrained in it giving it the innate ability of manipulating space. in this case, it's ability is to pass through objects. It also is a darkness path beast meaning it has the laws of the darkness element ingrained into it giving it the innate ability of disappearing into darkness, further merging both it gains the ability to merge its body with darkness and emerge from any dark space that is connected with its shadow."
She continued : "The entire forest at night is practically its home, It is an Apex predator that is very cunning with a very powerful jaw that could tear almost any beast with flesh, one of its strongest strategy for survival is its enslavement path attainment, the beast has elvolved to be able to mimick enslavement path using darkness path, it's a powerful evolutionary change that allowed it to be almost unvulnerable in this type of environment."
"What is enslavement path?"
"Enslavement path is the ability to enslave beasts, the dark abyssal hyenah can enslave its offsprings, after giving birth, the male and female abyssal hyenah fight and eat each other until only one survives, the one who survives uses its offsprings as basically a battle unit moving it all like puppets. Enslavement path is very similar to being puppeteer."
"What a ruthless world, it doesn't suprise me in the least."
She continued : "It's also the purple dao marks that are on your body."
"What?!"