BIOLOGICAL SUPERCOMPUTER SYSTEM-Chapter 1225: Mur’s Shores (1)

Two days of tense flight finally brought Erik and the clone within sight of Mur’s coastline. Their small bodies made the journey painfully slow, but their modest size had proven more than crucial for survival.

The journey had been a constant nightmare. Countless times, they’d nearly been found by the terrors that patrolled these waters, both in the sky and in the churning sea below.

The sea thaids breached the surface below them, while flying thaids soared overhead, leaving no safe place in any part of this cursed sea.

No matter which direction Erik or the clone looked, danger was present, and if it wasn’t, there were great chances it could come at a moment’s notice.

The only positive thing was that, knowing that even a moment’s distraction could prove fatal, both of them kept vigilant and started to understand the thaids’ hunting patterns and flying paths, which were becoming more predictable, but that made them no less lethal.

The problem was that Erik and the clone had no idea of how the thaids in this area behaved, because no human survived encountering them, meaning there were no information about them.

Yet Erik was strong enough to survive and to learn.

As the sun set on another treacherous day, the darkening waters seemed to come alive with even more dangerous creatures.

The nocturnal hunters emerged, but just so enough that their shapes were barely visible in the growing gloom.

Erik didn’t know why the sea thaids came out during the night and hid during the day, but it must have been because of the sun.

After all, the glowing orb of fire in the sky made it easier for the predators in the depths to spot those staying closer to the surface.

Yet, knowing this meant that Erik and his clone knew they would need to find a safer place before full darkness descended.

<Jeez. If they weren’t stupid beasts, I would have thought they were searching for us,> Erik said to the clone.

<Don’t make me think about it, master.>

In truth, most of the times Erik’s encounters were just a weird combination of events, especially those that involved thaids hunting in some area and the two being too close to the monsters’ prey.

For that reason, Erik decided he needed something more drastic to make things safe. He had been far-sighted enough to bring with him some of the rocks from the tiny island on which the clone had saved his life and made holes in it.

Both the clones entered the holes, and Erik moved it across the water using telekinesis. A rock was small enough to float, and whenever a thaid got too close to them for comfort, they hid inside of it so that they would be left alone.

A rock was a rock, after all, and seeing it made the thaids too stupid to understand the ruse. Just get away from it.

Though there was always the risk, the sea thaids thought they were shelled creatures, so Erik remained inside of it just as long as the Thaids to leave the area.

Of course, that was made only by the not-so-rare occurrences in which Thaids could feel the flow of mana. Shapeshifting didn’t use much, but Phantom Veil did, so he had to turn it off.

As if all that wasn’t enough, not every thaid could be fooled by sight alone. When scent-hunting thaids drew near, Erik and his passenger would plunge beneath the waves, holding position until the danger passed.

Yet the water held its own dangers—more than once they’d had to burst from the surface as massive jaws rose from the depths to devour them.

They survived through cunning as much as caution. When larger thaids fought over territory or prey, Erik would guide them close enough to use the chaos as cover but not so near as to draw attention.

Every natural event became a survival opportunity. They used fighting thaids as cover, hid behind rock formations during hunts, and took advantage of water currents to mask their movements.

When predators gathered to feed, Erik and the clone would slip by unnoticed in the opposite direction. They even timed their movements with the changing tides to conserve energy while traveling.

The problem was that Erik hadn’t been able to bring water or food. The lack of nourishment had taken its toll.

Even in their smaller bodies, two days without food left them weak, especially considering how much distance the two had to travel.

Now, as the dark mass of Mur’s coastline finally emerged from the horizon, both Erik and his clone felt a mixture of relief and apprehension.

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They had survived the crossing, but the continent before them promised dangers that would make their ocean journey seem tame by comparison.

<We made it, Master,> the clone said.

Erik stayed quiet, carefully watching the shore ahead of them. He looked from side to side, checking every part of the coastline for any signs of danger. Next to him, the clone also remained silent.

The shoreline of Mur stretched before them, but rather than resembling the familiar coast of Mannard, it presented a different sight.

Dense jungle pressed right up to the water’s edge, massive trees with twisted trunks creating a wall of vegetation. Their branches intertwined so thickly that the forest floor remained hidden in perpetual shadow, even in daylight.

It wasn’t that there weren’t forests on Mannard; quite the contrary, and since nature was untamed, it was very close to the continent’s shores. The difference was that the vegetation was massive.

The trees were enormous—bigger than anything Erik had ever seen growing naturally before. Next to these giants, even the oldest trees back in Mannard looked tiny.

Their trunks were so wide Erik could fit an entire house inside them, and even more. The bark was rough and covered in deep scratches, showing signs of where enormous creatures had attacked them, or where they sharpened their claws, and it wasn’t hard to see this even from a distance, both for the trees’ size and also for the size of the claw marks and bites left by the creatures who used them to mark their territory, or as a result of a fight.

Erik felt uneasy looking at these trees, because if they had grown this big, it must have been because they needed to protect themselves from the dangerous creatures that lived here.

<That, and the fact that most likely Mur has much more mana than Mannard.>

<It makes sense, master,> the clone said. <As much as we have seen, the creatures around here are bigger than those in our home. Abundance of mana is the only explanation. >

They could also feel the energy flowing around them. There was much more of it in the air here than Erik had ever felt back in Mannard.

He could feel it saturating everything around them, like a thick fog that remained invisible. This abundance of energy could explain the trees’ impossible size—they were literally gorging themselves on the ambient mana.

<I’m pretty sure these things house a lot of flying thaids, and if not them, there are still many variants that can use them to nest.>

Erik studied the canopy’s movement, noting how entire sections swayed without wind—clear signs of large creatures moving through the upper branches.

<They could work well even for us, Master. The best thing will always be to stay away from the shores, and I won’t change my opinion on that.>

The clone said while looking at the stretch of sand in front of them.

<Neither I.>

The beach itself was narrow, barely a strip of sand between ocean and jungle.

Here and there, massive rock formations jutted from the tree line like nature’s watchtowers. These weathered stones, some easily as tall as buildings, showed deep gouges and claw marks.

Massive bones jutted from the sand in every direction, bleached white by sun and sea.

These were bigger than anything Erik had ever seen before. Giant rib bones curved up from the beach like arches, and there were other bones he didn’t recognize half-buried in the sand.

Erik couldn’t tell whether these bones belonged to a single type of thaid or to different species.

<What really worries me is what the hell killed those things…> Erik said. <Whatever it was, it could have probably been bigger than the one who died.>

If they had been killed, the thing who did it could likely be around these parts too.

<Yeah, but they could have also died naturally…>

<Here? In Mur? I doubt so.>

What the clone said made sense.

<Better think positively… Now,> Erik said. <We should find a suitable place to make camp.> The clone nodded. Safety here would mean finding a place the thaids avoided, or at least where they didn’t go often. Of course, if such locations existed on this hostile continent.

Erik looked along the beach, trying to find any traces that his companions had been there.

A group of transformed Chimaeric Demons would have needed somewhere to make landfall, somewhere to establish an initial foothold.

But the shoreline showed no obvious signs of disturbance—either they landed elsewhere, or all traces of their arrival had been erased by time and tides. Hopefully not thaids.

<If they made it, they would have headed inland immediately,> Erik thought. <Staying near the coast would have made them too exposed.>

He looked for safe paths through the jungle that would protect them as they traveled deeper into Mur.

Then they finally reached the shore. From there, they could see the jungle better.

He saw several open areas along the edge of the forest, but Erik was too smart to go there. He knew these clearings were dangerous—predators often used them to catch their prey.

Instead, they would need to look for narrow paths and hidden routes through the trees, ones that even the huge thaids might not notice and that hopefully humans used.