Level Up The Colony-Chapter 104: Darkness

Yet here he was, standing once more beneath the oppressive silence of the chief's tent, eye to eye with the massive, tusked leader of the Darvani.

The one-eyed chief stared at him with that same cold, unreadable expression, daggers for teeth, brutality etched into his every line and scar.

And then, in his deep, guttural voice, he finally spoke:

"You have proven that survival is not a hindrance to you. However… the Darvani are not waiters of judgment. The forest grows sparse with prey. We now go deeper to find meat. You will go with them."

He didn't gesture.

He didn't need to.

The group of guards surrounding the chief, six in total, the same ones who had once mocked and stoned Timothy awake immediately nodded in unison.

Their posture grew alert with Intent.

There was no mistaking it.

He was going hunting with them.

Timothy's gut wretched.

He wasn't being given a chance, he was being handed a death sentence.

Hunting night creatures in the deeper forest?

Which forest? That question didn't even matter.

Every direction surrounding the village was flanked by thick, towering trees, tangled roots, and brush-covered ground.

The entire wasteland was forest in every direction except for certain washed-off areas, like where they were.

Naturally, it didn't matter; this whole terrain was naturally conflicting and impossible in the first place.

It didn't matter where they went.

What mattered was that they would be venturing into unknown danger, and he'd be the weakest link.

Timothy said nothing.

He simply breathed in deeply and turned to leave the tent.

A wooden spear was shoved into his hand, thick, crude, and heavy with more weight than he'd expected.

He stumbled a bit under it, regaining balance just in time before one of the guards grabbed his shoulder and led him away.

Moments later, the group exited the village.

They moved fast and wordlessly.

Like shadows melting into the trees.

And just like that, they vanished into the depths of the forest.

As the trees swallowed the group,

Timothy's thoughts spun.

'This is suicide'

There was no way he'd survive alongside them, not if a serious confrontation occurred.

And even if, somehow, he did, it would be impossible to return to the village unscathed and not arouse suspicion.

The odds were stacked against him from the very start.

So he made a decision.

If things went sideways they would then he would run.

Not back to the village.

But away.

As far as possible.

Into the wild.

He didn't care about the risks anymore.

Whatever lay beyond the trees, whatever strange lands stretched beyond the horizon, they couldn't be worse than this slow death of submission and spectacle.

Timothy had been sorely mistaken.

The forest stretched wide, alive with towering trees, thick grasses, flowering shrubs, and tangles of brush, every detail designed to make it look like any other forest.

Yet, if the Darvani were right, its prey had long since vanished.

Minutes passed as they ran, and still no sign of their wild animals or monsters as he knew them, no rustle of movement in the undergrowth.

What unsettled him most, however, was not the silence but the Darvani themselves.

Their glowing, gemlike eyes cut through the night with ease.

Timothy wondered how they could see so clearly in this darkness.

The occasional streak of moonlight broke through the canopy, but that was nowhere near enough.

Maybe they were simply creatures born of this forest, molded by it.

Timothy, on the other hand, stumbled constantly.

He had no glowing eyes, no fur coat to shield him from the scratch of bushes and the cold press of branches.

Survival for him was mimicry, following their every stride, leap, and crouch.

Where they bent low, he mirrored.

Where they bounded over fallen logs, he forced his tired legs to do the same.

He couldn't see them clearly most of the time; he followed the glow of their eyes and the sound of their breathing.

This was their ground.

They were built for it.

Their dark skin blended with the trees, their red eyes could lure as much as they could pierce the dark, and their lean, powerful bodies carried them like predators in their element.

Timothy was already breaking down from the effort.

Still, he studied them.

Every step, every sound, every way they moved through this place became information.

He couldn't help but wonder how far their prey had really gone, if the Darvani were forced to hunt deeper and deeper?

That thought hadn't lingered long when he felt it.

A shift.

The terrain grew denser.

What little light there had been before disappeared entirely.

If the last stretch of forest was dim, this was pitch-black.

Timothy thought they might have entered a new domain, and the way the Darvani slowed their pace confirmed it.

When they finally came to a halt, the silence pressed in on him.

Perfect camouflage for them.

A death sentence for him.

He could hear nothing but their low grunts and the shifting glow of their eyes.

Timothy wondered how they intended to hunt in such a void and in the same moment, he secured his escape.

The moment he entered the forest, he'd activated Colony Genesis.

Back in his makeshift shelter, the skill had been nearly useless; there was no biomass to feed on.

Here, surrounded by plants and roots, he hoped the termites would finally amount to something.

His limit was only four, so he'd been cautious, dropping two along the path as markers while the remaining two clung to his head.

One guarded the forest's outer entrance.

The other, the threshold to this new, denser terrain.

If anything went wrong, those tiny creatures might be the difference between death and escape.

Around him, the Darvani crouched low, bodies taut with focus.

Timothy told himself they were waiting for prey.

Yet unease gnawed at him, they seemed too tense, as though they were bracing for something far more dangerous.

His thoughts drifted, unbidden, to simpler times.

Back in secondary school, when things were good, his friends would argue over the "darkest place on earth."

Richard, ever the contrarian, had answered, Outer space.

That sparked the usual uproar.

Space isn't part of Earth! Some argued.

Richard countered, It was dark, wasn't it? And wasn't darkness simply the absence of light? Others insisted that out there were monsters stranger than the human mind could fathom, aliens.

And maybe, one friend had muttered, we alienate ourselves already.

Standing now in this oppressive blackness, Timothy almost laughed.

Darkness wasn't empty.

Darkness was full, full of things you couldn't see until it was too late.

Back in school, the debate had ended with a strange conclusion: whatever monsters lurked at the ocean's depths could probably survive in outer space.

The reasoning? Threefold.

First, they were already adapted to utter darkness.

Second, they required little oxygen, thriving on pressures and chemistries that would kill most creatures.

And third,

lived in three dimensions, as comfortable moving vertically as horizontally.

Timothy had never bothered to test the truth of those claims.

But now, standing in this oppressive black forest, he found himself wondering, what if that kind of darkness had adapted here, on land?

The thought never finished.

A sudden weight pressed down on his shoulder, crushing, suffocating, like a building had been dropped on him.

Every muscle seized.

His instincts screamed danger.

He opened his mouth to yell only for a Darvani hand to clamp over it.

Their glowing red eyes flicked toward him.

The shock in them told him all he needed to know.

His stats hadn't warned him.

His attributes hadn't reacted in time.

The system had failed him again.

Another reminder of how dependent he'd need to become.

And in the next moment, another truth struck him just as hard: he likely wasn't here to hunt.

He was bait.

Prey never came easily to predators unless a weaker prey was provided.

Almost immediately, something coiled tight around him.

Pressure constricted his ribs.

His bones creaked.

His lungs fought for air.

Silent constrictors were rare, and rarer still were those clever enough to single out the weakest prey.

Timothy almost laughed until he realized he might be crushed before the Darvani even acted.

If these mutts don't move now, he thought grimly, I'm ditching them faster than a one-night stand.

Then came the sound.

A wet, ugly pulch.

Hot blood splattered across him in waves.

He braced for the serpent's shriek, he'd fought enough snakes here to expect it.

But there was no sound.

Just silence.

The grip on him slackened slightly.

Relief was short-lived.

In the next instant, he was hurled against a tree, pain cracking down his spine, yet the tail never let him go.

It dragged him, flinging him across roots and rocks, his body colliding with anything in its path.

The battle raged in silence.

Timothy could only read its progress by the serpent's grip sometimes loosening, crushing.

Smart and Hungry made it Reluctant to give up its prey.

Then, without warning, the serpent surged forward faster than ever, its coils clamping down with lethal force.

For one awful moment, Timothy thought it was dying and trying to take him with it.

Instead, water swallowed him whole.

He had no breath prepared, only panic.

For a minute he thrashed, drowning, before he was wrenched back into the air.

Cold wind slapped his face.

Then darkness again.

Narrow walls squeezed in on him.

Realization hit like a blade.

He had been eaten.

The serpent wasn't fighting anymore, it was fleeing.

Using water as its path, as its shield.

It had lost the Darvani.

And now, so had he... For now.