Chapter 173: The Green Sea
The tracker needed a few minutes to come back to his senses after witnessing Coop deal with something that had haunted the region as easily as taking out the trash. The appearance of Field Boss level monsters had been the end of the humans’ ability to freely navigate the wild areas, forcing them to bunker down or accept that they needed civilization shards to claim territory. They lived in fear of a Field Boss encroaching on their camps and ultimately ending their struggle to survive. In contrast, to Coop, a Field Boss was just another monster with even better loot. He had to reassure the tracker that they would definitely be taking back their planet from these Primal Constructs, it was just a matter of time.
Once the tracker got a hold of himself, wiping away a tear or two of relief, he led the way along twisting foot trails with renewed vigor. They moved through thickening forest until Coop started to get concerned about night fall. Without the sun high in the sky, the thick canopy of leaves blocked almost all of the direct light before it reached the ground. The dirt trails were shrouded in shadow by the afternoon, and by the evening it already felt closer to night.
The trails themselves were hardly noticeable to someone like Coop who could have mistaken the path for the game trails of small mammals. The only sign that they had been used by people before the tracker strode through the brush was in the composition of the top layer. The dirt, mud, and leaves had been swept away until rocky stone bedrock outcroppings were exposed, creating a small valley wide enough for a single person to travel between bushes, but only a few inches deep. The jagged tertiary limestone was worn until smoothed over. They were almost like small islands of stepping stones that had risen from the mud. Countless sinewy roots had bored into the empty spaces in between the stone as nearby trees sought to expand their coverage, but smaller vines had been crushed by regular travel and it seemed like water would be funneled down the path at frequent intervals.
As they moved south, winding through the vegetation, they also ended up further from the coast. The forest regrowth transitioned into a proper jungle as they entered what had been conservation areas even before the assimilation. Coop was comfortable with sleeping on the beach on Ghost Reef, where the worst threat was having a hermit crab pinch his toes, but spending the night in the jungle wasn’t something that would put him at ease. As it grew darker, he couldn’t help but seek reassurance from his guide.
“Are we almost there?” Coop ventured, trying not to sound like he was sitting in the backseat.
“We made good time.” The tracker responded. “See that ridge?” He pointed ahead, between trunks of trees to a black cliff that was like a stone wall among the vegetation. “We just have to get to the top.”
“Hm?” Coop thought he made it sound a lot easier than it actually would be. He wasn’t ready to call the terrain mountainous as they were still in the northern lowlands, but a cliff only needed to be a dozen meters before Coop’s rock climbing skills would be abandoned in favor of mistjumping.
“Don’t worry, there’s a trail.” The tracker chuckled, mistaking Coop’s consideration for hesitance.
“Let’s get going.” Coop suggested, looking forward to a little break after a full day of tough travel.
While the hike had been physical enough, Coop hadn’t had much to do besides follow the tracker. They had expertly avoided almost all monsters which had mostly been the Elite Ruin Nebulas that covered the interlocking branches high in the trees. For the most part, the monsters simply didn’t have the reach to attack them as they passed by as long as the tracker kept them moving on open trails, making sure the sky was always clear above their heads. The times where Coop had deleted an obstacle in the form of a monster blocking their path had been few compared to the actual number of ambushers waiting in the trees. A single spear throw was enough to crush the Ruin Nebulas. The damage that Coop’s attacks dealt to the elite monsters made precise targeting of weak points a bit unnecessary. He could annihilate the entire body of the monster with one strike. They didn’t get the opportunity to offer a challenge as long as the tracker or Coop’s Presence of Mind pointed them out before he wandered underneath them.