Chapter 352: Core of the Forest
The mayor of Iquitos tried to warn him, but Coop still severely underestimated what it meant to traverse through the Amazon rainforest in a post-mana scenario. The guidance of the Warriors of the Crossroads and the Jaguar Elites at the start of his journey had spoiled him, leading him to believe that while the forests, mountains, jungles, and rivers involved challenging terrain, they were relatively easy to navigate, assuming a specific destination was in mind.
Coop was mistaken.
The gap between Central and South America had been a battleground for months prior to his arrival, starting even before Coop reached Corozal for the first time. The monster nests and burgeoning domains that competed with local fauna for territory were chipped away by Sierra and other members of the Jaguar Sun until the Primal Constructs became second fiddle to the wild animals of the region. Sierra had already been one of the highest level humans on the planet specifically for her efforts extending her range from Costa Rica, while preventing the Cult of Chakyum access to South America.
Coop had been judging the area after thousands of people had toiled with the invaders over the course of the majority of the assimilation. He made the mistake of considering the forest to be the natural state of things, despite all of that effort. However, the journey between the Andes and Iquitos had been a preview for what the heart of the untamed rainforest might be like, but he had taken it for minor curiosity, with inexplicable bursts of power in individual monsters. The reason the people of Iquitos were specialized boss killers was because everything that lasted long enough to become a threat was forced to evolve into that level of danger or simply perish.
The jungle was packed with tangled vegetation. Trees had transformed into mountains of living bark, extending all the way into the low misty clouds, a few so high the tips of their crowns were capped with a hint of white. Vines moved like lethargic snakes, threatening to ensnare any whose attention lingered too long on the landscape, and the undergrowth so packed, it transformed into impenetrable walls of flourishing blossoms that demanded alternatives to bypass. The Amazon was an emergent realm, beyond even those areas untamed by civilization shard territory.
He thought that the empowerment of humanity through the activation of mana meant that they were better equipped to become proper stewards of planet Earth, but he was underrating the specific environs and the rest of the inhabitants. It didn’t take long for the environment to provide enough reminders to open his eyes and show him how far it had gone beyond his element. The heart of the rainforest was effectively its own unique domain, outside of the official designations.
Coop was relatively unpretentious, but in retrospect, the idea that it was entirely up to humans to resist the invasion of the Primal Constructs was a bit presumptuous, especially when he knew there were so many animals rising to the occasion in the various places he had previously visited. When it came to the galactic community, there were probably 10 million different species on Earth that could be leading the way. If humans were taken out of the equation, how much better would the Primal Constructs fare? Probably not as much better as the rest of the galactic community might like to think.
He completed his first two grinds within the territory of the Iquitos settlement, persisting with the impression that he was fully equipped to tackle the Amazon rainforest. The regular and elite variants of Primal Constructs did nothing to dissuade his thinking. However, when he left the taming atmosphere of the local civilization shard, he found it extraordinarily difficult to even follow the Amazon river. His first errant mistjump forced him to sit down and reevaluate himself and the environment lest he make the situation worse.
Wandering off course and exploring was completely off the table. Even mistjumping too aggressively put him at risk of permanently losing track of the winding river as it was swallowed by the enormous rainforest domain. He had been looking at the expansive territory all wrong.
The river may have ranged between 25 and 200 miles wide, making it seem like an indelible landmark, impossible to lose, but in the grand scheme of the interior, it was a hairline fracture weaving through the trees. The forest itself was potentially over 5,000,000 square miles itself. If he didn’t want to blast himself to either the Atlantic or the Pacific Oceans in order to start over, he needed to be a bit more humble.