15 Experimenting The Primal Wrath

"Those birds haven't left the corpse site, even after two hours…"

"Mmm~ now that you already satiate your curiosity, let's go back to the outpost and grab more food."

Dusk began to creep upon the sky, unrelenting and soothingly assuring.

Not wanting to let all of that meat from the falling 'huffalo' go to waste, Clover and Pippin went back to the location, only for three meters tall raven-like beasts to feast upon the mountain of corpses like there was no tomorrow.

There were also too many of them, and as they didn't seem to act hostile to the usalian, Nagan prompted the usalian to steer clear of that place. Not to mention, considering the potential intelligence of those giant birds, Nagan didn't want another sprinting scenario against a species capable of soaring in the sky.

"Pippin, don't you think it's weird that buffalo taste like shrimp?"

"Well, I'm not the one who accidentally opened all of the eight million memory packages. Wait, they tell you the taste of those animals?"

"Ohoho, I see that you haven't opened a single memory package on the animal section." Clover puffed her chest with a smug. "Did you know that an omnivorous shrimp with the binomial name of Lysmata amboinensis is considered a cleaner shrimp as it is eating parasites and dead tissue from fish makes up a large part of its diet? Meaning that many fish often form a symbiosis mutualism with them to get parasites off from their body and clean some residue off their mouth!"

"Ah! So it's like going to the dentist!"

"What's a dentist?"

With the looming potential danger of the night beginning to become the concern of survival, the expedition team had already ensured that the minimum parameters were filled with traps and a mini one meter and a half wall scattered amongst the presence of the trees, which includes numerous strategic positions to fall back and retaliate to any ground-based threat.

There was also a chance that a tree-climbing predator might appear, so wood thorns were installed on some part of the trees which might possibly lead the threat into a position that could be easily ambushed from all sides.

All that said, the covered perimeters weren't that much of a strong defense territory yet, as the expedition team would still need to prepare to abandon the outpost if the situation demanded it. 

So for now, the most reliable deterrent they could possibly utilize was actually nothing but the ol' reliable torches and bonfire, which was also not a great long term deterrent as it needs a constant source of stalk and biomass along with flammable liquid, where in this case, animal fats are used as substitute.

"Felling the trees is surprisingly fun," Willow quipped, holding the other end of a makeshift two-person crosscut saw.

"But are we still going to do this throughout the night tho?" Mako continued. "Don't you think that all of this noise would attract beasts?"

"Think about it." Willow cockily pointed at her own cranium. "Animal of prey stands still when a predator is near. An animal that bravely creates a loud sound without care will scare predators because of how unnatural it was in nature, just like the existence of fire."

"Well, what if the animals in this world aren't afraid of fire?"

"Huh, good question."

"Anywho, Zuuuuu, Shaaaaa, Zuuu, Shaaaa~!" Mako gestured her finger back and forth with a large grin of excitement, signaling for the sawing to commence once again."

"Hehehe, Zuuuu, Shaaaa, Zuuuu, Shaaa~!"

"Zuuu Shaaaa~!"

And so the noisy act of deforestation had begun imprinting its footstep into this foreign wayward world. 

With how long the first night could be, the usalian already start to rest in shifts. They were, however, not really having the most pleasant of sleep.

"... I was forced to learn the definition of a sound pollution," Immortal Dragon Overlord uttered.

"You said it…"

Meanwhile, Nagan was outside of the outpost proximity, after he gave a command to the usalian to only contact him through the soul link in an emergency situation.

With an empty gaze caressing against the tree in front of him, he opened both of his hands. For those palms of his were only meant to be a catalyst, to summon the very same strength that Bluebell showcased this afternoon.

"Too many, then it will overflow, crushing everything within its path. Too little, then there is barely anything left to grasp."

Slowly, yet unsurely, the threshold unfolds as a door that knocks the pathological facade. A vow in the squirming, in the squirming, in the squirming of the ark—to burn what was left in the churning of the dark. Everything caring to the road-less harming, something must accumulate through the veins, through the blood, and through the taint.

They want to listen, they want to dream, they want to smile, they want to hurt. 

It churns inside and out, filling the aft where it looms.

"Almost… there…"

A controlled apocalypse in the palm of non-believer, the red began to emerge and corrupt the space and time of its surroundings.

They lurk but enticed, hurriedly creeping to the catalyst, to be held and to be chrysalis—waiting to be born and tempered by the wrathful flame within the fireside corner of Nagan's heart.

And as he finally grasped the conceptual manifestation of anger against everything existing in this reality, he clenched his fist until the bones cracked and veins spilled, just to ensure that the pain and sorrow didn't disappear through the slit of his flesh.

Holding such malice and hatred, Nagan hurled a punch toward the tree in front of him. Insinuated by the goal of 'hitting' the tree, the tainting crimson enlarged and began to engulf Nagan's arm as a whole. 

It formed an engine, a torque, then began full throttling the force behind the momentum. In just a miniscule window of time, the intent of 'hitting' the tree evolved into 'consuming' the tree as a whole.

And what kind of 'consuming' that could happen when it was coated by a red raw wrath from a creature called a man?

"Too much!"

Explosive cracking of the sound barrier could be heard alongside its shockwave, as the crimson of indignation emulsified and steamed everything in the former tree's general direction, leaving a dragged crater of liquid red and strange biomass that scatter fluorescent smoke into the air.

The itchy anger was still etched on Nagan's veins within the aftermath, throbbing and glowing like a root system connected to his fervent red gaze.