While sitting atop the tree, Nolan finished the map he was making about the area surrounding the tree. Everything around him was so strange that he found his head aching from time to time.
There were things humans were never meant to see… but here he was, living his life. No matter where he turned, what he saw—there was absolutely nothing familiar in this hell.
Trees were different, there were monsters everywhere, even the animals he could recognize were somehow far different from how they were supposed to be.
Talking about animals, Nolan looked beside him and found the crow was still there.
Caw! Caw!...
Not only did it continue living there with him, but it also didn't know how to shut its mouth as well.
Shush... shush, can you please shut up for once…
Fucker, if it weren't for your agility, I would've long killed you… I mean, not really, but still... Nolan thought, remembering how every time he tried to kill this damned beast, he was just met with caw caws full of mockery.
It was just too damn hard to kill. Not only was it hard to kill, it was even hard to get rid of it.
No matter how much he tried to shoo the crow away, it just didn't work.
Even when he thought it would fly away, it would just vanish for a few moments and then come back with some worms in its beak.
There was even a time when it offered a piece of a worm to Nolan.
Of course, he didn't take it… But the gesture made him forget about this strange bird for now. Still, seeing how the crow was getting comfortable like this around him... made him shudder for a moment.
'Am I crow-friendly… or something?' he mused.
In the end, he just gave up and looked at the map he had drawn on the page. At the center of it was the tree he was standing on, and everything else was written around it.
Looking at the page, he tried to revise what was in his surroundings.
To his right was the vast ocean... or that's what it appeared to be at first glance. But now that he was on top of the tree, he could vaguely see the other end of the water.
Which prompted him to think this wasn't the ocean but a river.
He could see the end of the river's width, but no matter how far he looked, he couldn't see the end of its length. It flowed from the north's horizon and disappeared behind him.
As the tentacled monster lived along with who knows how many more abominations there, he had marked the river as an absolute danger zone—an area he would only go to if there was an absolute need for it. If not, he would try to keep himself away from it.
There were a few more anomalies he had noticed in the river, but as there wasn't enough research, he hadn't made any concrete conclusions. It was left for later to figure out.
On his left was the forest... to be more accurate, it was slightly to his front left. To his absolute left was a mushroom field, and if one continued to move forward, they would eventually reach a desert.
Looking at the forest in front of him, a bitter feeling arose from inside. Gritting his teeth, he looked at it with absolute hatred. Frowning, Nolan whispered,
"I will fucking raze you to the ground one day. Remember, fucker."
He wasn't saying this just for the sake of saying... no, he truly intended to do that. It was just a matter of when.
Marking the forest as moderately dangerous, he moved to the area behind the tree. There was nothing known about the back, as it was marked with a question mark.
The tree was so dense and big that from the front, he couldn't see what was in the back.
He had thought to make the trip sometime, but today wasn't the time.
For now, he just speculated that the mushroom field surrounded the tree, but until he saw it with his own two eyes, there was nothing hundred percent.
Crossing the back, he moved to what was in front and the area he was most interested in.
Far, far away in front of him was the mountain... which was his goal. And to reach this goal of his, there were areas he had to cross. There were two in particular.
He could see the mushroom field surrounding the trees, but that wasn't the only thing blocking his path to the mountain. No, after a while, even this mushroom field was left behind, and a new biome took its place.
Nolan could vaguely make sense of what it was... and from all the information, he was almost sure that it was a swamp that was the final obstacle between the mushroom field and the mountain.
Marking the swamp as not fully known and of unknown danger, he moved to the mushroom field and continued his observation.
It wasn't for nothing that Nolan had spent a few hours sitting and watching the area. No, he got valuable information about his surroundings, and one of them was the type of monster inhabiting the field.
He may not have seen all the species, as the field was full of mushrooms towering over 20m, which obscured the view from the top of the tree.
But from what he could see… he found two types of monster species inhabiting the mushroom field.
One of them he named Shrooms—mushroom beasts with horns and a spore hump on their back. This monster wasn't of any interest to Nolan... not at the moment, at least.
It was the second monster he was interested in.
If he were to describe it, Nolan would probably say it was like an evolved, monstrous version of a wild boar—or maybe a hybrid between a bear and a dog.
He had only vaguely remembered their look, but it was their behavior that he was more interested in.
He had always thought that monsters were predators... preying upon the lives of others to satiate their hunger. But today, he understood that wasn't the case.
Take this boar monster, for example—it didn't feast upon others' lives and instead ate the mushroom stems and mycelium that grew on the ground.
There were times it attacked the shrooms, but that was only when they were the first ones to initiate the attack. It was for defense.
As he understood their behavior, Nolan found a way to ensure his survival.
'Shall we look around?' Nolan thought, looking down.
There was one more thing about these boars... they mostly wandered in groups. And in those herd, one could often find cubs—cubs whose hides weren't as strong as their adult counterparts.
And they will satiate his hunger.