Ivory's eyes swung open the second he woke up. Good, not dead. His recent levelups echoed still in his mind.

It felt exceptionally strange, knowing that he could sense what Misoe was feeling. She was still asleep in his arms, wrapped in the towel, but he could tell that she was okay. It occurred to him that the venom and the oozing black stuff were related, obviously, but the latter was distinct. He had cured the venom in her system, but the spreading necrosis that followed was its own ailment, caused by the venom.

Luckily, Ivory wasn't tired, so he was capable of this 'self debrief'. The question he had ignored yesterday was ready to be attempted: why was he here?

It was malicious—no doubt. He doubted that Heito had done this; this didn't seem like a 'soon-to-be graduate half prank half test', or a 'test your mettle' kind of haze.

Whatever party had orchestrated this, it was quite clear that it was meant to be subtle, and that there was an expectation that he would not make it out. A reasonable expectation, Ivory conceded.

So. Ivory sat upright, out of his curled up ball position, rustling all the detritus off of him. It was morning or, at least, daytime. Light was making its way through the canopy; he obviously had none of his previous tracks to follow, but he recognised the tree that he had passed before he stopped to make 'camp' for the night. He rested the bundled Misoe down.

"Gotta keep going, mate. Let's go," he told the still sleeping Misoe. He stood up and stretched; the ridiculous curled position he had to sleep in wasn't exactly ergonomic.

He expected Misoe to feel more… firm, given the Skill he had received. Well, she got it, but it was his Skills. Confusing. Anyway—she was just as smooshy as before, and most importantly, alive.

There were multiple layers of morbidity that Ivory could think of, most pertaining to grievous or fatal injury, but the one he was lost concerned with was the one that informed every other one.

"I hope this isn't the wrong way…" his light, breathy plea, had it come a few weeks prior, may have reached the ears of a select few. Now, of course, it was heard by none but his own.

And so he walked on, doing his best to walk in the one direction so he might reach the ocean—or civilisation. It was no easy task to simply 'walk straight' in a forest, especially a rainforest: he was wiping streams of sweat from his face constantly; he had learned to walk a bit slower when he did this, as he'd walked into many low hanging branches and a few trees while doing so.

Ivory's [Dangersense] hadn't stopped, either; at first he didn't realise it was still 'ringing' since he had gone to sleep hearing it. It was only when he realised that it was still going did he realise that it was a lot sharper sounding. Nothing he did made it stop—he wasn't sure if it was a reactive thing, like 'keep going and you're screwed' or 'you're in a nasty zone, good luck', but based on him stopping and briefly walking in other directions for a moment did not make it abate. The latter it was, then.

A curious rattling a few metres ahead of him stop dead in his tracks, or perhaps it was the volume knob being turned up to 100 on his [Dangersense].

He gripped his wand—which hadn't left his hand—and tried to see what the hell was about to kill him. Ivory stood as still as stone, forcibly internalising the deep chittering feeling his teeth were desperate to do. He wasn't afraid to feel fear, of course, but the situation required him to at least present as unwavering.

Three minutes of excruciating stillness paid off. The rattling noise was back, and with it came its source.

Across the thick red bamboo tree crawled a gigantic lizard. With each slap of its feet, its tail would spasm, producing the distinctive rattle.

"Identical to that chameleon…" thought Ivory. It was about seven times the size, but perhaps most alarmingly: it wasn't camouflaged. "Their leader? King? Genetic alpha?" He gulped as surreptitiously as he could muster. At the tip of its tail was a ball about twice the width of its tail at its base. It was a pale, sickly yellow thing—the source of the rattling, no doubt.

It was a safe assumption that there were, to use the specific terminology, a fuckton of stealthed chameleons on that tree. Why he wasn't already a puddle of black goop, he couldn't say. He closed his eyes as he inhaled deeply through his nose.

In the teeniest of voices, he spoke his newest, unfamiliar spell. It felt right.

"[Ominous Wind]".

Nothing happened, that he could notice. He supposed that you couldn't really see air; you saw what air moved, indicating that there was a breeze or whatever.

The mega chameleon didn't seem to notice anything either. After a few seconds, it walked a few paces across the tree without rattling its tail. Something was happening.

At once, the entirety of the tree, which was easily about 10 metres across, lit up with a flashing array of greens and greys, not unlike the colour of the forest floor. No, Ivory realised: exactly like it. And that's when the hiss-screeching began.

Like a mad exodus, the now visible chameleons—still rapidly changing their colour—began fleeing for their lives. Some ran up the tree, far past where Ivory could see, some jumped right off and hoped for the best. The rest ran to the base and ran for the hills.

The lone chameleon was all that was left. Ivory's [Dangersense] wasn't as shrill anymore; he had two options, as he saw it.

Option one: try and kill it, since it was likely now defenceless. The lessening of his [Dangersense] suggested as such.

Option two: leg it.

Neither option was appealing. If he attacked it and it had some one-shot last defence mechanism, he was dead. If he tried moving past it, it could have some motion sensor like some animals had, and used its one-shot move.

He didn't know what his spell did, but it obviously freaked them the fuck out. If it affected the boss as well, it not moving might be in itself the defensive reflex. So, he opted for option two.

Ever so slowly, Ivory walked parallel to the tree; the chameleon still unmoving. Once he had rounded enough of the tree and it was out of his sight, he bolted.

For a good 5 minutes he sprinted, somehow not running into anything or being attacked by a predator. Running in such conditions—dodging environmental, well everything, holding a seal, being drenched with sweat which stung his eyes—was not exactly ideal. That being said, most of the environmental obstacles were way above him at this point—giant branches far above him, and vines hanging from them. A few hit his face as he ran, but it beat banging his head against a log and decapitating himself.

He eventually collapsed against a tree, winded to hell. He needed a rest and, well, this was where he was taking it.

Ivory closed his eyes as he lay against the smooth bark of the tree. He felt his wand in his grip—good. He felt inside the bundle in his arms and felt a pulse—good. So far, so good.

He thought of the spell he had cast. It freaked the hell out of those chameleons, but what did it do? If it was anything like [Eerie Cinders], then it took on the property that he wished it to. But what did he want it to do, other than to, well, save him?

His thoughts were interrupted by a prodding of his shoulder. Instinctively, he swatted the source away. It continued, and then he realised what he had just touched with the back of his hand.

A hairy finger.

Ivory's eyes snapped open in terrified shock. In front of him was a monkey, perhaps two feet tall. Its fur was light brown, and its face a bright red. His [Dangersense] wasn't any shriller than before; the monkey probably didn't feel very threatened, as on its face was a look of mild curiosity.

The monkey made an ack? noise and tilted its head. The two humanoids stared at each other for a few seconds; one was very concerned, the other pretty chill.

Ivory looked to his side to see if it had any… friends… with it. What he saw made him sick.

In a comparatively organised section of trees, vines and branches were upwards of 30 other monkeys and apes, all looking down at him. Gigantic gorillas that would dwarf Earth's equivalents, orangutans, some tiny little green monkeys hanging off some vines one handed…

What stopped Ivory from just giving up outright was the lack of danger he felt—well, the lack of increased danger. Before Ivory could plot his next move, three figured leapt down and approached him.

First came a jet black gorilla, biggest of all, who was easily three metres tall—when walking on all fours. The second was one Ivory couldn't identify; it was the same height as him and had the arms of an orangutan, but it was distinctly… Human looking. It looked like what a Neanderthal may have evolved from, bodywise.

The third was one of the tiny green monkeys. It swung from the light vines and dropped down beside the two other apes.

Ivory felt like he was going to spew up all his organs; he was still sitting against this tree while these three creatures were only about two metres away from him, looking at him almost appraisingly.

They then turned inwards towards one another and began screaming. Ivory moved his wand hand ever so slightly, and the little monkey—who was positioned at the back, with vision of him—snapped its eyes right at Ivory, in a fierce glare, staring right into Ivory's. He quickly lifted his left hand up in 'defeat' and picked the now acorn. It then turned its attention back to the group.

He exhaled a deep breath he didn't realise he was holding. They were quite clearly intelligent—as these animals tended to be—and seeing as he was in another world, the concept of a super-intelligent lot of monkeys wasn't exactly farfetched.

Ivory's arm creeped into the towel to check on Misoe; with this screaming match, it was a surprise that she hadn't woken up.

"Heartbeat. Good," he whispered. "Must have taken a hell of a—"

"Grraaah! URRAH!" Great wads of spittle landed on Ivory's legs as the gorilla jabbed a great finger down towards Ivory. It was so close that he thought he was about to be impaled. Which absolutely was possible.

Ivory sat there in silent terror. Of the emotional bandwidth that wasn't being used for that express purpose, a tiny part was pissed off that he wasn't feeling that calm resignation that came before you could be about to die. The impending threat of being smooshed, pulverised or if having his face snatched off prevented such a calm demeanour.

Their communication lasted a few more minutes, until he saw the little monkey pout. Whatever was being discussed, it had obviously been overruled.

The orangu-thal thing walked up to Ivory, its fingers tapping the ground as it went. It—he—gently grasped Ivory's Bag of Holding, which it could see, and met his gaze.

Ivory blinked a few times uncomprehendingly, and then took it off. it was the correct decision, apparently, as it took it back to the two others and then emptied it out on the forest floor.

"I'm being mugged," he said, matter of factly.

The three rooted through all the items, knocking aside the folded clothing through the dirt. Thankfully, none of the potions had smashed, however they took all of them. The little monkey had at some point signalled for its kin to come, and they began to ferry them away. They looked through the loot from Earth and then threw it on the pile of clothes. The gorilla took the Wistram puzzle, looking satisfied.

The orangu-thal, seeing that nothing more was desired, packed everything back into the Bag of Holding and returned it to Ivory, who was even more spellbound than before.

"Th… thanks? Wha—"

The orangu-thal grasped Ivory's free arm and pulled. Ivory stumbled up clumsily, following his lead. It was… unnerving to see such a long arm, especially when stretched.

Ivory realised, after a minute, that he was being lead through their territory. A decent price to pay for brief safety.

As they went deeper through their territory, Ivory bore witness to what could only be described as a micro-civilisation. There were what looked like nest huts scattered in abundance above him, some connected by vines with wooden splints as walkways. He wondered if this was a village of Monkey Beastkin, which seemed like hilarious tautology. The chances of that were virtually none, since they were communicating in their own animalistic language, not in Drathian.

Further on they walked, its arm still holding Ivory's. There were a few landmarks they had passed, such as a gigantic hollowed tree with the occasional hole every few metres up, and even a structure. It was… probably not made by them; it was covered in moss and vines, a likely remnant of a civilisation long since dead.

Ivory found it curious that they were just walking in a straight line—not once had they made any turns or significant pivots from the line they were walking in. That is, until they reached another landmark.

Just up ahead, on their left, was an ugly, yellow tree. It looked like it was made of the dud chainlinks an [Apprentice Blacksmith] ballsd up, in all honesty. As Ivory got closer, he focussed his eyes and saw that thin vines were holding the structure together; it was clear that it was not one comprehensive unit, but many making a whole.

As they passed it, Ivory got one good close up look—and his stomach dropped. Towering up several metres of the tree were hundreds, maybe even a thousand alpha chameleon rattles. He even swore that he heard a faint rattle as a modest breeze made him conscious of his considerably wet head.

He was thankful that his guide still maintained a light, stabilising grip—it saved him from a fall as his knees went momentarily wonky.

“The spell must have made an illusion of the apes,” Ivory thought. It was a sensible conclusion to come to, all things considered.

Another 30 minutes passed before they reached their destination—which was just another part of the forest. His guide let go of his arm and simply… walked back. Ivory was momentarily stunned, before remembering that he was dealing with animals—animals smart enough to ‘escort him’ through their territory for a fee. He sighed and kept walking on—

Glllluuuuurrrrrrrrbgggggggggggggggggggggggg.

Ivory freeze frame stopped, mid stride, wondering what in the hell that sound was. His [Dangersense] wasn’t any louder than before—actually, it was just a low hum, now! Misoe was still sleeping, so it wasn’t her. He looked around to see if there was a non-aggressive megabeast around that could have made that noise, but saw nothing. It was as he was wiping the sweat off his face again that he realised his throat was sore. When had that happened? His eyes widened as he realised that his stomach had made that sound.

“Should’ve eaten the lizard!” he groaned, realising the unavoidable danger he was currently in. He’d somehow survived two events—the first would have slain at least one member of a Bronze-ranked team. The second would have overwhelmed and wiped a Silver-ranked team that lacked a [Fire Mage], or at the very least a weapon with a fire enchantment. Or an illusion based [Fear] spell.

There was only one way to combat the current danger—food and water. If he could find a river, it would be a hearty boon. But for the time being, finding food would be easier. Ivory had no idea how he didn’t realise he was neither hungry nor thirsty for so long: it was easy to feel peckish a few hours after a meal! Was it the [Dangersense] overriding his brain’s “eat and drink, now” signals, or the frequent rushes of adrenaline? Both?

Unfortunately for Ivory, now was when those highs were waning—and fast were they waning.

“Shit!” he yelped, as his knees buckled, from the surge of lethargy. He fell backwards on the hard, muddy forest floor. He had enough energy to scoot himself up against a tree; a position now quite familiar.

Ivory closed his eyes, assessing his current dilemma. He was probably as safe as he could be, as he was on the edge of the apes’ domain… but that was little comfort. His eyelids felt uncomfortably heavy, along with the rest of his body. He managed to slip his now-acorn into his pocket.

“...[Lightshow].”

A small flashing orb of yellow, black and white floated in front of his face. He knew that he would not be able to keep his eyes open; he focussed his vision on the light penetrating his eyelids in an attempt to avoid sleep. The black of night was soon to arrive, which would enhance this effect significantly.

It worked, for a time. The inevitable came, as it always did. He felt it coming on, too.

“Noooo…” he breathed, as he passed out, unable to hold out any longer. His arms slumped to the side, causing Misoe in her bundle to roll onto his legs.

There Ivory lay: weak, vulnerable and unconscious. In a warm and spacious room on the far side of the island, a Peacock Beastkin sat unaware of the predicament he was in—and was, in fact, smiling with the knowledge that his Skill had worked.