Chương 46: [B2] Chapter 4: Sector 9

The birds went silent a kilometer before the boundary announced itself. Zero had learned, by now, that this particular silence meant something rather than nothing. He stopped walking. The others stopped with him, the reflex worn smooth from repetition.

"Territory line," Miho said, reading his posture correctly before he'd said a word. The ground beneath them had changed texture without any of them noticing exactly when, packed harder than the loose, root-choked soil of Sector 8, as if something with real weight had crossed it recently enough that the jungle hadn't finished reclaiming the compression. The undergrowth thinned in patches nothing had cleared, only avoided, the way animals avoided ground that smelled wrong to something they couldn't name.

A window confirmed it. Territorial Boundary Detected Current Sector: 8 (exiting) Adjacent Sector: 9 (entering)"This was someone else's assignment," Yukito said.

"There should be a team here."

"It is quite likely that there is not," said Zero.

"We have encountered evidence of two teams that crossed into our assigned territory, and at least one of them is now dead. I do not know how many other sectors that Sector 8 borders, but it is possible that we have already seen their bodies." Nobody filled the uncomfortable silence that followed them as they walked.

The second animal corpse announced itself through scent and circling scavengers, the same way the first one had, except this time the birds kept a wider, more cautious distance from the ground, wheeling high rather than descending in the confident spirals of a scavenger expecting easy carrion.

"They're… afraid of it," Miho said.

"Even though it's dead." Zero understood why the instant the tree line broke. It had been, in life, larger than anything the tutorial had prepared him to categorize cleanly. A quadruped built along predatory lines, scaled up past the jaguar by a factor his eye struggled to process at first glance, easily three times the mass, with a bone structure visible through decayed hide that suggested armor plating along the spine as well as musculature.

It lay in a clearing far larger than the jaguar's grave, flattened undergrowth radiating outward in a rough circle that told him the creature had thrashed considerably before dying, or after being struck, or both. He ran Identify. Corpse: Bronze-Plated Grizzly Estimated Time Since Death: 5-8 months Cause of Death: Puncture trauma along throat and spine Consumption: Approximately 6% of available biomass Note: Wound geometry consistent with previous specimen.

Same attacker profile likely"Same wounds," Viria said, reading over his shoulder.

"Same spot. Same lack of interest in actually eating anything." Miho circled the body at a careful distance, studying the scale of the puncture wounds against the scale of the kill.

"The wound diameter has not changed proportionally to the size of the prey," she said.

"Whatever did this did not need to work harder to kill something three times larger and considerably tougher-looking than our apex predator."

"Which means the effort required was similar regardless of target size," Zero deduced. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. He did not like the shape the implication took. [Predation Analysis Lv. 1 → Lv. 2] Additional data point(s) logged: Attack originates from a fixed range Prey does not appear to flee prior to the strike"It doesn't chase," Zero said after processing the new information from the window.

"The prey is caught before it registers a threat exists."

"An ambush predator," Miho said.

"Or," Yukito offered, "something fast enough that the distinction doesn't matter."

There were no vulture hornets in this corpse, so they took what the site offered before leaving. Miho harvested a section of the armored hide that had rotted the least, testing its flex against the flat of her sword before folding it into a bundle. Yukito pried loose a set of claws, each one longer than Zero's forearm, edged along one side in a way that suggested a use beyond simple digging.

Item Acquired: Plated Hide Section (Apex-Tier) 4x Serrated Claw (Apex-Tier)"Someone could make something out of these," Yukito said, handing them to Viria.

"If we ever find a smith who isn't a corpse," she replied, placing the items in her subspace. Nobody laughed, but nobody flinched from it either, which Zero had started to understand was its own kind of progress. They followed the compressed trail deeper into Sector 9, the same unnatural flattening that had led them out of their own territory.

It was Viria who found the next human body a quarter hour later, half-hidden beneath a season's worth of fallen leaves. There were no puncture wounds, torn tissue, or anything pointing to a predator at all. Their clue lay in the canteen, open beside an outstretched hand. A bow lay half-buried near the fingers, a recurve made of dark wood, the grip worn smooth by a hand that would never use it again.

"No wounds," Miho said, crouched beside the body without touching it.

"No struggle. Water, probably. The jungle doesn't need teeth to win." She turned to Viria, "See? Clear is not the same thing as clean." Viria ignored Miho's remark. Her attention had already drifted to the bow. She hadn't reached for it, but Zero recognized the particular stillness she wore before deciding to want something she'd have to justify wanting.

"We should see what else they were carry–" she started. Viria never finished the thought.

The first feather struck the ground between Miho and the corpse with enough force to bury itself a hand's length into the packed earth underneath the leaf litter. Zero's eyes went up before his mind finished processing the sound that preceded it, a sharp displacement of air too fast to be wind. Something vast moved against the canopy far above, wings spanning wide enough to blot out entire sections of the fractured light, gold-brown and bronze where sunlight caught individual feathers.

IDENTIFICATION ACTIVE: Stymphalian Eagle Estimated Level: 50 Classification: Hostile Type: Avian Predator Attributes: Aerial Superiority, Projectile Plumage Threat Level: High"Level fifty?" Viria said, already moving.

"That's not even our jaguar's level."

"It is not our jaguar at all," Zero said. The second volley came down. Feathers fell like arrows, each one edged and weighted with a precision no ordinary plume should have carried. Miho rolled clear of the corpse, sword already drawn. Yukito's shadow spread wide and thin across the clearing floor, an instinct built for a threat that stayed on the ground, and found nothing useful to grip.

Zero shifted his shoulders into the wing configuration that had carried him across the Cloud Sea and pushed upward, intending to close the distance the way he closed every distance, directly and by force. The eagle was already gone from the branch it had launched its feathers from.

It threaded a route through the canopy that his eye caught only after the eagle had used it, folding its wings tight to slip through gaps he'd have needed to reshape his own bones to fit through, then snapping them wide again the instant it cleared to loose another volley from an angle none of them had anticipated. It didn't fly like something navigating unfamiliar terrain. It flew like something that had never needed to learn this canopy at all, because the canopy had grown up around exactly what it already was.

Below him, Miho took a graze along one shoulder trying to close on a target that refused to let her arrive.

"I can't reach it!" Yukito called up, a feather burying itself a hand's width from his foot.

"There's nothing to grab it with. It's not landing, nor is it even trying to land!" Zero banked hard, lost ground, banked again, and found himself consistently a half second behind a creature that had never once needed to learn what it was doing. Below, Viria had gone very still, the eagle's next volley already arcing down toward her, and she had nothing in her hands but a bow that belonged to someone who hadn't survived this jungle at all.