CHAPTER 8: SHIFTING POSITION IN THE FOOD CHAIN
Waking up after his morning slumber, he looked up at the sky to find it was already midday; the sun hung high directly overhead. It seemed that working relentlessly through the night until dawn had caused him to sleep until noon.
Feeling his single functioning right auxiliary hand, he couldn't help but sigh inwardly. It throbbed with excruciating pain; the outer skin was so heavily damaged that almost nothing remained, completely exposing the raw muscle tissue beneath. But what else could he do? The work still had to be done. He sat up, preparing to test his newly crafted tool—the glass-fruit hammer. It felt strange and unwieldy, so he decided to just call it the "Fruit Mallet" for short, and picked it up.
Limping and dragging his steps, he realized he could fix his current mobility issue. He inverted his long spear, wedging the blunt end into his right mạn sườn (flank), adjusting it so his footing felt more balanced, much like adding a crutch. Though far from perfect, it was vastly better than before. He could move considerably faster now; his strides became steadier, his movements smoother, and it partially conserved his meager, remaining energy.
Advancing toward the plains near the boundary line, he began his search for food. Today, the area where he usually gathered sustenance had been nearly picked clean; only a few strands of moss tucked deep into the corners remained. That was precisely why he brought the mallet over to a long stretch of glass stones. For reasons he couldn't quite fathom, the glass stones here were abnormally massive, essentially boulders. He could understand stones the size of a hand or a forearm forming from fallen leaves turning into crystal, but how did these giants come to be?
Setting the mystery aside, he began to widen a narrow crevice using his mallet. As he swung the hammer down into the fissure, a violent recoil forces snapped back into his already battered, skinless hand, making his muscles spasm in searing pain. He realized he couldn't rely on brute, reckless force. Instead, he had to change his striking angle, exerting his power more gently and skillfully to neutralize the rebounding shock. This time, he focused on striking the outer edges of the crevice, loosening his grip to let his hand vibrate, thereby dissipating the momentum.
After repeating this for nearly half an hour, the gap was finally wide enough for him to use his spear to hook the cluster of moss out. The reward was well worth the effort. Perhaps because the interior of the crevice remained perpetually dark, it was densely packed with moss—enough to satisfy his needs for an entire day, a quantity that would normally take him a whole day of wandering to find. Since he already knew the locations where the moss grew, he simply repeated the process until the entire harvest was secured. In the end, he had gathered enough moss to last him nearly a week. Unlike his very first harvest, this yield, while still greater than what could be found out in the open, wasn't excessively overwhelming.
His previous method of squeezing fluid from blood grass had proven highly inefficient. When pressed out, instead of draining into his food, the liquid would mostly spill onto the flat surface of the stones and leak entirely into the soil. He intended to craft something to hold it. Lacking a bowl, he would have to make one. Continuing to strike a massive glass boulder with gentle, calculated blows, a process neither too long nor too short eventually hollowed out a depression large enough to serve as a bowl. He swept away the glass shards. Placing a small amount of blood grass inside, he crushed it into a pulp, using the fibrous grass residue like a rag to wipe away the remaining glass dust. He then began to prepare his meal.
He packed a large amount of blood grass into the hollow, crushing it thoroughly before discarding the spent fibers, leaving behind a pool of liquid that filled half the stone bowl. Next, he added the glass-moss. He hammered and ground the glass-moss into the liquid, maintaining a ratio of roughly three parts fluid to two parts moss. This created a looser, slightly viscous blend—a proper soup, unlike the thick mud paste from before.
He began to feed. It seemed either through psychological adaptation or biological adjustment, the act of feeding no longer brought agonizing pain. Instead, a sensation of profound satisfaction bloomed after a while, giving him his first real, filling meal. Of course, he still experienced suffocation, but it was no longer a massive ordeal compared to the days when the moss wasn't completely pulverized. Back then, the coarse texture would frequently slice internal wounds inside his vents. Now, because the soup was vastly more liquid, feeding had become significantly easier. Well, he thought to himself, this very spot would become his feeding ground, his camp, and his home for the foreseeable future.
Next came his final project: a garden to cultivate moss. Knowing the exact conditions required for them to grow, he simply needed to execute the steps correctly. First, he gathered small stones and placed them beneath a tree. However, trying to block the light that way was largely ineffective; after all, as he well knew, the tree's leaves were made of transparent glass. He was forced to use his final cành cây (wooden branch) to construct a roof, splitting the wood into four distinct segments, each measuring roughly 40 centimeters in length and 30 centimeters in width.
Regurgitating a small amount of acid, he attached the wooden segments to the tree trunk. The acid melted the fibers, and he stuffed blood grass residue into the joints to secure the bond. He repeated this until all four wooden pieces were permanently fused to the tree near his camp. Next, he gathered small glass stones and piled them under the shade provided by the wooden roof attached to the tree.
With the shaded area nearly filled, he proceeded to place a small amount of moss onto each individual stone. Since the knife he crafted had a rather short handle, he had only utilized a third of the remaining wood. He decided to crush the leftover wood fragments along with a bit of blood grass at his cooking area, packing the mixture into the crevices between the glass stones for the moss to freely absorb as nutrients.
With his work finished, he set out to study his prey. Wandering beyond the boundary line, he navigated the outer ring of the forest. He knew with absolute certainty that if he ventured into the deeper, central core of the woods, he would face instant death; he would be killed long before he could hunt anything. His target was the anomaly that had left the handprints before. Though it was far stronger, he held the advantage of his spear. His attack range was superior, and he was confident he could kite the creature to death.
Returning to where he first discovered the trail, he tracked the handprints stamped across the low branches of the trees until he finally spotted it. It was a chaotic, writhing mass of fused hands woven tightly together. The creature bore a dull, heavy gray coloration, blending perfectly with the bark of the trees. It lay sleeping on the ground, while the lower half of its body was burrowed into the soil, actively gnawing on the fossilized roots.
It's eating tree roots while asleep...??? Subject 198 wondered in bewilderment.