Reyansh had now begun to recognize some parts of this alien forest and their rules.
Where small beasts are found more.
Which part of the river is safe for drinking water.
And the most important thing—in which places one should not stop even by mistake at night.
But along with this understanding, he was realizing another terrifying reality.
This forest was not ending. The further inside, the further forward he went, this place became that much more strange, terrifying, and unknown.
On that day too, from walking continuously since morning, he had reached a part of the forest where the entire environment had begun to change.
Here the bark of the trees was not of an ordinary black color, but rather it was looking like some rotten charcoal. From between the roots of those massive trees, tearing through the ground, a strange, faint blue light was flowing like water.
The air had suddenly become very heavy. Moist. Sticky. Upon breathing, it felt as if water and the smell of rotten leaves were filling his lungs.
Reyansh moved forward slowly.
The ground beneath his feet was no longer tough. The soil was beginning to become soft and swampy. At every step, his foot would sink slightly inside, and while pulling it out, a strange squelching sound would occur.
He understood immediately.
Swamp.
He became alert and looked around. The entire area was filled with that faint, ghostly blue glow.
Above the black, stagnant water, small strange plants were floating, and from inside them, that blue light was filtering out. From the dry branches of some dead trees, white fungus was hanging like spider webs, which was moving slowly even without wind.
Far away in the water, bubbles were rising here and there—blup, blup.
This place was beautiful in a completely different way. But behind that very beauty, something was very wrong. Something that was telling Reyansh's survival instinct, screaming out, to return from here.
Reyansh strengthened his grip on his Bone Spear.
Now he was not that previous foolish boy who would enter a new place without reason.
Every step calculated.
Every breath completely under control.
He began to move toward the inner part of the swamp very slowly.
A few minutes later, he realized a very strange fact—
Here the sounds are different.
In the remaining parts of the forest, something or the other was always heard. The buzzing of insects, the rustling of leaves, the growl of some distant beast, or the thud of feet.
But here, everything felt suppressed. Muted.
As if this swamp, this water, and this heavy air were swallowing every kind of sound inside themselves.
A slight shiver ran down the back of Reyansh's neck.
While walking, suddenly his gaze went down to the ground.
At the edge of the black water, some small, transparent creatures were lying in the mud. They were looking like some snail, but there was no shell on their body. Inside their transparent body, faint blue veins were shining like lightning.
Reyansh immediately sat down on his knees.
He touched them slightly with a dry stick. No reaction. They were very sluggish.
Then he carefully lifted one creature with his fingers.
It was cold as ice. And inside its body, a very slight vibration was happening, as if some small engine was running.
Reyansh kept thinking for a few seconds.
To eat or not?
Then he took a deep breath and put it straight into his mouth.
The taste this time was strange. Neither good nor bad. It just felt as if he had swallowed some sticky, salty piece of ice.
But as soon as that thing went down his throat—
Thud!
The drums of his ears suddenly fluttered as if someone had burst a bomb right near his ear.
Aaaah!
Reyansh stumbled and fell backward into the mud. He immediately kept both his hands tightly over his ears.
It felt to him as if every single surrounding sound had suddenly increased thousands of times!
That slight movement of the water. The air colliding with the fungus. The crawling of some distant insect on the ground. Even the sound of the bursting of a small bubble rising in the mud was sounding like a cannonball.
His head began to split. His breaths became uncontrollable.
A few seconds later, when the pain began to go beyond endurance, the cold voice of the system echoed in his brain:
Foreign sensory organism consumed.
Zero point four Sensory Mutation Points gained.
Adjusting neural pathways for enhanced auditory reception.
Reyansh slowly began to calm down. That terrifying pain and echoing of his ears slowly began to lessen and turn into a strange clarity.
He removed his hands from his ears and opened his eyes.
And for the first time, he realized what he had become.
He was able to hear much more than before. Much, much more.
He took a breath slowly. He heard the sound of taking his own breath as if he was breathing into some mic. Inside his ribs, he heard the beating of his own heart... thud, thud... absolutely clearly.
Ten meters away, below the black water of the swamp, the sound of insects crawling in the soil was also reaching his ears.
A greedy glint came into Reyansh's eyes.
Sensory Mutation, he said whispering.
He immediately started searching for those blue glowing creatures at the edge of the swamp.
For the next few hours, he kept roaming in the outer part of the swamp. He continuously picked up those creatures and swallowed them without thinking.
Among them, some creatures turned out to be poisonous, because of which his stomach burned, but his Poison Tolerance skill saved him. Some creatures turned out to be useless from which no point was received.
But some rare glowing creatures were continuously giving him sensory points.
As he kept eating them, his Sensory Mutation kept increasing.
And along with that, his hearing power became even more sharp and fatal.
By the time evening fell, he was able to notice such things which were impossible for an ordinary human.
The slight sound of a dry twig breaking from the foot of some beast half a kilometer away.
The movement of insects fluttering inside the moist soil.
Even colliding with which tree, from which direction the wind is coming... he was able to hear even that flow of the wind.
But along with this new strength, a very big, fatal problem also started.
Night began to fall.
And night in this swamp was completely different and scary from the remaining parts of the forest.
As soon as the sun, or whatever the source of light was, set, the entire water of the swamp on its own began to glow with a sharp blue light. That ghostly blue light slowly spread through the entire area.
The white fungus hanging on the branches of the black trees above was now glowing like a neon light.
Above the black water, a deep, white mist began to crawl.
Reyansh made his place near the protruding root of a very massive tree, a little far from the water.
Today he could not go back. His entire day had been spent in crossing the swamp to reach here, and returning to the forest at night was suicide.
Holding the spear, he sat quietly without moving and started looking around.
And just then—
He heard a sound.
A whisper.
Very faint. Very subtle.
So faint that if his Sensory Mutation had not happened, he would have never been able to hear it at all.
Reyansh's spine became completely straight. He became alert immediately.
With his sharpening eyes, he looked around in the mist.
There was no one. No one far and wide.
Then the sound came again.
Low. Broken. Filled with pain.
As if someone from very far, from below the water, was trying to speak something.
Reyansh's heart slowly began to beat fast. He stopped his breath and tried to focus on that sound.
But the words were not clear. Those were only whispers. As if someone was groaning in pain, or someone was giving a warning.
After a while, he realized another terrifying fact—
This sound was not coming from any one direction. This was coming from every direction.
From inside the black water of the swamp. From between those glowing trees. From beneath the ground.
In his entire body, from neck to feet, an icy coldness descended.
This place... this place is not right at all, he thought in his mind.
But just then—
His ears which had become sharp caught something else.
Movement.
Very slight. Completely silent.
Inside the water.
Reyansh became completely frozen in his place. He did not blink even an eye.
He turned his eyes very slowly downward, toward that glowing water.
The water of the swamp was completely calm from above. No wave, no bubble.
But his enhanced hearing was telling him clearly—
There is something, which is moving very fast below the water.
Slowly. Round and round. Exactly like a shark. And that movement was happening right around Reyansh.
Reyansh gripped his Bone Spear so tightly that the knuckles of his fingers turned white.
His breathing became so faint on its own that his chest almost stopped moving.
And just then—
About fifty meters away from Reyansh, a very slight splashing sound occurred in the water. Perhaps some frog-like creature had fallen in the water.
Just a small splash.
In the very next millisecond—
Boom!
That thing present below the water, which until now was circling around Reyansh, ran toward that sound place with the speed of a missile.
The water tore open in a single jerk. Mud and water leaped several feet high up in the air.
For a second, some terrifying, toothed jaw emerged.
And then all quiet.
No scream. No struggle. Only waves of water.
Reyansh's eyes remained wide open.
His brain immediately understood the entire puzzle.
The predators of this place do not have eyes. Or perhaps they do not use eyes at all.
They hunt by sound.
Sound. Vibration. The sound of a heartbeat.
This very thing was their way of hunting.
He immediately did not change his position at all. Where he was sitting, in whichever angle he was sitting, he became stone right there.
He reduced the speed of taking his breath even further. Now his entire body, his each single muscle was completely under control.
He had understood—
To survive in this glowing swamp, there was only one rule.
If you made a sound, then death is certain.
That night, Reyansh almost did not move. Not even an inch.
Every time when even a slight sound occurred far away, he felt the movement of that massive thing below the water. That thing immediately advanced toward the sound like some torpedo.
Once it happened that a large glowing insect sitting near Reyansh's root fluttered its wings. A slight buzzing occurred.
An the very next moment—
From inside the water, a long, black whip-like thing emerged. It wrapped the insect in mid-air itself and pulled it inside the water.
Reyansh did not see the body of that creature. Only that whip-like tongue and a slight wave in the water. And then... silence.
Ice froze in his spine.
If he became even a little careless, if his feet slipped even slightly in the mud, then the next number would be his.
Slowly the night began to become deeper and blacker.
Those terrifying whispers were still coming into his ears.
But now Reyansh had understood that perhaps it was not any language. They were not ghosts.
Perhaps, this was the sound of the eco-system of this swamp. Or else a side-effect of his Sensory Mutation.
Because the more he began to hear this world, this world began to look that much more alien and maddening to him.
In the absolute middle of the night, suddenly his eyes opened completely.
In fact, he had not slept at all. He was in some trance like meditation.
But right now, he had felt something very close.
Very near.
Movement.
Without moving his head, he turned only his pupils downward toward the water.
At first, he did not see anything in that blue mist.
Then, the mist cleared slightly.
And he saw it.
Just three feet away from Reyansh's feet, right beneath the surface of the water.
Two large, hollow, faintly yellow glowing eyes.
Completely still. Without moving inside the water.
And those both eyes... straight, without blinking, were looking only toward Reyansh.
That thing was below the water. It was very big.
And who knows for how long... it was just waiting for Reyansh to make a sound.