As Rui continued traveling deeper into the forest, he came across some truly bewildering sights.
'Is that a tree?' His eyebrows furrowed in surprise. 'No, that's a plant. But it's huge.'
Up ahead in distance were almost entirely ordinary plants, with the most classical stem, and leaves and a fresh shade of green. The only abnormal part about it was that it was enormous, as large as a building. Furthermore, behind it was a huge sea of sea of giant blades of grass.
What Rui found incredible was the fact that there were actual trees past the bed of grass. A forest of trees that resembled a magnified version of the one he was in spread out in the distance.
'Damn.' Rui couldn't help but gape at the sight. The flora didn't appear to be the only thing that had been magnified in the distance. He could sense that even the fauna had grown proportionally in the distance.
Furthermore, the land seemed to depress downwards further into the forest, almost as if trying to compensate for the elevated height of the forest.
Rui had heard of this place. The information provided by the Beggar's Sect mentioned something about a Forest of Giants. The information that it covered was scarce, indicating that there weren't enough reports on it for the Beggar's Sect to provide him with information from.
It was a section of the Great Forest of the Hypnonarak that couldn't be avoided allegedly. This meant that one could be sure that one was going to run into it if one was trying to reach the core of the Hypnonarak.
Rui felt like a little critter or a larger insect in comparison to the large forest. Many of the creatures within the Forest of Giants were clearly of the same species as those within the normal parts of the forest that Rui was occupying at the moment.
He could see giant naraceets in the distance that moved in manners that were identical to their smaller counterparts. Furthermore, based on the size of the creatures, the average creature was probably an Apprentice-level beast at a bare minimum.
Rui heaved a deep breath before taking a step into the giant forest with an expression of apprehension and curiosity. One thing that immediately struck him was how much stronger the mental consumption.
'Interesting,' He mused with curiosity. 'Is that because the flora has grown larger, or because of a greater presence of an esoteric substance that consumes bioelectrical energy?'
Of course, there were a myriad of different possibilities, but the differences were meaningless and trivial, they were represented within the two possibilities that Rui did choose to take into consideration.
He simply stood there for a few minutes, taking in the novel existence of being small relative to most other significant beings of the forest.
He found himself to be part of the myriad of insect life in the forest. Because insects possessed cognition that was quite little relative to their size, they were spared from the forest's mental consumption for the most part.
They served as the food source for the small critters that had evolved to be able to avoid mental consumption. Unfortunately, he was now an insect in the eyes of the many creatures that inhabited the forest.
He found it amusing that many were compelled to look down on him due to his size. He immediately lowered his Mind Mask, unleashing the aura of a Martial Senior.
Instantly, a lot of insects and other creatures in the surrounding area scurried away.
'I wonder how the Hypnomaster created such a strange forest.' Rui found himself thinking for the umpteenth time. He had to admit, that for the most part, he had found his journey into the forest to be quite the exotic experience. It was a preliminary sample experience of the Beast Domain.
Of course, he also knew that the Beast Domain was far too diverse and vast for it to be summed up by a single experience of a niche kind of environment and ecology.
Regardless, it was experiences like these that reminded him how different this world was from Earth. The more time he spent in this world, the more he learned that there were little limits to what was possible and what could be.
In comparison, the human domain was less awe-inspiring and wonderous. If there was one thing that did not change from this world to the last was that human greed and fear shaped human civilization. A race for wealth, territory, resources, power, and influence created a world that Rui was all too familiar with from Earth.
He had distanced himself from it in his previous life. Yet in this life, he found himself entangled with matters of the human domain far more than he had with those of the Beast Domain.
'Maybe I should change that.' He wondered. The Beast Domain was more dangerous, but it probably was a lot simpler than the human civilization. Society was complex and even Martial Seniors needed to be careful even if they had no reason to fear ninety percent of human civilization.
Yet the times that they did could become quite complicated, especially if one chose to wade the swamp that was known as politics. In comparison, the kill-or-be-killed nature of the beast domain was a lot simpler, even if a lot more dangerous.
He paused for a moment as he spotted a creature eyeing him deeply with a glint of hunger.
A serpent.
The creature was enormous compared to him. Furthermore, not only was it not intimidated by his passive aura, it's own intrinsic threat level matched his own.
'A senior-level beast, huh?' Rui's eyes narrowed, as he crouched, ready to engage at any moment.
Yet, the moment had already arrived.
"Hiss!" The snake lashed at Rui with a flashing lunge, incinerating an enormous amount of air with the sheer velocity of its charge. Snakes possessed extraordinarily fast striking speeds, putting this one's velocity particularly high even within the Senior Realm.
