Parallel: United Front

Chapter 29: Low Guruk

Low Guruk

1123 Hours, July 31st, 3039.

Near the outskirts of Low Guruk, a broken city reclaimed by nature's forests, Dayle, Raines, Arthur, and Queen watched a powerful monster trudge through the city streets through the busted windows of a highrise complex.

Gugugugu...

"Is that?"

"Yes. That's a shiverhorn."

Dayle stared, eyes wide in wonder at the 10m tall behemoth whose feet shook the streets as it confidently strode through the city. At first glance, the beast resembled a supersized rhino, but there was a significant bulge along its throat that rhythmically pulsed with blue light. Dayle wondered what the light represented, but luckily, the shiverhorn, as if sensing his curiosity, provided an apt demonstration.

The shiverhorn's two-meters-long horn suddenly glowed white. Several light particles danced around the horn as if celebrating it coming to life. Vwooosh! A beam of ice shot out of the horn and then crashed into a branch overhead. The branch was instantly enveloped in hard, dry ice and then cracked under pressure, causing it to come crashing to the ground.

Gugugugugu...

The shiverhorn's gullet rumbled in pleasure as it approached the fallen branch. It bent down, and then picked up a pumpkin sized fruit. Crunch! In one bite, the shiverhorn crunched and then swallowed the fruit.

Gulp! Dayle swallowed hard. He could understand why Queen urged caution. The shiverhorn was not a monster FireRain could face. Even without its freeze-horn, Dayle doubted their current weapons could break past that thick hide.

Looking at the shiverhorn, Dayle thought back to the conversation they had with Queen on the way. Queen, at the time, revealed Low Guruk was an abandoned city that had been reclaimed by nature. The town, once constructed atop the ashes of ancient forests, now had its buildings strangled by thick interconnecting branches and vegetation.

Beasts of all kinds roamed the cityscapes, making their homes in the spaces once owned by humans. But, even among these monsters, four significant overlords ruled over vast swathes of land.

The aforementioned shiverhorn was one such overlord. By the rankings, it was around Level 80 and was a local tyrant. It led a pack of smaller shiverhorns to graze freely in its territory and was unique in the sense that it was the only herbivore among the overlords. However, while it might have been a herbivore, it was even more aggressive and territorial than carnivores. It sentenced any trespassers caught to a swift and angry execution.

The second tyrant was the leader of a pack of spidermonkeys. It specialized in stealth kills and entrapment, making the jungle-like city its playground. Spidermonkeys, while not overly aggressive, were utterly unpredictable. On one day, they could let you pass through their center without interfering, but on another, they could stone you to death just for being in their line of sight. That unpredictability and their sheer numbers made their territory a no-go.

The third overlord was a lone Sabertiger. It might have been alone, but it commanded the most strength amongst all the overlords, making it on par with not just the overlords, but their packs combined. Its powerful nose made it next to impossible to sneak past its territory, and its command over wind allowed it to launch attacks from several miles away. Its sense of smell was the reason the group ultimately ruled out its territory.

The final overlord was perhaps the most terrifying. The radiation caused mutations in every lifeform, including plants, and this overlord was one of the worst. The Dreameater Tree was a single tree whose roots and branches were spread over the entirety of its territory. The terrifying thing about this tree was its ability to infect monsters and people within its region.