The branches fired off like lances. Most were easy enough to dodge. A few clipped us, leaving thin cuts across skin and armor, but nothing serious yet.
Compared to the Saharan Waste, the Amazon Expanse still felt like a lesser threat.
Of course, we hadn't run into any apex predators.
Not yet.
The way it worked was simple: most of the animals across the Earthly continents had survived the Collision by evolving. Or maybe mutating. They adapted, drawing from ambient mana. The results were terrifying, sometimes grotesque, but still rooted in something we once recognized.
Jaguars with bone-plated hides. Crocodiles that could phase through water like it wasn't there. Spiders, wolves, even deer, remade by pressure and magic.
Familiar shapes twisted into something lethal.
But once you crossed the Earthly Luminant, everything changed.
Creatures out there weren't just stronger. They weren't from Earth at all.
They didn't follow any of the old rules.
The reason most creatures in the Earthly Luminant still resembled our own was because they were our own. At least originally.
But not all of them.
A portion of the monsters we encountered hadn't evolved from flesh or claw. They hadn't come from nature at all. They were born from belief—manifested from myth, dream, and fear.
During the Collision, something about the pressure, the force, the sheer weight of what merged into our world cracked open the space between ideas and reality. And some things, things we had only imagined, stepped through.
The woman in the river had been one of them.
I was sure of it.
The branches kept lashing out, sharp, whistling arcs of wood and mana.
We moved through them like a pattern we'd already memorized. Jackal weaved through the gaps with lazy precision, his sword dragging arcs of silver through trunks and roots. I cut forward, letting my armor take the occasional hit. Not because I had to, but because it barely mattered.
We weren't being challenged.
I ducked under a twisting root and drove my blade through the base of a tree's core, the Hellflame biting deep. It screamed, a low, groaning creak that rattled through its limbs—then collapsed in a heap of splinters.
Another lunged at Jackal. He didn't dodge. He let it wrap a vine around his arm, smiled as the fear hit, then cut it off in one smooth motion. It didn't even bleed. Just wilted like it had lost the will to keep fighting.
The trees were becoming a bit boring to deal with.
And that was a problem.
You didn't get stronger by fighting things weaker than you. That was basic. Obvious. The System didn't reward safety. It rewarded suffering. Pressure. Risk.
If the enemies were small, then they had to be many. Swarming, relentless. The kind of threat that could drown you if you slipped even once.
But this?
This was just cleanup.
And cleanup didn't forge anything new.
I let out a slow breath and glanced ahead. The jungle was quiet again.
No more lashing branches. No more moving trees. Just the thick, damp hush of leaves settling, like the forest was exhaling with us.
We found a small rise between two gnarled roots and sat down.
Not to rest.
Just to be still for a moment.
Jackal leaned back against a crooked trunk, arms folded behind his head, sword resting across his lap like it had never seen use. He looked like he could stay there for hours, half-dozing, half-listening to the jungle breathe.
"The Executive mentioned you had a family. How are they?" Jackal asked, voice casual, like they were talking over morning coffee.
It seemed we were getting closer. Strange, I was getting closer to the one least human.
"Yeah. Parents, brother. The usual," I said, watching the trees shift gently in the distance.
Jackal didn't press. Just waited, calm and quiet.
"Nice. What do they do?"
I got a bit more comfortable, "Actually, my father is an Explorer. Gold-Sigil, at that. A capable man... My brother recently awakened too, although he's still young and my mother is at home, for the most part. She takes yoga classes."
He gave a low chuckle and tipped his head back against the bark. "So you're all a happy family?"
"Yeah, one could say so." I glanced sideways. "What about you?"
Jackal didn't answer immediately. He stared up through the canopy, eyes unreadable.
"Not a great story," he said eventually. "I had to kill my father after he killed my mother. It was a disaster, truly. He was a piece of shit. My mother was an angel, but naive. Not sure what she saw in him—she was truly naive."
I didn't say anything at first. Sympathy felt useless, and Jackal didn't look like he wanted it anyway. He didn't even flinch while telling it. He just kept his gaze fixed on the sky, relaxed as ever, like he was recounting a weather report.
And yet… I believed every word.
"Sounds like you've earned your place," I said, voice quieter now.
Jackal gave a small smile, faint and toothless. He scratched his jaw and exhaled through his nose. "Earned it or stole it. Not much difference now."
He shifted, letting one leg stretch out into the moss, the other bent loosely. Then he glanced at me again, eyes a little darker but no less steady.
"I think I'll tell you the whole story someday. Feels like we're cut from a similar thread."
I didn't respond. Just met his eyes, held them for a beat.
The silence wasn't heavy.
Just understood.
Maybe he was a human after all.
"It's time we search for a challenge," I said. "If Gold-Sigils were dying out here, there has to be something tougher. Something worth facing."
I wasn't trying to brighten the mood. Just saying what felt true.
Jackal sat up slightly, brushing a leaf from his shoulder. "Not a bad idea. Just one thing. What Verdict do you think the Serpent was?"
"Very High Severance," I said. "She felt weaker than the creature I fought in the Sahara."
Kaldrith had been much stronger. A being of a different weight entirely.
But then again, between Verdict tiers, the threat didn't just rise. It multiplied. Exponentially.
I wonder if us two would be able to face a creature of such strength.