Aetherios System [Slow Build OP MC, Isekai LitRPG/Cultivation] Chapter 10: Chapter 7: Ambush

Read chapter 10 of Aetherios System [Slow Build OP MC, Isekai LitRPG/Cultivation] by TTReynolds on NovelPedia.

Chapter 7: Ambush Chapter 7: Ambush His gaze was directed up to the tree canopy. The canopy which was blocking out the sky above, choking the stars and moonlight down to only the bare ghostly strands that danced around him. Hardly enough to see the edge of his new campsite without the fire he had built. What was up there anyway? New stars? New Galaxies? An entire different night sky to the one he remembered back home? Could he still spot the big dipper if he tried to? Alex was already under the assumption he was in some kind of alternate world. A different reality to his own. He didn't think this system would have created a rebuild of his home planet, Earth. It was most likely some other planet, in another solar system. Did this one have multiple moons? Multiple suns even? He didn't know. He was curious though, and his eyes shifted to the branches of the tree he sat under. The branches weren't too far spaced apart. He, just like any other kid, had those early experiences of climbing trees out at the park by his house. He could climb as well as any human. As he looked up, thinking out a possible route to take through the limbs, he realized it was possible to climb to the top. So just maybe? He thought to himself. He couldn't believe what he was planning. He felt like a dumb kid. He wanted to know though, and the curiosity burned inside him. What was up there, where was he? So many questions to be answered, and all he had to do was climb. The first branch was easy, a simple jump and a grab. He hauled himself up quickly, the bark of the tree rough under his palms and fingers. Too much time working computers , Alex . He scolded himself as he looked down at the already reddening of his hands. Hands that used to be as rough and hard as the bark he was grabbing, but that was a couple of years in the past now. He moved higher, grabbing, pulling, shifting and stretching with each new success at the branches above him. Alex blazed through the tree faster than he anticipated. Going more quickly with the newfound confidence he had in his body and his control over it. He was thirty feet above his campsite in just a couple of minutes. The trees were large though, massively so, and Alex had a lot more distance to travel. He did have one close call. He slipped when jumping for a branch, and gained that gut-wrenching feeling of free fall for just a moment before catching himself. He had to catch his breath for a moment before making another attempt. He made the jump on the second try and made sure to really focus and calculate his moves from there on. Alex made it a hundred feet up before the limbs of this behemoth finally thinned enough to allow him a few slivers of a view at the stars beyond. He halted there, gazing up through the tiny gaps ahead of him. Of what he could see through those gaps around the leaves, the stars seemed so normal, so earth-like from where he was. He couldn't see enough to figure out any constellations yet, but the individual twinkles and dots of light were strangely normal. After a few more minutes, Alex finally broke through the canopy. He poked his head out of the top of the suffocating green blanket of the forest he was trapped inside, and looked up. His eyes dilated immediately, from fear, from awestruck, from sheer confusion. He wasn't exactly sure what he was seeing. The stars, as he suspected, were simply in new and unfamiliar patterns. Constellations of unknown design and purpose. As possibly humanity's first astrologer in this land, he could start drawing and naming his own constellations if he wanted. The moon was also unremarkable. It appeared roughly the same size as earth's, if not slightly larger. A similar white reflective sheen with far fewer markings and craters to earth’s. It looked like a slightly scratched marble hanging above him. Again, unremarkable, and not the reason why he was so stunned. What the actual fuck? Alex thought to himself, trying to wrap his understanding around the visual above