Venerable Chapter 4: Chapter 4: First Night

Read chapter 4 of Venerable by Jade_White on NovelPedia.

Dustin lay motionless beneath the bushes for several long hours. 'Remaining in this spot is inefficient,' Dustin reasoned internally after few hours of hiding. 'The predators are probably full right now but they will eventually get hungry again. This bush provides basic visual cover but it offers no physical protection against something with a decent sense of smell. I need to find a permanent resting zone.' He slowly pushed himself up from the dirt. His joints popped loudly and his muscles ached from the landing. He needed to understand what advantages the system had actually given him before he ventured out into the deadly woods. He closed his eyes and focused all of his mental energy on his perception. The result was instantaneous and overwhelming. A spherical map suddenly blossomed inside his mind. He did not need to open his eyes to see his surroundings. He could simply feel the physical location of every object around him. He sensed the thick roots buried deep in the soil beneath his feet. He felt a small colony of heavily armored beetles marching across a rotting log nearby. He could even track the slow descent of a dying leaf falling from the high canopy above. Dustin opened his eyes and mentally measured the distance of his newfound spatial awareness. The invisible detection sphere expanded outward in every direction and then stopped abruptly at a specific border. "So eighteen points is eighteen meters, huh," Dustin whispered quietly to himself. It was a perfect one to one ratio. His perception stat directly translated into a flawless eighteen meter radar bubble. As long as he paid close attention to that mental sphere nothing could ever sneak up on him. He would know when a monster entered his radius and he would have plenty of time to quietly slip away in the opposite direction. It was the ultimate tool for a man who desperately wanted to avoid doing any actual work. The forest was incredibly dark and oppressive. Massive trees with dark black bark towered hundreds of feet into the air. Their thick branches wove together so tightly that they formed a solid wooden roof blocking out the sky. Thick vines as wide as a human torso hung down from the canopy like giant dead snakes. Dustin moved with extreme caution. He placed every footstep carefully to avoid snapping any dry twigs. His twelve points of class boosted agility gave him a surprising balance. He felt remarkably light on his feet despite his terrible conditioning. He relied on his perception bubble to navigate the treacherous terrain. The mental radar constantly fed him vital survival information. He easily sidestepped a patch of brightly glowing blue mushrooms that radiated a highly toxic heat. He ducked under a cluster of razor sharp leaves hanging from a low branch. Then his mental radar suddenly flared with an intense warning. A massive moving object had just crossed the very edge of his eighteen meter boundary. Dustin froze in his tracks. He immediately dropped to his knees and pressed his body flat against the side of a massive fallen tree trunk. He held his breath and waited in silence. The ground beneath him began to vibrate. A loud scraping sound filled the air. It sounded like hundreds of heavy metal swords being dragged violently across a stone floor. Dustin peeked cautiously over the top edge of the rotting log. A horrific creature was slithering slowly through the dense brush just few meters away. It was a monstrous centipede that was easily ten meters long. Its body was covered in thick plates of dark crimson armor that looked harder than solid steel. The beast possessed tens of thousands of long scythe like legs that effortlessly sliced through the thick forest vegetation as it moved. Puddles of acidic green drool dripped from its mandibles and instantly burned small holes into the forest floor. Dustin watched the giant insect with a blank expression. 'I am not fighting that,' Dustin thought firmly. 'I do not care how many experience points the sys