Reincarnated as a Land Shark???

Chapter 35: The Vengeful One

You know, we've been having a lot of peaceful, relatively cheerful chapters lately. Our Mc hasn't been beaten up in a while, huh? We got some comedy, some exploration, a bunch of free food, frenemies who think they're friends, a cooked meal for the first time since reincarnation... yet all this time literally everything else has been suffering as usual.

What do you guys think about changing that?

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The forest is strangely quiet as I make my way back to my watery domain from the village of the slimes.

I can't say it was loud there in a typical way. Sure, there were a lot of squishing noises from the slimes moving about, but with all the slimes talking it had just felt louder. Now that I'm out on my own in the forest again, I guess the silence that comes with my passage is amplified.

I spent quite a while in the slime's village too; my water gauge is at 50/148 even with my high dryness resistance and the sheer amount of hydration my body can contain. I've come a long way from my initial forays to the surface as a baby Nanaue, but I'm still a long way from being able to head up to the mountains, where large water sources are likely to be more scarce. They look cold and snowy, so most of the water is going to be frozen over. I don't doubt that I'll be hydrating with snow and in dire need of hypothermia resistance the minute I start heading up there.

Back to the present, though, it really is quiet. Normally I can hear birdsong in the distance, but it got cloudy while I was at the slimes' place and thunder distantly rolls. It sounds like there'll be rain soon.

I haven't actually seen it rain yet. It might have rained at night while I was asleep under the lake and none the wiser, and considering how lush and green this forest is it probably rains often. The fact I haven't seen rain probably means it's overdue for some showers.

Speaking of, I wonder what time of year it is? It can't be winter or fall; the climate is too cold to be tropical and if it was winter in a non-tropical region it'd be snowy and far colder than this all the non-evergreen trees would have lost their leaves already. The pretty lake I've been living in would have also probably would have been frozen over, which would make life a lot more difficult. If it were fall, I'd imagine it'd be windier and the leaves would be turning yellow and red. So it's either spring or summer.

I don't think it's early spring, it's not stormy enough and I haven't seen a lot of flowers blooming. It could be late spring, early summer, or late summer. It'd be nice to know when I could start expecting the winter months, but I haven't really been alive long enough to know what the seasons are like in this world. For all I know, there could be ten different seasons and none of them are called spring or summer or even vaguely resemble the seasons I had on Earth.

I'm so lost in thought that I nearly miss the rustling of branches, but with the silence so prevalent right now I'm immediately put on alert.

Is it another slime trying to catch up to me and give me something? I look around, but the forest is silent again.

Eerily silent.

Now that I think about it, that noise came from the trees. Slimes move on the ground, and they're not big enough to cause that kind of a ruckus. I tense my shoulders, baring my fangs, and cast a cautious look around me.

Something else is here, and by the fact that I can't hear any birds even in the distance, it's hunting.

I back towards a series of bushes, hoping to camouflage myself at least a little bit, and listen carefully, eyes scanning the trees.