Becoming a Monster

Chapter 643: Chapter 642: The Restless Forest

A new day had started.

The sun should’ve risen by now, yet looking at the sky, it was difficult to tell that morning had arrived at all.

The clouds had only grown darker throughout the night, spreading so completely across the sky that there wasn’t even a sliver of sunlight capable of breaking through. What little light remained barely separated the early morning from the night that came before it.

Nearly all of Noah’s creatures were already awake, and many of them had been for some time.

The cats and dogs were the most restless of everyone.

They knew the storm was coming. Noah had already warned them about it, and they had been there for nearly every preparation made throughout the territory.

That knowledge did little to calm their instincts.

Their fur would occasionally stand on end for seemingly no reason. Some would suddenly lift their heads and stare toward the forest, while others found themselves pacing despite having nowhere they actually wanted to go.

Even when they lay down, it rarely lasted long.

A change in the wind or another distant rumble from the sky was enough to have their ears twitching and their bodies growing tense again. They understood why it was happening, but that didn’t make the feeling any easier to ignore.

Their sensitivity toward nature had always acted almost like a sixth sense. It allowed them to notice subtle changes in the weather and shifts in the environment that most others would never pay attention to.

And now that sixth sense was acting against them.

What Noah found interesting was that the same behavior wasn’t nearly as apparent among everyone else.

His weak goblins were awake, but most were going about their morning without the same constant need to look toward the sky. Even Moryvr’s troops were much the same, while many of the other creatures were more concerned about whether or not the fight was going to happen later that day.

There seemed to be a clear dividing line between them.

The beings that would be considered creatures appeared considerably more sensitive to whatever was happening than those that had always been monsters.

If it wasn’t for Dobby, Noah doubted many of them would’ve gotten much sleep at all.

The old cat had spent much of the night easing their fear and anxiety. Without him, one creature becoming restless would’ve only made the others worse until there was little chance of any of them relaxing enough to sleep.

And even without Dobby’s help, they were considerably better off than those outside in the forest.

The same instincts making the cats and dogs restless had already driven countless animals to search for somewhere safer.

Some had buried themselves underground, altering their burrows in preparation for the flooding that would inevitably follow the rain. Tunnels sloped away from the chambers where they intended to shelter, giving any water that made it inside somewhere else to collect before it could reach them.

Others abandoned their nests entirely in favor of whatever shelter they could find. Even creatures that normally avoided one another were becoming more willing to tolerate each other’s presence when the alternative was remaining exposed in the upcoming storm.

Unfortunately, migrating somewhere else outside of the forest wasn’t much of an option.

The clouds stretched farther than any of them could travel, covering the sky in every direction without any indication that somewhere beyond the forest would be safer.

That left them with little choice other than finding whatever shelter was available.

Those whose traveling abilities were far better than the rest decided to test their luck to find shelter elsewhere. The majority of the others, however, saw the forest as their best option.

Its enormous trees were more than capable of sheltering smaller creatures during normal storms, while the caves scattered throughout the forest offered somewhere to escape the worst of the wind and rain.

Naturally, they weren’t the only ones who had come to that conclusion.

By the middle of the night, some of the better shelters had already become crowded.

Caves that might normally belong to a single pack now had other creatures lingering near their entrances. Smaller animals squeezed themselves into cracks along the walls or crept into whatever space the original occupants were willing to ignore.

Predators that would usually take advantage of such easy prey were reluctant to leave the safety of the cave. A meal wasn’t worth much if chasing it meant returning to find another creature occupying the shelter they had fought so hard to claim.

That temporary tolerance, however, could disappear quickly.

There was only so much room to share, and fear had a way of making even normally timid creatures dangerous when something tried to take the one place where they felt safe.

Fights had already broken out over some of the larger caves.

Most ended as soon as one side realized they were outclassed. Others became considerably more violent, especially when the creature being driven away had already brought its young inside.

That was where instinct seemed to overpower almost everything else.

Animals that would normally flee at the first sight of a stronger predator were willing to bare their teeth when their offspring were behind them.

Even the trees were losing some of their usual activity.

Nests that should have been filled with chirping hatchlings sat empty on the branches. Parents had carried whatever they could closer to the ground, wedging eggs into protected hollows or settling their young among the tangled roots of trees large enough to provide some protection.

They were prepared to risk their young against potential flooding. But against raging winds, there was no chance to protect them.

Other creatures had no intention of leaving their homes at all.

They had spent the night trying to make them safer.

Fresh piles of dirt appeared outside burrows as their inhabitants dug until exhaustion finally forced them to stop. Some entrances had become so narrow that Noah would’ve struggled to notice them if he didn’t already know where to look, with leaves and branches dragged over the openings until only the scent gave away what was hiding inside.

Creatures with more useful abilities had considerably better options.

Spiders used their webs that normally existed to catch prey and layered them across nests until they were thick enough to hold branches together.

Earth-aligned beasts packed the walls of their dens until the dirt became almost as hard as stone, hoping to keep them from collapsing once the ground became soaked.

Then there were those who were capable of moving large stones, dragging it across entrances or wedging it into exposed gaps to keep as much of the wind and rain outside as possible.

One would imagine more than a few of them would be extremely annoyed when the storm ended and they realized they had nearly barricaded themselves inside.

Assuming their shelters survived long enough for that to become a problem.

Not every creature trusted its home enough to remain there.

Those living near the rivers had begun leaving sometime during the night.

The water hadn’t risen yet, but nests along the banks were being emptied while tracks led away from dens that had been occupied only a day earlier. Even creatures that normally spent most of their lives around the water were moving toward higher ground as the pressure building throughout the forest became harder to ignore.

That created problems of its own.

A herd searching for higher ground could find the path blocked by a pack unwilling to let anything approach its den. A creature driven from one cave might wander into another creature’s territory while searching for somewhere else, leading to that creature having to fight for its life when it had no intention to be hostile.

The entire forest was gradually being compressed into whatever places felt safest.

Every creature was making the best decision its instincts allowed.

But for certain monsters, they didn’t have nearly the same amount of worries.

For those like the trolls, they had considerably fewer decisions to make.

Despite their now-few numbers, there were even fewer creatures who were foolish enough to fight them over a cave.

They weren’t sitting around waiting for the storm either.

Boulders were being dragged across the ground and piled around exposed entrances. The current cave was being widened enough for the larger trolls to squeeze inside without spending the entire storm hunched over.

It wasn’t sophisticated work, but their immense strength allowed the job to be done easily enough.

The kobolds within the mountains were probably having an easier time than anyone else.

Their homes were already inside the mountains.

While creatures throughout the forest fought over caves, the kobolds had entire networks of tunnels to retreat into.

Their greatest concern wasn’t finding shelter, but making sure the storm couldn’t follow them inside. Anything of importance could easily be removed from the entrances before they sealed them off.

The kobolds were probably the only creatures that resided in the forest who needed to barely lift a finger for the storm.

Because of that, it wasn’t suspicious that there wasn’t much movement on their side. However, no one had noticed that this had been going on for a few days.