His consciousness sank into the night.
In the darkness, Famu saw the Spiral Tree.
Large stretches of its roots were lit up. The Nightmare Leopards had provided abundant nourishment, and for once, Famu felt no hunger at all. He was growing.
In one particular part of his spine, close to his chest, an immense amount of energy was contracting toward that spot along his ganglia.
Outside the cave, the wind from the Samei Rainforest swept across the plateau.
The place had grown quiet again.
Only the dried bloodstains left among the rocks reminded all who came afterward that a massacre had taken place there.
The Wanderer began appearing there frequently.
Every few days, he dragged a carcass through the woods.
Sometimes it was a small herbivore that had strayed from its group; sometimes it was a predator that had wandered into the territory.
The carcasses left long trails of blood across the forest floor as he dragged them along.
He never entered the cave, nor did he even approach it.
Each time he reached the vicinity of the entrance, he stopped, left his prey there, and silently departed.
He knew what lay dormant inside the cave: the monster that had destroyed his entire family, a ruler above the Nightmare Leopards, a true overlord among creatures.
He knew the Typhon needed the food.
Though he did not know when the overlord in the cave would awaken, the exiled young leopard had already made a decision.
This land was not merciful. He had lost his group and his name, and had nothing left, but he had made a pact with a monster.
He chose to attach himself to it.
Like vines clinging to a great tree, weak creatures always sought space to survive around stronger ones.
Roughly ten days and nights passed.
The Wanderer returned to the plateau and came face-to-face with the black tyrant basking in the sun.
The enormous Black Typhon reclined on the heights of the plateau, his tail, thick as an ancient tree, dangling lazily over the rock face as he let the sun beat down on his scales. The prey piled in the clearing had vanished without a trace.
Famu noticed the Wanderer as well. He had little interest in the young Nightmare Leopard.
But he knew the fellow brought him prey every so often. The young Nightmare Leopard was expressing his loyalty, and Famu tacitly accepted it, taking him in without ceremony and eating the prey the little fellow had brought.
Because of the scar on his head, Famu named him Headscar.
The Black Typhon slowly crawled down the plateau.
The faint morning light pierced the dense canopy of Sa Mei Su Mu trees and fell on his black scales, giving them the appearance of cast iron heated red-hot and suddenly quenched.
Headscar moved aside, retreating dozens of steps. He kept a moderate distance, neither getting too close to the black death god nor ever straying beyond the edge of his vision, letting the overlord see that he remained within his control.
Famu left the empty Nightmare Leopard den and crawled toward his own territory.
Famu had stayed there long enough. Whatever else it was, it belonged to someone else, and for a Typhon, soaking in a swamp was more comfortable.
Headscar followed silently behind.
All along the way, the canopy shook.
The White-Faced Monkeys were the first to spot the unfamiliar young Nightmare Leopard.
Shrill cries immediately tore through the woods. Pale monkey faces peered out from behind the leaves, their tails wrapped around branches as they bared their teeth at Headscar.
They knew the Black Typhon and had long since grown accustomed to providing the death god with information in exchange for scraps, but they did not know this strange Nightmare Leopard, who reeked of blood.
Their cries grew more frequent, and the mounting noise spread through the woods.
Famu, winding along ahead, slowly raised his head and gazed blankly at the trees with his pale eyes.
In an instant, the White-Faced Monkeys fell silent, too afraid to make a sound.
They cocked their heads and scratched the fur beneath their arms, quietly watching the serpent and the leopard pass through the deathly still forest floor.
When Famu reached the edge of the swamp, he did not stop. He submerged himself, and circles of ripples spread across the surface as his black figure quickly vanished among the murky water plants.
Headscar stood on the bank and slowly raised his head, looking around.
Nightmare Leopards were strong swimmers, and he could have followed Famu all the way into the depths of the swamp. But Headscar regarded the swamp as the Black Typhon's bedchamber. For a superpredator like him, his bedchamber needed no superfluous ornament like a Nightmare Leopard. A Nightmare Leopard should act as a sharp blade, as suited his nature.
This place belonged to the black sovereign, and that sovereign merely allowed him to live in his territory. He needed to make himself more useful.
Headscar began patrolling the nearby woods.
In the end, he chose a fallen Sa Mei Su Mu tree on the eastern bank of the swamp.
The ancient tree had long since died. Its thick trunk lay across a gentle slope, and the soil around its roots had been hollowed out, forming a natural chamber. Vines and ferns covered the area, with woods behind it and water in front. From there, he could watch the swamp and retreat into the forest at the first opportunity.
It was the kind of habitat large felines favored most.
Concealed, yet with a sufficiently broad field of view.
Headscar lowered his head to sniff the roots, then raised a hind leg and left his scent there.
This was his new home.
The White-Faced Monkeys in the trees erupted at the sight of the Nightmare Leopard urinating.
Monkey after monkey leaped onto the branches, letting out shrill, strange cries at Headscar and shaking the branches until they rustled. For the first time, these little creatures, who had always exchanged information for scraps, felt threatened.
The black sovereign already had them.
And now a Nightmare Leopard had arrived, one who could even come and go freely at the edge of the swamp.
They screeched and cursed angrily at the shameless young Nightmare Leopard.
As though their place was being taken away.
Headscar merely glanced up.
He could not be bothered to respond.
Monkeys were monkeys in the end, nothing but a group of useless, sycophantic courtiers.
Headscar was going to look for prey. He had keenly sensed Famu's terrifying need for food.
His agile figure soon disappeared into the dense forest.
In the cavern, Famu coiled up and fell dormant again after only a short time.
In the darkness, the roots beneath the Spiral Tree had reached one-fifth completion, a considerable harvest. The life provided by the Nightmare Leopard clan was far more abundant than that of any prey in the swamp.
But the key was not the Spiral Tree. It was the thing in Famu's spine.
He could clearly feel something growing inside his spine, like some kind of organ, something akin to a second heart.
Had it not been growing and pressing against the surrounding nerves, Famu would not have been able to sense it.
It was like development.
Famu could feel that it granted him an entirely new power. Although he still could not understand how to comprehend or wield this power, he was in no hurry to figure out exactly what it was. Just as a newborn beast did not know how to run, sooner or later, he would understand it.
I really am still a juvenile.
Famu pondered.
The vastness of the Samei Rainforest was beyond imagining. This swamp was no more than an insignificant puddle in an enormous water system.
If a Typhon wanted to continue growing, it had to swallow more territory and more waterways, where there was more life.
Sooner or later, he would encounter monsters like himself.
Famu would not be so arrogant as to think he was the only special creature in the rainforest, the only one with an organ like this. Although the Scepter System belonged only to him as a "human," the special organ in his spine belonged to a Typhon. There could well be creatures in the rainforest similar to Typhons. When the time came, mastering the power this special organ brought was a necessary part of expansion, if he did not want to die beneath another predator's fangs one day.
Food.
Lots of food.
Ultimately, Famu needed to do a lot of hunting.
With that thought, his dormancy ended. The Black Typhon awoke in the cavern and crawled onto the shallows.
On the bank, Headscar spotted the enormous shadow in the water.
He picked up the piece of bark beneath him in his jaws and brought it over to Famu.
He gently laid the piece of bark down. It was thick, with several strands of long, dark brown hair caught in its rough cracks. Each strand was as long as a White-Faced Monkey's palm. The hair was stiff, but its tips were coated with pale yellow resin.
There were also several deep claw marks on the bark.
The gaps between the marks were nearly half a meter wide.
A forelimb capable of leaving marks like these would not be much thinner than a young Sa Mei Su Mu tree.
Famu slowly raised his head, the outline of the prey already taking shape in his mind.
He knew this creature: a Giant Forest Beast.
It was one of the very few large beasts in the rainforest that dared remain in the middle of the woods for long periods.
These enormous edentates wandered slowly through the forest all day, using their thick, flexible snouts to gather berries and tender twigs. They also swept aside rotting wood to find termites and mushrooms hidden within. During the long dry season, they would even follow the smell of carrion, slowly grinding up a carcass's bones with their thick, blunt teeth and swallowing the marrow.
They had almost no natural enemies.
That was because an adult stood over two meters at the shoulder and often weighed close to two tons. When standing upright, it could brace itself in a stable triangle with its thick tail and hind legs. A single swipe of one forepaw could make a tree as thick as half a person shake violently.
Its enormous, sickle-shaped claws had evolved to strip the thick bark from ancient trees.
But swung at flesh, they were just as capable of tearing apart any predator that dared attack it.
Headscar naturally would not provoke such a behemoth.
Nor had he brought back prey.
This was merely evidence that a Giant Forest Beast had been active in the area.
Famu slithered out of the water. He was short of food, and Headscar had presented him with the location of a den.
It was like handing a treasure map to a poor man, an extremely greedy poor man who also possessed unparalleled violence.