"Haa... haa...," he grunted, wiping a mixture of sweat and black blood from his forehead.
The adrenaline from the Cobra fight had slowly faded, but his mind remained razor-sharp.
The jungle around him seed to hold its breath, the usual cacophony of screeching monkeys and buzzing insects dimd by the lingering aura of the apex predator he had just slain.
But the silence wouldn’t protect him for long. The scent of blood was a dinner bell.
"Need... to move," he grunted, wiping sweat from his brow with a bloody forearm.
He looked down at the bundle of black scales in his arms. It was heavy, slick with a nauseating mixture of the snake’s natural mucus and the black blood he had spilled. It was disgusting, but to Sol, it was raw treasure waiting to be cleaned up.
He didn’t have the ti or the tools for a proper tanning process. This had to be crude. This had to be primal.
"First step: cleanup," he muttered, hoisting the bundle higher.
He couldn’t wear it like this. The sli would not only sll... attracting every predator within a mile... but it would also make the hide slippery and useless. So, he needed water.
He scanned the ground, looking past the rotting logs and the vibrant, poisonous flowers. He looked for the telltale signs: clumps of broad-leafed ferns that craved moisture, the darkening gradient of the soil.
Rembering sothing, he closed his eyes for a second, letting the lingering instinct of the Obsid-Cobra guide him. The reptile didn’t just see the world; it felt it. Sol focused on the humidity in the air, the subtle shift in temperature that indicated evaporation. He didn’t need to hear the water; he could sll the moisture in the soil.
The new clarity from the Cobra’s soul made the world pop. He didn’t just see green; he saw the heavy, drooping leaves of ferns that thrived on moisture. He slled the faint, mineral tang of wet earth cutting through the rot.
Sniff. Sniff.
"There," he whispered.
North-west.
He moved with a newfound silence, stepping over roots rather than on them, not with the heavy, stomping gait of a man, but with a sliding, rolling step.
He followed the gradient of the soil, watching it turn from dry dust to dark, spongy loam. The air grew cooler, denser.
Splash. Drip.
Soon, the sound of trickling water reached his ears... a sweet, lodic chiming amidst the oppression of the jungle. He parted a curtain of thick, hanging vines and peered through.
A small stream cut through the roots of the giant trees. The water was clear, flowing over smooth stones.
But he wasn’t alone.
A small, four-legged herbivore with a snout like a tapir was drinking at the edge. Just a few feet away from it three small creatures were drinking at the water’s edge. They looked like oversized rodents, perhaps capybaras, but with armored plates along their spines.
Sol froze. In the past, he would have startled it instantly. Now, he stood perfectly still, his silhouette rging with the tree trunk behind him. The creature drank its fill, twitched its ears, and trotted away, completely unaware that a predator was watching them from a few ters away.
"Stealth verified," Sol smirked.
They lapped at the water with pink tongues.
Lap. Lap. Lap.
Sol didn’t hide. He didn’t crouch. He simply stepped out from the vines, his blood-soaked figure looming in the twilight.
"Hey," he rasped.
SNAP.
The reaction was instantaneous. The creatures’ heads jerked up, water dripping from their whiskers. Their black eyes widened in terror as they registered the predator standing twenty feet away.
SQUEAL!
In a chaotic blur of fur and splashing water, they scrambled. Claws dug into the mud, sending spray flying as they vanished into the undergrowth.
Sol watched them go, a dry chuckle rattling in his chest. "Run, little ats. Not hungry for you."
He approached the stream, checking the surroundings. No ripples in the deeper water. No shadows lurking under the bank.
He dropped to his knees and cupped his hands. The water was ice-cold. He drank greedily, the liquid soothing his parched throat, washing away the taste of mud and blood.
Gulp. Gulp. Ahhh.
"Life," he sighed, wiping his mouth.
He threw the snake hide into the stream.
Splash.
The clear water turned dark as the black blood washed away. Sol worked thodically, his hands scrubbing the scales. He scrubbed the hide with rough sand and water, stripping away the mbrane and sli, though he was careful not to scrub too hard and ruin the scent-masking layer of the snake blood on his new armor.
It was grueling work, his hands turning numb from the cold water, but as the gri washed away, the true nature of the scales revealed itself.
It wasn’t just black. It was a void.
Cleaned and dried, the scales didn’t reflect the sunlight filtering through the canopy; they seem to swallow it. The material was impossibly smooth, cool to the touch, and flowed like heavy silk. The texture was incredible... smooth as glass against the grain, rough as sandpaper with it.
He stripped off his tattered, blood-stiffened loincloth and washed his own body, scrubbing the gri from his skin until he felt human again.
Then, the crafting began.
He didn’t have a needle. He didn’t have thread. He had a bone dagger and raw force.
Thunk. Twist.
He used the tip of the dagger to punch crude holes along the edges of the hide. He found tough, flexible vines growing near the water, stripping them of their leaves to use as laces.
He draped the large section of the Cobra’s back over his shoulders like a poncho. It was heavy, wet, and cold.
"Brrr... fuck, that’s cold," he hissed, shivering as the damp skin slapped against his warm chest.
He tied the vines tight, securing the hide against his torso. He cut smaller strips for his forearms and shins, binding them tightly.
It wasn’t high fashion or anything... it was a poncho made of a nightmare.
As the hide settled, sothing strange happened. The coldness faded, replaced by a neutral temperature, as if the dead skin was matching his body heat perfectly.
He stood up. He looked down at his arms. In the shadows of the canopy, his arms seed to disappear, the matte black scales swallowing the light. If he crouched and pulled the edges around him, he looked exactly like a shadow cast by a boulder.
"No magic," Sol whispered, admiring the camouflage. "Just evolution perfecting the art of not being seen."
He stood up, the cloak settling heavy and comforting on his shoulders. He felt lighter, faster. The lingering soul of the Cobra seems to whisper in the back of his mind: Wait. Strike. Vanish. That was the survival philosophy of that Cobra.
"Let’s test it," Sol decided.
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