Kapitel 97: Journey Alongside The Cliff

We traveled further north for few more days. The past few days were quite intense. We encountered a group of bears that numbered over 50 and that was not all. The group contained 20 black bears as well as 5 silver bears. It was one of the strongest animal packs we encountered so far.

We obviously tried to run but the bears gave pursuit. We had to fight some of them in order to decrease the numbers and make the bears retreat or at least give up chasing us. We killed 2 silver bears and about 10 black bears but we left the normal brown bears alone as they posed the smallest thread. After about an hour of fighting and pursuing, the bears finally gave up but reluctantly. We were lucky that time and only escaped due to our past training.

After those couple of days, we decided it was time to change directions towards west. I wanted to go west as there were no dangerous areas in that direction, at least according to them map I had. One day of traveling later, we found ourselves at the top of a tall cliff. I saw no immediate way of traveling down as the cliff extended for as far as I could see in both directions. More forest grew below the cliff but the air seemed different in this parts of the forest. The air was more damp. Another peculiar thing was the horizon, it was shrouded by fog the further west one looked.

I wasn't sure where the path in front of us led but I wanted to try and descend down this cliff. I asked Shelly "Do you want to go down?" but Shelly looked down towards the bottom of the cliff and took couple of steps back while shaking its head. 'Shelly is probably scared of heights. I'm not entirely fearless either but what I meant, was for us to find a path, not climb down' I thought. I then said to Shelly "I didn't mean to climb down the cliff but find a way to go down without climbing".

Shelly looked at me and seemed to think about it. After a while of thinking, Shelly nodded its head. I said "We should go towards the southern direction then and find out where the cliff ends. Or maybe we will find a path down". Our new destination was set and so we traveled alongside the cliff towards the south in order to find a way of getting down.

We traveled for a whole day and rested during the night. We would hunt for food and play around to enjoy our time whilst traveling. Like this, a week passed and we encountered something new. It was a plant but also kind of an animal at the same time. I didn't know how to categorise it but the plant we saw was quite tall, as tall as human.

I noticed that the plants were rooted to the side of the cliff but after examining them for a while, I discovered that the roots started to move and together with the roots, the plant also moved. When I saw this I was left baffled. 'How is it possible for these plants to just simply move as if they had legs' I thought.

These plants were not carnivorous, this meant they didn't eat meat. They got their energy elsewhere. I said to Shelly "Let's stay here for a bit, I want to study those plants in greater details". Shelly didn't mind it as we were on holiday anyway so it didn't matter if we moved towards south or stayed in one place for a while.

I tried drawing the plant in my notes as I never saw it. When we started the journey, I decided to start a journal of all the creatures and plants we met on our way. This would be filled in with details such as the characteristics but also skills for combat or defence and behaviour. I wanted to make something similar to what Nick accomplished with all his recipes. I wanted to create a book of all the animals and plants we would encounter, with detailed descriptions and characteristics.

The plant had a very long stem that was green in colour while the roots were brown, almost the same colour as the cliff they were attached to. At the top of the plant, there was no flower but something that looked like a green fruit. It was not its mouth, I studied the plants and the fruit at the top never opened nor had any holes.

After some more studying, I found out that the plants moved because they extracted something from the place they were rooted. When the source of their food was gone, they would simply move a bit further and stay still for couple of days. I didn't know what those plants were absorbing. I could only guess that it was water but then wouldn't those plants have more water in the forest? Maybe it was because the forest was not a safe place for these plants. The cliff's face was much more secure location for these plants to thrive so why move somewhere else, even if they could move.

I wrote all these points in my notes. I didn't know if these plants had any names but I decided to name them myself. I did that for anything we encountered that was new and not in my notes. "I shall call this plant Cliff Walker. This is a good name and appropriate for this type of plant". My notes also contained other things we encountered. Such as wolves and all the variants we encountered so far. The bears were there as well as boars and spiky creatures.

Although I started those notes not too long ago, I already had 8 entries. I had the bear entry with the variants which were either black or silver. Each type had a specified behaviour, skills as well as habits that I recalled about them. There were also wolves and all the variants we encountered so far. The boars had the same thing going on but we only managed to find one variant which was yellow.

The other entries were, spiky creature which I named as Spikey Mouse. Then there were the Large Hornets with their huge hives that occupied most of the tree. I also added in the furry deers into my notes and simply called them Furry Deers. There was another animal we met but for a brief time. It was a black caterpillar looking creature we encountered while looking for Haze Flowers a long time ago. I didn't know much about that creature besides its aggressiveness, the ability to hide below the ground and that it had a very sturdy body.

I decided to name that creature Haze Caterpillar because we found it near Haze Flowers. And the most recent entry was the Cliff Walker, the plant that could walk on the cliff's face. The notes I had were a bit messy so I decided to organise them a bit.

I wanted to put them in alphabetical order but then decided against it. 'I'm the one who gives them names, so the order of my notes would have to change too often' I thought. Instead, I came up with a different idea. "I will just order them from the 1st one encountered to the last" I said out loud. This way, the order wouldn't have to change at all. The first creature I encountered, would be 1st on the list and so on. It was the easiest to keep the track of and the order would never change as the new creatures would be added as the last in the list.

I ordered the notes and thought 'Right! Nick named his books after what they were, of course with some added personality. I also want to give my notes some fancy title'. I then started to come up with a title that would be suitable for my notes.