A gorge, tortured screams echoing off the cliffs, birds aflight.

The old monkey sped towards the grove, its battle-garb howling.

Henry, used to ignoring such rackets, began spellcasting, his full attention fixed on the monster zooming his way.

Above its head, a number was in constant fluctuation signifying the calculating of its movement speed. This figure was being generated by another Commander ability, the same subclass responsible for the he’d used to highlight the arrow targets at the start of the tutorial.

Henry's sole goal for today was to scout the monster’s capabilities while avoiding death.

The margins of error for this fight were much tighter than against the boar and the wolves. Their unwieldy size had allowed him to dominate the higher ground, trivialising the encounters. In contrast, the monkey was shorter than himself, lighter, quicker, and more agile – it also came from a literal canopy-dwelling species.

Since it might end up being more difficult than the wolves by a factor of a hundred, Henry’d readied himself for a lengthy guerrilla campaign lasting up to seven decades. He’d decided in advance that he would quit if the battle exceeded that length; no matter the potential rewards, one needed to draw the line somewhere. Seven decades was his absolute limit.

So far, he'd used about a year of that time in preparation, much of which he’d spent mapping and modifying the jungle - not just this gorge, the whole jungle.

Of course, if a chance arose to score a quick kill, he would take that, too.

"God damn it," Henry muttered when the system finished calculating the monster’s speed, aligning with his own estimate.

It was moving at 81.4 kilometres per hour with no signs of tiring. This was faster than the donkey at full gallop with movement bonuses, eliminating the easy-mode tactic of kiting it while filling it with arrows.

The road network he’d laid through the jungle...worthless.

The old monkey's path through the gorge was soon blocked by a rushing river, sprouting from the artificial lake. This river wound back and forth along the gore's length, creating a total of 22 segments that would need to be bypassed.

The old monkey, seeing the convoluted blockade, underwent another abrupt, senile mood shift; all its menace faded and, in the oddly human-like manner of one of its past disguises, it lifted its hands in amusement. "The Dugaz Snakecharmers prided themselves on the Azure Pythons they raised for war. The greatest of The Snakecharmers were The Bryzo clan. Their python Izdaynik was so long that fifteen platoons could ride it into battle. As luck would have it, though, all the years, all the mineral mines, all the forests they’d force-fed the beast would be negated by a single sentence. 'Izdaynik, you do realise you've grown beyond their control?' Hahaha."

With no effort, the old monkey jumped and soared through the air, right across the segment of the river. Landing softly on the other side, it continued to sprint, then vaulted over the next as easily.

But, for Henry, the point of these rivers wasn’t to stop it completely. Instead, the segments had been made to vary by length, with his hope being to bait out the evolved version of the Yin-Yang Monkey’s ability. The range of the ability was essential to know because if the monster ever got up close to him, he would lose in a blink. He'd brushed up on his melee techniques during his prep-time, but they would be utterly useless against the old monkey's - The Redeemer had been the strongest non-Cosmic deity in the entire history of this instalment.

Right now, Henry saw that the old monkey was simply jumping with its raw muscle power. The distance of this jump was 16.7 metres. He worked this out after three segments because the monster, strangely, wasn't bothering to adjust their length.

Despite the memories invoked by the ugly robes, it might still be senile...

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When the old monkey reached a river segment wider than 16.7 metres, it jumped and...landed with a splash.

As it emerged from the water, sprinting up the bank, showing no sign of concern or self-awareness, its wet hair was blown dry by the wind surging around itself.

Coming to the next segment, the old monkey sprinted, jumped, and...

Splashed again.

Henry supposed that, in its shoes, he wouldn’t expose his capabilities needlessly. He had an inkling, though, that the true reason was that the monster had forgotten it possessed a ability.

In conclusion, still very senile.

Henry wouldn’t complain. That was perfect for one of his strategies.

Without needing the assistance of a game skill, he judged its underwater movements to be slower than that of his sailing boats. This opened up the possibility of another strategy, Henry evading it on the lakes spread around the jungle whenever he needed a rest.

Since his opponent wouldn't reveal its range, he used to enclose the monster in a glowing neon sphere with a 60-metre radius, representing the maximum movement ability range of any boss monster at this level. The neon sphere displayed only while a target was being actively tracked, so it faded from his view whenever the monster took a dip in the river.

After the old monkey finally bypassed the river section, it arrived at the foot of the grove of giant palm trees, and it was stopped by Henry's next scouting test, by the twang of bowstrings.

Arrows darted from out of the surrounding trees, amongst whose branches had been perched Skeleton Archers, like those that'd shot King Torc from the wolf-bone chandeliers.

The old monkey, calm amidst the falling missiles, tilted its head, an arrow sweeping past its ear. "For the snail, the tortoise's crawl seems unfathomably fast." It shifted its foot away from an arrow about to pierce its toe. "For the eagle, however, both are no different from rocks."

Henry carefully studied its dodging movements. In the Yang-state, this species had hyper-perception, and he wanted to gauge the exact proficiency of The Redeemer's. That volley, which had not posed the slightest challenge, had used about a third of his summons.

When his Skeleton Archers fired again, half of his reserves joined them, increasing the difficulty.

"More?" replied the old monkey dismissively. "These are merely Helm’s Sparrow in a relaxed flight. Grow their flock by a thousand-fold, and I would continue to waltz among them without being scraped by a feather."

Once more, it dodged with ease, stepping in the gaps between the arrows.

While Henry ordered his remaining reserves to fire with the last volley, he simultaneously made an inquiry with his Mental Library based on the monster’s boast. Helm’s Sparrows were a living species, whose flight velocity may have been documented. Using that figure to divide the speed of the skeletons' arrows, 73.8 metres per second, he could approximate how slow the world seemed to the monster.

Since that inquiry would take half a minute to complete, he moved on with his testing.

The old monkey, while studying the full volley, saw the piles of lumber scattered around the grove's base begin to stir, floating up from the jungle floor and spinning together in a swirling swarm. There were many types of wood, from raw logs to processed planks with dovetail joints, and each seemed, in the myriad flock, to hold their own yet-to-be-stated purposes.

Henry was using the same technique from when he'd buried The Wolf Emperor and his minions in burning logs. During the subsequent episode in the winter forest hunting the wife-wolf, his control had improved significantly.

The old monkey, on close inspection, could see that the complex movements of these wooden pieces coincided with the swivelling of the human's binoculars.

Another memory coming to mind, it slapped its knee comically. "The Stonedancers of Hgan used to hold a bi-annual concert where they made slabs of stone promenade across the clouds. The performance was wildly popular, attracting a crowd of hundreds of thousands that would extend from Hgan's citadel to its outer stables. Watching the show, I was reminded by the movements of a tornado of Limebirds that I’d once witnessed above the Vieonkya savannah. A dart through the conductor’s forehead at the climax, that was all it took for the slabs to come raining down. Splat! Splat! Splat! Splat! Splat!"

Now, in a playful manner, the old monkey bounced and wove through the arrow shower, bringing itself to the base of the giant palm tree in which the human stood, waiting to be eaten.

There, it stopped to touch a mysterious line carved into the bark of trunk. Similar lines extended all the way up to branches. They could also be found on the surrounding trees.

What was the trick with these? it wondered.

Undergoing another mood shift, the old monkey rubbed its chin seriously. "When Esva The Vermin Emperor of Liegoudo was on his deathbed, he ordered The Empire's finest sculptor, a human thrall, to create a statue of him. The completed thing was marvellous. It gave the observer the silent dread that The Vermin Emperor had projected in his life. However, the sculptor, a man, a creature of deceit, had betrayed his lord. The Jimnarock commissioned for the monument had been replaced with a cheap limestone. Decade by decade, the statue's details were washed away by the rain, and so The Emperor became a featureless boulder. Alas, Esva, my friend, for trusting man, the ages have forgotten you."

Like the wolves with their one-shot bite, the old monkey's mouth stretched several metres wide, wrapped around the trunk, and swallowed the entire base.