Looking up at the clear blue sky, Thomel gazed at the sun. he was still wearing his helmet so a great deal of the harsh light was being blocked. Which allowed him to stare at it and wonder if it was real or just some titanic creature.

After a few seconds, he did what he should have done when he first arrived and began looking around himself in a hurry.

He didn’t spot any threats or possible dangers, just a scenic view.

He was standing in the tall grass of a meadow, surrounded by overgrown weeds and a forest a few dozen yards behind him and on his left.

It seemed like there was also a stream in front of him which went over towards his right side as well.

It was a beautiful sight. One that managed to dredge up a smile onto his weary face.

Carefully taking off his helmet he set it on the ground and gazed up at the brilliant blue sky, shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand.

Feeling the soft breeze on his face and hearing the orchestra of birdsong with greater clarity almost brought tears to his eyes.

But he had a job to do, he could take his time and enjoy the scenery once he was done so, with some regret, he placed the helmet back on.

Then he began to follow his Tracking boon and made his way towards the forest. Stepping over thorny plants and smacking aside the tall grass with the barrel of his gun.

He was mildly concerned about snakes and other such creatures hiding out of sight but he was rather confident he’d be fine.

He was wearing pretty solid boots and some very thick pants with what he assumed to be wire mesh inside them, maybe even enchanted mesh.

Besides, in a worst case scenario, he would just use the disc to teleport back to safety.

The tall grass started to fade, replaced instead by tall and firm saplings and a few bushes.

Looking up at the inviting woods, Thomel felt something off about them. The trees looked too flawless, like they’d all been grown in laboratory-perfect conditions.

Entering the forest he placed his palm on one of the nearby trees, marvelling at its smooth feeling. It felt like he was placing his hand on processed and sandpapered wood, not hard bark.

Giving it a slight knock denied his suspicion that perhaps it wasn’t actually bark or that, if it was, then it was as soft as heated butter.

Anyone who cared about camping would go crazy over this sort of wood, it was immaculate.

If he was living back in his hometown before the whole change and he found a tree like this, he would have been hailed as king.

Walking over to another of these straight-growing trees, he rapped his knuckles against it to the same result.

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Even the branches looked like something out of a fairy tale or painting, each one bristled with bright-green leaves, angled outwards from the tree in mechanical precision.

If he had a tape measure and a ladder, he would bet anyone who went against him that if he went up there and measured the distance each branch was from each other and the tree, that they would all be exactly the same distance.

He couldn’t tell if the perversive feeling of wrongness or childlike feeling of wonder was stronger when he looked up at these prim and proper displays of noble fauna.

After nearly ten minutes spent marvelling at them, he resumed his journey, walking deeper into the woods.

He didn’t know how far away he actually was from the jacath so every now and then he would zig-zag from side to side and see how his Tracking boon changed.

Nothing unusual happened until at one point about half a mile into the forest, he felt the tug swing wildly to the right.

He was close, incredibly close. Gripping his gun tightly with two hands he turned around and glared fiercely at the trees in front of him. One of them wasn’t a tree at all and he was going to find out which one was the pretender.

Circling around the cluster he spent the next half an hour slowly widening and closing the net, gauging which tree was likely to be the jacath in disguise.

Eventually, he was left with a handful of trees, assuming this number was small enough to justify wasting ammo, he knelt down and opened fire.

A single bullet smashed into the picture-perfect bark of one of the trees, shredding into it and blowing out a chunk of the trunk.

There was no blood or organs that splattered anywhere, so it had been a failed shot.

With a sigh, Thomel moved on to the next one, this tree was comparatively smaller in size and actually shook once his shot impacted against it.

There were only a couple left now so he should be getting closer to hitting the jacath, it was just a numbers game.

There was no third-time charm for him, the third shot slammed into another false flag, brutalising a literally perfect tree.

His fourth shot, however, struck metaphoric gold.

Brown blood spewed out of the fake tree, splashing onto the ground like slushy sewage water.

A screech erupted from the mimic as it t began to flee, it was quite cartoonish how it jumped up and then began running away with dozens of scurrying tendrils like an eldritch octopus.

It looked like he was watching some animated plant try to flee, but no smile graced his lips.

He only pulled down on the trigger again and bisected the jacath with a burst of gunfire.

The top half fell over and just lay there, leaking oily blood out onto the soil, while the bottom half kept trying to run away.

Firing another volley, this time aimed at its appendages, Thomel stole that ability from it.

Over the following minutes he fired another few shots into it, eventually using the whole magazine to ensure that the creature was dead, before moving up to claim his prize.

Just a few steps later.he was standing next to this formidable ambush predator.

He placed his foot on the top half for stability and then pulled out his knife and began stabbing into it.

The knife bit through the false bark but the edge found nothing. it was a husk. Only the very bottom of the top half held any flesh at all.

If he aimed any higher he wouldn’t have hit anything valuable, if anything he would have helped to make it escape since it would be lighter.

At least his job was easier since all the important parts were located in just one part of the body.

Heaping some blown-off tendrils and chunky bits onto the lower half, he started to tug it backwards, toward where he first appeared in this world.

He wanted to see that sky again and have a nice lunch. Listen to the birdsong and wash his bloodied hands.

It wasn’t the smart choice but he felt like it was the human one.