NOVEL NEXT Chapter 39
Dhun sighed internally and grumbled to himself as he swatted around his lesson attend, ‘These young bloods know how to use a spear, but all they know to use it for is hunting unthinking beasts.’
‘Those boys from the Green Path tribe were enthusiastic but amateurish at best.’ At this point, Dhun was not even keeping track of how many people he had left to spar with until he heard a familiar name being introduced to him before another round began.
“I am Grud from the Rock Skull tribe.” Dhun turned to look at the young man. He saw a tall and well built man whose body was covered in discolored patches of skin in the shape of claw marks and other injuries that indicated that the skin was relatively recently healed.
‘So this is the young man I heard about from Vice-Chieftain Crig who took down the Dire Bear by himself and is being trained deeper in the ways of the shaman by Chief Shaman Zargall. Champion in the making indeed, I would marry my daughter to him if I had one. Unfortunately, my wives have given me all boys.’
When Dhun saw Grud get into position, Dhun readied himself and said “Come.”
Upon his prompting, Grud pushed off from his starting location towards Dhun. Seeing the speed Grud was advancing towards him, Dhun’s eyes opened wide in alarm and raised his guard to defend against the incoming jab from Grud’s staff.
‘Fast!’ Dhun thought to himself just before he intercepted Grud’s thrust. Dhun used the tip of his staff to tap Grud’s advancing thrust, making it go off course, then quickly positioned the tip of his staff for Grud to run into it himself.
Just before Grud’s momentum brought him crashing into the tip of Dhun’s staff tip, Dhun saw the alarm in Grud’s eyes as he tried to move his body out of the way, but it was too late. Grud ended up taking the hit of his own momentum to his shoulder but managed to spin off to the side to recover his stance.
During the impact, Dhun felt something weird, ‘That hit… it feels more like hitting a tree than a man, maybe he was just lucky this hit did not feel like hurt him much. If not, this Grud might be tougher than he looks. Let's increase the pace.’ The moment Grud recovered, Dhun charged toward’s Grudand threw out a few jabs and whacks.
It was in those few seconds of beating on Grud that Grud realized that the feeling he get from the first hit on Grud was not a fluke, ‘He really is not getting hurt by these weak attacks I am throwing at him, and the feeling from hitting his body… it feels a lot more sturdy than the feel of hitting veterans during training. He also seems to be able to follow and block against some of the faster attacks I mix in.’
Before he could make any more observations, Dhun had to dodge twice and take a step back from Grud’s retaliatory attacks despite getting hit and countered while making those attacks. Dhun narrowed his eyes at Grud ‘He ate those attacks just to strike at me. Looks like it is time to get serious since these weak attacks don't affect him at all.’
While Grud recovered himself from the barrage of attacks he received, Dhun got into a lower stance with his spear leveled at Grud. While both of them were in their stance and stared at each other for a few seconds, suddenly Dhun charged and thrust his staff so fast that Grud barely manage to deflect it mere inches from impacting his chest.
Unfortunately for Grud that was not the end of the attack, Dhun’s attack forced Grud to bring his staff in close to his body and use it to deflect Dhun’s strike to his right, but this left Grud’s left open, which Dhun took advantage of by whipping the other end of his staff to the left side of Grud’s head and impacting with an audible bonk, making the other that were watching flinch.
After the impact to the head, Grud did not fall but stumbled to his right. Dhun advanced forward and started jabbing and whacking Grud with increased speed and strength.
A few seconds into the onslaught of blows he was dishing out, Dhun saw Grud regain the focus in his eyes and started bringing up his staff to defend himself, and as the spar continued, when Grud’s staff was not enough to defend, Grud would sometimes release the grip of his staff to use an arm to batt away or block incoming strikes he knew he could not intercept with his staff.
A savage grin came to Dhun’s face, ‘His technique may be shit, but he is learning and adapting to my attacks and sacrifices his arm for what he cannot block. Not the best option, but when facing opponents more skilled than you, it is a viable option if you have a sturdy body like his.’
Compared to the other hunters that spared against Dhun that were knocked out of the ring or surrendered in less than a minute, Grud’s beating lasted for more than five minutes.
In that whole time, Grud was outclassed even though he demonstrated that he was obviously stronger whenever they clashed, or faster as demonstrated in the few times Grud decided the tank the blows Dhun was unleashing on him and rush Dhun to attack him staff swings and jabs that were almost a blur.
But those staff swings and jabs were easily dodged, parried, or simply sidestepped as if Dhun knew what Grud was going to do before he did it. ‘As tough, strong, and fast as Grud is, the other thing he currently lacks is awareness of his surroundings.’
While Grud was attacking Dhun with fervor he did not realize that he was led to the border or the ring, ‘Since he is so bloody tough that hitting him does not make him retreat, I will need to knock him out of the ring by tripping him.’
When both of them were parallel to the ring’s border, Dhun threw out a few fast, easily defendable jabs at Grud’s body, when Dhun saw an opening, he threw out a staff jab aiming for Grud’s head.
When Grud brought his staff up to defend his head, Grud’s vision narrowed on the tip of the staff on its way to his face and managed to block it, but there was no weight behind that jab, in fact, there was no Dhun behind that jab either.
That was because Dhun was now below Grud grappling his leg that was further away from the ring border and heaved Grud’s leg upwards, thus flipping him out of the ring. Dhun watched as Grud tumbled ass over head and rolled once before he got his bearings and got up to face Dhun in a fighting stance again.
Seeing that Grud still had fight left in him, Dhun sighed ‘As willing as he is to still fight, it has been a long day of travel and the hunters have come back with food.’ Dhun then pointed down at the ring line “You lost Grud, you will need to work on the awareness of your surroundings.”
Then he looked at the other hunters, “We will continue lessons tomorrow, go have dinner and rest we still have a long journey ahead of us.”
—
“I take back everything I said to Zargall about the fighting lessons. That was not a fight, that was a man beating a bunch of children, me included.” Grud lamented to himself after dinner as he checked himself by prodding the welts and slight bruises that covered his body.
“If that had been an actual spear, I would have been killed a hundred times over. I will need to take lessons seriously from now on.” Grud said to himself in particular to motivate himself.
A few minutes after getting back to his shelter, Mita’s incorporeal form emerged from the ground in front of him, and after looking at Grud for a few seconds, Mita’s face wrinkled in worry >Why husband Grud hurt? What beat you?< Mita’s voice shouted in his mind as she floated over to Grud to fuss over him as his other wives would do, the only difference is besides the surface inspection, Grud saw Mita’s hand phase into his body and somehow had the weird sensation of his insides being inspected.
<Don’t worry, me and the other hunters were just sparring with each other and we will be sparing regularly for our journey.> Even while her hand was inside of Grud’s chest, she looked up at Grud with a head tilted and gave him a questioning look. >Sparring? What is sparring?<
Hearing that question, Grud had to pause a while to think about how to explain sparring to Mita. <Sparring is…. Have you ever seen some young beasts play fight with each other?> After seeing Mita nod in the affirmative, Grud continued, <It is the same thing we play fight with each other to get stronger, so we can fight better in actual fights.>
It took a bit more explaining, but eventually, Mita got the concept. But Mita was grumpy after the explanation, >Mita understand. But still feel bad in chest when see husband Grud hurt.< the only thing Grud could do in response to this is bring Mita into a loving hug, <Ok, I will try to not get hurt as much.>
Grud spent the night having pillow talk with Mita about what she spent her day doing but paused when Mita mentioned something she saw while exploring in the direction they were heading, >I saw many scale beast in groups.<
<Scale beast?> Grud asked with a hint of worry. <How big are these scale beasts? How many legs?> Mita tilted her head from side to side while thinking then replied a few seconds later, >Mita think as long as you. Four legs.<
As the image of what Mita described was forming in his head, Mita giggled and touched Grud’s forehead with her own, as soon as their heads touched, images started flashing in his head. Scaled beasts of green and yellow with some of them having a red crest, they were on four legs prowling around in a group of around twenty.
Grud may have never seen a live Hunter Lizard before, but he had seen their pelts being traded during the meetings. After Mita disconnected her head from his, Grud looked at Mita in amazement <You can let me see what you see? Amazing!> Mita puffed out her bountiful chest and said >Yes. We are bonded. Mita very useful!<
Grud could only nod in agreement and give her a peck on the lips as thanks, <Those scale beasts are called Hunter Lizards, do you know how far away they are from here?> After a few seconds of calculating, Mita replied >Half day walk.<
‘Good, at least I got a heads up of what is to come. But is there a way I can inform the rest of the hunters without revealing Mita?’
After thinking about it for a while, an idea came to Grud ‘Dhuk did teach me the rituals of communing with the Great Spirits… and Mita is a Great Spirit that I have more than communed with. Maybe I can give a warning to Chieftan Dhun.’
After thinking about it some more, Grud gave a thank you kiss to Mita and went to find Chieftan Dhun. When he reached Chieftain Dhun’s shelter, he stage whisper to get his attention.
“Chieftain Dhun… Chieftain Dhun, are you awake?” After hearing some shuffling Chieftain Dhun’s head popped out of his shelter to take a look at who was interrupting his sleep.
When their eyes met, Chieftain Dhun grunted out, “Grud of the Rock Skull tribe right? What is it?”
Grud nodded “Yes, that's right… Actually, I came to you because I… err… got a vision while practicing my ritual to commune with the Great Spirits…”