NOVEL NEXT Chapter 46
Around two months had passed since the Tree Claw incident, which was a wakeup call, after that day, the watch was doubled and everyone was to travel in at least pairs, even when going to relieve themselves.
As the hunter group headed further south to settle the tribes, Grud and the hunters quickly noticed that they were running into less solitary predators and more pack predators the further they went, which eventually led to casualties for the hunters.
Over the two months, seventeen hunters died and twenty-three were too injured to continue, volunteers had to be called up from the escorted tribes.
But all was not bad, Grud was thankful that none of the deaths were from his tribe, but three of the injured were. The only slightly dangerous situation Grud got into was getting bitten by a snake that dropped out of a tree and bit him.
After getting bitten, Grud quickly grabbed the snake and bit its head off in revenge, but the damage was already done, and after seeing the colors of the snake, his fellow hunter was ready to bury him and give him his last rights.
After a few minutes, Grud started to feel groggy and fell over unconscious, only to wake up a couple of hours later on a stretcher covered in sweat and feeling feverish. Fortunately, when he woke up, their group was a short couple of hours away from setting up camp for the night.
After getting some food into himself, Grud stumbled back to his shelter his tribe mates help him set up, and immediately fell asleep. When Gurd woke up the next morning, his vision was different.
The roof of his shelter was dyed mainly blue with streaks and patches of different shades of green and yellow. Confused at what he was seeing, Grud brought his hand up in front of his face, only to see his palm was in shades of red which diluted to yellow towards his fingers.
“What in the world am I seeing? Is this like my other vision?” Grud said to himself then squinted and flexed the muscles around his eyes, eventually finding the right muscles to flex to get his normal vision back.
‘Wait, is this sight from the snake whose head I bit off yesterday? Does that mean I do not need to eat the heart to get the beast’s power? I will need to test this more. And I will also need to test what this new vision does.’ Grud thought to himself as he exited his tent.
As Grud looked around he flexed his eye muscles to switch to his new vision. As he looked at his surroundings, he saw tree trunks and branches dyed blue and their leaves speckled in greens, yellows, and reds. When he turned his gaze to the ground, they were speckled in more blues, greens, yellows, and reds with big patches of reds and yellows.
Grud then switched his vision back to normal and noticed that the big patches of reds and yellows were places where the morning sun was shining upon, he then toggled back to his new vision and looked around the camp where his fellow hunters were and saw med of red going about their day, the garments that covered them were shades blues greens, yellows.
Finally, Grud looked toward a campfire, when he gazed upon the campfire, everything around the fire was dyed blue as the whisps of flame danced their crimson dance in his vision, and at the core of that red flame danced a small sliver of red that was darker than blood.
Grud soon changed his vision back to normal and blinked a few times to get rid of the spots in his vision. ‘So… this new vision lets me see heat? Hmmm… this gives me an idea.’ Grud then looked towards the woods and turned on his new vision.
Besides the different colors, Gurd concentrated and looked for movement or discrepancy in his sight. After a few seconds, he saw a small patch of red overlap with a patch of blue. Grud focused on that patch and toggled off his heat vision.
At first, he did not see anything, but after concentrating, he thought he saw a small rodent that blended in with the ground and dead leafs keeping very still. Just to make sure he was not just seeing things, Grud picked up a small stone and threw it at where he saw the small rodent, only to see it scamper out of the way.
This brought a smile to Grud’s face as he spoke to himself “This is going to be useful… very useful indeed…”
As Grud got on with his day, a few of the hunters checked in with him to see if he was doing fine after the snake bite and were surprised to find him fit as a fiddle, and chalked it up to Grud being a shaman.
In reality, the venom that was injected into his body was broken down by the improved immune system he got after eating the Giant Badger heart, and the impurities of the venom being broken down were just waiting to be pissed out of his body.
—
The day had finally come, it had taken two long months, but Grud was glad, he was glad to see the familiar landmarks that he had grown up with, he was home. As he and his fellow tribe hunters led the group to the Rock Skull tribe’s ground, Grud breathed in deep the air of his home and picked up two distinct scents.
One of the scents was a scent he smelled before but always mixed into the background of smells, now that smell was very pronounced but Grud still did not know what it was. The other distinct scent was one he recognized, rotting flesh. And both scents were coming from the same direction, his tribe’s home grounds
Grud immediately signaled the hunters to slow down and relayed what he was smelling. After this, Chieftain Dhun separated the hunters into three groups led by members from the Rock Skull tribe, the first group that Grud was in to come up from the front, the second and third groups to flank from the sides.
As they got closer to the tribe grounds, even the other hunters could smell what Grud did from far away. Soon all three groups met up in the center of the tribe's grounds where slightly dilapidated huts stood, but no beasts were spotted.
Chieftain Dhun looked at Grud with a questioning eye, but Grud’s head was pointed in the direction of the cave the tribe uses to keep some of their goods cool and dry. Dhun nodded and signaled the others to surround the cave entrance.
This was not the first time they cleared out a cave some beast decided to take up residence in. The Rock Skull tribe’s cave was just under seventy meters deep and had bends that prevented light to shine all the way in, so they started a fire and lit some torches in preparation for clearing out the cave.
Being the one who detected whatever took over the cave, Grud along with ten other hunters were chosen to check what was inside, and if possible, lure it out to face the hunters that surrounded the entrance.
When Grud neared the cave, the smell got worse, besides the rancid smell that came from whatever was rotting in there, there was an acrid stench that he assumed was coming from whatever was squatting in his tribe’s cave.
The smell got so bad for Grud’s sensitive nose that his eyes watered and changed his breathing to be done via his mouth, unfortunately for Grud, he forgot about the mutation from the Hunter Lizard that let him taste the air and had to stop himself from gagging as he took smaller controlled breaths to try to minimize his suffering.
After his group got past the bend in the cave, the other hunters could only rely on their torches, but this was no issue for Grud who could see in low light.
About almost a quarter way into the cave, Grud picked up a very soft chittering sound and signaled the group to stop as he turned his head at different angles to confirm what he was hearing.
As he concentrated to strain his hearing, Grud finally picked up on it *tac-tac-tac-tac-* the sound of many hard legs scuttling about. Grud then signaled for them to proceed forward slowly to where he knew there was a final bend that led to a straight path to a wider area in the cave.
As Grud peeked around the bend, he tried out his new heat vision and froze. Grud recognized what he was seeing from its thermal silhouette that was covering the ground, walls, and ceiling of the cave and just to confirm, he changed his vision to ultraviolet and stared in horror at what he was seeing.
Centipedes, but unlike the ones Grud had seen before that did not exceed half a meter, the smallest of these were two meters long, and from the rough count of those he could see, there were around two hundred of them. Most of them seemed to be dormant while a few were scuttling around.
Grud was so engrossed by what he was seeing that he failed to realize one of the hunters holding a torch stepping around the bend to see what Grud was staring at, only for the light of the torch to reflect off the carapace of the huge centipedes.
The centipedes that were scuttling around froze when hit by the light of the torch, after a few seconds of everyone freezing in place, a centipede raised its body aggressively and let out a loud chittering hiss, which was soon echoed by the rest of the centipedes.
Grud could only turn back to the other hunters and shout “RUN!!!” and started a sprinting retreat, within a few seconds of sprinting at superhuman speed, he zoomed out of the cave entrance while shouting “VERY VERY BIG CENTERPIECES! HUNDREDS OF THEM!”
Grud formed up next to Chieftan Dhun and filled him in on what he saw as quickly as he could. After hearing Grud, Dhun barked out some orders and got the hunters into a semicircle around the cave entrance.
A few seconds later, the other hunters that went in with Grud came running out of the cave, followed by the sounds of hissing and scuttling got louder until the first of the centipedes came out into the sunlight and was met with three spears to its body, but only one spear managed to pierce and pin the centipede to the ground, but it refused to die until it had its head cracked open with an axe.
A second after the first centipede was killed, a flood of centipedes started swarming out of the cave entrance toward the encircling hunters.