NOVEL NEXT Chapter 54
After reaching the Long Shadow tribe, Chieftain Dhun decided that the hunters would have a three day break to let the hunters who were injured recover and swap out some hunters who were too injured to keep fighting.
But even though the hunters were on break, they were preparing for their venture into the unexplored south. And there was one important lesson they learned from the past couple of days of fighting after exiting the canyon and encountering more dangerous beasts on the other side, and that was that ranged attack was king.
As they got close to the border, the hunters got more and more into the habit of throwing their spears to soften up their target before rushing in with their secondary weapon to finish the target off.
It was shortly after exiting the canyon, that one of the hunters guarding the tribe’s flank strayed a bit too far from the main group and was attacked by a beast that thought it could get a quick kill and run away before the rest of the tribe caught up.
Unfortunately for the beast, the hunter saw it coming and had to sacrifice his hand to get mauled while wrestling with the beast, this bought time for other hunters to assist the attacked hunter.
After the scuffle, one dead beast and four injured men, Grud helped pick up their dropped spears and got an idea, after getting permission to keep the mass produced spears belonging to the four injured hunters, Grud got back to the front of the front of the group, where we would get to use his new spears a few hours later.
His first target was a bear he scented on the wind and went off to attack the bear before the tribe could run into it. With his four extra spears in hand, he did not bother with stealth and rushed the bear while throwing spears at it. On the third spear, Grud must have hit something important and the bear slumped over with labored breathing before dying.
While extracting the spears from the bear carcass, Grud imagined the scene, “All the hunters… throwing spears at once at a single target… I don't think anything can survive that.”
Grud brought the idea up with Dhun, which led to Grud and a bunch of men sitting around in the Long Shadow tribe’s ground, whittling down branches into shorter but still throwable spears, they were nothing fancy like the stone tipped spears that all hunters usually used as a main weapon, they were just sharpened sticks that were three quarter the length of a normal spear.
After some test throws and some help from the Long Shadow tribe’s crafters, they decided to tie some feathers or leaves to the butt-end of the throwing spear which greatly improved the spear’s ability to fly straight.
These throwing spears were tested by hunting parties that went hunting and gave great reviews for killing prey, but not so good for getting a clean kill, sometimes the spears will hit the intestines and foul the meat, but for the expedition’s purposes, killing was just what they needed.
By the end of the three day break, all the hunters going on the expedition had at least three of the throwing spears and some practice to get used to its handling.
When they were ready to venture into the unexplored south, Dhun gave a rousing speech, got the men hyped up, and off they went.
—
It has been a month since the expedition left the Long Shadow tribe, the first thing they definitely noticed was the sharp increase in beasts and even a couple of monsters fighting for territory. Fortunately, the hunters’ new strategy of pin-cushioning any beast or monster that they engaged with was a lifesaver.
The only time they had an issue with this strategy was when fighting a huge armadillo-like monster the size of a bull with a spiked tail, their throwing spears plinked off its shell harmlessly as it charged forward, but it was quickly outflanked and harassed due to its inability to turn fast to engage multiple targets.
After a few attacks that failed to hit any of the hunters, the huge armadillo monster realized that attacking was a losing strategy. It proceeded to plop its huge body down to the ground and folded its legs in, if it could not defeat its opponents, it would just wait until the hunters lost interest and moved on like so many others before had.
Which was a decision it soon came to regret when faced with foes who had opposable thumbs, dextrous hands, and the tools to attack the gaps in its armor. The armadillo monster was killed shortly after with spears shoved in between its armor plates. Its meat was then harvested, Monster Core extracted, and the carapace carefully removed by some of the apprentice crafters who came along to maintain the equipment.
The second thing the hunters noticed was the climate getting warmer and more humid, and the vegetation was also getting more dense. And along with the increasingly dense flora, came the fauna that liked to hide and ambush from said flora.
In that month of expedition, the men had become rather paranoid of trees, there had been more than twenty attacks from beasts ambushing from the trees that claimed the lives of four men and gave quite a few more men some nasty scars.
Grud was able to thwart most attacks by regularly cycling sight to see heat and ultraviolet, but even with his enhanced senses, he could not see a beast hiding behind a tree or thick foliage and only showing itself after he passed.
When Grud asked Mita to help scout ahead, he found out that while she was able to see alot of things, she was not able to identify alot of them due to not seeing them before, and because of the shear density of lifeforce by the flora and fauna clustered close together. What she was able to easily pick out so Grud could warn the others, was monsters.
On the positive side of things. With all the new different beasts that nobody had ever seen before, the hunters were having a blast naming the new beasts, and Grud was able to sample the hearts of all the different beasts and monsters.
But even after eating all those different hearts, Grud did not feel much difference from them. There was some improvement, but it was almost negligible. Grud was beginning to form a theory.
‘Am I not getting stronger because even tho I am eating so many different beasts, they are more or less the same? Most of them have the same thing in common, thick hides, strong bodies, and better senses. If I think about it, aren't I becoming like that? As I am now, I can wrestle some of the stronger beasts barehanded and overpower them… the only difference between me and them is that I can use a spear.’
As Grud was having these thoughts while walking along a river, the call to stop and make camp was called. Grud, who lost track of time looked to the sky and saw the sun was getting low, seeing that they were just next to a river, Grud decided to go wash off the day’s sweat, grime, and the blood of a beast he punched to death earlier in the day.
Grud approached the shallows of the murky river and scanned it for any dangers with his visions, his normal eyesight could not penetrate the murky water, ultraviolet could not pick up anything either, and his heat vision could only see the fluctuation of temperatures of the flowing water.
‘Looks safe enough.’ Grud thought to himself as he walked into the river, when he got to the knee level of water, he realized something, “Hmm… as gentle looking as the river seems on the surface, the current is actually quite powerful… what is that coming down the river.” catching the sight of something floating down the river at the corner of his vision, Grud turned to look.
‘Looks like a fallen log.’ Grud thought to himself and mentally shrugged as he got back to washing his body. When the fallen log got within spitting distance of Grud, he noticed something suspicious, ‘That is not any wood bark I've ever seen… and wasn't it floating down the middle of the riv-’
Before Grud could finish his thoughts, the fallen log lunged at him with a mouth full of teeth. Seeing this, Grud’s world slowed down as he tried to jump backward while in the water, but as fast as his mind was, his body could not keep up.
As he fell backward with a shout, to let other hunters know of the danger, Grud could still not get away from the beast that was trying to eat him. Although it missed its attack on Grud’s torso, it managed to clamp its jaws on his left calf.
Grud roared in pain as he reached down with both hands to try to pry open the jaws that were clamped on his leg. And Grud was lucky he held on to the beast's jaws with his hands, because the beast started rolling in the water, which rolled Grud along with the beast, thus avoiding his leg being twisted off his body.
As Grud rolled, more of his body was submerged deeper into the river, and eventually, no part of him could touch the river bed, soon the rolling stopped and the beast that was holding him underwater started thrashing.
Disorientated and with the air shaken out of his lungs, Grud started to panic, and with nothing solid to grab onto besides the beast that was grabbing onto him, Grud started to freak out as the edges of his consciousness started to go red.
—
When the hunters called to stop and set up camp for the night, Mita told Grud that she was going out to explore, and with Grud’s mental acknowledgment, she was zipping off into the trees.
Not even five minutes after departing from Grud and as she was following a small monkey swinging around the tree branches, a spike of panic and danger shot across the bond with her husband.
<HUSBAND GRUD! HUSBAND GRUD!> Mita called out over her bond while she was zooming through the air as fast as she could, the only thing Mita could hear through her bond was mental roars of fury and fear.
By the time Mita got back into Grud’s body which was underwater, the only sound Mita could hear in Grud’s mind was the roars and growls of a cornered beast that was fighting for its life.
And in the physical world, Mita saw her husband clawing and grappling with the beast while his left leg was bent at an angle it should not be. At this point, Mita was also panicking badly and felt powerless. Her husband was about to die before her eyes.