NOVEL SIMPLE Chapter 42
As Grud’s group continued their journey, the first thing he did was confirm that he was the only one with greyed vision and that the world as he knew it still had colors. After asking a few other hunters about the color of different things in the environment and getting weird looks and concerned questions about his well-being, Grud confirmed that it was just his vision that was grey.
This led to another problem, as he looked all around him, he noticed all kinds of smudges and blots of both the hunters traveling with him and on the trees and ground around him too. This made Grud act even weirder to his fellow hunters as he sometimes walked around something only he could see and avoided some hunters that walked too close to him.
The situation was not helped by his sensitive nose. Smells of some things that he could previously only tell the rough direction and distance of, he could now see. Not that Grud knew it or not, but he was slowly becoming germophobic.
‘On the upside, this grey vision lets me see some small animals and bugs that I would have most likely missed.’ Grud thought to himself as he continued to observe his surroundings.
Besides the suspicious pronounced patches on the ground and at the base of trees, Grud also noticed that some flowers, bugs, birds, and small animals also seemed to be more pronounced in his greyed vision.
Besides his new fangled vision he was getting used to, his sense of smell at the roof of his mouth was another weird one. While it was weird to smell and taste what you were currently chewing at the same time, it was something Grud got used to quickly.
A few hours into the day’s journey, Grud was getting tired of his greyed vision, ‘Seeing things I could not see before is great and all, but will my vision be stuck like this forever?’ With that worrying thought, Grud started brainstorming ways to get his vision back.
Having no concrete ideas for solving this issue, Grud started squinting and flexing the muscles around his eyes, within a few seconds of trying, Grud noticed some color flood back into his vision, but as he relaxed the muscles around his eyes that he was flexing before his full vision was filled with color, Grud’s vision snapped back to Grey.
Not to be deterred, Grud tried again, this time flexing those eye muscles until his vision was filled with the colors he had seen all his life. This time when he relaxed his eye muscles, his vision stayed the same in full color.
‘That is a relief, I was afraid my sight would be stuck like that forever. But that grey vision may be useful in the case I need to find something I cannot usually see, now that I know how to get my normal vision back, let's see if I can get see in that grey vision again.’ Grud thought as he started flexing his eye muscles again.
What Grud found was that he could toggle his vision by flexing the same set of muscles, and after playing around to relieve his boredom, Grud found out that if he flexed that particular muscle on only one eye, he could retain his colored vision in one eye while his other eye’s vision was greyed.
While it was nice to have both visions at once, after a few minutes, Grud’s eyes began to throb, which led to a slight headache, forcing him to return to his colored vision, ‘So… I can be in either vision but not in both, otherwise it would be too stressful for me.’
By the time Grud was done playing around with his new vision, the group stopped for lunch. The uneventful journey this morning was met with good news as the two hunters that were scratched by the Hunter Lizards had recovered slightly before the group stopped for a break, when they checked on the hunter that was bitten by the Hunter Lizard, he had somewhat regained control of his ability to speak but was still unable to move his limbs beside some twitching.
Continuing their journey for an hour after their lunch break, Grud tapped Dhun to get his attention and whispered to him, “I smell fresh blood around three hundred meters ahead of us, but the smell is not that strong…. Maybe something smaller than a Tusk Pig was just killed.”
Now having more trust in Grud’s abilities, without question Dhun brought the group to a stop and sent Grilk out in the direction Grud indicated. A few minutes later Grilk came back with news, “Just one Giant Badger ahead.”
Dhun nodded and signaled everyone to advance, “This should be easy if it does not run away after seeing us.” Dhun said.
Sadly for the Giant Badger, it had more courage than brains and stood its ground while snarling and snapping aggressively at over seventy hunters.
Grud looked at Dhun and said, “I’ll do it.” before charging at the Giant Badger which was the size of a large dog. The Giant Badger seeing Grud closing on it, decided to meet Grud in combat, only to meet an anti-climatic end when Grud flashed his spear forward in a fast and powerful thrust that entered its mouth and deep inside its body.
The thing that amazed Grud was that even with a spear shoved down its throat and most definitely damaging its insides badly, it did not stop at Grud while swiping its claws furiously which forced Grud to abandon his spear that was so deep in the Giant Badger that he almost got his hands clawed at.
Grud ended up asking one of the hunters to lend him a spear and finished off the Giant Badger by introducing a few more holes to its body.
Before they moved on, Grud used the excuse of retrieving his spear that was stuck in the Giant Badger to quickly cut out its heart and store it in a pouch.
After the encounter with the Giant Badger, the rest of the day’s travel was relatively uneventful besides the hunter that was bitten by the Hunter Lizard finally being able to walk on his own.
As the group stopped to set up camp for the night, Grud excused himself to take a piss and went behind some trees to consume the Giant Badger's heart. After that was the same routine as the past few days, set up his shelter, get his ass beat by Dhun as he tried to improve his fighting skills, get some dinner and lastly retire to bed to fill Mita up before falling asleep.
—
The mutating agent was active once again when Grud fell deep asleep. New genetic material was introduced to the system for it to adapt.
As the mutating agent scanned thru the genetic information, it found most things mundane compared to what the host’s body had now. Its eyes were not as good as the host’s original even if it has low light vision, the Big Tooth Cat’s low light vision was better.
The Giant Badger’s hearing was also inferior to the host’s which was improved by the rabbit’s hearing.
This new genetic donor’s olfactory organ seems to be able to detect some smell particles better than the host, but other than that it was a negligible improvement, but was adapted to the host body anyway
After scanning thru and recycling any genetic information that was incompatible or inferior to what the host already had, it came up on the genetic donor’s immune system which was more robust than even the host’s which was improved by the mutating agent.
After getting a better look at the genetic donor’s immune system, it seems to be a lot more capable at metabolizing toxins or foreign substances that the body identifies to be harmful when compared to the host’s current immune system. So it was adapted to the host’s body.
After scanning thru more genetic information that seemed to be useless, the mutating agent called it a day and went dormant again.
—
That night as Grud slept, his body began to sweat heavily, and his temperature began to rise to a feverish temperature for more than an hour before his temperature began to drop down to normal levels.
This high spike in body temperature as his body made internal changes to his immune system left Grud’s body feeling so weak, he did not even notice the noise of the camp waking up or the sunlight peeking thru the cracks in his shelter hitting his face.
After the noise of camp activity was going on for quite awhile, taps to wood on the wood of his shelter could be heard, *tap* *tap* *tap* “Grud, wake up and get something to eat quick, we are about to move out soon.” after a few seconds of silence, more taps came followed by more calls to Grud, “Are you awake in there? We are moving out soon.”
>Husband Grud. Husband Grud! You wake!?< even Mita’s mental voice was met with a lethargic groan <mmmmmnnnn…. noisy….tired….> Soon after there was no audible response, More taps came followed by “Grud? Are you ok? I am coming in.”
The one who pulled away the dead leaves covering Grud’s shelter entrance was Nolk, one of the Rock Skull tribe’s hunters, if he had pulled away the dead leaves away a second earlier, Nolk would have seen a white blob of semen floating an inch above the ground scurrying out the back end of Grud’s shelter to hide in a nook between the shelter and the tree behind it.
Instead what Nolk found was a naked Grud who stunk of sweat lying on the ground that was only damp on the area he was lying on, Nolk also noticed Grud’s eyes were sunken and the breath he was taking was shallow. This prompted Nolk to run off to get help.
When Grud finally woke up, he found himself on an impromptu stretcher carried by two of his tribe mates, Grud weakly raised his hand and with a hoarse voice said “Water…” Grud was set down and handed a water skin which he quickly drained and asked for another.
After drinking three whole water skins, Grud felt alive again, although very hungry, Grud looked to one of the hunters that carried him and asked “What happened? Why was I being carried?.... I feel so weak.”
Grud was then informed of the state he was found in and that he was totally unresponsive, he was fed what water he could swallow without him choking but ran out of time and had to start their journey. Grud was also informed that they were less than a day away from their first destination and that the group would only stop when they arrive around early afternoon to wait for the main bulk of the tribes to arrive.
Grud could only nod at what he heard as he chewed on some smoked meat to sate his hunger while thinking, ‘Must all my new power come with a trial? I do not even know what I got this time.’