NOVEL SIMPLE Chapter 45
As the group of hunters progressed over the next two weeks they managed to settle three more tribes back to their tribe grounds.
So far, everything was going smoothly, with the worst injury being one of the hunters breaking his leg from a bad fall while climbing a tree to get a better view ahead and was changed out with a hunter from the main bulk of the tribes, other than that, there were just minor bumps and scrapes from travel and fighting beasts along the way.
It was only on the night after moving onward from the fourth settled tribe that the hunters had their first casualty.
At the parameter of the camp of hunters led by Chieftain Dhun, were two hunters standing watch at their section of the parameter for the night. Nid and Kran of the Sharp Wind tribe were having some idle chatter to keep themselves alert until they were relieved of their watch.
When they reached a lul in their conversation, Nid spoke up, “Hey Kran, I am going to take a piss.” Nid said while gesturing his thumb over at a tree, Kran just nodded and waved Nid off with a grunt.
Nid walked a few trees over from where he was standing watch to a particularly large tree, hiked up his garment and soon the sound of constant patter of piss hitting the tree filled the area. Little did Nid know that he had caught the attention of something in the tree he was pissing on.
Slowly and silently claws longer than a large man’s hand carefully unfurled from the branches they were holding onto and quietly descended to the hunter below it.
When Nid was done relieving himself, a small part of his subconscious was screaming in his mind, then he realized that in his immediate vicinity, there was no sound of any birds or insects, ‘This is bad, better get back to warn Kran.’
But as Nid turned around, he locked eyes with an upside-down head staring at him with pupils that reflected the moonlight. Nid tensed up, but before he could so much as utter a cry to warn the other hunters, claws flashed forward and Nid could feel the rest of his body from the neck down no longer.
When Nid’s eyes panned down to an arm covered in long shaggy fur that extended from below his chin all the way to a creature covered in that same long shaggy fur that was hanging upside down from the branch above him.
Nid’s vision started to grow fuzzy at the edges and started getting darker as his mouth opened to scream, but not a sound came out as Nid finally faded away.
—
Grud jolted awake as a scent entered his nose, “Blood…. Man blood.” Grud yanked his dick out of Mita’s resting form, grabbed his garment and spear, and sprinted after the scent. As Grud made his way thru the camp, one of the hunters from the Spirit Moon tribe who was up to stoke the campfire caught sight of Grud.
“Where are you in a rush to?” the hunter asked Grud as he was rushing past the campfire, the only thing Grud could squeeze out was “I smell blood nearby.” before he was out of sight.
From the corner of Grud’s enhanced vision, he saw the hunter rush off to what Grud assumed was Chieften Dhun’s shelter.
When Grud cleared the last of the clustered together shelters he sprinted towards the source of the scent, after under a minute of sprinting at superhuman speed, Grud’s low light vision landed upon a creature hanging upsidedown and very engrossed in the shoulder of a hunter that was hanging limply from its grasp.
Realizing that he was not noticed by the feasting creature yet, Grud immediately slowed to a crawl and circled a few trees over to backstab the creature, only to come upon a hunter standing watch, oblivious to what was happening to his fellow hunter a little over twenty meters away from him in the dark.
Grud came up from behind him and tapped his shoulder, then the hunter who he tapped turned around, “Nid wh- mmm… MMM!” Before this hunter could make more noise, Grud’s hand shot out and muffled his mouth and shushed him.
When the hunter that Grud only saw in passing and did not know the name of settled down, Grud gave him the hand signs for There, Enemy, Danger. When the hunter looked in the direction that Grud signed out, a look of realization hit him and he nodded as he hefted his spear.
Grud signed Follow Me, which was replied with a nod from the hunter as they both crouched low and moved slowly towards the creature. Soon both of them were within line of sight of the creature and even the hunter beside Grud was able to see it in the dim moonlight as it feasted on their fellow hunter.
As they were both crouched, Grud got the attention of the hunter beside him, pointed to the hunter’s spear, and signed Throw Good? The hunter looked at the creature that was around ten meters away, looked back at Grud and nodded.
After signing with each other for a while to decide on an approach to kill the creature, they decided to keep it simple, the hunter will throw his spear at the creature and Grud will charge in to make sure it is dead.
Once it was decided, on the count of three, the hunter popped out from behind a bush and let loose his spear toward the creature as Grud sprinted forward just behind the thrown spear.
The thrown spear caught the creature in the back which made it screech in pain as it dropped its meal, it twisted its body around to the direction it was attacked with its arms held wide open and ready to slash at anything, but the only thing it met was the fast moving bundle of muscles that was Grud with a spear that was inches away from it.
Before the creature could start swiping its claws, Grud slammed into the creature spear first, which easily impaled straight through the creature’s body, but that was not all, Grud’s charging momentum slammed into the creature and tore its grip on the branch it was holding, sending both Grud and the creature towards the trunk of the tree.
With a dull but loud THUMP, Grud slammed the creature against the tree. Grud quickly tried to fallback with his spear but quickly realized his spear was stuck, and with the feeling he got when tugging his spear, he realized that not only was it stuck in the creature, but also the tree trunk behind it, so he released his spear and hopped backward as a swipe from the creature was coming towards his head.
After getting out of swiping range of the creature, Grud watched the creature with caution as his hand went toward his hip where he usually holstered his axe, and remembered he did not bring it when we rushed out of his shelter in haste.
Fortunately, Grud did not need to worry as he soon heard many footsteps coming toward him, ‘Good, it seems like backup is here.’ Just as he finished that thought, the hunter he just met came up beside him and looked at the corpse of his fellow hunter with sadness in his eyes.
“Curses!” the hunter said harshly as he spits in the direction of the creature that was pinned to the tree and bleeding out, “I should not have left him alone, I wondered what was taking him so long to take a piss. What am I going to tell his family?”
After taking a short moment to grief, he joined Grud in staring at the struggling creature and asked, “What in the name of the Great Spirits is that?” to which Grud could only answer with, “I have no idea.”
After a moment of staring at the impaled creature, the backup arrived with a torch to reveal the creature to light.
The creature was revealed to have moss green shaggy fur with streaks of brown, its body looked like a sloth that was enlarged to be slightly bigger than an average man, but the proportion of its arms were longer and its legs shorter.
When the rest of the hunters gathered around the creature, the same questions were echoed, “What is that?”, “Never seen anything like it.”, “I wonder if it tastes good?”
Then a voice sounded out, “I have seen this before.” at this statement, all eyes turned to the man. From his markings and clothes design, Grud knew it was a mand from a border tribe like his, the Long Shadow tribe.
“The last time I saw this, it was near the border of the unexplored south. It ambushed a prey we were chasing, slaying a large buck in a single strike of its claws and dragging its whole body into the trees before we could do anything. We call them Tree Claws.”
This time it was Chieftain Dhun that spoke up, “Hmmm… This is worrying, if what you say is true and they mainly live further south, that must mean that whatever is chasing them North is able to attack them or the prey has dried up in their usual territory.”
Dhun looked at the Tree Claw and said, “Put that Tree Calw down, quickly process it and get back to sleep, we have a long day tomorrow.” after saying that, Dhun walked past Grud and slapped his shoulder and gave an approving nod before walking back to camp.
Grud claimed the Tree Claw’s heart before the other hunters got to work processing its carcass and ate it as a night snack when he entered his shelter and fell asleep.
—
The mutating agent roused in the host’s sleeping body to sample the new genetic material for anything useful.
Unfortunately, after sifting thru the genetic material of the Tree Claw, it came up with nothing that was better, compatible, or feasible for the host to adapt.
Ultimately all this newly introduced genetic material was marked to be recycled as biomass and the mutating agent went dormant again.
—
When the first morning light hit the camp Grud woke up, had a quickie with Mita and exited his shelter to start the new day, but today was a solemn day, they had lost a hunter last night and everyone was none too happy about it.
The fallen hunter’s body was wrapped in some leather and dragged along on a cobbled together sled. It was only after the hunter group stopped to mark out a suitable area for the main bulk of the tribes to make camp for the night, did they do a quick funeral for the fallen hunter.
A hole was dug, and the fallen hunter Grud now knew as Nid of the Sharp Wind tribe was lowered in, After a few words from Chieftain Dhun, Grud was called over as a Shaman, even if he was one in training, to perform the final rights.
After which, they gathered some sticks and stones to make a small grave, and the members of the Sharp Wind tribe drew their tribe’s sign on the filled over sand to let the rest of their tribe who has yet to arrive know one of their own has fallen.