Unto the Ages

To Grud’s surprise, nothing intruded or came near where Grud was hiding, letting him have a relatively peaceful sleep. 

 

When he woke up, Grud checked his broken leg. While his fractured femur had joined back together, the moment he put some weight on it, shooting pain ran up from his thigh, which was all he needed to know that he was still not fit to travel.

 

‘But the longer I spend resting to recover, the further the expedition gets from me. I must at least cover some distance today!’ Grud thought as he willed himself onto one leg and hopped around to find something he could use as a crutch.

 

An hour later, Grud was limping along with a cobbled together crutch out of the clearing. It was only when he was exiting the clearing that he saw the reason he had such a peaceful sleep last night, hidden among the shrubs at the border of the clearing, were the bones of beasts littered among the shrubs and covered by grass.

 

“Well, that explains a lot. Anything smart enough to recognize the dead remains of these beasts would stay well away from the area.” Hearing a disgruntled Mita huff through their bond, Grud added, “And I should have been more careful and listened to your warning and not just charged monsters just because they are small.” Grud said to mollify Mita.

 

Throughout the day after leaving the monster rabbit’s territory, Grud could only sustain himself by gathering what fruits and berries came across his path and killing a few small animals by throwing stones at them, neither of which was very filling.

 

On top of not having a full belly, Grud had to totally avoid any fights, this translated to Grud spending at least half of the day hiding from anything that looked like could take him on, which gave Grud a lot of time, time which he used to refine his crutch with more padding using leaves, and upgrade his wood tipped spear with a monster rabbit’s horn as it's new spearhead.

 

And just like that, another day went by and the evening smoke trails from the expedition were barely visible in the distance. Grud tested his injured leg again and still experienced the shooting pain, “I guess moving around the whole day even if I did not use my leg is not helping my situation either.” Grud grumbled to himself as he took shelter in a ditch for the night.

 

Over the next two days, Grud tried to make the best pace he could while limping, hiding, and subsisting on what little he could forage and kill. But by the end of the two days, he could no longer see the smoke trails in the distance.

 

On the bright side, the wound that would have taken others months to recover from was somewhat feeling better, now Grud could walk with a slight limp and just have a dull pain while using his spear as a walking stick.

 

While in no shape for jogging, it was more than enough for a brisk walking pace. And the only direction Grud knew to go was south and hopefully, find the trail of the expedition he could follow.

 

The following day, Grud came across the footprints of the expedition, which greatly lifted his spirits, “Luckily there are so many men in the group, they leave tracks that even a half-blind man could follow.”

 

And so, Grud followed the trail left by the expedition, which was all well and good, but as each day passed on Grud’s journey south, the challenges kept increasing.

 

—

 

Another three weeks passed as Grud followed the expedition’s trail, but the further he went the worse it got, it was only the first few days after coming upon the expedition’s tracks that Grud noticed the density of beasts and monsters started increasing at a rather alarming rate.

 

Now it was not only at night that the majority of beasts and monsters came out to hunt, now they came out in the daytime too, which screwed with Grud’s sleep time. With this new situation, there was no difference when he traveled, day and night were now both equally dangerous.

 

This forced Grud to quickly learn how to fall asleep almost on command because he did now know when he would be able to catch some shuteye next.

 

His solo expedition, even with Mita’s scouting, had pushed Grud into more fights to the death than all the fights to the deaths he had experienced from his coming of age to when he washed up with the crocodile combined. And this was turning Grud’s demeanor more… feral.

 

By the end of the three weeks, Grud was snarling and bellowing war cries like the beasts around him when they roared at him in challenge. Fortunately, Grud had not lost all his marbles and stayed clear of the truly huge beasts and any monster he came across.

 

Grud had even found a use for his mana by using telekinesis to rustle bushes to distract beasts from his position while he sneaked away. Unfortunately, this tactic did not work on monsters as they were able to see the tendrils of mana Grud was extending from himself to cause the distraction. Grud had to run or fight to the death three times before he caught on to why it did not work.

 

It was during one of these fights to the death with a monster when Grud was in a fully feral mode that he discovered something.

 

It was when Grud was forced to fight a feline monster whose speed far surpassed his, the same could not be said for its strength or natural defenses. After a haymaker to the side of its head stunned it as it reared back on its hind legs, a quick swipe from Grud’s dagger disemboweled the feline monster just below its ribcage, and with his other hand, punched into the open wound, and up into its chest cavity. Grud reached up until he felt the beating heart of the feline monster in his grasp and pulled.

 

The feline monster immediately felt something important being ripped out of it, fell backward, twitched for a few seconds, and expired.

 

Still in his feral state, Grud bit down on the bleeding heart in his hand as the sound of Mita shouting something in his mind sounded, but Grud was not paying attention.

 

It was only after consuming the heart that Grud came out of his feral state >-sband Grud! You fine? You hear me now?<

 

“Wha… What were you saying?” Grud mumbled as he was regaining his senses.

 

>You eat Monster Core!<

 

“WHAT?!!” Grud said in alarm. “When?!”

 

>It stick to side of monster heart. You not see?< Mita asked

 

“I… did not notic- HHNGGG!!” Grud suddenly hunched over in pain as he felt something hot dissolve in his stomach as hot pulsing mana flowed from his stomach to his own monster core, and then throughout his whole body as the same veins that had formed during the formation of his own monster core pulsed red through his skin.

 

Luckily this pain was not as extreme as when he formed his own monster core and only lasted for a minute or so.

 

It was only after the pain somewhat subsided that Grud noticed the change, the quantity and vigorous flow of his mana had increased, it was then that Grud discovered that eating Monster Cores increased his mana.

 

It was after his discovery of consuming Monster Cores to empower himself, that Grud decided to start targeting monsters, but only if he could ambush them. If the ambush failed, Grud usually ran away.

 

But even if he ran, Grud could not always get away unscathed, on a couple of occasions of failed ambushes, Grud would suffer injuries that would put him out of action for a day or two and was lucky to get away without any broken bones.

 

But fighting all these monsters gave Grud some inspiration when they fought, like the monster rabbit that broke his leg, Grud noticed some of the monsters he fought expelling mana from their limbs when they suddenly increased their movement speed, or when they concentrated mana into their paws, claws, horns or fangs when they attacked.

 

In fact, Grud saw a long-tailed lizard monster he was about to ambush whip its mana-concentrated tail toward some beast it backed up to a tree, and the beast was effortlessly split into two pieces, along with half a section of the tree the beast was backed up against where its tail swiped through.

 

That tree was as thick as Grud was tall, Grud wisely decided to stay the fuck away from that long-tailed lizard monster and take a long ass detour around its territory. But that demonstration made Grud start to experiment.

 

With the help of Grud’s own monster core providing ample amounts of mana and the teachings of Chief Shaman Zargall on manipulating the mana in his body, Grud took to empowering his strikes with mana like fish to water. 

 

The only thing Grud had to work on was blasting mana out of his feet to go faster, after his fifth time slamming into trees or faceplanting into the dirt from being unable to control his speed and momentum, Grud decided to put a pause on going even faster than his already enhanced could.

 

—

As Grud progressed with a few fights with a couple of monsters after learning to empower his limbs to strike, one day as Grud was lying down after a hard won fight against a monster with particularly long limbs, a thought came to Grud.

 

‘If I can empower my hand to strike, can I empower my spear too?’ Grud started trying to pump mana into the spear in his grasp, he felt mana enter the wood of the staff, but it felt like he was trying to force peanut butter through a fine mesh, Grud thought maybe he was just not pushing hard enough and increased the pressure and amount of mana he was pushing into the spear.

 

After almost a minute, Grud heard cracks, followed by the center of the spear exploding into smoldering splinters, which annoyed Grud immensely because he had to find another stick that was straight enough, find and retrieve the monster rabbit’s horn he was using as a spearhead which was propelled quite a distance away, and lastly, Grud had to spend the better part of an hour pulling splinters out the front of his body.

 

But this experiment was not a total waste, when Grud finally found the monster rabbit horn, he pumped a pulse of mana into the horn, thinking maybe his method of injecting mana into his spear earlier may have just been wrong and there may be another method.

 

To Grud’s surprise, his mana was easily absorbed and as Grud started pumping more and more mana into the horn, Grud could sense the being empowered but did not look as stable or powerful as his own arms while being empowered, when Grud tested the horn on a nearby tree, the horn was met with much less resistance than it did when he was testing the horn spear when he first made it.

 

“Could it be that monster parts can carry mana better?” This question ignited Grud’s curiosity as he imagined himself wielding a long spear totally made out of bone and thrumming with mana flowing through it.

 

All of a sudden, Grud’s wariness for the monsters he would potentially encounter, turned into greed as he could not wait to see what monster he would encounter next, and what parts he could use to make his imagined bone spear.