Unto the Ages

After Grud’s failed experiment with empowering his spear and coming up with the theory that monster parts were able to carry mana better than other objects, Grud hurried back with his monster rabbit horn to the monster he just killed before he started the experiment with his spear.

 

When he got back to the long-limbed monster’s carcass Grud was relieved that nothing got to it first, “Well, come to think about it, I am currently in this dead monster’s territory, so I should be safe for a while unless something bigger or fearless comes by.”

 

Grud immediately got to work butchering the monster, out of all the parts he got out of the monster he coveted the most were the disproportionately long arm bones of the long-limbed monster.

 

After Grud was done scraping off the meat, Grud was rewarded with four arm bones that were each three-quarter of a meter long, Grud then built a simple rack to hang the monster pelt after doing a rough job at scraping off any leftover meat and fat.

 

After stuffing his face with the butcher monster meat, Grud got to work experimenting with the monster bones.

 

The first thing Grud was to confirm his theory of monster parts carrying mana better than things like wood and stone, he started by grabbing a rib he had cleaned off and pumped mana into it, to his delight, it reacted the same way as the monster rabbit’s horn.

 

Grud then moved on to the long arm bones which had the same result as the rib, but Grud noticed that he was having issues empowering the whole arm bone, as he sensed the mana in the arm bone he was holding, Grud noticed that some parts of the mana coverage further from where he was holding the arm bone fluctuated and Grud was having some difficulty continuously pumping mana into the bone.

 

After more time studying the effect, Grud came to realize that while the bone was easily taking in his mana, it was just as easily being dissipated back into the environment the further away it was from where he was touching the bone.

 

“There goes my idea of a bone spear, my mana would dissipate before it even reaches the spearhead.”

 

The next thing Grud tested was if bones could conduct mana from each other, this was done by tying two ribs end to end and pumping mana into it.

 

The result was, yes, bones could conduct mana from each other, but Grud estimated that only less than a tenth of the mana made it into the bone that was tied on the other end. Worse was that the tied bone experienced totally horrendous mana fluctuations and sometimes did not even conduct mana at all.

 

These results left Grud a little disheartened, as things stood, there was little Grud could do with the bones from the long arm bones. As Grud looked at the position of the sun, he realized he had taken a few hours doing his experiments.

 

Grud looked at the pelt of the monster drying on the rack and said, “Looks like I will not only be using your bones, I will be using your territory for tonight also.”

 

Grud then proceeded to build a simple shelter for the night and continue with his experiments on the monster's remains.

 

—

 

Deeper in the unexplored south, it has been more than a month since Grud got snagged by a river beast, and Chieftain Dhun was not having a good time in the slightest. Ever since Grud was witnessed being attacked and drowned by some river beast, their fights had not been going as smoothly as before.

 

Where once Grud was there to throw himself into the front line to blunt the beast’s attack to make it easier for other hunters to score some easy hits on distracted beasts, now the weaker and less hardy hunters had to step up in the case their fights got into melee range.

 

This naturally resulted in many hunters being injured and a few dead, but fortunately, it took a couple of battles to get used to Grud not being around but the expedition got into its groove of battle.

 

The expedition managed to sustain their fighting prowess due to the apprentice crafters they brought along, they crafted better equipment for the hunters due to their current weapons and armor getting damaged as they ran into stronger beasts and the occasional monster, which was becoming more frequent the deeper they went.

 

Dhun tried to keep a constant pace to quickly find the source of the problem that was pushing predators north and either kill it, chase it away, or failing that, return home to get a bigger force to get a bigger force to come back to deal with the problem.

 

But there was one problem standing in the way of completing the expedition faster, it was the increase in powerful beasts and monsters that dared to attack a large group of hunters where they would usually leave them alone due to their numbers.

 

At first, those beasts and monsters that attacked the expedition were nothing worth mentioning, but as they went deeper, the beasts and monsters who attacked the expedition could back up that bold move with real strength and power.

 

What the hunters could just pepper with throwing spears to kill, now shrugged off or ate the damage of the throwing spears, it was like like mosquitos biting an elephant.

 

The crafters tried to remedy this issue by replacing the wooden tips of the throwing spears with monster’s teeth. This improved the penetration power and killing potential, but it did not help them against the truly strong opponents.

 

More and more, Dhun and the more experienced hunters had to step forward to engage the beast or monster while the other hunters got in whatever attacks they could, this resulted in Dhun being injured and had to be carried along for a few days before he could get back on his feet.

 

Fortunately, the expedition was able to rest undisturbed at night. The older hunters thought it was because they were staying still in one location instead of marching through different beasts’ or monsters’ territory.

 

But Dhun soon noticed, that as the days went on, they got into more fights and encountered tougher opponents. As a result, they covered less ground each day and the men’s moral was taking a nose dive.

 

So Dhun made the decision to find a cave or an equally safe location, clear it out if needed, and let his men take a break for a few days while they rest, heal, and tend to their equipment.

 

—

 

Grud woke up with a tingly feeling, stretched his body, and rubbed his muscles. Over the weeks he had been separated from the expedition, he had killed and eaten quite a few different beasts and monsters, but besides a slight tingle in his muscles, eyes, ears, and nose, nothing felt different.

 

Grud suspected that there were not many changes because more or less, all the beasts and monsters he had killed and eaten so far were more or less the same, beasts with fur and four legs, lizards with scales and four legs, or snakes. But so far he did not run into any huge bug or centipede things again.

 

The only major difference was his new diet of monster cores, so far he had consumed around a dozen of them, and besides the initial pain and a dull ache throughout his body, Grud felt his mana had drastically increased and so had the vigor of his mana flow.

 

Another thing that changed for Grud, was that during his downtime while waiting out the passing of huge and truly dangerous beasts and monsters, he had completed the mana structure for his body, what the shamans called the ‘Infinite Cycle’, or so he thought, Grud decided he would need to get a second opinion if he did it right.

 

But now, Grud was able to throw around mana pulses and telekinesis with much more ease compared to when he left for the expedition, so Grud figured he was doing something right.

 

The last thing that changed for Grud was his equipment. While he still had his rabbit horn on a stick as a spear, he also got the same idea as the expedition hunters to tip his throwing spears with monster teeth, but the thing he spent the most amount of time on was his nea bone knives.

 

It took him a while to make, and sometimes even had to escape or fight in the fiddle of crafting them. They came from a weird looking monster that looked like a Tusk Pig but not as big as one, the main thing that stood out was that its tusks were proportionally bigger than what its body looks it should support.

 

With his tooth tipped throwing spears, his horn spear, and newly gained ease of using his mana, Grud was easily and quickly dispatched the monster and harvested its tusks.

 

It took a couple of days to grind the tusks down to shape using rocks and even other monster bones but he finally did it, Grud ended up with two curved bone daggers. While not as sharp as a knapped stone dagger, when pushing mana through to empower it, it did the job just as well or even better without chipping.

 

As for armor, since he left his centipede carapace armor at camp before being dragged by the crocodile into the river, Grud had to replace it with layered pelts from furred monsters and scaled leather from lizard monsters to act as leather armor, but Grud did not bother empowering the leather armor because the first time he tried it, it sucked mana from his body at such a fast rate that he almost fainted after half a minute. There was just too much surface area to empower.

 

But after having his new, roughly made leather tested by letting a smaller clawed beast take a swipe at his chest and only feeling the impact and not the sharp claws, Grud deemed the armor adequate for the moment.

 

But all that being said, today was a special morning for Grud. Last evening, Mita reported to him that she spotted smoke in the distance. It was faint, but Grud estimated it was a two and a half to three day journey, maybe two days if he rushed, but Grud learned his lesson about rushing.

 

Finally, he would be able to rejoin the expedition, but Grud also wondered ‘How have I been able to catch up? Or are they slowing down?’