Unto the Ages

AN: Check out my other novel, Of Arms and Arcane https://www.scribblehub.com/series/872408/of-arms-and-arcane/

 

Grud sped through the woods, pumping mana into each bounding step, he rapidly ate the distance while keeping a look out for any sight, sound, or smell of any big creature, preferably one that is a monster so he could get more materials to experiment with.

 

Unfortunately, Grud only ran into beasts. The first beast he ran into was a bear halfway through its meal on some animal. After smelling the bear and then catching sight of it a short while later, charged towards the bear that had its face in the dead animal’s guts.

 

Grud flooded his new spear with mana and jabbed at the bear’s head. With the speed Grud was moving forward along with his thrust, the resistance he felt was akin to jabbing his spear into water.

 

The bear did not even know it was dead before its body just slumped to the ground.

 

After pulling the spear out of the dead bear, Grud looked at the spear with joy, flicked the spear to get the blood off, and slung the bear over his shoulder to bring it back home.

 

—

 

After Grud arrived back at the tribe and dropped off his kill to be processed, he arrived at Vok’s hut to find that they had visitors.

 

A shaman along with two hunters from the nearby Stoneclaw Tribe were sitting and chatting with Dhuk and Vok showing off their discovery of the monster parts.

 

When they noticed Grud enter the hut and Dhun call out to him by name, the Stoneclaw tribe’s shaman got up to greet Grud, “Ah, so you are the Grud the men from the expedition talked about. I am the Stoneclaw tribe’s shaman, Borga, and this use of monster is most interesting. But what I really want to know is, is it true that you can use mana as monsters do? Can you show me?”

 

Grud looked at Dhuk a look as if to ask ‘Is this ok?’, and got a nod in return. He then picked up a normal scrap bone, pumped mana into his other hand, and casually flicked his hand in a chopping motion at the bone, chopping it in half.

 

Seeing the mana empowering Grud’s hand got Borga very excited as he rushed to Grud and bombarded him with questions which he patiently answered.

 

But Borga’s questions were interrupted as one of the tribe’s women called out from outside, “Grud, you got visitors.” what he found when he poked his head out of Vok’s hut, were two more shamans and their escorts.

 

By the end of the day, there were four shamans from other tribes, all bombarding Grud, Dhuk, and Vok with questions in regard to Grud’s ability to empower his body the way monsters do and equipment made from monster parts.

 

Over the next week from the first visiting shaman, more shamans and their apprentices started streaming to the Rock Skull tribe to look for Grud. 

 

While the chieftains were having their meeting, the gathered shamans started their own impromptu meeting and started nerding out. They had pretty much taken over Vok’s hut until he kicked them out and a tent for the meeting was raised just outside.

 

After seeing the two main subjects, which were Grud’s body empowerment and monster material equipment, the shamans automatically gravitated to either subject. 

 

This ate up a lot of Grud’s time that he would like to spend with his wives and kid, but with his tribe being the host to so many shamans, he had to be a good host and accommodate their guests. This led to Grud being a test subject as he was requested to empower his body over and over again as the shamans surrounded him and observed the flow of mana.

 

After a week of being poked, prodded, and asked to do different actions while empowered, Grud had enough and pulled the ‘I need to take care of my pregnant wives’ card on the shamans before running off.

 

After that, Grud would spend more time with his family, do some hunting, and drop in every now and then to assist the shamans with their research.

 

As for the happenings on the monster material crafting side, they were burning through usable material fast and had to get more. So the shamans sent their escorts back to their tribes to request more monster parts, which also included monster cores, and to also fetch their tribe’s crafter to learn the method of crafting with monster materials.

 

—

 

The months passed, and most of the shamans returned to their tribes to try to replicate or improve what they were shown. Grud was at the border of the tribe’s grounds practicing his telekinesis on some sticks when one of the tribe’s women ran up to him shouting.

 

“Grud! Grud! Ida is going into labor!” Grud dropped what he was doing and bolted towards his home, ‘I already missed Ayla’s birth, I am not missing this!’

 

As he was nearing his home, he saw another woman waving and calling out to him as she approached, “Grud! Reta, Uchi, Silne, Sonu & Oso just went into labor!”

 

Grud stopped in front of the woman in shock, “What!? I thought it was Ida going into labor, what happened?”

 

The woman whom Grud now recognized as one of the tribe’s midwives quickly blurted out, “Not so sure, after Ida went into labor, Uchi also went into labor, followed by the rest of your wives.”

 

Not having time to think about it, Grud burst into his hut to see six of his wives lying beside each other and holding hands while being surrounded by a bunch of the tribe’s women, which included Nita and her mothers.

 

“Is everyone okay?!” Grud said as he rushed to his wives and gave each of his wives a kiss, the women and his wives assured him that all was fine, but every time one of them had a contraction Grud would immediately rush to them and try to comfort them until the midwives had to chase him away so they could do their job.

 

While he was not fussing over his wives, he was nervously pacing around and in turn making everyone uncomfortable. Eventually, Nita had to kick Grud out of the house so the women could work in peace.

 

As the hours went by, Grud paced in a circle and flared his mana into different parts of his body to keep himself busy, this continued until he heard the cries of a baby and rushed inside the hut to see the midwife finish checking on the baby and passing it to Ida.

 

Grud went over to the sweat covered and exhausted looking Ida who was cradling their newborn boy and kissed her forehead while stroking her head, “Well done dear.” Grud said as Ida snuggled into his kiss.

 

Over the next few hours, the other five wives started giving birth one by one until Silne was the only one left. While the other wives were resting, Grud and Nita were holding her hands and encouraging her as the baby started crowning and was soon delivered safely.

 

By the end of the train of births Ida, Uchi, and Silne gave birth to boys, while Reta Sonu and Oso gave birth to girls.

 

After Sline and her baby were cleaned up, Grud carried her over to his other wives who were waiting with their own babies, and as he sat down to rest with them, Grud felt a warm feeling in his chest that he never felt before, as he closed his eyes and listened to the sounds of his wives chatting and the cooing of his new children, Grud truly felt at peace.

 

—

 

After spending months away from home, Chieftan Froll finally arrived home and very much wanted to spend time with his wives, daughter, and grandchild in peace. The only thing preventing him from doing that was a group of shamans and their escorts that followed him back.

 

Apparently, word of Grud’s abilities and new weapons had gotten around and caught the interest of the shamans near and around the Spirit Moon tribe.

 

After talking to some of his tribe’s people, Froll now learned that this was the second of such a shaman gathering. Froll grumbled, if he was any other man he could have just pushed all the shamans to Dhuk and Grud, but as the tribe’s chieftain, he was obliged to play host, especially to visiting shamans, extended rest and family time would have to wait.

 

Onto better news, he now had six more grandchildren, and all of them were born on the same day. Ida, Uchi, and Silne gave birth to boys, respectively their names were Durm, Vorg, and Groth. As for the girls, Reta, Sonu, and Oso gave birth to Elka, Syla, and Ursa.

 

It was a shame he soon may not have much time with them, he was going to break the news to the whole tribe and ask Grud an important question.

 

But all they could wait for later, he had to gather the whole tribe to make the announcement.