Unto the Ages

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

Grud and Old Crot gathered all the people of his new tribe, they numbered more than a hundred and fifty including children, and with Old Crot advising Grud, the newly created Rock Claw tribe got to work.

 

The first thing they needed to do was take care of the housing, or their lack thereof. Trees were cut down, long grass and foliage were gathered, and dirt was mixed into the mud to be used as building material, with over a hundred working adults, everyone was housed within the month.

 

But building homes was not the only thing the tribe was doing ever since they arrived. The hunters and gatherers explored the surrounding forest and beach for anything useable or edible, and they came back with a bounty.

 

The first things that they found were new sources of food, different fruits plants, and roots. All are tested with the tried and true method of ingesting a small bit and see if the person eating it gets sick, and if the tester gets sick, the food that made the tester sick goes on to a second round of testing to see if another tester still gets sick after it is cooked.

 

The next food source came from the beach and the sea. The hunters that had been patrolling the coast caught crabs, mussels, and other shellfish when the tide was low, they even managed to to spear a few fishes and a stingray that got too close to the seashore.

 

The tribe also discovered that the seaweed that washed ashore was also good to eat.

 

Further down the beach, a rocky area was discovered, and in those rocky areas were birds that were big enough to be worth hunting and eating. And along with those birds, were the eggs they produced. 

 

Besides food, another useful resource was the seashells they found along the beach, these seashells were crafted into tools and jewelry.

 

But the most important thing they discovered, was harvesting salt from the sea. It was first noticed when one of the children scooped a bowl of seawater from the sea, left it at home, and forgot about it until the parents found the bowl with white power in it.

 

After taking a sniff, then a taste, and realizing it was salt, they asked their child where the salt came from, only to be told that there only used to be seawater in the bowl.

 

From there, after some experiments to verify and optimize salt collection, the tribe used their free time to mold multiple wide clay trays for them to evaporate sea water on. The collection of salt even became a full-time job for some of the tribe’s women.

 

—

 

After a few months of setting up the tribe, life began to settle into a routine for Grud, and that meant being able to spend more time with his children and especially his wives who were well into their second pregnancy.

 

But all was not rainbows and sunny beaches. Now that he was chieftain he had other duties to attend to, and was forced to take on a more social role that he was entirely not used to, and that was what Old Crot was there for.

 

He would allow Grud to take a shot at the problem first and if Grud fucked it up too bad, Crot will step in. At first, some of the people tried to bypass Grud and try to take their problems up with Crot but soon found out that was a quick way to receive a tongue lashing from Crot.

 

Over the months, Grud had to carry out duties, such as resolving disputes between his tribe members, making decisions on how much of the salt and other products the tribe was willing to trade to other tribes, sifting through verbal reports of sightings of prey or dangerous beasts/monsters, and delegating hunting and gathering parties.

 

But that was not all, Grud also doubled up as the tribe’s shaman and had to treat the injured, and hold ceremonies for newborns or those who came of age. Fortunately, he did not need to conduct any funeral ceremonies. Yet.

 

To get away from all this busy work, every now and then when there seemed to be a lull in activity, Grud would take some alone time and go out hunting. With his tribe’s food situation at excellent levels, especially with food from the sea, he enjoyed the feeling of running wild with all the speed and power that no man could match.

 

Every chance he could, Grud would explore further and further along the beach in both directions, and every now and then he would find a new creature he could devour, especially sea and amphibious creatures. But besides some general improvements in his body’s physical performance and slightly improving his senses, Grud still felt he was missing something to bridge the gap to the great power that was just out of reach, which slightly frustrated him.

 

Grud signed as he put all his worries out of his mind and roam free.

 

—

 

Five years passed since the establishment of the new tribes, and much has changed for Grud and all the tribes.

 

Over the years, under the guidance of Crot, Grud had grown more comfortable and competent as a leader, and he had to be because once the other tribes stabilized their hold on their tribe’s surroundings, trade started, and because of the salt this tribe was producing, trade was flourishing for Grud’s coastal tribe.

 

Which meant negotiating with other tribes and settling numerous disputes between his tribe and the other new tribes that were trading with him. Sometimes things came to blows, but they all engaged in fisticuffs the understanding that besides a few knocked heads and broken noses, no blood would be drawn for lethal combat in these trade disputes. 

 

Other than trade, Grud’s personal life had also gone through a big change, what was once a family that was Grud himself, his eight wives, one of them being a Spirit Wisp, and his first batch of seven children, was followed by another seven being born a year later and every year after that, Grud had to renovate his home two times in those five years.

 

When all his wives were confirmed pregnant for the fifth time, Grud and his wives decided to try to avoid making more babies, at least until the ones born earlier were grown up.

 

So in order to combat the overpopulation from their family that they foresee happening if they do not slow down their babymaking, Grud’s wives reluctantly agreed to only take his seed up their ass or swallow it. In agreeing to this, Grud had to practice his pullout game seriously.

 

Another thing that was taking up Grud’s personal life, was his children, the oldest batch were currently five years old and liked to climb their dad like a tree whenever he played with them, and soon after, the younger siblings that could walk joined in the fun of climbing Grud and being a general nuisance to Grud.

 

Despite all this, Grud was contented when he saw the smiles on his family's faces.

 

In other news of what else happened over the five years, all the new tribes had to contend with some strong beasts and even the occasional monster that tried to evict the new tribes. Most of the tribes managed to defend themselves and those that failed to do so were able to escape to the neighboring tribes to help and eventually retake their tribe.

 

A shaman from the Swift Scale tribe who was obsessed with crafting using monster parts ever since it was introduced, had discovered a way to increase the mana efficiently of monster armor by using monster core glue to make a pseudo body’s mana structure on the armor. The monster armor would still use a big chunk of mana, but at least it would not totally drain a shaman of all his mana minutes after wearing and activating the armor. This new advancement was shared among the shaman community during the meeting, which spurred the other shamans who thought monster armor dead end to keep experimenting.

 

But the biggest and most important thing that happened in the years until now, was all of Grud’s wives started to become mana sensitive. It first started with Nita complaining that something was tickling her, or feeling a gust of wind where there was none.

 

They only found out she was mana sensitive when Nita brought Grud his meal when he was practicing with his mana in a small hut on the outskirts of the tribe. As Nita sat down to have a meal with Grud while he was practicing, complained to Grud “Dear, please stop using your magic on me.”

 

Grud looked at Nita with a raised eyebrow, “But I am not using magic on you”

 

As Grud’s practice continued, and Nita complained every time he used his telekinesis, Grud got suspicious and filled his eyes with mana to look at Nita.

 

While there was no overflowing mana leaking out of her, Grud could see that the mana in her body was a lot more active than normal people. At first, Grud shrugged at it thinking it was a lucky coincidence and he would seek the wisdom of Shaman Dhuk and Chief Shaman Zargall when they went to the next meeting.

 

But when his other six wives started to one by one showing signs of mana sensitivity, Grud could no longer think it was a coincidence, so in the meantime before the next meeting at the Spirit Moon tribe, Grud did what he could to teach his wives on how to develop their body's mana structure.

 

During the meeting, Grud told Dhuk and Zargall, with the help of the Spirit Moon’s old lady shaman Eba, they checked Grud’s wives to see the truth of the matter and were astounded, all seven could become shamans, and Grud was instructed to pass on his teaching to them, which was not a problem since he was with them most of the time.

 

By the third year after the establishment of the new tribes, all his wives were able to perform the basic shaman rituals and even took over some of Grud’s shaman duties, which freed up some of Grud’s time.

 

—

 

As Grud was playing with his many children, a patrol came back to the tribe carrying a barely conscious man with a bleeding stump where his right arm used to be while shouting for a healer to come.

 

Grud rushed over to treat the man’s injuries. But before Grud could do anything, the injured man grabbed Grud and shouted with a hoarse voice, “Chieftan! Where is the Chieftan?! Must warn!”

 

Grud grabbed the bleeding man and said firmly, “I am chieftain of the Rock Claw tribe, what must you warn us about?”

 

The man looked at Grud with tired bloodshot eyes, “The… the islands… lead to dangerous lands…”

 

With labored breaths, the man started talking about what he knew. After leaving their land to the island off the coast connected by the land bridge, the man told of twenty-three islands, all connected by landbridges that appear at low tide.

 

After the twenty-third, there was a huge fog-covered landmass that he could not see the ends of. After coming onto the new land, the man started exploring.

 

There he found many beasts of gigantic size, some of them met the description of a bigger version of Hunter Lizards and Great Maw Lizards.

 

After giving a brief description of what he saw, the man got to the part of how he got to the state he was in now.

 

He had spent half a day in this new land when he was suddenly ambushed by something that looked like a Great Maw Lizard, the only difference was that each of them was only slightly bigger than the average man and came at him as a pack. He was chased for hours until another gigantic beast that also looked like a camouflaged Great Maw Lizard but with a huge fin on its back interrupted the hunt.

 

The finned Great Maw Lizard snapped out and the only thing the man could do was jump out of the way at the last moment, but not fast enough, his right arm was cleanly bit off and he fell to the ground.

 

As he lay on the ground in pain, the finned Great Maw Lizard was about to finish him off, but the pack of small Great Maw Lizards interrupted his death by releasing shrill-sounding barks to challenge the finned Great Maw Lizard who was stealing their prey.

 

While the finned Great Maw Lizard was distracted, the man ran off to hide and wait for the landbridge back to the island to open and escaped.

 

Grud cussed to himself as the man fell asleep from exhaustion. Over the years, there were a few people who could not resist the allure of exploring new lands and went to explore the islands. This man was the first one who ever came back.

 

“This is going to be troublesome, I am going to need to make sure the islands are clear and nothing followed this man back to our lands.” Grud said to Crot and the few people assisting Grud in treating the man.