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Unto the Ages: Chapter 77
🕑 Added 2023-11-01 14:17:18 +0000 UTCGrud strode out into the night far enough that the lights of the outpost could barely reach him. When he was halfway between the outpost and the trees, he once again planted his spear beside him and proceeded to untie the bindle of throwing spears.
Once untied, he planted them head first into the ground, ten on his left and ten on his right. All within arms reach ready to be hurled at whatever came his way.
Once all preparations were made, he plucked his main spear out of the ground and waited.
Minutes passed, then hours. After two hours and change, Grud’s keen senses picked up the unnatural rustling of leaves and grass, followed by the smell of old unwashed blood, and the flickering of yellow eyes reflecting the light from the outpost.
Slowly, the lizard pack advanced toward Grud, thinking that this particularly big soft-skin was as blind in the darkness of night as the rest of its kin.
They could not be more wrong, for Grud’s eyes have also mutated to see in low-light environments, and after eating a few different species capable of doing the same thing, Grud’s low-light vision was superior to that of the bunch of lizards trying and failing to advance towards him stealthily.
When Grud noticed the last lizard cleared the treeline and that no more were coming, Grud plucked one of the throwing spears out of the ground, along with two tendrils of mana picking up their own throwing spear, and hurled it toward the last lizards to clear the treeline.
The main throwing spear thrown by Grud’s own hand hit the last lizard of the pack, the throwing spear entered its shoulder and exited its stomach, the power of the throw was so powerful that it also pinned the beast to the ground and killed it on the spot. The other two throwing spears launched by the mana tendrils hit different targets besides the lizard who got pinned to the ground, those two lizards survived only because Grud had not yet mastered throwing spears with mana tendrils.
The moment the throwing spear left Grud’s hand, the pack leader knew the jig was up and started dashing, the rest of the pack followed its lead and charged Grud, some of them even propelling themselves off the tree stumps scattered around the area to glide toward Grud.
The lizards did not even take two steps before the next spear went flying with more spears close behind it.
As the leader lizard charged, it was assured of its success in reaching and attacking Grud due to itself and those charging beside it not being hit despite the soft-skin repeatedly throwing sharp sticks at them.
What it did not know was that Grud was attacking the lizards at the rear to avoid spooking those in front, if the pack of what Grud roughly counted as around thirty lizards were to retreat due to him decimating their front lines too early, he would have a hard time chasing down the scattered lizards.
By the time Grud had thrown more than ten spears, not caring if he killed his target or not, the first of the lizards were upon him, it was one of the lizards that decided to approach Grud by gliding toward him.
Grud threw the throwing spear in his hand to the pack’s rear before turning his attention to the gliding lizard. As the lizard tilted its head to the side and opened its maw in an attempt to chomp down on Grud’s head, Grud empowered his spear and took a swipe at the flying lizard.
As Grud’s empowered spear came into contact with the temple of the flying lizard’s head, everything from the lizard’s top jaw up was pulverized, the impact sent the lizard’s body flying in a different direction away from Grud leaving the lizard’s head with only its bottom jaw and tongue flailing about.
In this same fashion, Grud swatted two more flying lizards out of the air. Seeing how easily Grud dispatched three members of its pack, the pack leader purposely slowed its charge while the rest of its kin charged forward, confident in their strength of numbers.
While the younger members of the pack blindly charged toward Grud, the leader and the older members of the pack started to flank Grud from both sides.
As the lizards were flanking Grud, Grud effortlessly butchered four more lizards who were charging directly at him from the front, this action brought those lizards charging directly at Grud to come to their senses and stop just outside of his spear range.
Soon, Grud found himself surrounded by a circle of hissing and snapping lizards, and from his back, his enhanced senses picked up the sound of one of the lizards pouncing toward him.
While his spear is still kept to the front in case any of the lizards in front try to jump him, Grud turned left to give his attention to the lizard pouncing at him front he back and grabbed it by the throat. But just as he was about to toss the lizard away, Grud felt pressure on his right lower leg.
A quick look showed one of the lizard’s maw clamped down on his armor-clad right leg while its claws dug into the ground in an effort to hold Grud down, and from what Grud could see from his peripheral vision, a few of the lizards surrounding him were digging their claws into the ground and ready to pounce.
‘I need to break out of this encirclement.’ Grud thought to himself and then proceeded to slam the lizard in his hand directly into the lizard biting his leg.
The moment he did this, five more lizards pounced at Grud aiming for his limbs. Grud swung his empowered spear, hitting the two lizards that went high, and almost folded them in half as the shaft of the spear batted the two lizards aside.
At the same time, Grud tried to jump out of the way, only to realize that the leg biter he smashed a lizard into was still holding on to his leg. Its body was limp but its jaws were still locked on his leg. But even his failed dodge yielded results as Grud dodged out of the way of one lizard and was able to backhand a lizard going for his thigh, the only lizard who succeeded in its attack was the one closest to the ground.
It managed to adjust its target after Grud’s failed dodge and clamped onto Grud’s left leg.
‘Shit! I am going to need to use some mana after all.’ Grud thought.
Grud then proceeded to flood his legs with mana and dash forward trying to break the encirclement. This allowed Grud to shoulder check a lizard who tried to get in his way, sending it flying but also dragged the two leg biters along, and due to the two three-meter-long lizards having a death grip on his legs, Grud did not have the balance to recover and ended up tumbling and rolling out of the encirclement.
The moment Grud was out of the encirclement, he had no time to waste and drew his monster bone knife that had more in common with a short sword and pumped mana into it. With two swift swings of his empowered knife, he decapitated the two lizards holding on to his legs and jumped to his feet as the lizards rushed to try to pile onto Grud.
With a few big back steps, Grud managed to get a full view of the enemies. He had reduced their number by half, with some of them having throwing spears sticking out of their bodies, but all of them with primal rage in their eyes as they charged him again.
‘Now that they are all in front of me, this should be a lot easier.’ Grud thought as he kited the lizard pack around while killing any who got too close while he was back stepping, and using mana tendrils to pick up throwing spears to throw at the tail of the pack.
After a few more of the lizards died chasing Grud, the pack leader got back to its senses and looked around. The moment it noticed the dead bodies of its kin strewn around the area, it knew it was time to cut its losses and run from this monster in the guise of a soft-skin.
The pack leader stopped in its tracks and released a series of barking chirps before dashing towards the woods, the rage in the eyes of the rest of the pack died as they heeded the call of their pack leader and turned as one towards the woods.
“So you are the leader.” Grud said as he spotted the lizard with a scar that ran along its body that was making the barking chirps. He stopped backstepping and pumped mana into his legs.
Grud’s toes dug into the dirt as he pushed off the ground, leaving deep divots every time his feet touched the ground.
As the pack leader was sprinting for its life, it saw the carapace-clad Grud charging towards it with his spear pointed to the front ready to impale it. It was so close to the woods, it only had to jump and glide into the embrace of the trees, so it chose a tree stump in front of it and pushed off of it, spreading its arms and legs to glide to safety.
It was mere meters away from a tree when the lizard pack leader felt an impact to its side and its wish was granted, it was moved to a tree, the only problem was the bone spear impaling it to the tree.
The moment Grud confirmed the lizard leader was not going anywhere, he drew his axe and knife and started chasing down the retreating lizards. Unfortunately, he was only able to kill two before the rest retreated into the safety of the trees.
That left a blood-splattered Grud standing just outside the treeline, and when the adrenaline left his body, he started panting as he took deep breaths to bring his breathing back to normal.
“I could not get them all, but I hope this is more than enough to scare them away for good.”
