Perishing of Gorilla tribe

Now that he had completely crushed the Lion tribe would Xiao Fan set his sight towards the other tribe that his mission included, the Gorilla tribe.

But before he could go there, he needs to clean up the remnants of the Lion tribe who had surrendered to him.

This in mind, he walked towards the field where the fighting had happened while thinking about the situation.

First of all, he himself had wounds all over his body some small some major, and second was the worry about how much had he lost in terms of monkeypower.

Figuring the second thing out a happy smile came to his face as he walked the field filled with lion carcasses, but almost no monkeys were lying on the ground breathless.

One would later count that they had traded one monkey for ten or more lions, so everything added together his plan of charging troops blindly towards the weakened and unsuspecting den had been a stellar success.

The surrendered lions Lei had talked about were surrounded by the weakest monkeys who had been pushed to guard them while stronger monkeys enjoyed looting and eating.

When Xiao Fan showed himself walking towards them, the lions who still could got up to wait for their sentence be called out.

They didn't expect a lot from surrendering, but fighting to the end wasn't any better either and maybe just maybe the human would pity them enough to save their lives.

And Xiao Fan indeed would give them this amnesty, but with a pretty weird set of terms towards them as first thing was that he wanted them to locate all remaining lions towards the Gorilla tribe?

What was the meaning in that they thought while reluctantly agreeing without other options and then departed themselves towards the Gorilla tribe where they needed to act like usual.

Plus, behind them followed a few mutants and a combat squad which at this point more than enough to control the bigger group of lions.

Xiao Fan watched them leave with a confident look thinking that the Gorilla tribe now wouldn't get any ideas about the Lion tribe's demise and would continue, as usual, giving him ample time to recover.

He would now also need to make another plan for them as he had made none yet, and after this war, he had come up with better ideas such as subjugation rather than slaughter.

The Lion tribe was also different compared to the Gorilla tribe as the gorillas were in human standards almost the same species anyway.

His idea more specifically was one of recruiting them through subjugation. Doing this would double the Monkey tribe's manpower which seemed like a good idea to him.

While wondering about this and how perfect it was, he was also giving new orders for his troops which started a resting period for the campaign.

His wondering went so long that he even schemed another idea besides the subjugation idea.

It was a more sinister idea in the way, but it would surely lessen his losses. The idea was planned in his mind as the attack before the attack.

This attack before the attack was planned to be a poisoning of the enemy's water source, which would be like an attack on them before even attacking.

The idea of this had come to him when he had remembered coming across a nice flower on his way here that he had read about in the first steps to medicine book.

As from what he knew, the flower would make beings who consumed it paralysed for some time.

So if used properly, it would give a decisive edge in the fight, but for his plan, he needed a considerable amount of said flowers.

Hence even the real objective of halting his march towards Gorilla tribe laid in gathering enough to poison a flowing river, for enough time that almost every gorilla had drunk from the poisoned river.

....

The gathering of herbs was finished two days later.

At that point, his troops had come up with a small mountain of those tall lupine flowers around them.

They had gathered so much due to Xiao Fan having no idea how much of this poison he would need to do it, so he had in his opinion gathered a massive amount of lupines to be sure about it working out.

Now having the flowers he made the combat squads with highest losses and the least reinforcements from the now disbanded supply squad carry out the poisoning while rest of them followed him towards the remains of the Lion tribe.

In these free days, he hadn't been idle himself either-even if he might be combat ineffective as of now he could still train more mortal monkeys to follow actual orders of battle.

And thanks to the battle itself which had hardened a lot of monkeys to be somewhat proficient in large scale combat.

Together with two extra days of training producing two more squads of Mortals of the Left could he say that he had a somewhat coherent fighting force.

This also meant that most of the regular monkeys were now able to understand things like line combat and not blindly charging in alone.

These things might be self-explanatory to any human formation, but for animals, Xiao Fan and Du Lan thought that this gave them a positive advantage.

The compound that was the target was only a day of marching away, so they quickly cathed up with the surviving lions and their handlers.

Reaching there Xiao Fan noted that the lions had been cut down in size again.

Well, their plan was to die anyway so Xiao Fan didn't care how many of them had died and to what as long as they had kept the gorillas in the dark about his movements.

When attaching them to fight any lion was then pushed into the front of their tomorrows battle line.

Tomorrow's battle line as only by now the other squads were poisoning the water supply which from the Gorilla tribe got all of their water.

Xiao Fan watched as the creek falling from a ledge towards the enemy started becoming a violet due to the colour of the flowers thrown into it.

Du Lan inquired that wouldn't they realise something was off, but only a smirk and confident words about them being animals responded to her inquiry.

The next day when the sun had risen had they started slowly advancing towards the Gorilla tribes home.

They were at marching speed walking up the slope, not caring about how much noise they were making as no one was coming to meet them anyways it seemed.

The only resistance they came across was a few boulders rolled down towards them, but even their numbers were so low that they didn't have a major effect.

However, they did decimate one of his combat squads. A mistake on Xiao Fan's side as the squad that was rolled over was also the one he liked the most, the third combat squad.

The third combat squad had been the most promising, and that had also become their doom. Since their nicely formed line of monkeys was mushed by one massive boulder leaving no survivors.

Their enthusiasm and Xiao Fan not wanting to deny their proper formation in this attack had cost all of their lives.

Losing them was also a big blow as it was still ten monkeys. Then include this with the fact that they had almost lost the same amount of monkeys to the lions.

Xiao Fan on the side reacting to this could only grieve for a moment before losing his cool and ordering a charge towards the enemy positions, bringing an end to the somewhat militaristic attack.

On the other hand, the monkeys not caring so much about their kin dying shouted happily, for their time had now come and so they unleashed their animalistic desires and ran behind the lions.

When Xiao Fan himself got up the hill minutes later the others, he saw a handful of gorillas still defending against any lions and monkeys they could.

Still angry about the loss Xiao Fan only noted that his plan had worked before throwing himself on the still surviving gorillas.

In the end, it took them only five or so minutes more before any person not paralysed was killed in revenge of the third combat squad especially the gorilla who was the one rolling down the boulder ending them.

Since Xiao Fan had made sure that he would suffer just much as his favourite tribesmen, and so he utilising things he had seen and done did he mutilate the gorilla.

That gorilla ending up on the pointy end of a stick was also the end to any slaughter today, as after his death, there was no one else capable of putting up resistance.

By the time Xiao Fan was even done with the gorilla, his underlings had come to him telling that they had located the survivors.

The gorillas due to the paralysing effect of the poison were all lying inside the largest cave, and the only fight they could give was a face of horror as a monkey came up to them and either knocked them unconscious or just bound their hands and feet.

Then hours later every live gorilla had been tied into one lengthy rope and were waiting for transport.

From the gorilla's hands and feet, there was a rope bounding them, and then the rope went into the one behind them.

Xiao Fan and Du Lan only needed to watch as the gorillas left the cave marching towards the Monkey tribe's cave.

Du Lan experiencing Xiao Fan's cruelty towards any gorilla did make her uncomfortable as he had acted like a slaver would do, and his whole plan had been more like a slaver than a subjugator that in his plans he had talked about himself being.

Thinking about it while she watched the line started moving she decided it was best to talk about it soon before later, and so she made a point about it.

¨You wanted them to be a part of Monkey tribe correct?¨

¨Yes after they will be brought to the cave I will present them to Uruk, he as the chief will have the final say in things anyway¨

His indifferent reply made her even more sure that he couldn't go deeper in this path before he would be only a machine thinking about numbers with no empathy in his actions.

Moreover, this also raised her question of why he seemingly had no social interaction skills or empathy?

¨Even if Uruk wants to keep them do you think they will want to join us after you keep them like this for days? They will harbour evil thoughts for the rest of their life¨ She warned.

¨Why should they? They will be happy and grateful towards me about them not being slaughtered on spot¨ Xiao Fan did think that she was somewhat right but why was she? He didn't understand why they would be so unappreciative towards him.

¨They will not see it like that. Those gorillas will think that they were given no chance and were forced to work for you and will try to rebel or worse later on¨

¨You yourself said that they are animals, so how could they be grateful about what you are doing?¨

Thinking about it more Xiao Fan did figure that his thinking contradicted in that. Since he believed that the monkeys would work as he conceived.

That somehow, the enemy wouldn't realise an obvious trap but would understand a deeper meaning inside his actions.

¨Indeed if I bring them like this they will harbour evil thoughts about me destroying their tribe and will not see that they are alive and better under me...¨ He mumbled in a voice that Du Lan could just hear.

Realising that he didn't honestly have social skills, she was somewhat sure that Xiao Fan had had a terrible childhood or something. As in her opinion, Xiao Fan lacked any healthy thoughts that a man in his age had.

It should have been enough to realise this when he didn't react to her like every other man; with lustful stares and thoughts, no he wasn't anything like that, Xiao Fan so far had thought her only as a number and nothing else.

He didn't care about her looks or body, but about her skills and what she could bring into the table whereas any person before would teach her only with other intentions in mind whereas he wanted to teach her because he saw talent and a worth doing so.

However, knowing this didn't translate entirely to good thoughts, but to a more mixed one, as she didn't mind using her looks in helping herself achieve things at all to a certain degree.

So concerning her was what happens to her when he would find someone more talented than her? She was confident in her skill and was a top archer in her town, but surely the world is much bigger than the area of the local warlord.

If someday he would find a more talented archer to suit his needs wouldn't the current non-affectionate Xiao Fan ditch her on the spot? Currently, he wanted her only for skills and maybe as a guide right now.

And so if she wanted to hang onto this mysterious tree branch, she would need to change his mentality, sooner the better at least to a point he wouldn't ditch her altogether