Chapter 49

Staying clear of the still smoking cave, Grud and the other hunters who were still clearing up the surviving centipedes suddenly became very still as they all had the same thoughts, 'If this already eight meter long centipede was not the one who roared within the cave, how big is the one still in the cave?'

Chieftain Dhun quickly gave the signal the all the hunters to back off back to the treeline to observe what came out as the sound of hard chitinous legs got closer.

As the other hunters beat a hasty retreat, Grud Dhun and the other two hunters that took down the gigantic centipede, carefully backed away while keeping their eyes on the smoke spewing cave entrance.

But before Grud's group could make it to the tree line, a familiar tingling feeling came over Grud, 'Mana? Here?'. Just as Grud had that thought, two antennas as long as a man is tall whipped out of the smoke, followed by a drooling head that took up a sizeable portion of the cave entrance.

The gigantic head turned from side to side, clearly sensing the other hunters hidden in the tree line, then finally it locked its gaze on Grud's group of four which made all of them freeze from the predatory gaze that sent chills down their spines.

While Grud's group was frozen in place staring at the truly humongous centipede and waiting for it to make the first move, Grud channeled mana into his eyes to see mana just like Zargall thought him, what he saw made him break out in cold sweat.

While keeping eye contact with the centipede, Grud whispered loud enough for his group of four to hear, "Chieftain Dhun, I sense mana coming from that centipede," Just from that sentence alone, Grud could see the blood drain from Dhun's face "If what my tribe's shaman thought me is true… I think we have a Monster in front of us."

Hearing this, dread dawned on the other two hunters in their group. Dhun quietly asked this group, "Have any of you ever fought a monster before?" Grud and one other hunter said no while the last hunter said yes.

"Well, I can tell you it is not easy, Monsters are a lot tougher than their non-monster counterpart," Dhun said as his gaze swiveled from left to right, Dhun continued and said, "If this centipede is as big and long as I think it is, I may have a plan. On my signal, we run back into the woods,"

The other three in the group nodded and got ready. The Monster Centipede noticing the four men tense up and ready for action, started to extricate the rest of its body from the cave. As meter by meter of gleaming black carapace and sharp pointed legs exited the smoke, Grud and all the hunters' faces around turned increasingly grim.

When it was fully revealed, the Monster Centipede was a good twenty meters, maybe more. After getting the measure of the enemy they were facing, Dhun decided to waste no more time and gave the signal.

All four of them sprinted with all they had towards the treeline as a split second later, the Monster Centipede was hot on their heels. Grud had to slow his speed in order to not leave everyone in his dust.

"So what's the plan?" Grud said as they were running, "Same tactic as hunting Tusk Pigs, run the centipede around a bunch of trees and try kill it" Dhun said as he pointed to a bunch of trees that had grown close to each other.

As they were running for the trees, Grud realized that at the speed that were going, they would be caught by the Monster Centipede first, so Grud purposely lagged behind to act as rear guard.

When Grud sensed the Monster Centipede was about to launch itself at him for a bite, Grud spun around and with his full momentum, brought his heavy club to the side of the Monster Centipede's head with all his strength.

When wood met carapace, Grud's club splintered into pieces, but all he got out of breaking his only weapon was deflecting the Monster Centipede's head to the side. After the impact, both Grud and the Monster Centipede came to a standstill.

For Grud, this was merely a stalling tactic as he knew he would have no problem outrunning the Monster Centipede. For the Monster Centipede, this was more of an annoyance and a blow to its pride that something so much smaller than itself had managed to break its momentum.

Slowly, the Monster Centipede who had its head batted to the side by Grud, turned its head to face the puny thing that stopped its advance and reared its front segments up intimidatingly, before letting out a chittering roar that sent spittle and the smell of rotting flesh at Grud.

Seeing that he most likely did not hurt the Monster Centipede and only made it angrier, Grud did not hold back on his speed as he did earlier and dashed so fast towards where Dhun and the two other hunters were waiting, that his feet gouged the ground and kicked up dirt behind him.

Seeing its offending prey escape, the Monster Centipede resumed its chase to kill Grud and later all the other soft looking things that killed its kin.

Grud was soon, between the trees where Dhun was with the Monster Centipede not far behind. He asked Dhun, "So what's the plan?" Dhun just smiled at Grud and slapped his shoulder and said, "You are the plan." After receiving a confused look from Grud, Dhun continued, "I think you really made it angry, so it will chase you, while me and the other hunters will try to take out its legs like we did the first one."

Just as Grud was about to ask for clarification of the plan, Dhun looked to the side at the incoming multi-legged horror and said, "No time, split up!". And just like that, the four of them ran in different directions.

Sure enough, just as Dhun said, Grud was running for his life as the Monster Centipede was just a few meters behind him. Unlike the Tusk Pig's trouble with making tight turns around trees and obstacles, the Monster Centipede easily glided around them, and any tree less thick than a grown man's thigh was either bowled over or pinched and shredded by the Monster Centipede's body when coiled around said tree.

But as powerful as the Monster Centipede was, after a few laps around the trees, all the hunters noticed something, wherever the head of the Monster Centipede traveled, the rest of the body followed the same path, even in one case where Grud circled around the Monster Centipede and jumped over its body, which the Monster Centipede gave chase even over its own body.

—

While Grud was keeping the Monster Centipede busy, Dhun quickly gathered the hunters. He picked out the strongest and burliest of the hunters to come with him to attack the Monster Centipede, after which he assigned the rest to get spears, stones, and even heavy logs or branches to throw at the Monster Centipede, 'Who knows, someone may get lucky.'

When he was done giving out orders, he had a dozen of the strongest hunters following him. "Break into four groups and spread out, when you see the Monster Centipede loop around something, smash its legs, do not hit the body, it is too tough." Dhun said while with the hunters in tow, then some smart ass in the group said "Well then, We better break those legs quickly or we cannot get Grud to owe us!"

This was met with booming laughter as they split up to attack the Monster Centipede from different angles. Dhun saw Grud lead the Monster Centipede around another tree and called out to the hunters, "And someone get Grud a club, when you start breaking its legs, you will most likely be attacked also."

—

As I was running, I noticed Dhun leading some of the hunters to surround the Monster Centipede. "Looks like our attack is about to begin." Grud said to himself as he waited behind a tree for the Monster Centipede to catch up to him and complete the loop while pelting it with whatever he could pick from the ground.

As he completed the loop and ran in another direction, out of the corner of his eye, Grud saw a group of four hunters run to the loop he just made and started swinging at the Monster Centipede's legs around the tree.

This made the Monster Centipede swing its head back to see what was hurting it and roared at the hunters that just attacked it. The hunters immediately retreated just as Grud heard someone call his name from behind. When he turned toward his name being called, he raised his hand in time to catch a club thrown at him by another hunter.

Just as the Monster Centipede was about to reach the retreating hunters, Grud ran up to the nearest legs and took a swing, the force of his swing taking off a leg and cracking the next one in the club's path, which brought the Monster Centipede's attention back to Grud.

This time as the Monster Centipede swung its head back at Grud, he could see it literally frothing at the mouth in anger as it let out a constant low growl. The Monster Centipede let out a roar and continued the chase.

Ten minutes later, Grud was panting heavily and slowed down drastically, fortunately so did the Monster Centipede who was missing many of its legs and could not support its own bulk. At this point in the fight, the Monster Centipede curled itself defensively and was hissing and snapping at any hunter that got too close.

As Grud was bent over and breathing heavily, Dhun came up beside him, "Good job lasting this long, too bad about that hunter that got too greedy." Grud thought back to hit-and-run attacks that were being carried out on the Monster Centipede earlier and recalled a hunter that had some success breaking legs and just had to get another hit in.

He managed to get the hit in, but before he could disengage, the Monster Centipede also managed to get a hit on the hunter, its thick mandibles sinking into his body and crunching anything between those mandibles. "At least it was a quick death." Grud said grimly

When he caught his breath, Grud stood back up to his full height and stretched, "Well, I guess we better finish off this Monster and search the cave in case there are more Centipedes left, my tribe would most likely be back in the evening."