Chapter 53

Sometime after Dhun sent Grud and some of the other hunters off to scout ahead, he heard loud bestial roars bounce off the canyon walls, reacting immediately, Dhun signaled the men forward and ran into a hunter that was sent to get back up.

While they were running to support the scouts, Dhun was informed of what the scouts were facing. "More than thirty apes like beasts that are bigger than men? Shit! Pick up the pace men!" Dhun shouted behind to the rest of the hunters as he sped up.

When Dhun arrived, he saw the four hunters behind a boulder, one of them was lying on the ground unconscious with a bleeding forehead while the other three were throwing rocks at a bunch of ape beasts while the ape beast was throwing rocks back at them, and by the looks of it, the ape beasts were having fun exchanging rocks with the hunters.

On the other hand, the three hunters that were throwing rocks looked battered and all of them had swelling or cuts on their face or body.

But when the ape beasts noticed the arrival of Dhun and the other hunters, their demeanor changed, they stopped throwing rocks and what looked to be the females fell back while the males formed a line, they started roaring, beating their chests and making a ruckus while trying to make themselves look bigger.

The moment the ape beasts stopped throwing rocks, Dhun noticed the pinned down hunters retreating towards them with the unconscious hunter slung over Grud's shoulder. When Grud reached Dhun, Grud sighed in relief, "Thank the Spirits you arrived, I do not know how long more they were going to just throw rocks before they charged at us."

Dhun looked at Grud who looked fine besides a few bruises on his head and shoulders, "Can you still fight?" he asked Grud. Grud nodded and said, "Yeah, but be careful, I made them angry for awhile after throwing rocks at one of the big ones, he shattered a small boulder with its fist before pelting us with its broken remains. I don't think any man can survive a clean hit."

Dhun nodded and shouted the hunters into position, 'There is a longer way around the canyon, but we cannot show our backs to these beasts or they may chase us down, better to fight them and hope they run away after we kill enough of them.' Dhun thought to himself as he got ready for battle.

—

Grud wiped the blood from the wound on his forehead that had already stopped bleeding and got ready, he recovered his spear from the hunter that was knocked unconscious by a stone to the head and joined his fellow hunters in the front line.

Soon when everyone was ready and hyped up, Dhun gave the order to charge. With his favorite spear in his right hand and a heavy club in his left, Grud surged forward as a few spears flew ahead of him from hunters who carried extras.

Unlike when facing solitary predators or pack beasts that were smaller in stature than him, Grud was reluctant to charge ahead of the other hunters like he usually does in case he clashes with these hulking beasts and gets surrounded, so he just kept pace with the front line until they advanced on the ape beasts.

Just prior to the two sides clashing, the ape beasts saw the spears being thrown at them and instinctively brought their huge armored arms up to a boxer's high guard, causing most of the incoming spears to plink off their armored arms, the rest of the spears either missed or were stopped by their tough muscles.

As the ape beasts' guard was up, this gave the hunters the advantage of striking first. Seeing their opportunity, Grud and the first row of hunters threw their full body weight at the defending beasts in a bid to knock them over. If the ape beast were off their feet, they would be easy pickings for the rest of their fellow hunters.

But what the hunters were hoping to accomplish did not come to pass. Grud was expecting the hunters who had four times their number to run the ape beast over, or at least knock them off their feet. What happened instead, was the charging hunters were stopped dead, especially those who clashed with the five biggest males, and Grud was one of those.

The five biggest males ape beasts barely moved an inch back and the smaller males were just knocked back a step. With their momentum exhausted, the brawl began with Grud reacting faster first with a club to the head of one of the biggest males who was opening up his guard.

Grud's club cracked on the bone plate of the big ape's forehead and made it flinch back. The cracking sound of wood meeting bone plate set apes to start throwing hands and the hunters to swing axes, clubs, and hammers while spears reached over the front line hunters to jab at whatever fleshy bits they could target.

As the fight started, Grud's decision to stay in formation with the other hunters and not charge forward alone was proven correct, these beasts were strong, very strong.

In the ape beasts' first two swings, Grud had to crouch low to avoid getting hit, unfortunately, the hunters around him were caught by those strong hook punches that sent men flying.

But throwing such wide and wild swings left the ape beast wide open, and with Grud crouched down, the back line of hunters and a clear shot to lunge their spears forward into the ape beast's body.

The ape beast roared in pain, and as it was about to backhand the hunters that had speared it, Grud sprang up from his crouched position spear first straight into the neck of the ape beast. Grud felt the sensation of smashing thru bone and immediately, felt the ape beast go limp and crumple to the ground.

When Grud looked up from his kill, he saw that similar situations were taking place down the line. The ape beasts got two or three hits in before they were overwhelmed by a wall of weapons hitting them.

It was when that Grud saw one of the five big ape beasts leap backward with two spears and an axe still stuck in its body. It then quickly turned around and run toward the female ape beasts while hooting and grunting, which made the rest of the ape beasts retreat at full speed.

Only one other juvenile male managed to escape with its life, the other ape beast that clashed with the hunters lay dead looking like pin cushions.

After keeping on high alert for half a minute while the rest of the ape beasts ran away, the hunters were confident that the beasts were not coming back for round two and began to attend to their wounded.

The casualty was worst than expected, five dead from having their heads or chests caved in by the powerful punches despite having their new centipede carapace armor, another eleven with broken limbs or ribs, and a few others with lite bumps and scrapes.

Grud came up beside Dhun and asked, "What were those?" Dhun shrugged and looked at a hunter from the Long Shadow tribe because it came from the direction of his tribe.

The Long Shadow tribe hunter shrugged and said, "I do not know either, first time seeing this beast."

This caused a small commotion among the hunters nearby who heard, the first reason for the commotion was that this was a beast that nobody had seen before, and the second reason was that if nobody had seen it before, nobody had named it before.

Immediately, names were suggested and shouted, even those who were injured and groaning on the ground got in on the shouting. Soon Chieftan Dhun had to step in to settle the rowdy bunch of hunters and shouted at them to get back to handling the dead and injured first.

After all the necessities were taken care of, they skinned and butchered the ape beasts while discussing a name for it, after putting a few good suggestions up for a vote, the name Armored Ape won.

After that was settled, a hunter was sent to get the main bulk of the tribe to catch up to them and continued their journey.

When they stopped to camp for the night, Grud took the Armored Ape's heart he reserved and ate it before going to sleep.

—

The mutating agent was active once again with the introduction of new genetic material. It found this genetic data to be very compatible with the host, especially the muscle and bone structure of the upper body. There was another useful feature that would let the host grow bone armor on its skin, but the downside would be a drastic decrease in dexterity for the limbs covered in said bone armor.

Another reason the mutating agent decided not to apply the bone armor feature, was after reading the subconscious information from the host, it decided that external growths that were not normal for the host's species would drastically lower the host's chances of mating, this conflicting with one of the host's primal directives.

So it stored the bone armor feature away for future use, locked in the mutation for the improved upper body muscles and bone structure, and became dormant again.

—

It was another night of pain for Grud as his whole body ached, the lower half to a lesser degree. When he woke up, he was covered in sweat, and the first voice he heard was Mita's >You pain whole night… but now look different… top body bigger?<

Grud stepped out into the morning light and took a look at his own body, while he could not see the size difference, but when he looked at his arms and chest, he could see the difference in muscle definition, it was a lot more pronounced.

But all that could wait for later, his stomach was making more hungry noise than usual and he had to go shut it up with some food.

A couple of days later, they arrived at the Long Shadow tribe's grounds. After experiencing the increase in the danger of the beast they were facing, the hunters took no chances and spend an extra half a day clearing the surrounding area of any beasts, be they predator or prey, it did not matter.

At the end of the sweep, all the hunters descended on the tribe grounds where dilapidated huts stood. After checking all the huts, other than chasing out a pack of oversized rodents, the place was clear.

The Long Shadow tribe was called in. The hunters and the tribe's men then proceeded to pitch some tents for the hunters and carry out maintenance on the huts, while that was going on, the women of the tribe gathered the meat from the hunters clearing the area for a feast to celebrate the end of the hunters' escort mission.