The next few days after the conversation had gone well, all things considered.

After he’d ‘imparted some wisdom’ onto her about the safety of running around with cannibals or beasts roaming the area they’d spent another few hours making idle conversation about the beasts of the forests and where they generally resided, before moving on to things like their favorite foods, which for her mostly consisted of the different Altered meat her sister brought for her.

Explaining to her what a ‘soft drink’ was had been fun, for about twenty seconds until the numerous questions about how it was made and what he meant by fuzzy taste. In all honesty he was mostly annoyed by it because he blanked out and could only respond with ‘carbohydrate’ when she asked what made it ‘fuzzy’.

In total the conversations around his ‘tribe’ hit a dead end once they tried to talk about things outside her general translation skills. It was hard to explain what a magi-engine was to someone who didn’t even understand what an engine was, let alone half the things he used or did in his day to day life.

At the very least he was able to explain to her what a ‘pit fighter’ was and why he’d done it for so long. Explaining to her what Ambrosia was had been surprisingly easy, after drastically simplifying what it was and how his mother had been infected by it Chloe had been rather… supportive of him. She hadn’t approved of him risking his life, she’d pulled the big ‘what would your mother want you to do’ routine he’d gotten from plenty of other people when he’d started but she also understood why he needed to do everything he could to save her.

She had told him of her mother, her grandmother and a few of the elders she knew. She’d never known her father, who had died in a raid shortly after her birth, and with how small their tribe had been she’d only known around a dozen people. And since the tribe was rather small she’d only known three of them well enough to talk about beyond descriptions. But nonetheless she had spent a good amount of time unloading stories of things that different family members had done throughout her childhood, good and bad, until she’d run out of things to speak about.

It felt good to have someone to talk to, even better to finally vent about things he’d barely told anyone.

The only rough patch throughout the entire night was when he’d asked her where they were, but he didn’t need to press her on it. The silence afterwards spoke for her.

After hours of talking however they’d grown tired enough that they’d decided to go to sleep, her sleeping in her cot and him taking the empty one. The small wooden crevice was comfier than he’d originally thought it was going to be, but his neck had expressed its dissatisfaction towards it in the morning, something that had kept with him for the entirety of the day.

The morning had been a rather awkward one. The sisters had spent a good amount of time arguing in their native language, most likely about him, before Chloe had stated that they simply didn’t have the food to spare for him - unless he was willing to spend hours of his day chipping away at the wood and roots around them to ‘gather’ his own dinner.

He’d declined, stating he was more than capable of hunting for food if need be, which had started another argument when he’d mentioned the waterfall with all of the fish in it.

Apparently the city was going to be a no go for a few weeks after he’d killed one of the Ginte tribe members. The Ginte were massive assholes and wouldn’t take the murder of one of their own lying down, meaning if he went back he was more than likely to be found, attacked, or tracked down to their home.

While he wasn’t worried about him or Juli in the event of an attack, he knew for a fact that Chloe was practically defenseless if they came here, let alone if they arrived with Altereds or ‘Warriors’ as Chloe had called them. All it would take is them finding the area where they lived, tracking them down to the entrance and searching the general area until they found the ravine. As secretive as the entrance was, it wouldn’t matter if they couldn’t get down if the three of them couldn’t leave.

They couldn’t survive indefinitely off of the roots around them, they took too long to gather and contained only the smallest amounts of energy. A full day of carving for the sisters generally only allowed them to cut out around a square foot of the root at the very most. While he didn’t know how much they got from the stuff he was able to absorb most - if not all - of the energy and knew he’d be fine at the very least.

But they’d given him a place to sleep, and were the first friendly faces he’d seen in days, so he abided by their rules.

Of course that meant that for the next two days after that he’d spent almost all of his time hunting. Sometimes with Juli if Chloe was working on something or repairing tears in clothing or by himself if they were busy.

He’d grown used to having Juli out on hunts in a way, she was quiet, deathly quiet. She moved as fast as he did but almost invisibly, like she didn’t exist. It had taken hours for her to teach him the basics of how she moved, gliding on the earth and moving around the land, softening his muscles and tendons as he landed instead of instinctively tensing himself in preparation for the impact.

When he’d arrived in the forest he’d started as a city kid, lost in the woods. So to get better at using his body he’d tried to move like the ‘cool and smooth’ guys in the video’s he’d once watched, but Juli was something else. She was born in nature and had adapted to it, like an animalistic hunter, and by watching her and obeying her rather… irritable lessons he’d barely even grasped the basics of what she was trying to teach him. It was like a caveman trying to learn how to use a computer, but in reverse.

He was still loud and made mistakes, but he was finding it much easier to find prey when they didn’t hear him from miles away.

As for the hunting itself he’d had a rough time of it the first day, apparently it wasn’t just the city itself that warded the beasts off, but the general area. He’d had to travel a few hours away from the city to find even the smallest hints of wildlife. After that though it’d been a rather easy task to find food. Stomping into burrows to find smaller animals like rabbits - the non-screaming kind - and other animals like foxes and squirrels. Most of them had minor mutations in size or shape, but most were easily caught. He’d only ever had trouble with the squirrels. Usually they hid and lived in trees, but the buggers had changed into burrowers with - relatively - massive claws.

The first time he’d found one it had dug into the ground so fast he’d barely laid eyes on it before it was gone.

Other than those however he’d caught another snake, a few oddly shaped birds, and had gotten into a fight with one massive deer that he’d mistakenly thought would be easy pickings.

The shattered antlers he’d taken back after being forced into retreating from the fight had proved that he had been wrong.

Which was how he’d ended up crossing the paths of two rather senseless tribal hunters, carrying bone spears and wearing armor made from animal bones, carefully following the ‘tracks’ he’d made while running towards his new hunting grounds.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

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What the hell are they doing out here?

He’d been carrying back some game he’d caught when he’d nearly ran head first into a pair of tribal hunters. Bone armor, bone spears, he’d almost thought they were monsters until he gave them a second glance.

They thankfully hadn’t noticed him - only because he’d been walking back so as to not destroy the hides and meat stored in his pack - so he’d hidden in the tree’s above them as they followed his tracks.

While he’d gotten far better than before at moving without destroying everything in his path thanks to Juli, he still wasn’t as good as she was at moving unnoticed. It was obvious that an experienced tracker would be able to follow him, hell a newly trained tracker would probably use his footprints as training. But he wasn’t shocked that they were tracking them, only shocked that they were here.

The Ginte stayed north, just in between the city and another small town miles away. He was almost exactly south of where their territory was according to Chloe. Besides the Ginte there were a few tribes, mostly small families gathered together for protection like the sisters had been, but none of them hunted down here.

He didn’t really understand it, but apparently crossing borders into other tribes’ ‘hunting grounds’ was a big no-no out here. Chloe explained it by simply saying that there were only so many ‘safe’ animals to hunt during the year, and if too many of the weaker animals died all that would remain are the dangerous ones. If only Rox’s or the Deer Kings or whatever were available to hunt then all the tribes would begin to lose members, and while losing a few ‘mortals’ was acceptable to some of the tribes, they all relied on their Warriors.

It also doubled as a way of protection, from and for the dangerous beasts. If they hunted all the small game then the bigger beasts, like the Deer King or Rox Mother would begin munching on humans out of necessity rather than opportunity or self defense.

The only reason they avoided the tribes now was because of the amount of Warriors each tribe had, and vice versa. The stronger beasts were of course, animals, and once the bigger beasts died others would appear to replace them, and maybe instead of a Deer King or Rox Mother prowling the area only defending themselves or their children you had to deal with some Altered lion or wolf that hunted humans for fun.

It’s confusing why the beasts are so… ‘normal’ out here, while the cities are constantly attacked and trade envoys ambushed. Having a few Warriors around here practically guarantees safety from anything less than the kings of the area, but the cities have way more Altered and get messed with constantly.

So the question was, were these new people or members of a rival tribe? Newcomers would most likely cause issues with the current owners of the land, being the sisters of course, but Ginte meant that they were actively hunting them down.

He would understand if they were Ginte, he had killed one of their members and let the other one go. They had an eye witness to what he did and what he looked like. The idea that they may have tracked them - him - all the way back would make sense if they were actively hunting him down.

I should have asked what the Ginte usually look like, the other two were covered in rags but they didn’t appear to be the most important of their tribe. If I knew what their hunters or Warriors wore I wouldn’t be having so much trouble deciding what to do.

The best bet was always just ask, if they said they were Ginte, or just outright attacked him, then he’d deal with it - hopefully without killing one of them again. And if they were new to the area, or outright invading or some shit, then he could simply talk to them or knock their lights out and go ask the sisters what to do about it in the future.

It’s definitely better to just talk first, instead of possibly killing an innocent person. I got lucky last time, I won’t next time.

By now the trackers had passed him and begun moving towards the way he’d just come from. It wouldn’t take long for them to possibly find the almost side-by-side tracks that lead to him climbing into the tree, where they’d no doubt spot him.

Better to do it now, instead of after they find me. Taking them by surprise will make them more… agreeable.

With a single leap he went from nearly two dozen meters behind them, to three meters in front of them. Landing with a heavy thud that spread through the ground and through his body, he was standing tall before the sound from his landing had even faded.

Within a moment the trackers had gone from ‘stealthily’ tracking him, to standing face to face with him. To say they were surprised would have been an understatement.

Gotcha.

However he had to give them credit where it was due, the first tracker - most likely the more experienced one - had reacted to the sound of him landing and stabbed out with the bone spear aiming almost perfectly for where his throat was.

The strike had been slow to him and easy to avoid, but he couldn’t deny the tracker was extremely proficient with the spear. If this had been a few months ago he wasn’t even sure if he would have been able to react to it, nor would he bet on himself surviving it.

Almost at the same time the lead Tracker seemed to realize that he had missed, Mark smashed the spear with a fist, shattering it in half and sending the end flying into the bushes far away.

The man stared at his spear for a moment, before dropping it and pulling a knife. With a flick of his wrist he threw it towards Mark and dashed away, his partner rushing after him. This time Mark didn’t even need to dodge, the knife missed him by a good inch and sailed away harmlessly behind him.

Well I can’t fault him for trying.

With a few steps and a leap that sent tremors through the earth around them he landed in front of the fleeing trackers - again - before putting his hands harmlessly above his head.

“You really don’t need to run, just wanna talk!” Well, if you’re Ginte you might want to run, but I’m not gonna say that out loud…

The eyes of the men seemed panicked, the leader was - probably - defenseless and both of them were up against an unknown Warrior from the tribe that most likely owned the land. They were probably expecting him to kill or severely maim them for trespassing.

At some point a switch seemed to be flipped that caused both of them to realize that they weren’t getting away. The first tracker angled himself forward, like a football player going for a tackle, while the second one drew his spear back for a strike. For a moment he thought they might try and attack him at the same time, maybe try to pin him down and spear him through the chest, except when they turned towards each other and nodded their heads instead of the second tracker attacking with the first he instead turned tail and ran, dropping the spear on the ground as he went.

The fuck?

The man tackling him hadn’t even realized he’d been abandoned yet, having rushed him and grabbed him by the sides in an attempt to get him to the ground, or simply buy enough time for his ‘friend’ to stab him through the heart or skull. He struggled for a few moments as Mark sat there, baffled at the man leaving his friend to die.

Are you fucking serious? I mean I expect shit like this from gangbangers in the city, but fuck me this guy is supposed to be your ‘tribe’ right? Aren’t you all family and shit?

It only took another second for the man to realize something was wrong, before turning his head behind him. When he witnessed his partner running away, already having cleared roughly a hundred meters or so, he began yelling towards him.

“Tora? TORA!”

The cowards name is Tora, got it.

Without hesitating any longer he put the palm of his hand on the man’s chest, before gently slamming the man’s back into the dirt beneath him. He had tried to control his anger and strength as much as possible, only using enough force to knock the wind out of him, so he was rather pleased when instead of breaking bone or the snapping of tendons all that he heard was a dull thud as the man hid the dirt and began to wheeze. The second he had confirmed the man wasn’t seriously injured he began sprinting towards Tora. By the time he’d begun chasing Tora the man had already cleared around a hundred and fifty meters, the sound of him gasping and crying as he ran away reaching Mark’s ears clearly.

Even if the man had a good half hour head start he wasn’t sure Tora would have gotten away, it took him less than ten seconds to get almost directly behind him, abandoning all sense of stealth or subtly as he chased the man down like a hunting dog chasing down prey. With a greater sense of control than he’d had a few weeks ago he ran past Tora and leapt in front of him, sliding backwards as he turned to face the man.

When he passed Tora to stand in front of him he tried to stop and turn around, again, but with a swipe of his open palm Tora was caught by the throat, the distinct sound of his terrified yelp being cut off causing no small amount of joy to erupt from Mark’s heart. With barely a thought he slapped the coward directly across the bone mask, sending the mask and a broken tooth to fly out of his mouth.

I don’t know why but Tora leaving his partner behind really pissed me off.

As for what he looked like under the mask, pretty much the exact same as the Ginte from what he saw in the city. He was covered in grime under his clothing and mask, with tanned skin barely being discernable from the utter filth he was covered in.

I don’t want to say they are Ginte just because of how dirty they are, this is the damn forest. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a genuine survival technique to help them blend in. Luckily I now know one of them is a coward, and would gladly give the other one up to be allowed to live. Plus I have the other one, who was just left to die and might give me everything I ask if I offer to let him go instead of Tora.

Dragging the whimpering Tora back to his partner he felt his anger quickly fade, replacing it was a strong sense of second hand embarrassment. By the time he’d returned to the man he’d knocked the wind out of, the leader had placed his bone helmet on the ground, kneeling with his head down and his hands on his knees.

The poor dude got abandoned by his friend, only to get slammed into the ground and left for dead. He probably could have run away, but realized he wouldn’t have made it far and didn’t want to risk pissing me off further. At least he’s moderately smarter than Tora.

Tossing the now sobbing Tora onto the ground he stood over the pair with his arms crossed, doing his best to appear as intimidating as possible.

“Now, who wants to speak first?”