The group of fifteen didn’t try to particularly hide their presence, especially because the thick fog clearly muffled most sounds. They couldn’t even hear birds chirping up in the trees, although judging by the few corpses found on the ground there were definitely such somewhere.
Theoretically there was risk of a higher ranked beast finding them, but anything below rank six didn’t pose a threat to a group of their level. And if by any chance suddenly a rank seven monster appeared, then so be it – they’ll just die.
If a conversation like this happened while they were back in the sect, Leo would’ve thought people were showing off. But here even he actually thought so. Fortunately his situation was not as bad – contrary to the fellow disciples he had a wast reserve of supplies.
It was hard to tell how long the group battled through the swamp, but at some point it seemed the sky was about to get dark. Everything, including the branches on the ground, was so wet, it was impossible to make a bonfire, thus the expedition members gathered in a small circle and sat on their backpacks, for now refusing to put their buts directly on the soggy ground.
No one was in the mood for chatting, but watching each other and counting whom a mosquito bit for which time was also lame. Unfortunately everything was better than the horrifying thought of what the upcoming night will be like.
When the dusk fell, hurried footsteps resounded around the camp drawing everyone’s attention away from their misery. The ‘plap, plap, plap’ sounds signified someone was casually running on the wet ground and from the looks of it there was more than one creature.
“Dinner?” One of the guys whispered, but the one next to him sighed, “Raw.”
And the mood was instantly dampened even further.
Fortunately it was not for too long. A few moments later approximately fifteen yards away from the group, from behind a large tree a couple of heads slowly popped out. The beings looked rather strange – their hear was wet, dirty and disheveled, but the small, black eyes clearly seemed to be human. The creepy part was that their mouths looked as if they were forcefully carved with a knife and were at least three time the size a normal human proportionally would have, and between the parted lips the expedition members could clearly discern teeth that more resembled those belonging to a shark than human.
“Whip, whip!” One of the creatures made a strange sound and, surprising the guests, quite a few voices around the miserable camp happily replied, “Whip, whip, whip! Whap, whap, whap!”
One could not see the others, but it was clear the humans were surrounded by at least a couple dozen of them.
“Yes! Greenlanders!” A guy called Jakub, the one who earlier asked about dinner, shouted out loud, but apparently too loud, because the two curious people vanished.
Luckily for him, before the others vented everything that had piled up during the day, the two heads appeared once again. And then a couple more behind another tree, and then a few more.
“Hi!” The current leader of the expedition took the initiative to make the first contact. She stood up and introduced herself, “I’m Gabriela!”
Even though she was dead tired like the rest, she made the sweetest smile and waved and in return the creatures smiled back, except Leo felt his hair stand on end from the sight.
“Ela, ela, ela!” Apparently guided by curiosity few of the creatures came closer to take a better look at the guests.
One of the girls, named Valeria, fished out few snacks from her backpack and offered to the locals stretching out her hand, “Here, take!”
“Ake, ake, ake!” Local aborigines apparently tried to communicate, repeating everything anyone said and few came closer to see what she had there in her hand.
Finally everyone could closely observe what the creatures looked like and if earlier Leo was creeped out, then now his first impulse was to run away from there without looking back.
The aborigines were a bit taller than four feet and their height somewhat resembled the pygmies Leo lived with in the Oceandesert realm. But these guys had long extremities and their feet and palms looked disproportionately large. They were rather hairy, especially around the intimate spots and the natural hair was the only thing that covered those.
They walked slightly hunched, fingers almost touching the ground, but the manner might’ve also be caused by their weariness from the newcomers. Be as it may, to Leo even the silverback apes seemed more human-like compared to these and he simply refused to believe these were the local human tribes.
When the closest one was only a couple of yards away, he paused, observed Valeria’s stretched out hand and then at lightning speed jumped over, grabbed the snacks from her palm and immediately returned to the spot where he was previously. Everyone in the group was a Foundation establishment stage cultivator, but only few could follow the speed the creature moved at.
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Valeria found it amusing though.
“Hahaha!” She loudly laughed and the creatures moved closer while trying to imitate her. She turned towards the rest of the group and said, “Aren’t they cute? In their own way, of course. Anyone else wants to feed them? We’ll call them ‘greenlanders’ from now on, right?”
Most of the guys were reluctant to part with their scarce provisions, but seeing the girls starting to feed the creatures, they kind of felt forced to share a piece of bread or a jerky they had packed along for the trip. Leo, of course, couldn’t care less what the others thought. He attentively observed the ‘greenlanders’ while ready to swing the Cleaver any moment.
Fortunately nothing bad happened. All the offered snacks disappeared in the huge mouths and after a while, seeing there was nothing more to get here, greenlanders were forced to realize that was it. After echoing the sounds they picked up from the guests, they began to reluctantly withdraw, but while the most disappeared in the fog, there were a couple who stayed behind and kept shouting ‘whip, whip, whip!’.
“Are they telling us to follow?” Suddenly one of the guys, Rafael Silo, asked.
“Could be. We did give them food and I think we kind of hit it off.” Gabriela pondered out loud, “Maybe they want to introduce us to their families? Shall we take a look? It’s not dark yet ...”
The group quickly decided to follow the locals since their camp wasn’t particularly cozy anyway and a short while later actually cheered at their own decision. As it turns out, the place where locals lived was not that far away – it was a small hill, comparatively dry to the ground they waked on up until now. Of course, greenlanders didn’t live on the hill – they had made countless holes under it and lived in what most likely was a rather complicated tunnel system.
Unfortunately for the guests the half yard wide tunnels were too narrow and they had to settle next to the hill, but even then the ground level was slightly elevated in comparison to the rest of the swamp and it was possible to finally rest their buts on almost dry surface.
The moment the expedition arrived, tens of heads popped out from the hill and dozens of greenlanders crawled out to greet them. Just like the ones from the greeting party, these tend to echo what humans were saying, but sometimes conversed between themselves as well with sounds that resembled soft whistles and growls.
“Do you think it’ll be easier to learn their language or should we teach them the main dialect?” Gabriela asked while ruffling hair on two greenlander heads at the same time.
Before anyone could answer, the ladies in the group loudly cheered and it was immediately copied by the locals. The reason was obvious – seeing it was safe, the small ones began to crawl out from the tunnels and curiously observed the newcomers.
It didn’t take long for them to become braver and soon every human had at least a couple of kids hugging their legs, hands and some, probably showing their ecstasy, chewed on the guest extremities with their huge, but toothless mouths.
While most found it cute, Leo barely held back the deep disgust he felt. He had spent many months playing with the baby apes and compared to these ugly creatures they were the most fun beasts in the world. In addition, even though the three greenlander kids currently chewing on his legs had almost no teeth, their bite was rather painful.
Apparently Jakub had a similar thought and kicked away the two that were currently hugging him, but not only immediately got scolded by the leader of the expedition, even the whole greenlander tribe hissed and bared teeth at him. The good news was that after the incident no greenlander babies neared him and others also started to stealthily shake off the kids. Unfortunately most of them took it as a game and continued to pester the guests even more.
After few tries of getting rid of the annoying locals, Leo suddenly got an idea. For the last couple of months he had intensely practiced various Qi release techniques, mostly self developed, but the ‘Angelic wind’ Elsa taught was on a completely different level – after all it involved the release of Qi infused with the practitioner’s innate element.
Thus now, to effectively deal with the greenlander kids he released small amounts of Qi infused with the hated purple lightning and the results were astonishing. The little needlers one after another ‘fell asleep’, shocked by meeting such amazing individual and soon Leo could sit with a wide grin plastered across his face.
The new technique turned out to be so incredible he could apply it in almost any situation! At this though Leo suddenly turned serious. What if he released lightning infused Qi with kicks and punches? Wouldn't it similarly shock his opponents? The idea seemed so cool he almost began to look for more greenlanders to come and chew on him, but for some reason everyone began to avoid him. The mothers of the ‘sleeping’ ones quickly picked them up and brought away, thus all Leo could do was to practice the ‘Lightning touch’ by using ground as a target.
Indeed, he immediately came up with the name for the self invented technique and actually felt rather proud of it. Not only it sounded cool, he was certain in the future he could further develop it into the ‘Lightning kick’, ‘Lightning punch’ and … basically everything ‘lightning’. Of course, he guessed there were people before him who came up with the idea, but it was still his invention thus the youth felt rather elated.
Until the darkness fell, he managed to ‘put to sleep’ few more greenlanders and these were grownups of both sexes and the experimentation further improved his mood, but unfortunately all locals soon withdrew to their tunnels.
Since there was no one left he could practice on, Leo began to ‘shock’ the mosquitoes that actually were even more annoying than the greenlanders.
This exercise turned out to be of a completely different level of difficulty. While the mosquitoes were bigger than any he had seen in his life, they were still small and refused to land on the spots he was used to train for the Qi release. They preferred face, shoulders, arms and back and in most cases one could know they were there only when a stinging pain already registered, indicating the person had suffered a minor poisoning.
Nevertheless this was the most fun exercise he had done in years and it was well past midnight when Leo fell asleep, pleasantly exhausted.
Most of the group couldn’t sleep though. In soft voices they discussed their options and the future plans, and one of the strongest suggestions was go back to the teleportation platform and wait out the few months they were given. In the end the group decided against such option, at least during the upcoming month, since at some point lady Evelyn could teleport over to check the situation and they would’ve been in a world of trouble if got caught fooling around.
After a unanimous vote the plan was made after all. For now they’ll stay here, try to discover the best ways to replenish provisions and maybe learn the greenlander dialect.
The discussions were lengthy, but before the sunrise one after another all people fell asleep anyway. They had planned to take turns staying awake and keeping watch, but either there was something in the air or everyone was just too tired, but all passed out like drunken children after a tee party went wrong.