Gympie was really starting to find his place within the community. Over the few days that they had spent camped by the river he had fallen into a bit of a pattern. Every morning, he would leave his host with the village guards and head out with the hunting party. His god given items were able to make short work of most of the smaller creatures around here that he would bring back for the village. Unlike the locals he had found himself living with he didn’t need sustenance other than what his host provided him but he found that the leftovers of what he brought back made excellent fertilizer.
He also learned that his armor really held his mana well making it even tougher when he wore the full set and didn’t leave it as protection for his host. But in his opinion his host needed the protection more than him anyways, if he died he would reconstitute eventually as long as his host was okay but if his host died that was it, the end of the path. So that particular revelation was exciting for a bit but not ultimately useful especially as all that metal made him quite clunky and attracted beasts larger than he was comfortable with handling.
By watching the others, he was even able to figure out how to clean his kills and prepare the parts for others to eat when he caught more than he needed to use as fertilizer. He never actually ate any of the things that he cooked but the others seemed to like his cooking, so he was probably good at it. But then again, they enjoyed it raw almost as much as cooked so it was a bit hard to really say one way or another.
He even started to help the old healer lady with her work, although he had to be careful not to touch anyone lest they get stung if he wears the gauntlets from his armor he can easily follow the old healer’s lead. Although Gympie still thought that rattling around a stick and putting mud in people’s wounds were probably not the best healing methods. But people seemed to accept him more when he helped out with it so he wasn’t going to say anything about it.
Stolen novel; please report.
Even if he did say something about it, it wasn’t as if any of the locals could actually understand any of what he said. Not being able to really communicate with anyone was a bit frustrating but at least they couldn’t make fun of him for talking to his host like the twigs did back home. Darn twigs and their insistence on being annoying, it was almost as bad as their penchant for violence and destruction that made it so he could never go too far from his host or else risk being too far when an attack came.
Of course, he didn’t really understand any of what they said either and was even worse at making sounds that even vaguely resembled what they said between each other. His throat simply didn’t make those sorts of noises unfortunately.
Then only a few days into stopping they packed up their few belongings and started moving out again, it seemed that there was someplace they were trying to get to at the end of the river although he wasn’t one hundred percent sure if they knew what it was they were trying to get to and couldn’t ask. As they gathered their belongings he pulled his host onto his back and got ready to chase after them again.
But this time as he ran after them, he just couldn’t keep up. There were too many trees in the way, and he couldn’t push through them and soon ended up completely lost having lost them at one branch of the river or another. When the sun set, he went for a bit longer but soon realized he must have made a wrong turn at some point and he was hopelessly lost.
He spent the rest of the night backtracking, getting pounced on by a beast in the night. He didn’t make it out unscathed, but he had learned some tricks by watching the hunters of the tribe, targeting some areas of these creatures is more effective than others. If you want to kill a plant, take them out by their roots, if you want to take out a beast go for their throat.
His knife sparked with lightning as he had dug it into the creature’s throat even as they had turned to flee from the pain of biting into Gympie in the first place. Gympie was disappointed that they couldn’t bring the thing back to the tribe, but it was too big and he was already afraid of not being able to make it back before they decided to move again. So in the end he just cut off a haunch and moved on letting whatever would come for it next have the rest of the meal.
As he continued his hike, he pulled some mud from the riverbed and spread it on the bites on his midsection, he may not of thought that it was the best medicine but he didn’t really know of anything better so he just continued to follow what he saw worked for the tribe. As the sun rose, he thought he saw his tribe in the gap between the trees.