It took three and a half days for Grud to finally catch the fresh scent of the expedition upon the wind. For some reason, the expedition picked up a lot of speed, and Grud only found out why when he caught up.
Grud experienced the same phenomenon of the lack of decent-sized game and predators in the area, but from what his sense of smell could tell Grud, there was one type of predator in the area, 'That must mean whatever I am smelling now must be what is pushing everything north.'
It was then that the distinct smell of blood hit his nose and it was coming from the direction the expedition's tracks led to, 'On the bright side, this does not smell like man blood… it smells closer to the predators that dominate this area. Better get there as fast as I can in case they need help.' With his decision made, Grud recalled Mita from watching the area around him and they sped off.
—
Grud was now eating up the distance as his empowered legs made small holes in the ground where his feet pushed off the dirt. It had taken quite a few more bumps and scraps before he could use the empowerment in his legs to travel with any semblance of competence, but he finally got the hang of it a couple of days ago.
As Grud got closer to where the expedition was, the bloody smell of whatever they were fighting got stronger, 'Good, I did not pick up any strong smells of man blood, so I can presume things are going well for us.'
Wondering how much further he had to run, Grud took note that the wind was blowing and carrying the smell in his direction, so they may be a few kilometers away. It was then that Grud's enhanced hearing picked up the mournful wail of the dying juvenal, followed by the angry sounding guttural roar of the juvenals' parents in response.
"Looks like I did not miss out on the fight after all." Grud said to himself in anticipation of seeing what was able to mess up the whole ecosystem.
—
As Grud neared the fighting, he finally caught the first scent of man's blood being spilled, 'Better speed up, things are starting to get serious.' Grud then started pumping his legs harder and faster as he pushed more mana into his feet. It may have made him trip and faceplant twice due to not being used to the timing of his mana release, but overall he was going at a faster pace.
Grud soon caught sight of the combat, only to be met with the scene of Chieftan Dhun tumbling through the air, crashing and rolling a few times as the lizard beast walking on two big legs rounded on Chieftan Dhun's prone form.
Grud immediately empowered his throwing arm and sent all three of his throwing spears flying, when they hit the beast, it did not even flinch, and Grud also noticed that the throwing spears only managed to sink only a couple of inches into its body, "For a beast that size, that depth of penetration is nothing." Grud muttered to himself.
As the beast was on top of Chieftan Dhun, Grud hurled his main monster rabbit horn spear at the beast, hoping the heavier spear would be able to distract its attention away from Chieftan Dhun.
But even as the spear slammed into the beast's body and sunk in by a foot, the beast still did not flinch. Realizing neither he nor Chieftan Dhun had enough time to stop this in normal circumstances, Grud decided to copy what the monster rabbit did when he first encountered it.
Grud stopped, jumped to the trunk of a tree, aimed himself, and pushed off with as much might and mana as he could push. In doing so, Grud snapped the tree trunk in half from where he pushed off as he rocketed through the air with his monster bone daggers ready and flooded with mana to stab the lizard beast in what Grud assumed were its brains.
But apparently, the beast managed to react to Grud flying towards its head and managed to start turning toward Grud, which resulted in Grud missing his mark and his long daggers sinking deep into the upper jaw and snout of the beast.
'Now that I got its attention, I just need to finish it off before it can do more dama–' Grud's thoughts were interrupted as the beast started shaking its head to get rid of Grud, this made Grud abandon any plans of attack and hold on for dear life.
When that failed, the beast decided to try to smear Grud on the ground, to which, Grud waited for the last moment and with a small hop while holding on to the knife anchored in its snout, repositioned himself to the top of its snout.
Now with his other dagger out of reach and the only thing keeping him stable as his holding on to the snout dagger, Grud had only one form of attack available to him.
Grud empowered his empty hand and punched the beast between the eyes *THUD!*. An impact that sounded nothing like a normal punch should sound like rang out to the surroundings, drawing the attention of the hunters.
After that punch, the hunters from the side observed as the eyes of the beast unfocused and legs began to wobble.
But Grud did not give the beast time to recover *THUD!, THUD!, THUD!, crack, THUD!, CRACK!*, Grud started raining blow after blow, causing the beast's legs to become shakier and eventually it toppled over as it flailed its legs and tiny hands around while making incoherent wining noises.
The moment the beast hit the ground, the surrounding hunters swarmed the beast while trying to drive their spears into whatever part of the body might have an important organ.
When the beast flopped over, Grud decided to jump off early, lest he be slammed to the ground alongside the beast. When Grud recovered to his feet, and looked at the beast, he cussed and grumbled, "Did it really have to land on the side where all my weapons were sticking into its body?"
As Grud saw the other hunters were having some trouble breaking its skin with stone tips, Grud cracked his knuckles and walked towards the flailing beast 'Looks like I am really going to need to punch it to death.' but stopped as he saw Chieftan Dhun approach from under the beast's chin with a familiar spear.
Dhun then aimed the spear from under the chin of the beast and thrust forward, he penetrated the flesh from its chin and lower mouth only to be stopped by an audible *Tock* of metal spearhead meeting the bone plate protecting the brain, but that did not stop Dhun as he took a step back and kicked the butt of the spear.
There was a crunching sound, followed by the beast twitching for a few seconds and going still. All the hunters around held their breath as the beast exhaled its last breath and after a few seconds, one hunter shouted in victory, followed by the others.
But before they could get too rowdy, Chieftain Dhun Shouted, "Celebrate later, everyone go assist the other fight!"
As the hunters ran off to the other fight, Chieftain Dhun yanked the metal-tipped spear out of the beast's head while Grud lifted the massive head and wiggled his long bone daggers out of the beast's skull.
Just as Grud recovered his second bone dagger, he felt someone pat him on the shoulder from behind, Grud turned around to see a roughed-up Dhun, "Glad to see you are alive, we will talk later"
"Glad to be alive, almost died a few times myself." Grud replied as both men took off toward the other beast.
—
Although there were more casualties compared to the first adult beast they took down, with the help of Grud and his mana-empowered daggers, the second adult beast was able to be swiftly taken down after Grud easily cut into its legs, allowing the other hunters to swarm and kill the beast.
After confirming the last adult beast was dead, the hunters gathered their injured and dead. Between the fight with the two adult beasts, the casualties were fourteen dead and five with broken bones.
Grud led the other hunters in giving the dead their last rites as was his duty as a shaman, and after the short ceremony was over, they moved to make camp and harvest the bodies of the five beasts they just killed.
As Grud was helping with the harvesting of materials, Dhun approached Grud and asked, "Were any of these beasts monsters?"
Grud shook his head, "No, I do not feel mana from any of the bodies, so I doubt there would be any monster cores, they are just beasts."
With his reply, a grim look came upon Dhun's face, "This means that these beasts were strong enough to drive out other beasts and even monsters from the area, we need to find out where they came from in case more of them come and do the same thing."
"So this means the expedition is not over yet?" Grud asked, hoping Dhun would declare the expedition over and they all could go home.
Having the same idea as Grud, Dhun had half a mind just to declare the expedition over and go home, but Dhun knew what needed to be done and let out a long breath of frustration, "No, we are not done yet, we need to find out where these beasts come from. We will rest for today and continue tomorrow."
—
That night, Grud took a raw chunk of Great Maw Lizard to eat. Over the days that he was separated from the expedition, while Grud was fighting or running for his life, he found out that he did not need to eat the hearts of the beasts or monsters to gain their strength, he just needed a mouth full of their meat.
But recently as he ate different beasts and monsters, Grud had an increasing gut feeling that he was missing something, but could not figure out what it was and eventually resigned himself to wait and see, he may just get lucky and eat the correct thing someday.
And so Grud scoffed down the raw meat, it was not very good tasting, it had a strong smell and an even stronger gamey flavor, but bared with it.
"I sure hope it tastes better cooked, would be a shame to waste so much meat."
—
When Grud fell asleep, the mutating agent awoke to new genetic material, and after sifting through the genetic information of the new input, it found nothing much of difference from the usual improvements, slightly increasing the host's body size, and muscle and bone density, but there was so much more that currently could not be applied to the host.
If the mutating agent was truly sapient with emotions, it would lament the wasted potential of the genetic information it had stored away but could not apply to its current host, because for all of Grud's extreme deathworld level toughness and resilience by galactic standards, it made his body harder to mutate freely as it did to other more squishy species, which led to their very painful and very messy deaths.
So currently, it could only mutate Grud in ways that would somewhat stay similar to his species' default form and enhance the body in ways that help the host accomplish its primal goals, reproduce, provide, and defend.
The only thing the mutating agent was currently lacking was genetic information that allowed the host to be malleable enough to use all that stored away genetic information. It could only wait and hope the host would get some new genetic information that will bridge the gap.