While the scouts went to investigate what was happening from the direction the wounded man came from, Grud and the medicine man were trying to save the life of the wounded man with the weird wounds all over his body.

 

Unfortunately, fate was not on the man’s side this day. Despite the treatment, the man continued his incoherent ramblings about a swarm, and soon after that his unfocused eyes rolled back into his head, and he started having a seizure and died soon after.

 

After confirming his death, both Grud and the medicine man let out a sigh, ‘With the ferocity of this new land, this will not be the last man I bury.’ Grud thought to himself.

 

Being the only shaman in the outpost at the moment, he held a short ceremony and gave the man his last rites.

 

It was almost dark by the time the scouts came back and they did not bring good news. “Chieftain Grud, the outpost in the direction the man came from was intact and its gates locked when I arrived, but nobody answered my call to see if there was anyone around and there was the strong smell of blood. When I climbed a tree tall enough to see over the wall, the only thing I saw was blood everywhere but no bodies.”

 

“Were there any tracks around?” Grud asked while thinking about what in the world could bypass the walls and gate ‘Was it those damm lizards again?’ Grud thought to himself.

 

“Weirdly, no foot tracks, only blood trail. We had no time to investigate further and made our way back.” the scout reported.

 

“Good.” Grud said as he turned to another bunch of hunters, “Make two small teams and go to our two closest outposts. Tell them what happened and request their backup, stay with them overnight, and come back tomorrow so we can investigate tomorrow. If what the man I just buried said is true, nothing called a swarm is good.”

 

The next day around late morning, three teams of hunters along with the men he sent to get them showed up and after a short rest for lunch, made their way to the outpost his scouts reported about yesterday.

 

When they got to the outpost, they too tried to call out and peek over the wall only to find the now-dried blood splattered all over the place.

 

After sending a couple of men over the walls to open the gated form inside, the hunter teams made their way inside the abandoned outpost.

 

When Grud made his way inside, it was then that the full stench of the place hit him. There were the usual smells of battle which was blood, sweat, piss, and shit, but along with those smells were three more smells.

 

The first was a yellowish liquid that had been spilled around, and from the splash pattern, Grud suspected it was the blood of whatever killed the people in the outpost. 

 

The second smell came from certain patches around the places where scuffles took place, the patches had the same smell of the man he buried yesterday, wherever the patches were, the area seemed to be blackened like it was burnt, yet there was no smell of ash, only an acrid scent that was so sharp and pungent that it curled his nose hairs.

 

The last scent was mild and subtle, yet it left distinct trails around the outpost, over its walls, and leading away into the distance. ‘I have no idea what this scent trail is, but it is a good bet that it belongs to what killed out people.’

 

After searching around for any survivors, the only thing they found was some small remains of the men who were once there. 

 

Seeing that there was nothing more they could do, Grud split the group. There were two nearby outposts, so he sent two teams to investigate the status of one while Grud’s team along with another team would investigate the other and meet back at Grud’s outpost.

 

When Grud got to the next outpost, the results mirrored the previous one. Gates locked, blood everywhere, no bodies, and the same three smells that were not associated with men dying.

 

After performing the last rites so that those who died here would be guided by the Great Spirits to their ancestors’ side, Grud ordered a return to base before it got too dark.

 

Grud’s group returned to their outpost to rest for the day and let his men rest and do their own equipment maintenance, and they were soon joined by the other group that split up to investigate another outpost.

 

But unlike Grud’s group, the other group saw some action at their assigned outpost. They came back with the carcasses of four giant ants along with a few men with similar wounds as the man he buried, but they were less severe.

 

From the report of the encounter with the giant ants. The outpost they went to was the same as the previous one, the only difference was when they climbed over the wall, the blood splatter was very fresh, and the four giant ants were just milling around until the men came over the wall.

 

When the ants tried to rush the men, the men prioritized the main gate and went to remove the log barring the gate, after that the rest of the hunters rushed in to slay the ants, but not without a few of them getting sprayed by a burning liquid.

 

Fortunately, there were a lot of people around with waterskins to wash off the acid before the acid burns got too bad.

 

After the reports, Grud got everyone settled in as the families assigned to the outpost got dinner ready for the hunters.

 

While waiting for dinner, Grud went over to the dead giant ants to figure out what they were dealing with.

 

The first thing he noticed was the ant’s compound eyes, ‘If this is just a really big ant, does that mean the normal smaller ants have the same kind of eyes?’ Grud asked himself as he prodded the compound eyes.

 

As he prodded the rest of the body, he noticed that beside the head and thorax, the abdomen was covered by a more flexible chitin, and when pressed would flex to where he applied pressure.

 

Grud wanted to see how much pressure the abdomen could take and started to compress and smush the dead ant’s abdomen to the ground. When it was smushed halfway down, a sudden spray of colorless liquid came out the back end of the abdomen onto the grass, and within seconds, the grass began to sizzle as an acrid smoke began to waft up from the area where the acid touched.

 

‘Well, that explains the injuries the men got when slaying these ants.’ Grud thought.

 

After a while of examining the ant carcasses, the call for dinner was made. Thinking that he might as well get over with the most likely awful taste now and wash it down with some good food, he reached into a big wound on the ant’s thorax and ripped out a chunk of meat, and bit into it.

 

After gagging a bit from the sour flavor of the meat, he washed the rest down with a lot of water and made his way to the cooking fire to cleanse his tastebuds with some hot food.

 

Then Grud retired to his tent early to blow his load inside of Mita and rest for a busy day tomorrow.

 

—

 

When Grud was deep asleep, the mutating agent got to work on the newly introduced genetic data that was introduced to the system and got to work to see what it could use to mutate its host.

 

Mandibles, incompatible. Multiple legs, could be useful but the internal mechanisms for movement were too different from the current host, so it was incompatible. Compound eyes, are objectively worse in every way than the host’s current situation, each individual eye in the compound eye (ommatidium) is so weak that even as a whole the eyes can only see a couple of meters before everything becomes a blur of shapes and colors, this genetic data is to be broken down and recycled as biomass. Chitin exoskeleton, a potential mutation option if the host gets more genetic data to bridge the gap, to be stored for the moment, and the same applies to the acid glan, it will do more harm than good if applied now.

 

As for the features that can be applied, the mutating agent found that the pheromone gland was much more advanced and complex compared to its host and decided to apply the mutation. The other feature the mutating agent decided to apply to complement the applied pheromone gland was the antenna, or more specifically the sensory receptors in the antenna which were added to the host’s already powerful olfactory senses.

 

Seeing nothing more it could do, the mutating agent went dormant again.

 

—

 

It was night time and most people were already asleep, while others were still up shooting the shit with their friends, that was until a sentry released a sharp whistle and shouted “ANTS!”