Up the hill, Zhao Wei couldn"t sleep. His body was weary of the day but his mind wouldn"t let him rest. Gowan had called him over to talk about something he thought was quite serious himself. He was thinking of moving the village away from the area as a few Clay Eaters were closing in.These were bipedal beasts with medium length forelimbs lined with claws shaped like shovels, it"s face was flat with it"s eyes right behind it"s huge mouth and it had a tail. Several spouts lined each side of it"s torso and it"s tail looked like a fan-shaped blade. This was the extent Zhao Wei knew of it"s physical appearance. It wasn"t from a lack of trying though, as these beast were covered from head to toe in a formation of rocks, looking almost like they carried a range of mountains each.
With everything, these beast usually grew to at least the size of a double decker bus with the biggest Zhao Wei had seen going up to the size of four story house. It was pretty easy to tell their age as the bigger the crust on their backs, the older they were.
The crust on their backs were made by themselves as their unique trait is to spew a clay like substances from their mouths which acted like quick dry cement and rolled in it before it dried. And these things definitely ate meat.
Zhao Wei had almost lost his life to them once. While he was chasing 3 Death Wishes, hot on their tail, suddenly a ma.s.s of the clay flew, over coating all 3 while almost touching Zhao Wei. They could no longer move once they were in there, only some of their limbs protruding from the substances shook to try and free itself. One of these huge monsters came and directly bit through both the clay and the Death Wishes inside.
Zhao Wei had already escaped a good distance to view the beast as it lumbered back. Following it a little, Zhao Wei found out that in the chase, both him and the Death Wishes stumbled near it"s territory which was like a gigantic crater made out of the same material they had on their bodies.
While scouting it out, he noticed it never p.o.o.ped while it kept eating any life-form it covered with it"s clay. Zhao Wei deduced that while it did absorb the animals it ate, the left-overs such as claw, teeth and skeletons were digested and mixed into the clay it spat out spouts.
It"s tail worked like a sc.r.a.ping knife combined with a catapult, it"d use it to sc.r.a.pe up any of the wet clay it"d spit out of the spouts and fling it at any una.s.suming prey that came close enough to it"s habitat. Now, two of these things were expanding here which wouldn"t bode well for the primates in the village as although they were strong, they had no way to beat it as their claws would require them to shovel through the armor continuously for who knows how long just to reach it"s flesh. In comparison, they would just fling their clay at the trees and vines, covering them and making it difficult for the monkeys to move around without anything to hold on to.
The thing is, these monkeys were territorial, almost never moving from their habitat. This was because of their legs, with the opposable thumbs on all of their limbs they could almost fly around with the help of the vines and trees, making them the king here. But, if they"re on flat surfaces such as the plains, their biology became a crutch, making it difficult to outrun animals with normal feet. Once the Clay Eaters covered the vines and all, the monkeys left on the ground would only be ripe for the picking.
Gowan didn"t want to do this, but he had little choice as he knew the limits of what he and his people could do. Once they left, out of all of them, at most 40 would survive before they found a new hunting ground outside. Zhao Wei who knew the beast habitats, hunting paths and the surroundings quite well, knew that this was too optimistic. Realistically, only Gowan would survive as there was no such hunting grounds within a day"s trip and the farther they went the stronger the beast were. And if they didn"t reach one when night came, most of them would die from the cold temperatures without the support of the heating rocks and the rest, the nocturnal beasts would finish them of.
Zhao Wei thought about this for sometime as the primates had treated him well and he had come to know quite a lot of the village inhabitants who regularly gave him more fruits and vegetables to bring back. But the issue was that he knew he had a small chance against this one, he"d tested out the clay before, sticking a spear into it. Even while it was wet, he couldn"t pull the spear out at all. He could barely hurt normal big cla.s.s beasts, taking great amounts of effort to kill one. This one had armor on top of their normal durability and there were two of them.
The thing that kept him awake however was not this, at least not this alone. The reason this particular beast was moving was because it was being hunted.
Zhao Wei knew that something else was hunting in this area. In more than one occasion, he"d gone to a beast"s travel path to hunt that day, only to find that they were already killed by something else. And the only reason he called it hunting was based on the kills, it like Zhao Wei knew its prey"s pattern. For most of its kills, they didn"t even know what hit them before they were dead.
But most of all, this was a beast. Zhao Wei knew this from the bite marks and claw marks left over from the beast"s kills. As of now, all he knew about it is that it had five claws on each limb, seemed to be about small to medium size and had a bite that could even end big beasts.
He couldn"t sleep because he knew this other hunter was nearby. One who he knew almost nothing about. And one who potentially knew about him.