Chapter 89: Parents, siblings?

The hunters, and everyone else settled in after they got home. It was an hour past sunrise, and people were on the move, they were active, so even though the survivors wanted to slow down and catch up on their sleep, the tribesfolk didn’t let them. They threw a huge feast, to welcome everyone back home.

Pounds upon pounds of crocodile meat were being fried on the fire. The smell itself would lure in many predators, as it slipped past the holes in the cavern ceiling, but with Rampage sitting close to their home, no predator would dare to approach the cavern. The tribesfolk were safe to do as they pleased.

The survivors were being force fed at this point. They must have consumed three pounds of meat each, but there was plenty to spare. The crocodile that Rampage brought them as a house warming gift was huge, so there was a lot of meat to go around.

Within the cheerful expressions and bustling conversations of the crowd, Jimmy and Anna decided to put their time into better use, so they tried to know their parents better. They both had a set of separate parents in this world, blood family that they knew nothing about. The memories of the past body owners weren’t coming to them, so they had to learn who they were related to, and essentially, if their blood family was worth the effort.

The main thing that concerned them was that both of their parents were not hunters, despite being young enough to be out there, on the hunt. Naturally the tribe could use as many hunters as possible, so aside from their parents, they were trying to weed out other people who could join the hunt in the future. Mothers especially.

There was a large quantity of capable mothers, some of them even former mothers, former wives of the dead hunters, and although it wasn’t traditional for them to hunt, with enough training, they could effectively fill the gaps, and replace the hunters that the giants killed.

In rough calculations, if ten or fifteen mothers used to be hunters before the giants killed them, then the same amount could be trained in the following months. It wasn’t ideal, but widows, and the childless had nothing to lose, so they might as well hunt.

Elders might need to come out of this world’s version of retirement too. Jimmy was hoping to use the reverence these people had for him, to put the powerful elders to use, and get them out to hunt.

Another thing, he wanted to find salt deposits. If meat was salted, dried, and stored properly, it can last for months at a time! If they stashed a few tons of meat in the cavern, they wouldn’t need to hunt weekly. Winter was close, so finding salt deposits was very important.

If there was a sea, or a lake nearby, Anna could transport hundreds of pounds of salt a day, with the help of Bonita, her flying pet.

Anyway, as Jimmy got to know his parents, with the pretext that he hit his head, and didn’t remember much, he figured out why they weren’t hunters. Jimmy’s father, Gnegor, had suffered an injury years ago.

Gnegor walked with a limp, Jimmy had noticed this before, but he couldn’t figure out the reason. He looked forty years old at most, but if one couldn’t run, they’d be easy kills in the wild, a meal served on a silver platter, so no one expected him to hunt. It was a shame too, because he bore special magic, he was unique.

Jimmy’s mother, Lasra, was a couple of years younger than her man, her husband, and she bore Dinosaur Strength. This magical ability was very common, and she was otherwise perfectly fit to hunt, she even used to be a hunter in her youth, but between taking care of her children, and taking care of Gnegor so he wouldn’t have to walk much, she was rather occupied over the years. Gnegor became more and more immobile over the years, as he kept eating and not moving much, so he was quite fat now.

That aside, Jimmy used to have a brother, and a sister, from what he understood. His sister died young from an unknown sickness, and his older brother, Gaark, tried to hike past the impassable tip of the rocky mountain they lived in, and never returned. He was an ambitious boy, and tried his luck as soon as he became old enough to hunt, which based on some rough math, was about five years ago, since Gaark should be two years older than him, or two winters older.

It was sad, Jimmy was an only child now, but there was nothing he could do about it.

To help heal some emotional wounds, he decided to treat his father’s physical wounds. If he could heal his father, then both he, and Lasra, Jimmy’s mother, would be ready to start hunting. They wouldn’t need much training either.

Jimmy slowly revealed that he was a healer of sorts. At least, he was a far better healer than the old women in the tribe who’d otherwise stuff random weeds in people’s mouths whenever people had common colds, he was a powerful healer. He could even heal brain damage if he tried hard enough, so in a way, he was this tribe’s, and potentially the entire world’s best doctor, best healer.

“Will you let me have a look at your leg?” He asked. “I can probably heal it before lunch.”

Gnegor was hesitant. He wasn’t used to magical healing abilities, it was unheard of, but the survivors praised Jimmy after every other word, so he decided to trust their collective perspective, rather than the words of a young boy. The words, and ambitions of a young boy made him lose a son in the past, so of course he was skeptical towards what Jimmy had to say. He was only eighteen years old, after all.

Jimmy put his hand on his father’s old wound, and tapped into his heartbeat shortly after. The wound looked like an old bite, from whatever dinosaur bit him many winters ago, and just as he suspected, the bite had torn through Gnegor’s muscles, tendons under the knee, which was the main cause behind his limp, and the bite had even cracked his bone. The bone had healed over time, but the leg was deformed, as the tear had been too big, about three inches per tooth mark.

“Yikes,” He winced, “I’m sorry you had to live like that, father.”

Gnegor smiled at that remark as if it was nothing. He was used to his limp, he was used to the pain, to the sharp aches, so he wouldn’t want to live life any other way. Subconsciously, he wished that his leg wouldn’t heal.

“This wound is bigger than I imagined, father,” He said. “This is gonna hurt a bit, because I have to fix your leg bone, and then generate some new muscle, fresh nerves, but you’ll be fine shortly.”

Gnegor went into shock as soon as he heard those foreign, nearly gibberish words. He suddenly realized that his son actually knew what he was doing, so his bleak mixture of hope and skepticism was replaced with an absolute truth. The truth being that he’d get the function of his leg back, today!

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep