NOVEL WEB Chapter 740 – Ways to Hunt
“It was a practice as old as time to attempt to prove one’s mettle through grandiose achievements. What people often forget about, though, were the failed attempts that at times consumed those who made the attempt whole.
Instead of recognition, only oblivion and ignominy awaited these unfortunate souls.” - Abu Halim Sewesko, Philosopher from Ptolodecca, circa 199 FP.
“Doesn’t the venom get bothersome?” Eilonwy asked one of the younger goblin hunters, trying to match their dialect as much as she could. The goblin hunter in question had just shot down a pheasant off the branch of a tree a good thirty paces or so away with his blowpipe, the unsuspecting fowl stiffening shortly after being pricked by the dart and plummeting straight to the ground below.
It was obvious to any observer that the dart must have been covered in some potent venom.
“Oh, this?” asked the young goblin back with a toothy grin on his face. “It’s harmless, just a little paralytic. We can just drink it straight without having more than a few tingly feelings. The kids always loved that,” he added with a widening grin. “Even the adoptees we got don’t have too many issues with them. It’s only really effective on smaller things and would lose its effects when cooked.”
“I see. That’s pretty convenient,” noted Eilonwy with a nod of her head. “Mind if I give it a bit of a try?”
“Go ahead, miss,” replied the goblin politely as he plucked out a fresh dart and handed it over to Eilonwy. He looked a little confused on why someone wanted to test out venom like that but eventually decided that it was not his problem to contemplate.
Eilonwy looked closely at the small dart. It was a simple construction, some sharpened fang or bone with a tuft of fur on the blunt end. The upper half of the dart’s length glistened under the sunlight, the venom coating it visible to the eye as a transparent coating on the sharp end of the projectile. She calmly pricked the palm of her left hand using the dart, making sure to allow it to get halfway into her flesh to be certain.
“Hmm, it feels like those times when you had been sitting too long and it feels like there’s ants crawling all over your foot,” she noted after a couple seconds. “I guess in a low enough dose kids might find the sensation amusing, all right. Definitely potent enough to drop small game but likely useless on boars or other larger ones.”
“Unless you get enough of it in them,” corrected Aideen from the side. “Even weak paralytics like these can drop you if you take in enough, though it’s usually more hassle than it’s worth to do things that way when you can just use stronger venoms instead.”
“It is as the Lady says. We use these just for the smaller game. For larger things we use a different, much more potent brew,” said the goblin. “It can drop one of those Stalkers in one to two hits, depending on where we get them.”
“Those things are pretty big, so that’s pretty potent all right,” noted Aideen with approval as the young goblin displayed a selection of three darts on his hand. She immediately noticed how they were color-coded. The one like what the goblin used to hunt just now, which Eilonwy also tried out, had black fur on it. The other two had gray and white tufts of fur on their blunt ends.
Given how the black one was for small game, Aideen guessed that the white one likely held the most potent venom.
“We are small compared to our cousins in the plains,” stated the old goblin with a sagely nod when he caught wind of the discussion. “We make use of what we can to make up for it where we need to. Of course, it is not like we do not have our own advantages either.”
The goblins then demonstrated a different way to hunt their prey when the group veered close to a river a bit later that afternoon. There were several crocodiles visibly swimming or floating around in the river itself, with a few more lazily lying down on both banks of the river. Aideen had thought that the goblins would stay away from the riverbank for that reason, but contrary to her expectations, a few of the younger goblins headed straight towards one of the crocodiles.
One of them baited the crocodile and ran back towards where the others had hidden themselves on top of the branches of a nearby tree. Rather than spring the trap then and there, though, the goblin that played bait stopped running and stood there as the crocodile rushed at him with jaws opened wide, ready to devour him whole.
At the very last moment, the young goblin leapt to the side and avoided the closing maw of the beast, then before the crocodile could react, he leapt back on top of the beast’s snout and held its jaws closed by wrapping his arms and legs tightly around them.
It was then that the rest of the goblins leapt down, relying on the momentum of their fall to lend power to their spears. Four of them pinned the crocodile’s four legs to the ground and rendered it immobile, while its tail was not flexible enough to hit any of the goblins. Its jaws were still held shut by the first goblin, so it was unable to resist when two of the goblins slit its throat open with their knives and simply bled it to death.
Only after the beast fell still and unmoving did the first goblin – now half-soaked in the crocodile’s blood – let go of his grip and stood up while sighing in relief. He had taken on the greatest risk by playing bait and then holding the beast’s jaws shut, and proved his mettle in the eyes of the older hunters amongst them with that feat.
The carcass itself was naturally stored in Aideen’s storage as well. Normally it would have taken several of the goblins to lug all that meat back to their village, but Aideen’s help made things far easier for them.
