CHAPTER 122: GREENBACK GORILLAS

Greenback Gorillas

’Interesting.’ Mike hummed as he sat on a tree branch. The direction he was looking into was over 2 miles away, but with his eyesight, the distance posed no problems.

When he decided to enter the Greenback Gorilla Territory, he decided to scout it out a bit, mostly out of curiosity, as he wanted to see what these creatures were capable of which allowed them to acquire a marker on the map.

After all, from what he noticed, creatures that acted in groups tended to be weaker individually, which is why they grouped up, to flesh out their weaknesses.

When he observed them, Mike discovered that this was indeed the case, as individually, many of the Gorillas weren’t much stronger than the felines he encountered when he first landed. However, it didn’t take him long to figure out what made them so dangerous.

Intelligence

Gorillas were already considered to be among the smarter species of animals due to their more developed brains. Moreover, the fact that they had fingers meant that they could do things normal animals couldn’t.

In this case, it was even more extreme as the Gorillas had a semi-complex structure from what he could tell.

He half-expected to just see a bunch of muscular creatures mulling about, occasionally fighting with one another or going out to hunt for food. However, he was quite surprised by what he saw.

In the first place, the first group of Gorillas he noticed seemed like a patrol group. All of them wore primitive clothing like loincloths, and they each had weapons ranging from spears to swords. Mike wasn’t sure if he wanted to call these weapons primitive, as in his mind, primitive weapons consisted of stone or wood.

What they carried around instead looked like vegetation from which blades had grown out of, and while they probably weren’t as good as any of the alloy weapons he’d seen, they were definitely decent.

Making use of the stealth part of his new skill, Mike moved around and spotted several more of these patrols, committing to memory how their setup looked before he moved onto the next one.

Granted, they didn’t look like a well-trained army or anything like that, but they seemed coordinated enough, and that was already very impressive.

He also noticed that while they hunted whatever creature was in the vicinity, the food they acquired wasn’t nearly enough to feed what he assumed was probably another entire community of them, and he quickly realized why.

The trees in the area weren’t the same as the rest in the jungle. They were still massive, sure, but more than that, they produced fruits, and he often saw groups being escorted by the patrols to extract these fruits in large amounts.

The fruits themselves looked like very big green peaches, and Mike had tested one out of curiosity.

He later harvested an entire tree himself.

Something else he noticed, though, was his inability to get too close to the center where the presumed community was. Not due to there being elaborate traps or whatever. No.

There was a presence there.

The moment Mike got even a bit close, his instincts would act up, telling him that whatever was there would notice him immediately he got near, which surprised him.

And excited him.

However, he didn’t just rush in to immediately fight the strongest thing there for a few reasons.

One, he guessed that the ’community’ probably had a bunch of weaker Gorillas there, specifically children and mothers. Other than killing them via collateral sounding off to him, their deaths would provide him with no experience, and hunting them wouldn’t be fun, so he didn’t feel inclined to do so.

Moreover, with how organized the Gorillas are, he did not doubt that the moment he engaged with the presence he felt, they would come in to assist whatever it was, so he would rather thin out the patrols to prevent this.

He liked his hunts uninterrupted.

’This will also be good training for fighting organized groups, considering what’s gonna happen eventually.’ Mike thought as he remembered that over half of his classmates were after his head.

With a thought, Mike activated his Partial Transformation, and he immediately felt strength fill his body as his stats were amplified. However, he frowned a moment later.

Looking at his arms where the fur had appeared, he noticed that the fur didn’t stop at his elbows but crept further along his arms, halfway to his shoulders. Moreover, the fur felt more... coarse.

Not just that, either. It wasn’t by much, but the size increase from the Partial Transformation was a bit more than usual, and the added parts that were his tail and ears seemed a bit more sensitive.

Mike didn’t need to think hard to realize that this was due to the upcoming full moon.

He clicked his tongue.

’Whatever.’ He grumbled and jumped off the tree.

***

The group of Greenback Gorillas had almost finished their patrol and were set to head back in the next hour or so. As such, their guards were lower than usual.

Granted, their guards weren’t super high to begin with. Other than the occasional beast that wandered into their territory, they rarely had to do anything. And why would they?

With the presence of their chieftain, nothing dared enter their territory willingly. To a lot of them, all of this was just a formality.

The only one among them who seemed a bit more serious was the leader of the group.

He was about a head taller than the rest, and his weapon resembled a large axe that almost seemed to have been grown out of the ground itself.

He felt some dissatisfaction at the lax behavior of his subordinates, but it couldn’t be helped. No matter how well-trained one was, after long periods without danger, it was difficult to stay on guard all the time.

He shook his head. When they returned, he would try to convince the elders once more to try and create some way to reasonably train the fighters, as this simply wasn’t sustainabl-

SHA

Before the leader could complete its train of thought, something flashed by, and its eyes widened as it opened its mouth to shout, but instead, what came out was a glob of blood.

Shocked, its hands moved to its neck, only to realize that a large chunk of its neck had been ripped out, and blood was spurting like a river.

It took a step forward, but then its legs gave out, and it collapsed weakly on the ground. A few seconds later, it stopped moving entirely as its blood soaked the dirt.

The surrounding Gorillas stood there in stunned silence, their brains not quite processing what just happened.

One moment, their leader was looking around vigilantly, and in the next, he was on the ground, bleeding out. They hadn’t even seen what struck him.

Before they could come to, though, something flashed by again, and three more Gorillas had their throats ripped out.

It was this that snapped them out of their stupor, and several of them shouted with alarm and panic as the remaining Gorillas quickly grouped up, their backs to each other.

They raised their weapons as each of them looked around desperately to find what was attacking them. It did seem like their decision to group up like this was the right choice, though, as the attacks stopped coming.

A moment later, one of them made a sound, and the rest turned to see a figure emerging from the vegetation.

They all aimed their weapons at the figure and started shouting out threats, but the figure didn’t stop walking until they could see him properly, and the first thing they saw were his glowing blue eyes that shone like lanterns in the dark, making each of them shudder involuntarily.

’I could probably end all of them here with Primal Authority.’ Mike mused when he saw them shaking. However, he decided against it. Not only would that be boring and unnecessary, he genuinely wanted to train his ability to combat groups.

’Though, I probably shouldn’t have killed the leader in that case since it might have been able to coordinate them properly.’ He realized and stopped himself from smiling wryly.

At that moment,the Gorillas finally seemed to have gathered their courage and ran forward with their weapons aimed at Mike.

Mike didn’t retreat and simply smashed his fists together as he awaited their charge.

Immediately they got close, the two closest Gorillas jabbed their spears forward, and Mike swayed to avoid them before he surged forward, claws brandished.

However, the two retreated and made way for two shield-bearing Gorillas who brought up their defenses right as Mike swung.

His strike didn’t carry too much power, but he was still surprised when he saw that he only managed to leave some marks in the shields.

’Their coordination isn’t too bad.’ He thought and ducked out of the way of an arrow, only for two spears to bar his path and stop his retreat, allowing two sword-using Goriallas to flank him.

Mike saw all of this, and smiled a little.

’Alright, this might be more fun than I had originally thought.’