[EoR] Chapter 65

I sailed down the coast, feeling more free than I had in a long, long time.

My first time heading out into the open waters in my kayak had been a small taste of that freedom, as was each subsequent fishing trip, but each of those ended with a return to camp and the rules of my tribe. That had always felt a bit stifling, but once it was directly measured against the freedom of paddling or sailing away, it soon became a weight I couldn’t shake off.

Until now, I thought with glee.

There would be no returning to my tribe this time. That meant I was all on my own, and would need to provide for myself without the help of others, but I had spent years learning from the grandmothers while improving my boat designs, and had managed to get together enough tools, resources, and know-how to ensure I wouldn’t immediately fail in my freedom.

As the wind shifted and the boat slowed, I leaned back and closed my eyes. I could paddle—it wasn’t that large of a boat—but I was in no rush.

While I waited for the winds to pick back up, I considered my growth over the past few years.

I had finally matured enough to start really pushing my physical training again, taking my six-limbed modified calisthenics to the next level. I was also able to start incorporating weights, to some degree, into my training. Mostly, these were just boulders which I carefully and painstakingly carved handles into, or smoothed and rounded off and used like Atlas stones.

Like the boats, some of the newly Bloodied boys—and even some of the grown tribesmen—grew interested in my proto-gym and fitness training, which I was happy to share. I had much rather seen the adolescents compete in physical strength and lifting rather than fight to the death for Blood. This was another reason formal challenges between boys had been on the decline before I left; the boys started building a relationship in their training and competitions, which made it hard for them to turn around and kill each other for Blood, especially when they could already contribute to the tribe with fishing. Roba had been less put off by the fitness side of things, since the boys were training their Brawn and getting stronger that way, even though it was probably the bigger issue. He didn’t train with us, so he didn’t see the growing camaraderie.

Well, it’s not my problem anymore, I thought. Either the Roba would figure it out and put a stop to it, or he’d pit the boys who had bonded against newly Bloodied adolescents in order to bypass the issue. Since he was the chief and they couldn’t hope to challenge him with no Blood, what he said would be what they did, in the end.

In any case, I had finally been able to start growing my Brawn in this life. I only gained a couple new stat points in those years, mostly by focusing on new muscles and movements with this body that I hadn’t really had as a human, and while I had left my equipment behind—it would have sunk my boat immediately—I knew I could rebuild somewhere else and continue on, or even make improvements. If I could just figure out a way to make a sturdy lever that wouldn’t break under load, that alone would open up a bunch of opportunities for new training tools.

My Brain stat also increased by 1, finally, somewhere along the process of working out how to make boats that would work. I didn’t get a boat-making skill, but in learning from the grandmothers and applying those skills, I did eventually pick up a skill similar to how I learned [Carving] from my father, years ago.

[Sewing 1]

Basic mastery of sewing. Minor carryover effect to all textile-based crafting.

The skill had been a surprise, but like [Carving], it only popped once I had hit a point of being able to make a proper, waterproof stitch, which had taken a surprising amount of learning and practice.

These “crafting” skills were something I was really interested in exploring further, once I was living a life within a more comprehensive civilization again, and I had to swallow some regret that I hadn’t found the time to pick up a few in my last life which could have helped me earlier in this life. Mishel would probably have happily taught me carpentry, if I had ever been interested instead of so focused on [Swordsmanship] training, and any of the manor staff could probably have taught me something too, had I again not been so focused on magic and combat—the bulk of which locked to me without mana.

My [Spearmanship] also increased once I started using my bone-and-ivory fishing spear a lot, and I even gained a level to [Dual Wielding], probably in part from my dual-paddling technique once I made myself a second paddle for my kayak. I could have made a double-sided paddle, but when I figured out I could stabilize a paddle on both sides simultaneously with four-arms and [Dual Wielding], I found it hugely effective in carving through the water quite fast. Or maybe it was paddling with one pair of arms while I speared with the other pair of arms which advanced the skill. I had found as Tovar, and again in my time as Mali, that it was usually fairly obvious what earned the skill, but sometimes a bit harder to identify what further advanced the skill.

Beyond that, I slowly but surely advanced my Blood techniques, especially [Blood Restoration]. Unlike magical healing with mana, [Blood Restoration] sped up natural healing, so it was perfect for recovering from workouts, or even during workouts. It just required eating more food and getting more sleep, but that was doable with fishing and an abundance of free time as a tribesman between hunts. In fact, the Bloodied boys who did train with me who still pursued challenges for Blood had done so in part because of jealousy about the recovery technique and wanted to acquire it themselves to be able to train harder and faster.

Some of those teens were quite sad to see me go, but less than I would have thought. Frankly, no matter how much camaraderie had formed, male Uli in large numbers were considered competition to other male Uli. So long as the tribe had enough males to hunt and protect the tribe, one less just meant one less competitor for mates and other resources. Ultimately, I didn’t think Roba had anything to worry about for the tribe, and exile probably wasn’t even necessary, because once those boys were old enough and suffered through a few breeding seasons without mates, the challenges would have resumed. Maybe the timeline for Bloodied boys reaching the rank of tribesman would have been delayed but a couple extra years due to slow starts, but I didn’t think I had changed enough to alter the entire structure of Uli society.

I could see it again and again as I started passing by various tribes along the coast.

Usually, it was a Bloodied boy being lazy about his chores who would spot my boat first. Sometimes, it was a mother or grandmother. Occasionally, when passing by a tribe that wasn’t so strict about keeping kids in their creches, it would be a child. In every case, it usually drew a crowd, one excited and interested about the novelty. I would wave, and the teens, females, and occasionally the children would sometimes wave back, a far cry from the fear about tribe interaction that I had seen during our migration. Not that the fear wasn’t justified, as the roving tribe had hurt us quite badly and forced us into a second migration.

It wasn’t until the tribesmen made their way to the shore, due to the commotion, that the vibe would change. The females and the young would be sent away, and Blood techniques would flare, not immediately hostile so much as a warning not to get any closer. They would watch me until we disappeared from sight of each other, no interest in how I was sailing by aside from concern about a possible attack. Again, it was justifiable, but grown male Uli just seemed to broadly lack the same sociability that was visible among the females and the young.

I couldn’t figure out if it was biological or cultural. There were animals that acted similarly, and it could have been a product of the monestrous nature of Uli, as was often also the case for said animals. Humans weren’t, but there were other polyestrous animals that either weren’t social at all or had steeper competition between males, with males even fighting to the death when there were too many of them.

It was probably cultural, then. Blood may be a primary contributor to cultural development among Uli, but it wasn’t the only one. The Uli didn’t seem to have any religion; they weren’t a storytelling kind of people, and again, I wasn’t sure if that was biological or not. If they did, could that have curtailed the male-on-male violence? If not religion, was it the lack of large scale wars? Humans were rather prone to wars, which also often resulted in dead males, but was also a way to unify males on one side together, against a common enemy.

But there could be a biological aspect to that, too. Humans were individually weak, and working together forced them to select for cooperation, where violent or antisocial tendencies would be removed from the population. Perhaps even war itself acted as a selective criteria, where the most eager to do violence were prone to die, leaving those who were peace-seeking to survive and breed. That wasn’t too different from domestication, and humanity might have self-domesticated in various ways to allow for larger groups to work together. The selective pressure on Uli was almost the opposite, where a lack of willingness to kill those within their social group resulted in death. The Uli may have been breeding themselves further away from domestication, rather than towards it. What would the Uli tribes look like in another ten thousand years? A hundred thousand years?

I shook my head. I wasn’t here to try and fix an entire species, and any fixes I make were biased by my own past as a human, anyway. There wasn’t necessarily anything wrong with the Uli. So long as the species survived, it was successful. I paddled on, making my way back towards my tribe’s original camp site.

*

There were new Uli living in the area we had migrated from. That wasn’t a surprise, as it had been quite a good location with fairly rich tide pools. The issue was the increase in the local uqandu population, which had been severe enough to convince Ardu-un Iqul Roba to relocate our people.

For the first time since I had left my tribe, I decided to try and come to shore and speak with Uli.

I had come to shore a few times for various reasons, but only far, far away from any other tribe. I was mostly able to subsist on my boat without needing land, since I could eat my fish raw and didn’t need a campfire for cooking, and the climate was comfortable enough that I also didn’t need a campfire for heat, or shelter. Mostly, it was storms that sent me back to land, since I didn’t want my boat to capsize or get destroyed by being bashed into jagged rocks.

Since I couldn’t imagine coming to shore at the site of the tribe’s camp would be welcomed, I still sailed past it, coming to shore far enough from the tribe to not be a direct challenge. From there, I approached slowly, stopping a comfortable distance away and waiting for someone to come meet me.

A young chief, one who appeared only just Bloodied enough for the role, came out to meet me. Technically, I was younger and had fewer names on my skin, but that didn’t account for my Metasurvival and hidden Will. The chief was wary, but didn’t seem overly concerned about my strength, and I decided that was probably for the better so I could speak with him without him seeing me as a possible challenger.

Given his youth and Blood, I figured that a nearby tribe had maybe had a schism and split. Intra-tribe conflict usually just resulted in dead Uli and a more powerful singular tribe, but not always. Sometimes when a chief died, depending on what the competition for a new chief looked like, Uli tribesmen who were close to reaching that level would just take their mates, Bloodied, and children and leave. This would become the origin of a new tribe, and was why there wasn’t a complete stigma on Uli taking creche siblings as mates. In these cases, it would be necessary until the new tribe was strong enough to fight another tribe and claim mates from the other tribe.

I wasn’t sure if that was the situation with this tribe, or if it was the leftover after some lines left an existing tribe, or something else entirely, but I greeted the tribe chief with the same respect as I would my own, trying to avoid a fight.

“What brings you here, stranger?” the chief asked warily. “And how were you traveling on the water? I have never seen such a thing.”

“The how is hard to explain, Roba, but it is something called a boat,” I said, using the new Uli word for it. The grandmothers had been the ones to ultimately name it, out of necessity as I kept building them, and it roughly came from “ocean tent” in the Uli language.

It was etymologically interesting to me to be present at the naming of a whole new concept in this culture, because I knew that if the idea survived, the word would change over time. But even if I did figure out a way to make larger boats, made without a stitched hide base, they name would likely persist despite the changed meaning.

I didn’t need to tell this tribe leader all that, though, nor that I had come up with them, but I had no issue talking about it since I saw it as a net-positive technology for all Uli, even if I couldn’t predict where it would lead. “It is something being developed far up the coast, as a way to hunt larger fish out in the ocean.”

“How peculiar,” the chief murmured, clearly interested, but not enough to shift his focus away from the fact that I was a stranger. “So you were out hunting when you passed us by?”

“Ah, not exactly, Roba. I was traveling. I’m in search of resource, a thick black liquid that is sticky. I have been led to believe it may be further down the coast from here. But I stopped because my tribe used to have my camp where your tribe now lives.”

The tribe chief’s eyebrows raised at that. “Is that so?”

His question was probably rhetorical, since there was no way they wouldn’t have seen evidence of people living at these tide pools. We had needed to leave a lot of stuff behind, plus had reshaped parts of the land, evidence which would have lasted for years, even with scavenging animals and storms. The question wasn’t really one of veracity, but one of probing for details, so I just nodded and continued.

“Yes, Roba. Have you been any having issues with uqandu?”

At the mention of the mantises, the chief’s eyebrows furrowed, and he began to bare his tusks. I raised my four hands in placation.

“I ask because that is what drove our tribe from here. They were hunting down our Bloodied, particularly during the breeding season, and when we tried to push them back, we ended up suffering the loss of too many tribesmen. Our Roba decided to move the tribe up-coast.”

The chief calmed himself, then frowned in thought. “We did have some issues with uqandu last season,” he said cautiously. “Why are you telling us this?”

Ah, Uli, I thought, trying not to smirk or laugh. I masked it with a shrug. “No reason. I was just passing by and thought you might like to know, so your tribe doesn’t face the same fate as… my former tribe,” I said, deciding at the last second to identify myself as separate from my former tribe. Though, I left it up in the air as to whether or not my tribe had fallen or if I had left it of my own volition.

I wasn’t seeking an invite to a new tribe, and wasn’t all that interested in re-settling in my old home with new people, especially if the uqandu continued to be an issue, but I couldn’t help testing the Uli out to see how he’d react. I had spent too much time thinking about the nature of our species while sailing, perhaps.

In the end, he didn’t invite me into his tribe like the strange Uli whose friends I had killed when our tribes fought, nor did he challenge me to a fight to the death for my Blood like my former chief had done. There was no talk of trade, because Uli didn’t really do that—a pity, because there was a ton of potential there for me with my boat-making techniques and carving abilities, though it wasn’t like this tribe had anything I needed and couldn’t get on my own—and soon I was walking away, leaving him with the information that would hopefully help stop his young tribe from dying out.

Getting back in my boat and setting sail again, I wondered why I had bothered. Sure, I’d likely have to spend a lot more time in this region while I hunted down the tar pits inland, but it wouldn’t be all that close to this tribe, nor would they help me at all. This one small tribe surviving or dying out wouldn’t affect anything, grand scheme, and I didn’t owe them anything just because they were living where I had once lived.

Maybe I was just trying to reclaim a bit of my humanity, now that I was living life for myself again. A kind warning and some neighborly advice cost me nothing, but could be worth everything to these people. It wasn’t something an Uli would do, but I wasn’t just an Uli.

I was Mali. I was Tovar. I was me. And I would live this life on my own terms, from now on.