The Cavemen - IAS Side Story

Timothy the Stingray was a man of many ambitions, he was a great example for any mages who wanted to progress into the higher realms of mana! His ambitions were great, but his knowledge was still under development, as there was only so much that an earthling could figure out on his own, after stepping onto a massive, complicated planet.

One thing that eluded him for a long time, was the fact that countless civilizations, or tribes, lived in vastly different time periods, even though they were all on the same planet! The planet he was on was so big, that even the more advanced civilizations couldn’t, or at least didn’t bother to help other, lower civilizations advance in technology!

This was a baffling fact that created the basis of what this planet was about! Naturally, he was unaware, or ignorant of the idea of how some people spend their time, and their life. One example were the various species of cavemen, who haven’t progressed much despite having an ancestry stretching over hundreds of thousands of years! In this case, it was a good example that mother nature sometimes played favorites, because there were plenty of other species of humans on this planet who had progressed greatly in terms of technological affairs.

Although the minds of these cavemen were yet to develop properly, magic was something that no creature could avoid. Being able bodied, physically, humans had a bit of an advantage when it came to magic, because they could bear more mana in their pools in comparison to smaller mammals, or primates!

Cavemen lived in various faunas, both filled with modern animals, or with what could be considered ancient animals. The planet that they were on was that big, and supportive of different faunas!

Leading by example, was a group of cavemen who could be considered that they were in the Stone Age, in earthly terms. Though isolated, this group had discovered the use of magic a couple thousand years ago, and although they use it on a daily basis, they were yet to progress to the point where they could challenge the common mage in more developed civilizations, that lied within the God’s Punishment realm of mana, even though that realm was the lowest amongst the low.

Nevertheless, this tribe of cavemen was the most advanced in terms of magic in their specific fauna, so they had reigned supreme throughout these past couple hundred years! This group, and its offspring were known to be able-bodied, because they consumed meat more than the average caveman, on the count of how they could access food so easily.

Their easy access to food was so impactful, that it may even have stunned their cognitive development! When one has easy access to food, they may not go out of their way to get their hands on it.

This concept of readily available food is an example, or at least one of the reasons why thousands of species never evolved to be super intelligent! Comfortable creatures would simply not care to put themselves under any unnecessary pressure.

Anyway, even though cognitive progress may be slow amongst some species, magic itself wasn’t as slow. If it could progress amongst lesser creatures, it could progress amongst humans even easier, regardless of the fact that they were cavemen, as even cavemen could make good use of a bigger mana pool!

Regarding the group, or tribe of cavemen in question, two ambitious little guys from within the tribe, were experimenting with a series of powers that may help their tribe exceptionally! They were brothers, sixteen and fifteen years old, and one could say that their ambition was almost genetic! The series of trouble that their tribe was facing now had everything to do with how comfortable they had felt up until recently.

“The big glow is risky, small glow is better. It’s tamable.” Tal, the older brother said. “We must tame it first, as we did with the hounds.”

“A snag on our path is merely a stepping stone, brother. We must take risks once in a while!” Mali, the younger brother said. “Let’s try our Flesh Mender ability on an antelope, let’s hunt one. If we can fix its burnt flesh, then surely we can fix the flesh of our friends. The mammoths are learning to fight us back, the cat’s too, so we must master the Flesh Mender soon!”

“You’re right, brother, we must make haste. Between the trampling of the mammoths, and the clawings of the cats, our tribe could be wiped out completely in the coming moons…” Tal agreed.

Necessity oftentimes led to innovation, and in this case, these brothers were very aware of the risk that their tribe was in. Their bickering may sound diplomatic, but in their actual language, they sounded no different from chimpanzees arguing over bananas! They certainly didn’t look innovative, but they had stepped up, and were hoping to save their tribesfolk in the eleventh hour, so to speak. The growing dangers within their fauna didn’t let them live in comfort any longer, they had to adapt!

To carry out an experiment, they left the comfort of their cave behind them, and looked for a live, healthy antelope. After they found a healthy one, Tal shot a small, foot-wide fireball at its leg, rendering it immobile for a good minute! The shock of pain kept the antelope immobile, even if the burn itself wasn’t powerful enough when it came to causing crippling, permanent damage.

The antelope was fine, but since it couldn’t run away, Tal and Mali were given the opportunity to approach the animal. In other words, they could run an experiment on it.

“Use the big glow, brother, and I will look at the wound from up close. Let us see if bigger glows are better, or worse.” Tal said, guiding his younger brother.

The antelope was of course terrified when it saw these big, dirty, black haired primates approach it, but it was still in shock. The antelope could not run away.

Mali carried out his experiment in peace. He summoned the new, Flesh Mender ability that he and his brother were working on, and unleashed it on the antelope!

This ability’s key features were the use of raw mana. In other words, Mali poured out blue mana out of his very own mana pool, in order to help heal the wound that he was aiming on! This was an expensive trick, especially for a caveman who was far away from mastering it, but progress after all, demanded some sacrifice.

Regarding its use, the Flesh Mender ability seemed to be doing what it was designed to do. It healed the antelope’s third degree burn that it had on its leg, and reduced it to a first degree burn! Now they weren’t sure if this ability would work as effectively against deep cuts that the common wild cat inflicted against their tribespeople, but they figured that if the Flesh Mender could heal burn marks, it can necessarily heal the skin, even if not in great depths.

“That was good, you healed a bad burn. Hmm… if we can stop the bleeding on deep cuts as well, then we’ll know for sure that our new power is useful. Over the passing moons, we can teach it to everyone we know.” Tal said. He was enthusiastic, jumping around much like an ape.

“We can’t wait around until one of us gets hurt, brother. After all, we may not see another moon ourselves, as our deaths are unpredictable.” Mali argued, and he was more eager to progress.

“What’s in your mind, then, brother? Shall we hunt another antelope? The one you healed ran away.” Tal added.

“Antelope flesh isn’t people's flesh, they’re different. Perhaps we shall pay a visit to those women that were killed by the sabertoothed ones recently? We buried their bodies, but what good are their bodies to them now when their breathing has stopped forever? We might as well test the Flesh Mender on them.” Mali pitched his desperate idea.

Tal was very uncomfortable with this idea, and he expressed it immediately through some growling, and arm flailing. “We shall not touch the graves of the dead, it’s frowned upon. We’ll be cursed with bad luck for forty moons!”

“If we don’t figure out the Flesh Mender soon, then we may not see forty moons, brother! Please understand that we must regain control of the lands, and soon, or else our tribe won’t make it. We lost two-hundred people in a very short time, so we’re desperate for a fix, and so we must practice desperate ideas!” Mali countered.

There was no arguing with the mere fact that one’s main purpose was to, and have their offspring survive. No matter where in the universe, a human’s indomitable spirit was always present, and radiant!

The brothers had to progress, regardless of the few rules that their little society had set up. If they didn’t break these norms now, then there may not be anyone left to follow them, because this tribe had been lazy for too long now! They were losing their dominance over the lands quickly, and there was no bigger threat than that, so they had to adapt.

With that said, Mali's suggestion led them to the graves of the recently deceased. It was very frowned upon to desecrate graves, even amongst cavemen who had only started practicing funerals throughout these past couple of centuries, but these brothers believed that their horrid act today would be justified! Or, they were hoping that it would be.

They eventually dug the graves up, using sharp stones as shovels, and sure enough, the decaying corpses of three recently deceased women were there. They were decaying, however, the corpses still had flesh on them, on the count that they had been buried less than three days ago. They were filled with maggots, and bore this unholy odor, but the brothers had to fight their urges to hurl, as the task that they had in mind was of grave importance, far more important than their comfort!

“You do it, Mali. The Flesh Mender listens to your commands more than it listens to mine.” Tal encouraged his younger brother, “The deep scratches are over there, above the chest. See if you can heal them.”

Although the scene that the brothers had walked themselves in was terrifying, Mali was still enthusiastic. He ignored the stench of the corpses, and started pouring mana on the victim's chest!

The Flesh Mender ability featured the use of pure, blue mana, so it wasn’t exactly a complicated ability. The ability, or simply put, its health regeneration properties, were purely based on how much mana one poured on a wound, and how decent their mana quality was. These two things dictated the results, and in this case, Mali poured a lot of mana on the wounds of this single corpse, hoping to make great progress!

Blue light emitted from his palm as he poured the mana, illuminating the green fauna around him as if he was a beacon of goodwill! He was overperforming, so unsurprisingly, he healed the wounds across the corpse’s chest completely! Not even a tiny scratch remained on her chest.

Mali ran out of mana at that point, and he was expecting this, so it didn't bring him down. He was happy enough that the Flesh Mender worked perfectly, and it did what it was supposed to; Mend flesh!

“Haha!” He celebrated shortly, “She's fine! It worked!”

“Well, she's still dead… but at least we can heal our people now.” Tal sighed in relief.

“We can heal bites and scratches from a sabertooth, but that's not the only animal killing our people.” He said, and then used his sharp rock to snap off another corpse's leg, right bone below the knee. “We need to know if we can heal bones, brother. Come and try the Flesh Mender on this one, as I've run out of mana already. Perhaps we can mend bones as well?”

Tal was at first hesitant to do what he was asked, but his brother's innovative enthusiasm was infectious. He couldn’t say no to him this time, and simply approached the corpse to get it over with!

Tal poured mana right below its knee, but he didn’t want to run out of mana, so he poured little amounts on it, amounts as thin as a finger. Initially his approach seemed ineffective, but then he discovered that the mana he poured, acted as if it was a tool, a needle. It slowly pulled the corpse's leg into place, and then regenerated the bone, making it look as if it was brand new! Afterwards, he simply healed the flesh above the initial wound, closing it up for good.

“I can't believe this is working so well…” Tal celebrated calmly.

“I told you it would work!” Mali exclaimed, “As long as our people survive animal attacks, we can heal them even if they're missing a leg!”

The sense of relief and victory that they felt was overwhelming! Success will remain the greatest type of joy that a human could feel, and in this case, they were feeling as if they were over the moon! They even forgot that they were cursed for forty days, for desecrating graves, and either way, they were now certain that their cause was justified, so they wouldn’t even care about being cursed! They could save so many people with the discovery that they made, and this turning point may even inspire their tribe to cultivate their magical abilities more and more.

Anyway, just as they were about to rebury the corpses, Mali noticed something strange. He noticed that the corpse which he had experimented on moments ago, moved!

This wasn’t the main problem, he figured that weird things could happen when one messed with graves, he knew that, but there was something else that was very off-putting about the corpse moving. It moved slowly, cautiously, as if it didn't want to be noticed!

When it moved again, Mali pulled his brother out of the two-foot deep grave, and shouted. “Brother, look out!”

The grave panic that he was experiencing was justified. The moment he had pulled his brother out of the grave, the corpse had figured out that her movement, and her ploy had been discovered, so she had lunged forward, attempting to bite either one of the brothers!

“What…” Tal grunted after he noticed the corpse moving. “No… stay down!”

A blink later, he launched a foot-wide fireball against the moving corpse, attempting to kill it, but he failed. The fireball wasn't intensive, so it only managed to burn its hair away, and also give the corpse second-degree burns! This abomination was still moving!

Nevertheless, he did buy himself a few more seconds, so he and Mali quickly jumped a few feet away, attempting to distance themselves from what spooked them to the core! Just then, the second corpse started moving, though more sluggishly.

“This is what we get for messing with graves, brother! We're cursed!” Tal shouted out.

“We're not cursed, probably not… The mana must have revived their heads, their brains, there's no other explanation. That bastard of a woman tried to kill us tactically, so there’s no chance that she’s mindless now.” Mali speculated, as he attempted to bring reason into the equation.

“It looks like our mana made them fearless as well, brother. Look at her, she's not even trying to pat herself down, her head is still on fire!” Tal pointed out.

It was difficult to understand the predicament that the two of them had created, but they tried their best nonetheless. They would've never thought that they'd see walking corpses in their life, nevertheless to be the direct cause behind it, but here they were!

Mali had run out of mana, but he wasn’t exactly defenseless. He found the biggest rock that he could carry, possibly eighty kilograms heavy (176 pounds), and tossed it against the corpses!

The stone he tossed mowed the corpses down as if it was a bowling ball taking down pins, and since his attack was effective, Tal followed suit. They overwhelmed the corpses with heavy stones, and actually buried the corpses with them at some point! This method of theirs was effective.

“You can move all day now if you want to, stinky one! No one's getting you out of there.” Mali exclaimed.

Afterwards, the two of them sat near the graves for a few minutes to catch their breaths. They couldn't stop thinking about the absolute horror that they just experienced, and fairly so.

“Mana revives the dead… brother. What will we do with this knowledge?” Mali asked, as he felt responsible for making such a horrid discovery.

“We must not tell anyone,” Tal said, “The dead must remain dead, because even if we revive them, they don't seem to return to their old selves. They're violent, dangerous, and they could be a bigger threat to us than the sabertooth cats ever were! We got lucky, but we must never experiment on corpses again!”

“I agree with you, brother. It's enough that we can now help our tribe survive. There's only eighty of us left, so we must not add walking corpses to the list of dangers surrounding us!” Mail nodded.

The brothers came to an agreement that day. They never spoke of the corpses again, and sure enough, the Flesh Mender helped keep their people alive for at least a decade!

After a decade, their tribe had been repopulated successfully, and bore over a hundred members despite losing several people along the way, so they may live on!

The Flesh Mender didn't seem to work against diseases, but the brothers felt that this was a problem that only mother nature could fix if she wanted to, so they didn't bother tampering with it. They believed that diseases could be avoided, as long as they didn't eat anything that made them sick, or at least they hoped so.