FREE USE in Primitive World

Chapter 228: Chapter 228: Terrifying Encounter

He issued a strict command for them to hold their ground, then slipped seamlessly into the shadows, utilizing a bit of beast repellent as an extra precaution then creeped forward to investigate what had terrified his vanguard.

He moved silently through a thick patch of glowing violet ferns, the air growing thick with a foul, acidic stench, and carefully peered over the edge of a massive, depressed crater in the forest floor.

His breath caught in his throat.

The crater wasn’t made of dirt. It was a shifting, undulating, horrifying sea of matte-black and rusted red. It was a colony.

Thousands… no, tens of thousands… of the giant, cat-sized armored ants he had killed upon first entering the jungle were swarming the massive basin. The continuous clicking of their massive mandibles sounded like a deafening, continuous torrential downpour of rain hitting a tin roof.

They were currently engaged in the systematic, horrific dismantling of a massive, dead Silver-Backed Behemoth… one of the Lord-Beasts Zephyra had warned him about.

As Sol watched, a stray, terrified deer-like creature, panicked by a predator in the woods, stumbled blindly over the edge of the crater.

In a fraction of a second, a black wave of ants surged upward like a liquid tide. They didn’t just bite it, they fucking sheared the it apart with their iron-like mandibles while simultaneously vomiting their neon-green, highly acidic blood directly onto the creature. The creature shrieked, but the sound was cut short as it literally melted into a bubbling slurry of bone and flesh in less than five seconds, completely absorbed by the endless hive.

Sol’s eyes widened. The hair on the back of his neck stood straight up.

And just then these ants happened to see the mantes, and surged forward.

As for doing anything.

“Nope,” Sol whispered to himself, his expression deadpan. “Absolutely not.”

A single ant had been a tutorial mob. A dozen would be a challenging fight. But an entire, coordinated colony measuring in the tens of thousands, capable of melting a Beast into soup in seconds?

You would have to be completely, hopelessly mentally sick to even think about challenging that, Sol’s pragmatic brain concluded instantly. There was no ego here, only math. There is no loot drop in this entire world worth getting dissolved alive by a million acidic ants.

Knowing exactly when to walk away was the true mark of a veteran. He didn’t hesitate.Sol made a ruthless, highly calculated tactical decision. He mentally severed the Domination link to his three Scythe-Mantes, but right before the connection snapped, he issued one final, absolute command: Charge the crater.

As his former vanguard leaped blindly into the sea of ants to act as a fleshy, screaming distraction, Sol used the noise to cover his escape. He backed away from the edge with agonizing slowness, ensuring he didn’t snap a single twig.

Once he was a solid hundred yards away, he turned and sprinted in the opposite direction, putting two miles of dense jungle between himself and the colony before he even allowed himself to take a full breath.

…

But of course, he didn’t abandon his adventure, in fact, the adrenaline of the near-miss kept him razor-sharp as the perpetual twilight of the canopy began to darken into true night and he continued his intense trek through the wilderness.

He spent the next few hours engaged in a series of violent, high-stakes solo skirmishes pushing his physical limits, and relying entirely on his own skills now that his vanguard was gone and he hadn’t found another reliable one.

As he navigated a patch of dense, glowing blue fog, he was ambushed by a pack of Black wolves, but thankfully except the alpha, others weren’t even essence born.

Then it was just a battle of attrition, as the Alpha was cunning and was hiding in the pack to wait for a chance to attack.

As he continued thrashing the common wolves with his spear, he also kept his attention on the hiding Alpha.

As he was busy fighting suddenly from behind him the Alpha Black-Wolf lunged through the pack, jaws snapping for his jugular, Sol didn’t even turn around. His arm snapped backward with blinding speed, his large hand closing around the wolf’s throat in mid-air.

“Caught you,” Sol smirked over his shoulder.

Sol casually reached up, grabbed the massive, furry beast by its throat with one hand, the wolf yelped in shock as he brutally chokeslammed it into the petrified roots of a nearby tree. The impact cratered the wood and pulverized the wolf’s spine.

He dispatched the rest of the pack with precise, blindingly fast spear thrusts, spinning the heavy Void-Oak shaft like a lethal propeller that turned the remaining wolves into bloody mist.

He was gaining immense combat experience, adjusting his stances, and learning exactly how much heavy Golden Liquid to channel without wasting his stamina. He felt invincible.

But as the hours ticked by and the perpetual twilight of the canopy grew noticeably darker, indicating the approach of true night, a creeping sense of frustration began to settle over him.

He wiped a smear of purple blood from his cheek after effortlessly dispatching a massive, dual-tailed serpent that had tried to constrict him. He looked down at the creature’s corpse and activated his Crimson-Sight, analyzing its core.

Yellow. Essence-Born, Sol sighed heavily, kicking the dead, fifty-foot snake into the underbrush with a disappointed grunt.

He leaned against the wide trunk of a purple tree, pulling his waterskin from his belt and taking a long, refreshing drink.

He had hunted dozens of beasts today. He had fought hard, bled a little (mostly from thorns, not monsters), and explored deep into the uncharted territory. But every single creature he had successfully tracked down… aside from the Jaguar he had bound to his backup jade… had been nothing more than an Essence-Born beast. Common mobs. Fodder.

He hadn’t felt that terrifying, suffocating aura of a High Blood beast. He hadn’t seen anything that even remotely resembled the majestic, storm-summoning tiger Chief Veylara had manifested, nor had he heard the thrumming, mechanical wings of the dreaded Dreadwings.

Sol closed his eyes, his analytical mind working through the variables, cross-referencing his combat encounters with the lore Zephyra had provided.

I’m looking at this world design all wrong, he realized, capping his waterskin and wiping his mouth. This isn’t a randomized spawn map in a video game. It’s a living, breathing ecology. The reason I’m only finding Essence-Born beasts and a low-level Jaguar is precisely because there ISN’T a Sovereign here.

It made perfect, brutal sense. Apex predators required massive amounts of high-density essence and territory to survive. If a Layer 8 Lord-Beast or a true Primordial lived in this immediate area, it would have already eaten every single Ghost-Wolf and Stag he had fought today. The sheer ambient terror of a Sovereign’s presence naturally drove the weaker, common beasts away entirely. The abundance of weak prey was the ultimate proof of a lack of apex predators.

I haven’t reached the deep woods at all, Sol concluded, opening his crimson eyes and looking toward the darker, denser horizon where the trees grew so thick they looked like a solid wall of purple wood. I’m in a buffer zone. A relatively ’safe’ kiddie pool between the Veynar tribe and the true, untamed heart of the Great Orrath.

If he wanted a mythic soul… he had to push past the limits of where the normal prey lived. He had to cross the invisible line into the true dark.

Sol checked his remaining bone knives, ensured his backup Blood-Jade was secure, and tightened his grip on his obsidian spear.

A fearless, predatory grin touched his lips as he stepped away from the tree.

“Alright then,” Sol whispered into the misty gloom. “Time to take some risks.”