FREE USE in Primitive World

Chapter 260: Chapter 260: Targeting The Great Badger

He was the conductor of this orchestra of carnage.

But while the lackeys ground each other into bloody paste, Sol’s silver-crimson eyes were locked entirely on the true prize in the center of the valley.

Down in the ruined valley, the war of the Lords was completely devoid of any grand, philosophical meaning. It was just raw, uncompromising biology clashing at the highest possible tier of strength.

The Great Badger was taking an absolute, terrifying beating.

The two Layer 3 Sovereigns were theoretically perfectly matched, acting as natural hard-counters to each other. But in the practical reality of the battlefield, the Lord Dreadwing had completely abandoned the ground game. It fully utilized its absolute, inherent advantage: flight and super speed.

It was a masterclass in aerial dominance. The massive insect didn’t just fly, it dictated the very physics of the airspace. It would dive from above at speeds rivaling a modern jet, moving so fast it created localized sonic booms that shattered the surrounding petrified rocks into deadly shrapnel.

The Great Badger was the ultimate vanguard. Its defense was astronomical. It hardened its thick, silver fur into indestructible stone spikes, and its Lord-Bloodline possessed a terrifyingly high anti-venom resistance that simply ignored the Dreadwing’s corrosive green acid. But the Badger was tethered to the earth.

It would slam its massive paws into the ground, using pure, earth-shattering kinetic force to hurl massive boulders and splintered tree trunks into the sky, trying to swat the insect down.

But the Dreadwing’s thirty thousand microscopic lenses calculated the trajectory of every projectile in fractions of a millisecond. It pivoted instantly in mid-air, shifting its momentum backward without losing a fraction of its balance, effortlessly weaving through the debris before initiating another blistering dive.

SWOOSH-BOOM!

The Dreadwing swooped down in a blurring arc of iridescent sapphire. Its massive, razor-sharp front legs… each the size of a steel girder… sliced a deep, fifty-foot trench across the Badger’s back. The impact violently ripped away the protective layers of hardened earth essence and shattered the stone spikes into dust.

Before the colossal Great Badger could even roar in pain or swing its massive claws to retaliate, the insect was already gone. It pulled up into a sharp, vertical climb, completely out of reach, dropping a hyper-concentrated volley of glowing green acid bombs directly into the freshly exposed muscle of the Badger’s back.

The Great Badger roared in pure, unadulterated agony. The sound physically vibrated the blood in Sol’s veins from a mile away.

The acid hissed violently as it ate through the thick silver fur and burned deep into the flesh. But the Badger was the pinnacle of the vanguard tree. It slammed its massive front paws into the earth.

The ground fractured, and a localized shockwave of gravity-crushing force erupted upward in a wide pillar, visibly distorting the air, attempting to rip the agile insect from the sky and crush it against the mud.

The Dreadwing didn’t panic. It pivoted instantly in mid-air, shifting its momentum entirely backward in an impossible, physics-defying maneuver. It hovered effortlessly just an inch outside the range of the crushing gravity well, its crystalline wings humming a mocking tune, before initiating another blistering, supersonic dive.

Speed, Sol analyzed, his eyes tracking the impossible, blurring movements of the Lord Dreadwing with absolute, intense focus.. Speed is the ultimate power.

The Badger had the strength to level a mountain and the defense to tank a meteor. But none of that mattered if it couldn’t hit what it couldn’t catch. The Dreadwing was a phantom, swooping down, slicing deep trenches into the Badger’s stone armor with its scythe-like legs, and flying back up into the clouds before the mammal could even swing its massive claws.

Sol leaned forward on his Commander mount, his grip tightening around his Void-Oak spear, and his eyes locked onto the iridescent blur of the giant dragonfly.

Meanwhile, his mind was rapidly calculating his own “build.”

He already possessed an incredibly strong, durable physical body. His Golden Liquid core granted him hydraulic-press strength, infinite stamina, and an absurd hyper-regeneration factor. He possessed absolute, tyrannical mental control thanks to the Silver Liquid. But he was severely lacking in mobility.

If he encountered an enemy that could simply outmaneuver him, he would become nothing more than a stationary punching bag, exactly like the Great Badger was right now.

He didn’t just want flight. He wanted the Dreadwing’s absolute, mathematical mastery of the kill. He wanted the reflexes that processed visual information in fractions of a millisecond, granting him reaction times that bordered on precognition.

He wanted the spiritual equivalent of its compound eyes… the near 360-degree panoramic vision and flawless depth perception. He wanted to become an untouchable, hyper-lethal assassin.

“I’ve made my choice,” Sol whispered to himself, a predatory glint igniting in his eyes. “The Dreadwing is going to be my first Phantom.”

But to claim the loot, he had to intervene. If he let this play out naturally, the Dreadwing would eventually carve the Badger into pieces and emerge victorious, but it would take too long. Worse, the Dreadwing would be far too healthy for Sol to safely subdue, even with his Silver Liquid. The two Lords were perfectly matched in theory, but in practice, the Badger was a punching bag. He needed to level the playing field to ensure mutual destruction.

He needed to manipulate the aggro and end this on his own terms.

Sol closed his eyes, tapping deeply into the heavy, sprawling network of the hive mind, reaching directly for the slumbering, colossal intellect of the Hive Mother resting on her living palanquin below him.

Target the Great Badger, Sol commanded, projecting the image of the silver-backed behemoth into the Queen’s mind. Hit it with a concentrated mental spike. Don’t try to control it. Just distract it. Break its stance!

The Queen’s massive antennae twitched. Even heavily injured, the Layer 3 Sovereign possessed a mental capacity that dwarfed anything else in the jungle.

And a silent, invisible ripple of pure psychic force shot across the valley.