FREE USE in Primitive World

Chapter 267: Chapter 267: Loot

There was no terrifying suction, no metaphysical black hole tearing through reality. Instead of the ravenous, autonomous hunger from before, the Golden Liquid in his solar plexus felt like a massive, coiled snake that had just swallowed two whole elephants.

It was completely, stubbornly dormant. When Sol tried to forcefully squeeze his core to draw the Queen’s essence out, a sharp, terrifying spike of phantom pain lanced through his chest, as if his ribs were physically threatening to splinter outward under the internal pressure.

Frowning, a stubborn crease forming on his forehead, Sol pulled his hand back.

Maybe a Layer 3 is just too big? Maybe they take up too much bandwidth? his mind reasoned frantically, refusing to give up on the loot.

He spun around and blurred over to the nearby corpse of a massive Layer 2 Obsidian Commander. The fifteen-foot elite guard had been crushed under the Badger’s initial, berserker charge, its superheated scythes now dull and cold. Sol slapped his palm hard against its intact, faceted head, trying to siphon a lesser, theoretically more manageable soul just to test his limits.

Still nothing.

Not even a spark. His core remained utterly, entirely unresponsive. It felt incredibly dense, impossibly heavy, and absolutely, unequivocally satisfied.

He closed his eyes and looked inward, realizing the terrifying truth. The hyper-kinetic, supersonic storm of the Dreadwing and the crushing, tectonic mass of the Badger were currently swirling around each other in a delicate, high-tension orbit. Trying to shove even a Layer 2 spirit into that fragile equilibrium would be like throwing a lit stick of dynamite into a pressurized powder keg.

“Right. Okay,” Sol muttered, taking a slow, cautious step back from the dead insects.

The manic, greedy high of the double-absorption was finally beginning to recede, rapidly replaced by a cold, sobering wave of pragmatism. He could feel the sheer, volatile power thrumming through his veins. It was intoxicating, but it was also incredibly dangerous.

He raised his arm and wiped a thick streak of mixed blood, acid-tainted mud, and cold sweat from his brow, exhaling a long, shaky breath.

“Even with hyper-regeneration and an evolved, transmigrator body, the physical vessel still obeys the basic laws of physics,” Sol analyzed quietly, looking down at his own trembling hands. “A cup can only hold so much water before it spills over. Two Lord-Blood spirits seems to be the absolute, non-negotiable hard cap. Any more than this… and I don’t just risk an internal collapse. I’ll literally pop like a blood balloon.”

Still refusing to walk away from the architect of this entire massacre empty-handed, Sol looked down at the pure Blood-Jade, which was still perfectly clear in his hand. He pressed the crystal against the Ant Queen’s shattered head, hoping to at least capture her formidable soul in the stone to use as a weapon or a bargaining chip later.

But, the crystal remained perfectly, stubbornly clear. Heck, it didn’t even glow.

He closed his eyes and tried to pry her soul out using his raw mental power, exactly like he had done with the Dreadwing.

Still, no response.

Just an empty, hollow silence.

In a final, desperate attempt, Sol unleashed his ’Free Use’ Domination power. He sent a tendril of the tyrannical Silver Liquid directly into her massive corpse to devour whatever was left.

But as the Silver Liquid swept through her ruined vessel, it pulled back nothing but a handful of shattered, useless spirit energy and burned-out, microscopic soul fragments.

Sol lowered his hand, staring at the colossal insect that had, for a brief, glorious hour, been his absolute servant. He let out a slow, heavy sigh as the brutal truth settled over him.

The Ant Queen hadn’t just died from her physical wounds. To secure the kill against the Great Badger and protect the remnants of her hive, she had completely overused her mental power. She had weaponized her own existence, burning her consciousness as fuel for that final strike, resulting in the absolute, irreversible annihilation of her own soul.

There was nothing left to loot. She had burned it all to ash.

“Rest in peace, Your Majesty,” Sol murmured, wiping the dirt from his hands. “You played a hell of a game.”

…

He tucked the empty pure Blood-Jade safely back into his leather pouch. The metaphysical loot may have been capped, but his instincts quickly pivoted back to the physical reality of his situation.

The Great Orrath was a hungry, unforgiving place. The apocalyptic duel had created a temporary dead zone, terrifying the local wildlife into fleeing. But that wouldn’t last. The valley was currently a massive, miles-wide bowl filled to the brim with the scent of roasted flesh, vaporized acid, and the highly concentrated, incredibly valuable blood of two Layer 3 Sovereigns and thousands of elite lackeys.

It was the greatest free buffet in the history of the jungle. Soon, every scavenger, opportunist, and slumbering horror within a hundred-mile radius would converge on this exact spot.

“Time to carve the physical drops and get the hell out of the open,” Sol said, his silver-crimson eyes sharpening.

He gripped his Void-Oak spear and blurred across the mud, returning to the ruined corpse of the Lord Great Badger. The beast was dead, but its flesh was still saturated with dense, Layer 3 earth essence. For a human vessel relying on the Golden Liquid’s hyper-regeneration, eating high-tier essence meat was absolutely vital to maintaining his stamina.

Sol drove the obsidian tip of his spear into the un-melted side of the Badger’s thick neck.

Before, even with his baseline enhanced strength, cutting through Sovereign-tier muscle would have been like trying to hack through a tractor tire with a butter knife. But now, Sol tapped into the Badger’s own residual tectonic power resting in his core. He flooded his arms with the heavy, gravity-crushing density.

The Void-Oak spear slid through the silver fur and dense muscle like a hot scalpel through wax.

With a few flawless, hyper-fast surgical cuts… guided by the Dreadwing’s microscopic precision… Sol carved out twenty pounds of pristine, glowing silver essence-meat from the beast’s inner shoulder. He quickly wrapped the heavy, nutrient-dense slabs in broad violet leaves and packed them tightly into his rucksack.

Next, he sprinted over to the shattered remains of the Lord Dreadwing.

The acid sacs were completely ruptured and too volatile to safely harvest, but the physical armor was a different story. Sol moved to the base of the insect’s torn wings. Among the thousands of shattered, useless fragments, he found what he was looking for: a single, unbroken, three-foot-long shard of the Dreadwing’s primary crystalline wing-strut.

It was incredibly lightweight, yet when he experimentally slammed it against a petrified Void-Oak root, it cleaved clean through the ancient wood without leaving a single microscopic chip on the edge. It was the perfect raw material for a future blade. He secured the sapphire shard to his back, wrapping the base in leather.

Just as he tied the final knot, a sound rolled over the valley.

It wasn’t the mechanical clicking of insects or the territorial roar of a mammal. It was a low, unnatural, multi-tonal hum that vibrated the muddy water in the acid pools. It echoed from the deep, uncharted northern expanse of the jungle, carrying an aura of ancient, suffocating hunger.

The dinner bell had officially been rung. The real monsters of the Great Orrath were waking up.