FREE USE in Primitive World

Chapter 277: Chapter 277: Cowards And Ungrateful Dogs

“But for the sake of the tribe’s immediate future, we don’t have any other choice right now. It is a desperate gamble. It is either risk a betrayal from the Zharun, or guarantee our absolute extermination by the Zerith and Marauders.”

“What about the other human tribes?” Sol pressed, his strategic mind searching for alternatives. “Humanity is supposed to stick together in this hellhole, right? You said there were other settlements nearby.”

The mere mention of the other human tribes caused a sudden, explosive shift in the atmosphere of the High Hall. The simmering tension among the remaining elders finally boiled over.

An older, gray-haired elder standing near the back wall suddenly slammed his fist violently against a stone pillar, his face flushed with fury.

“They are cowards and ungrateful dogs! Worse than the beasts of the rot!” the elder roared, his voice trembling with a profound, bitter rage. “We sent our fastest, most elite messengers to all three of the neighboring human settlements two nights ago. We had bled for them! Even though we had helped them before in their times of absolute difficulty, they still refused us without a single second of hesitation!”

Another heavily scarred elder chimed in, taking a step toward the center of the room, his fists clenched so tight his knuckles were stark white. “Yeah! When they were facing dire threats, when they were facing annihilation from the beast tides, we helped without hesitation! They had been promising to help us when our time came, swearing blood oaths… but now that the Zerith are marching? They all ran away like cowards!”

The elders began to vent, their voices overlapping as they detailed the sheer, heart-breaking depth of the betrayal. It was a clear, tragic picture of a fractured, terrified humanity.

“When the Khorai tribe was dying of the black-vein plague three winters ago, who sent them our finest medicinal roots? We did! We stripped our own storehouses bare to send them medicinal roots and pure essence,” the first elder said, helpless frustration shining in his eyes.

“Our own children went hungry so theirs could live! And what did their Chieftain tell our messenger yesterday? He made a pathetic, insulting excuse, claiming his warriors were ’too fatigued from the recent harvest’ to mobilize! A pathetic cowardly lie to leave us to die!”

“And what of the Dravak tribe?” another elder added, his tone turning as icy as a winter storm. “Just last summer, a Layer 3 Serpent nested in their primary waters. They were starving. They begged on their knees for our aid.

Warchief Veylara personally led a squad, risking her own life and losing two of our best, most seasoned hunters to slay the beast and clear their waters. Yet, when we asked them to return the favor and stand with us against the coalition? They outright refused. They told our exhausted messenger it was ’not their war.’ As if the Marauders will magically stop at our borders once we are dead!”

High Shaman Zephyra exhaled a long, thick plume of blue smoke, her milky eyes entirely devoid of emotion, staring blankly at the far wall. “TheTeshari tribe was the worst of all. They reside in the high cliffs to the east. We considered them our closest kin. Our fastest messenger climbed for two days and two nights through a freezing, torrential rainstorm to reach their high-cliff gates. He was half-dead from exposure when he arrived.”

She paused, the silence in the room growing deafening. “They didn’t even grant us the basic respect of a verbal refusal. They didn’t even open the gates. They looked down at him from their warm battlements and completely ignored him. They left him standing in the freezing wind, pounding on the stone doors, until he was forced to turn back to avoid freezing to death.”

The elders fell into a heavy, resentful silence, the bitter sting of betrayal hanging thickly in the air.

Sol looked grim. He stood in the center of the High Hall, slowly lowering his head as he processed the tragic reality of the Great Orrath.

There was no honor here. There were no grand, sweeping alliances of humanity standing united against the encroaching darkness, like the fantasy novels he used to read back on Earth. It was a fragmented, terrified, brutally selfish world where every tribe was an isolated island, desperately clawing for their own survival, entirely willing to watch their neighbors burn if it bought them another week of life.

The Veynar tribe was completely, utterly alone, save for a highly volatile, treacherous pact with the Zharun bastards.

Internally, a wave of profound, bitter regret washed over Sol. He understood the Warchief’s impossible position perfectly. The deal with Prince Gorr, no matter how distasteful and dangerous, was a basic survival plan.

Even though he desperately wanted to step out past the gates, repay the Veynar tribe’s kindness, and crush the enemies himself, there wasn’t much he could physically do at this exact moment. He had the raw materials, but not the refined strength.

If he still had the Hive Mother…

His mind flashed back to the apocalyptic valley. If that colossal, terrifying Ant Queen hadn’t weaponized her own soul and burned her existence to ash to secure the mutual kill against the Great Badger, the entire dynamic of this impending war would be different.

If he had managed to keep his Domination over a Layer 3 Hive Mother, he would have inherited her entire colony. He would have had thousands of rust-red, highly organized, fearless insectoid soldiers at his beck and call. He wouldn’t need to care about Zharun Envoy. He wouldn’t care about the cowardly, ungrateful human tribes hiding behind their walls.

He could have marched his own personal, apocalyptic army directly to the southern border. He could have buried the Marauders and the Zerith under a suffocating, acidic sea of red chitin and superheated scythes. Maybe He could have drowned their Layer 4 warlords in a tidal wave of sheer, unyielding numbers. He could have been a one-man extinction event.

But the Great Orrath didn’t deal in ’what-ifs.’ The universe didn’t care about his missed opportunities.

The Ant Queen was dead. The army was scattered or destroyed in the crossfire. The massive, beautiful cheat code he had temporarily engineered in the valley was gone forever, locked away in the ashes of the crater.

He couldn’t rely on loopholes, hijacked armies, or the fickle nature of primitive alliances right now. The safety of Kira, and his own luxurious, highly privileged life in this tribe was entirely dependent on his own raw, personal power.

So, the best he could do right now was to explore more of this phantom and essence power and grow stronger as fast as he humanly could. He had to rely on his own two fists, the speed of the Dreadwing, and the mass of the Badger.

He needed to level up.

Sol took a deep, steadying breath, pushing the regret and the anger aside. His silver-crimson eyes sharpened, focusing entirely on Warchief Veylara with a burning, intense ambition. The gamer in him took over, analyzing the mechanics, looking for the fastest path to maximum power.

“I understand,” Sol said, his voice cold and analytical. “The Zharun will act as our temporary shield. But how do I utilize this power? How do I get strong enough to fight a Layer 4?”