FREE USE in Primitive World

Chapter 301: Chapter 301: Breakthrough

On the second day, he went deeper, deliberately hunting the apex predators of Layer 2 to synthesize specific elemental affinities for his phantoms.

He spent six hours tracking a Venom-Weaver… a massive, terrestrial arachnid the size of a transport carriage, known for spinning webs of hyper-dense, razor-sharp essence threads that could slice a Vanguard warrior to ribbons. He found it nesting in a cavernous hollow formed by the roots of a dead Heartwood tree.

The battle was grueling, pushing his combat reflexes to their absolute breaking point. The Venom-Weaver moved with erratic, terrifying speed, spitting globes of concentrated neurotoxin that melted the solid stone around him. Sol had to rely entirely on the Dreadwing’s passive neural acceleration just to track the beast’s movements.

He danced through a labyrinth of invisible, razor-sharp threads, feeling the agonizing sting as the edges grazed his fortified skin, drawing thin lines of bright red blood. He couldn’t rely solely on brute force, he had to use his mind.

He kited the massive spider out of its hollow, drawing it into a narrow ravine filled with loose, jagged rocks. When the Weaver reared up to spit another volley of acid, Sol didn’t dodge away. He triggered a fraction of the Great Badger’s active aura.

A heavy, oppressive wave of localized gravity slammed downward. The loose rocks in the ravine trembled, and the massive spider was abruptly crushed flat against the earth, its eight legs buckling under the sudden, immense spike in tectonic pressure.

Sol didn’t hesitate. He launched himself off the wall of the ravine, turning his body into a living missile. He drove his Void-Oak spear directly down into the cluster of the spider’s eight glowing eyes, burying the obsidian blade up to the haft.

The beast shrieked, a sound that vibrated the fillings in Sol’s teeth, before its massive body went entirely rigid and collapsed.

He spent the next hour absorbing its dense, toxic core. The raw, high-tier essence flooded his meridians. The purple drops he had refined from the Breath of Dawn acted as a catalyst, seamlessly integrating the spider’s chaotic energy into his own reserves.

In his mental space, the Dreadwing’s sapphire lightning flared brilliantly, digesting the kinetic speed of the arachnid, while the Great Badger absorbed the terrestrial mass.

On the way back, he deliberately charted a course toward the massive, scarred valley where his journey had essentially begun… the epicenter of the apocalyptic three-way battle between the Hive Mother, the Lord Dreadwing, and the Lord Great Badger.

He needed to see it. He needed a physical reminder of the power ceiling he was striving to reach.

When Sol finally broke through the dense treeline and stepped onto the ridge overlooking the valley, the sheer scale of the devastation made him stop in his tracks.

It was completely empty. The surrounding jungle, usually teeming with insects, scavengers, and lesser predators, was dead silent. Even days later, the residual, terrifying auras of the Layer 3 Sovereigns lingered in the soil, keeping every living thing miles away.

The valley floor looked like it had been subjected to an orbital bombardment. Massive, perfectly smooth craters fifty feet deep scarred the earth, the result of the Great Badger’s tectonic strikes. Huge swaths of the petrified forest had been completely melted into pools of bubbling, toxic glass by the Dreadwing’s highly pressurized acid.

And scattered across the scorched earth were the massive, bleached exoskeletons of the Hive Mother’s elite guard, completely hollowed out by the kinetic shockwaves.

Sol slowly walked down into the crater. The air was thick and heavy, tasting of ozone and sulfur.

He stood in the exact center of the devastation, looking at a massive, sheared cliff face that had been cleanly sliced in half by a stray attack.. He placed his hand against his chest, right over his solar plexus.

This is what is sleeping inside me, Sol thought, his silver-crimson eyes glowing in the gloom of the destroyed valley. This isn’t just power. It’s natural disaster.

The realization didn’t humble him, it ignited a burning, insatiable furnace of ambition in his gut. If he wanted to survive the Zerith warlords, if he wanted to ensure he never had to stand in a room and watch another girl get traded away to a tyrant because he lacked the leverage to stop it, he needed to unlock this disaster.

He spent the rest of the second day meditating in the center of the crater, using the Breath of Dawn technique to draw in the residual, highly concentrated Sovereign essence that still clung to the melted rocks.

The purple drops in his core multiplied, feeding the dormant spirits until they thrummed with a restless, agonizing vitality. The metaphorical walls of his Layer 0 containment were straining, bulging outward under the sheer pressure of the refined energy.

On the third day, the breakthrough finally arrived.

He was hunting in the jagged ravines to the east, tracking a Layer 2 Omen Blood known as a Wind-Talon… a massive, raptor-like avian with feathers sharp enough to cut solid steel. It was a notoriously difficult beast to kill because of its speed and aerial advantage, making it the perfect catalyst to push his body over the edge.

The fight was a grueling, high-speed nightmare. The Wind-Talon swooped down from the bluffs in a blur of gray feathers, launching volleys of compressed air blades that sliced deep gashes into the petrified wood all around him.

Sol didn’t use the environment to hide. He engaged it in the open.

He pushed his physical limits past the breaking point, his muscles screaming under the strain as he deflected the air blades with the shaft of his Void-Oak spear. He was bleeding from a dozen shallow cuts, his tunic shredded, but his silver-crimson eyes never lost their absolute, diamond-hard focus.

When the Wind-Talon finally dove for the kill, its massive talons extended to rip his head from his shoulders, Sol didn’t dodge.

He dropped his spear.

He reached up with both bare hands, his muscles bulging as he grabbed the beast’s thick, scaly ankles mid-dive. The sheer kinetic momentum of the massive avian threatened to rip his arms out of their sockets. Sol’s boots carved deep trenches into the solid stone of the ravine as he was dragged backward.

Now, Sol commanded his core.

He unleashed the entirety of the stored purple essence drops directly into his body.

The reaction was catastrophic. A sudden, blinding pain washed through his veins as the golden liquid boiled over. Inside his mental space, the crystalline sphere containing the Dreadwing shattered completely, releasing a torrent of sapphire lightning. Simultaneously, the metallic crust of the Great Badger exploded outward.

A sharp, metaphysical CRACK echoed in Sol’s chest.

Layer 1.

A localized shockwave of pure energy erupted from Sol’s body. The air pressure in the ravine inverted for a fraction of a second. The sapphire lightning of the Dreadwing surged through his nervous system, while the tectonic mass of the Badger flooded his bones.

With a roar that sounded more beast than human, Sol twisted his hips, utilizing his newly integrated, terrifying physical strength. He swung the massive, struggling Wind-Talon in a brutal arc and slammed it directly into the solid rock face of the ravine.