FREE USE in Primitive World

Chapter 328: Chapter 328: Lunging Headfirst Into The Beast Tide

The massive, obsidian-timber gates of the Veynar settlement groaned open, peeling back to reveal a sprawling, churning ocean of absolute nightmare. The southern horizon was entirely obscured by a violently roiling dust cloud, within which the glowing, feral eyes of thousands of beasts burned like malicious, bloodthirsty stars.

The Beast Tide was not merely a pack of animals, it was a living, breathing force of nature, an avalanche of muscle, claws, and corrupted essence surging forward to wipe the human stain from the map.

And charging directly into the gaping maw of that apocalypse was a single, solitary figure.

Warchief Veylara stood atop the central defensive rampart, her chitin armor gleaming in the erratic light of the warning fires, her obsidian spear gripped so tightly that the petrified wood groaned in protest.

Flanking her were the senior Elders of the tribe, seasoned warriors who had survived decades in this hellscape. They had formed a tight, heavily reinforced wedge formation, designed to act as a breakwater against the incoming flood. Their weapons were drawn, their beast-phantoms howling in the spiritual plane, bracing for the apocalyptic impact.

But the impact didn’t hit them first.

A streak of silver and midnight-blue tore past the Vanguard line with a speed that defied their expectations.

Veylara’s storm-colored eyes, usually unreadable pools of stoic command and cold calculation, were wide with a mixture of absolute shock and a profound, begrudging awe.

She had given the order. She had commanded him to stay within the inner sanctum, to be preserved as the tribe’s ultimate backup. Yet, there he was.

Elder Thorne, standing a few paces away, nearly dropped his heavy shield. He watched in absolute, paralyzed shock as Sol… the outsider they had just tried to cage for his own protection… shot out of the gates like a bolt of sapphire lightning.

And from his speed and actions, he didn’t run like a man charging into battle, he moved like a predator diving into a feast. The Dreadwing’s passive agility funneled the wind around him, while the silver-gray Badger hide armor absorbed the atmospheric friction. He was a blur of lethal intent, leaving a trail of ionized, crackling air in his wake.

“By the Ancestors,” one of the Elders breathed, his voice barely audible over the deafening roar of the tide. “He’s charging them alone. He’s going to be ripped to shreds!”

“He is insane,” muttered Elder Thorne, his face pale, slick with fear-sweat as he watched him sprint into the dark. As for whether this fear was due to beast tide or speed shown by Sol was still unknown.

“Silence, Thorne,” Veylara snapped, her voice cracking like a whip, her gaze never leaving Sol’s retreating back.

Veylara watched his movements closely. He wasn’t running with the frantic, adrenaline-fueled panic of a man fleeing, nor did he carry the heavy, fatalistic trudge of a warrior resigned to a meaningless death.

He was sprinting exactly with the terrifying, explosive momentum of an apex predator that had just been let off its leash.

In that fraction of a second, watching the silver-clad boy close the distance to the wall of rotting muscle without a single ounce of hesitation, Veylara realized her profound miscalculation. Sol wasn’t a bird to be kept in a cage. He wasn’t a fragile hope for the future.

He was a living, breathing calamity. He possessed a raw, untamed defiance that made her, the seasoned Warchief feel a sudden surge of inadequacy.

“He isn’t throwing himself away, Thorne,” Veylara murmured, a fierce, primal pride igniting in her chest, overriding her tactical anxiety. “He is drawing their blood.”

Down on the ground, he had left Kira behind, and the distance between him and the vanguard of the beast tide vanished in a heartbeat.

The first wave was composed entirely of unranked beasts… mindless, starved fodder driven mad by the crushing pressure of the higher-tier beasts pushing them from behind. There were rot-hounds with fungal-infected jaws, massive razor-boars with tusks like dull swords, and scuttling, multi-legged horrors that defied classification. They surged forward like a tidal wave of flesh and tooth, eager to tear the single human to shreds.

The collision was nothing short of spectacular.

Sol met the overwhelming wave head-on. Channelling the heavy, tectonic essence of the Lord Great Badger into his legs, Sol stomped his boot into the earth. The ground fractured spiderwebs of cracked stone outward. As the first dozen rot-hounds leapt through the air, jaws snapping for his throat, Sol’s hand blurred.

He drew the sapphire Blade.

The iridescent, sapphire wing saber cleared its leather sheath with a high-pitched, crystalline zing that somehow pierced the deafening roar of the stampede. Sol didn’t swing wildly. He executed a flawless, horizontal sweep at waist height.

Because the blade was forged from the primary flight-strut of a Sovereign Dreadwing, it ignored the very concept of air resistance. A localized vacuum-shear followed the edge. The dozen leaping rot-hounds didn’t even have time to register the strike.

The sapphire blade passed through their bodies as if they were made of mist. A fraction of a second later, twelve bodies separated cleanly in half, raining down in a gruesome shower of black blood and severed organs.

He continued pushing through, as the front ranks of the Beast Tide simply disintegrated. Dozens of unranked beasts were being bisected without even a chance to attack, their upper halves sliding off their lower bodies in a grotesque display of absolute anatomical failure. Black blood, yellow acid, and rotting viscera erupted into the air like a macabre fountain.

He didn’t stop. He stepped into the bloody void he had just created, a manic, exhilarated laugh bubbling up in his throat.

But more unranked beasts poured into the gap, driven by mindless frenzy. They swarmed him from all sides, leaping through the air, their jaws snapping for his throat.

Sol didn’t stop. He pushed forward, carving a bloody, brutal path directly into the heart of the unranked swarm.

His movements were a mesmerizing dance of hyper-lethal efficiency. The heavy Badger armor absorbed the glancing blows of claws and tusks, the kinetic force dissipating harmlessly across the silver-gray hide. He didn’t even bother dodging the weaker strikes, he simply let them shatter their teeth against his chest while he decapitated them in return.