FREE USE in Primitive World

The girl’s lips curved into a small, amused smile. It was a beautiful smile… elegant, almost delicate… completely devoid of outright hostility, but it held the quiet arrogance of someone who knew they held the superior hand.

Sol took a half-step back, keeping the spear leveled at her chest. “Observe from a distance. I’m not in the mood for games.”

The girl ignored the weapon entirely, as though it were no more threatening than a twig. She slowly, but gracefully walked toward the ruined, headless corpse of the Stone-Back Boar. She stopped a few feet away, her glowing violet eyes scanning the pulverized bone and brain matter scattered across the mud, and painted the nearby ferns.

“A pure strength attack,” she said, nodding slightly to herself. “You applied an aggressive, hyper-condensed essence to your physical strike, leveraging the density of an earth-aspected spiritual anchor. Barbaric. Inefficient. But structurally sound. I’ll admit.”

She turned her head to look at Sol, tilting it slightly to the side. She placed her hands on her hips, her tail swishing with a bit more energy, like a cat that had already caught its prey.

“Hostile. Paranoid. Highly territorial,” she noted playfully, ticking the traits off on her fingers. “You definitely fit in with the local wildlife. My name is Elyndra. And I don’t ’want’ anything from you, little anomaly. And no, I am not from this… rotting nursery you call home. I am simply… a traveler. A researcher of sorts. Passing through. I hail from territories far beyond this miserable jungle.”

A traveler, Sol thought, gritting his teeth. Yeah, right.

“A traveler huh and this place?” Sol said coldly. “This is the deep jungle. Things out here eat people for breathing too loud.”

Elyndra let out a soft, musical laugh. The sound was incredibly pleasant, but it lacked any real warmth. It was the laugh of someone completely, totally detached from the brutal reality of survival.

“Things out here try to eat me,” Elyndra corrected smoothly. “Usually, they just break their teeth. But… you are a fascinating specimen. You are different from other locals. You smell like…” She paused, taking a slow, dramatic sniff of the air. “…like an insect, and a badger,”

Sol’s heart skipped a beat.

The Dreadwing and the Great Badger were his spirits, and no one except him knew about them, even Veylara and Zephyra hadn’t noticed anything, but she knew at a single glance.

Sol’s blood ran completely cold.

For a second, he didn’t move. He didn’t even dare blink. But internally, alarm bells were ringing so loud they were deafening.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Sol lied, his face an impenetrable mask of cold hostility.

The girl let out a soft laugh. “There is no need to posture, little anomaly. I do not care about your little secrets. In fact, it explains why you possess strength as uniquely volatile as yours. It is incredibly rare to see someone weak like you have double spirits at this stage.”

She took a step toward him.

Sol’s Sun Core roared to life. The golden essence flooded his veins, illuminating the dark, rigid lines under his skin. The heavy, crushing tectonic aura of the Layer 2 Great Badger flared outward, visibly vibrating the mud around his boots. The ambient air pressure in the ravine plummeted as the Dreadwing’s power gathered at the tip of his spear.

“Take another step,” Sol warned, his silver-crimson eyes locking onto hers, “and I’ll see if your head shatters as easily as the pig’s.”

The girl paused. She didn’t look threatened. She just looked mildly disappointed.

Sol didn’t hesitate. He shifted his weight, his back foot sliding an inch through the mud, preparing to launch a full-power Dreadwing strike. He didn’t care if she was someone powerful; if she knew his secrets, she was a threat.

And who knew if she was really powerful or was just bluffing, even though odds were against it, it didn’t hurt testing her.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Elyndra said gently.

“You just broke your limits,” she continued calmly, gesturing to his sun core. “You feel invincible. You feel as though you have reached the summit. But you are still standing at the bottom of the hill, boy.”

To prove her point, she casually walked forward.

Sol thrust the bone-spear with everything he had. Driven by his Layer 2 physical strength and the explosive speed of the Dreadwing, the strike was an absolute blur. It possessed enough force to punch straight through a solid boulder. He aimed directly for her right shoulder, intending to pin her to the tree behind her.

Clang.

The impact sent a violent, numbing shockwave straight up Sol’s arms.

The obsidian tip of the spear didn’t hit flesh. Less than an inch from the girl’s shoulder, a hexagonal shield of glowing violet essence flared to life in the air. It wasn’t a crude wall of energy; it was an incredibly dense, highly structured lattice of refined power. Sol’s Layer 2 strike didn’t even scratch the outer layer of the shield, but the kinetic force completely died against it.

Sol stumbled forward slightly, his eyes widening in shock. He violently wrenched the spear back, spinning around to put distance between them.

She was standing right where she had been, completely untouched.

“Your raw output is commendable,” she explained patiently, watching him readjust his grip. “But your essence control is crude. You hit like a falling rock. I am a proper Spiritforger. You cannot break an Obsidian with a blunt stone.”

Sol stared at her. His mind raced, calculating the odds. Her shield had effortlessly absorbed his fastest strike. Her essence reserves were completely hidden.

If she wanted to kill him, he was going to be in for the fight of his life, and he wasn’t sure he would win.

With a slow, frustrated exhale, Sol disengaged his Sun Core. The golden glow under his skin faded. The heavy, tectonic pressure vibrating the mud ceased. He lowered the tip of the spear, resting the butt of the shaft against the dirt, but he didn’t relax his muscles.

“Good,” the girl smiled, her violet-eyes flashing brightly.

“Fine, Elyndra,” Sol said flatly. “What do you want?”