FREE USE in Primitive World

Sol simply dropped from the sky, like a descending god of vengeance.

He had tracked these cowards for nearly twenty minutes through the dense jungle canopy, moving silently from branch to branch.

The trail of their panicked flight and the sickening scent of fresh human blood had made them easy to follow.

Now he landed directly in their escape path with a heavy, earth-shaking thud, cracking the ground beneath his boots. Golden essence flickered around his silhouette for a brief moment before fading.

The lanky monsters skidded to a halt in the mud, their slit-mouth peeled back in pure shock, revealing rows of yellow needle-teeth stained with fresh blood. But the most disgusting sight was what they still held between those jagged teeth… broken human arms and legs.

One Zerith had an entire severed forearm clenched in its jaws like a prized bone, gnawing on it even as it fled. Another chewed greedily on a leg, while the third had both a child’s hand and part of a shoulder jammed into its maw, saliva and human blood mixing disgustingly down their chins and dripping onto their moss-covered chests

They had been eating on the run.

For a single heartbeat, pure primal terror froze the monsters in place. Their horizontal orange eyes bulged wide as they stared at the blood-drenched human standing before them.

Then survival instinct kicked in. The three Zeriths tried to turn and bolt back into the thick brush, their long legs twisting with unnatural agility.

But Sol didn’t even give them the second it took to pivot.

He blurred forward in a storm of motion. His hand shot out and seized the slowest one by the back of its segmented neck, yanking it backward so hard that its spine arched with an audible crack. The other two barely made it three steps before he was on them as well.

With terrifying efficiency, Sol slammed all three to the ground in a tangled heap. Mud exploded outward as their bodies hit the earth.

“You ran with your mouths full,” Sol said, his voice low and terrifyingly calm. “Still hungry?”

He ripped the severed human limbs from their mouths with brutal force, breaking several needle-teeth in the process. Blood and yellow saliva sprayed everywhere. Without hesitation, he forced the bloody remains down their throats instead… shoving the arms and legs deep into their gullets until the creatures began choking and gagging violently, their long necks bulging obscenely.

“Eat,” Sol commanded coldly. “Since you love the taste of my people so much.”

One of them tried to cough up the grisly meal, its eyes rolling back. Sol responded by stomping on its throat, driving the human flesh even deeper while keeping it alive with a vicious pulse of silver essence. The Zerith’s eyes bulged grotesquely as it suffocated on human body parts, its long limbs thrashing wildly in the mud.

The second stalker tried to slash at him with its remaining claws. Sol caught the arm mid-swing, crushed every joint from fingertips to shoulder in one slow, grinding motion, then used the broken limb like a handle to slam the creature’s face repeatedly into a rock until its facial bones cracked and caved inward.

The third one managed to scream… a high, clicking wail of terror.

Sol grabbed it by the hairs and ripped them clean off its skull. Then he drove his thumbs into its horizontal eyes, not popping them immediately, but slowly pressing deeper, crushing the delicate orbs while the monster howled through its overstuffed throat.

He didn’t torture them for hour long like the first group, he didn’t have the time… but he made sure they felt the weight of their failure.

These three received a faster, more brutal version.

He made them pay for every bite they had taken. He used the silver Free Use power not to heal, but to keep them conscious and hypersensitive.

He broke them methodically… joints, bones, organs… always stopping just short of death, always bringing them back to feel more.

He used the silver essence ruthlessly, keeping them conscious and amplifying their pain receptors so every injury burned like fire.

One by one, he made them experience the exact horrors they had inflicted on the humans.

The difference was that these Zeriths received no mercy, no quick ending, and no audience to end their misery.

Once they were thoroughly broken and writhing in the dirt, he raised his foot.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

He brought his heavy boot down, popping their elongated skulls one by one until the pass was silent.

…

By the time the first faint, blood-red streaks of dawn began to crack through the heavy canopy, Sol had personally slaughtered five separate squads of Zerith warriors.

Thirty elite stalkers had been reduced to fertilizer across the periphery.

He had hunted them relentlessly… ambushing warbands, intercepting runners, dragging those who tried to hide out of hollow trees and caves.

Some died quickly. Most did not.

The jungle floor was now littered with broken bones, pools of green blood, and mangled corpses left in varying states of agony.

Sol stood on the eastern ridge, breathing steadily. His hands, his face, and his black Rockhorn armor were completely caked in a foul mixture of green blood, yellow ichor, and rotting moss.

Yet his Sun Core hummed with dense, satisfied power. He had violently absorbed raw essence from every single Zerith he had slain throughout the night, converting their stolen life force into fuel for his own foundation.

He wiped his face with a clean leaf, his expression entirely ice-cold.

His silver-crimson eyes calm and distant. The perimeter was now officially clear. No Zerith remained alive in the jungle. The surviving Veynar scouts and patrols had already been pulled back behind the walls.

Sol turned back toward the veynar tribe, his strides long, heavy, and full of purpose. It was time to go home, look the Warchief in the eyes, and tell them exactly what kind of enemy they were facing.

The true war was no longer coming.

It had already begun.