FREE USE in Primitive World

They knew the “outsider kid, the suspected divine warrior” had spent forty-five seconds dismantling eight of the veteran warriors without even drawing a weapon.

And more importantly, the scouts he had saved last night had already spread the word of what they found in the gullies… dozens of elite Zerith stalkers, the lanky monsters that usually terrorized frontline squads, turned into headless, shattered heaps of green meat by a single man wearing black beetle shell.

The respect rolling off the crowd was heavy but silent. He wasn’t a stray guest Kira had dragged out of the muck anymore.

He was a frontline pillar.

A monster walking among monsters.

Sol also nodded seriously along the way, completely unlike the hungry monster back in his room.

Before guards could respond, he pushed through the heavy petrified doors of the High Hall, the thick wood scraping loudly against the stone floor.

The war room was a massive, circular chamber dominated by a flat, polished slab of obsidian that served as a tactical table. The air inside was suffocatingly hot, thick with the scent of burning fats, animal grease, and the sharp ozone smell of compressed essence.

Dozens of high-ranking warriors and elders were already crowded around the table, their low, grumbling voices creating a heavy hum.

Warchief Veylara stood at the head of the obsidian slab like a towering mountain. Her armor was still splattered with dried green blood from the Layer 3 Zerith commanders she’d hunted during the night.

She didn’t look tired. Her entire attention was fixed on the surface of the makeshift map, her hand resting heavily on the pommel of her massive bone-spear.

As Sol stepped into the room, the low grumbling instantly died down. Head after head turned to look at him, their gazes tracking the dark, oily sheen of his Rockhorn armor and the sapphire blade at his hip.

He ignored the stares and walked toward the front of the table, but as he moved, a specific wave of essence pressure caught his attention from the right side of the room.

Standing near the secondary defense line maps was a man who looked like he had been carved out of a cliff face.

He was nearly seven feet tall, his chest broader than a draft beast, covered in heavy, interlocking plates of golden scales.

His arms were thicker than Sol’s thighs, mapped with white claw scars that ran from his knuckles to his throat.

It was the Elite Commander Sol had seen on his very first day in the battlefield… the frontline general who carried the Golden Lion spirit.

The giant warrior didn’t move, but his yellow pupil eyes locked onto Sol with an intense, testing weight. The golden essence dormant in his core thrummed, a faint heat radiating off his skin that made the others nearby subtly shift away.

Sol didn’t back down. He stopped across from the giant, his silver-crimson eyes locking onto the commander’s gaze, his own core settling into an immovable, cold mass.

For a few long seconds, the two most dangerous physical powerhouses in the room simply stared at each other, their layer 3 and Layer 2 foundations silently measuring each other’s strength across the table.

Then, the Lion Commander let out a low, rough grunt. The corner of his scarred mouth pulled up into a brief, savage smirk of approval, and he turned his head back to the map.

The test was over and Sol had passed it with flying colors.

“Now that everyone who matters is in the room,” Veylara’s voice cut through the silence like an axe cleaving wood. She didn’t look up from the obsidian slab, but her voice carried a heavy, flat tone that commanded immediate attention. “It’s time to thoroughly reassess the whole situation”

Sol stepped up to the edge of the slab, his eyes tracking the markers. The map was a crude but detailed depiction of the surrounding geography, carved into the stone with charcoal lines.

At the center was the Feline Spire, surrounded by concentric rings of defensive walls. To the west lay the Zharun territories; to the north, the swamp tribe of the Zerith stalkers; and to the east, the rocky badlands of the Gray Marauders.

But it was the center… the massive, overlapping valley between the three tribal boundaries… that held the most charcoal markers. The Hunting Grounds.

“The Zerith infiltration wasn’t a simple raid,” Veylara stated, her thick finger slamming down onto the central valley marker. “It was the opening movement of an extraction. The Coalition has officially moved their main forces out of the badlands and the northern swamps.

They aren’t hiding behind anymore, nor are they testing us with small skirmishes. They are marching in the open.”

“How many?” the Lion Commander rumbled, his voice shaking the dust from the ceiling beams.

“Thousands,” Veylara replied flatly. “The scouts we pulled back before dawn report that the entire Zerith tribe has emptied their lower tiers. The Gray Marauders have mobilized their reserves too.

They are currently establishing fortified camps right in the middle of our primary hunting grounds. They want to cut off our food supply, bleed our peripheral units, and choke the tribe until we’re too starved to hold the outer walls.”

A low, angry murmur rippled through the older elders at the back of the room.

Sol didn’t join the murmuring. His eyes shifted toward the left side of the table, where the political factions usually clustered. Standing slightly back from the obsidian slab was the remaining council block of Elder Thorne’s alignment.

Thorne wasn’t in the room… the official reason was he wasn’t feeling well, but who knew if he was planning something again, or maybe Chief didn’t want him here on purpose… anyway remaining elders from his faction were still here.

They looked absolutely terrified.

Their faces were a pasty, sickly gray under the torchlight, their hands shaking as they clutched their bone staffs. They were looking at the maps, then casting frantic, searching glances toward the empty seat Thorne usually occupied.