FREE USE in Primitive World

For a second, nothing happened, then suddenly the thick turtle shell violently shattered into a dozen sharp splinters.

The raw kinetic force traveled straight through the broken shield, snapping the warrior’s arm joints and driving the bone shards into his chest cavity.

The man fell backward without even letting out a scream.

Before the shield wall could reform, Sol’s blue blade flicked out in a low, horizontal arc.

The edge cut through the remaining four shields like dry grass, severing the legs of the veterans at the shins.

The warriors collapsed into the red slush, their spears clattering against the stone, but before they could even register the pain, Sol stepped over them and brought his blade down three times, ending their cries instantly.

”Next,” Sol muttered, his voice rough and completely casual.

But alas! Enemies were even more ungentlemanly than he had expected, without even waiting for him, the second batch was already rushing into the slot.

This time, the Zerith shadow stalkers took the lead.

Six elite Layer 2 scouts tried to use their superior agility, jumping onto the smooth grey slate walls of the pass to scramble over Sol’s head and attack his blind spots from above.

Their multi-jointed limbs blurred as they crawled like giant spiders along the stone.

Sol didn’t even look up. He opened his chest pathways by a fraction, letting a short, sharp wave of his Golden Dominion energy explode upward in a tight circle.

The invisible gravity hit the climbing scouts like a falling mountain. Their internal energy lines lagged instantly, their nervous systems freezing mid-transition.

Their legendary balance broke, and all six stalkers slipped off the slate walls, tumbling clumsily onto the piles of dead bodies below.

Sol moved like a black storm through their falling forms.

His blade sang its low song, carving through their throats and chests before their backs could even touch the mud.

One stalker tried to raise its venomous claws to defend its face, but Sol’s blade cut through the arms and the skull in one smooth, vertical stroke, splitting the creature down to its neck.

The fresh essence from the dead elites rushed straight into Sol’s chest, feeding the liquid fire in his guts.

The pool inside him thrummed with deep satisfaction, circulating the warm golden essence through his bones and making his body feel even lighter, faster, and denser than before.

The batches kept coming, and Sol kept slaughtering whomever tried to pass.

The third batch brought eight heavy Marauder club-wielders, trying to rotate their strikes to tire him out. Sol stepped inside their reach, broke their jaws with his elbows, and split their torsos open like ripe fruit.

The fourth batch was a mixed squad of ten Zerith spear-men who tried to use long-range thrusts to pin his movements.

Sol grabbed three spears with his bare hand, yanked the warriors forward into his stride, and decapitated them in a single horizontal sweep.

The fifth batch sent a group of giant, bloody mud-covered Marauder brutes who tried to tackle him to the floor.

Sol stood his ground, caught the lead brute by the throat, lifted his heavy body, and used him as a club to smash the others down before driving his sword through their chests.

The slaughter went on for a long, unhurried watch.

The Coalition sent wave after wave of their strongest fighters into that narrow stone corridor, each batch more furious and desperate than the last.

But no matter how thick their leather armor was, or how heavy their stone weapons were, they couldn’t find a single crack in Sol’s defense.

He was a solid rock standing in the middle of a blood river, casually clearing the path with effortless precision.

The bodies piled up so high that the pass began to loosen slightly as the lower rows of flesh were continuously crushed and trampled into a thick, flat pulp by the sheer weight of the incoming groups.

Sol just kept walking forward, his blue-rimmed sword flashing again and again through the rising smoke, leaving a trail of severed heads, split shoulders, and spilled insides behind his heels.

By the time the sun began to tilt toward the afternoon, Sol had single-handedly slaughtered at least a thousand enemies inside that narrow chute.

The stone walls of the pass were painted completely crimson and green from floor to ceiling, and the smell of opened bodies was so thick it turned the air into a heavy, suffocating fog.

Yet, his breathing remained perfectly even, his posture completely relaxed as he waited for the next five faces to break through the smoke.

...

While the front line was being turned into a flat layer of meat, the true leaders of the Coalition were resting far back at the rear of the four-thousand-man horde, well out of sight of the mountain’s shadow.

The environment here was wide open, a flat wasteland of dry, cracked clay and white limestone dust that shimmered under the hot sun.

The main army had halted their march, their lines stretching back into the plain like a massive, sleeping beast.

The high-tier warriors were standing there, completely unbothered by the distant noise echoing from the mountains.

In the very center of this rear encampment, several massive stone chairs had been carved together over a layer of thick mammoth hides.

Sitting on these rough thrones were the Chieftains of the Coalition.

At the side of the central chair, the Zerith Chief was pacing back and forth across the dirt, his lanky, multi-jointed limbs twitching with extreme anxiety.

His head was spinning wildly, his horizontal orange eyes constantly flitting toward the mountain pass where the sound of the warning whistles had died hours ago.

He was sweating oily green fluid, his jaw-bones clicking rhythmically in a furious, quiet quibble as he leaned toward the giant sitting next to him.

”We need to move now, Grand Chieftain!” the Zerith Chief hissed, his voice full of sharp, frantic worry. ”My inner connection can feel it.

Our forward groups went dark, and the vanguard has been stuck at the threshold of that pass for two whole watches! Something is wrong!

The human monkeys must have built a heavy wall or set a trap!”