FREE USE in Primitive World

Finally, Sol turned his head slowly toward the far side of the clearing.

There stood Chief Vane of the Zharun tribe.... the mastermind behind the betrayal, the traitor who despite being human joined forces with aliens to annihilate fellow human tribe, and the exact man who had tried to personally decapitate Sol while he was suffering from the side-effects of the Golden Domain earlier.

The man who had boasted about skinning Lumi alive to sacrifice her.

Vane was trembling violently. The weapon in his hand rattled, his face was completely drained of color, his eyes wide with an absolute, primal horror that paralyzed his legs.

When Sol’s neon-crimson eyes locked onto him, Vane stumbled backward, dropping his weapon into the blood-soaked mud.

”N-No... stay back... Zharun warriors! BLOCK HIM! KILL HIM!” Vane shrieked, his voice squeaking in pathetic desperation as he tried to hide behind his guards.

The Zharun warriors didn’t move. They looked at the corpse of Bruga and Maradurer Layer 4, and looked at the bisected remains of the Zerith Chief, and wisely threw their weapons to the ground, not daring to move.

Vane was left standing completely alone.

WHOOSH.

Sol didn’t even use his wings to sprint.

He walked forward slowly, heavy step by heavy step, the sapphire blade dragging along the limestone floor, carving a high-pitched, screeching line into the rock.

SCREEECH... SCREEECH...

The sound was like a psychological hammer, beating against Vane’s collapsing sanity.

”You...” Sol’s voice was unnaturally calm, a quiet, terrifying murmur that cut through the roaring wind. ”You had a lot to say earlier, Vane. You talked about skinning Lumi, You talked about sacrificing her. You tried to strike me when I couldn’t move.”

”I-I was forced! It was Bruga! It was Thorne!” Vane babbled frantically, backing up until his spine hit a solid stone. He reached for a hidden bone dagger at his waist. ”Please! Spare me! I have wealth! I have territory! I will give you the Zharun tribe—!”

SWIFT!

Sol moved like a ghost. Before Vane could pull the dagger, Sol’s black gauntlet snapped forward, gripping Vane’s right wrist.

CRACK-TWIST!

”AAAAAAAGGGHH!” Vane shrieked as Sol ruthlessly twisted his wrist a full 360 degrees, shattering the radius and ulna bones into fine powder beneath the armor! The bone dagger fell uselessly to the earth.

Sol didn’t stop there. He wasn’t going to give Vane a quick, merciful death like Bruga or Kaelen.

PLUCK.

With cold brutality, Sol grabbed Vane’s left index finger and bent it straight backward until it snapped flushed against the back of his hand. Then the middle finger. Then the ring finger.

CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.

Vane’s shrieks turned into high-pitched, sobbing wails, blood and tears streaming down his face as he sagged against the stone pillar. ”PLEASE! JUST KILL ME! CURSE YOU, JUST KILL ME!”

”Kill you?” Sol smirked, his voice dripping with icy malice. ”Gor was your son, wasn’t he? You watched me skin him. You thought that was cruel?”

Sol let go of the shattered hand. Before Vane could slump to the floor, Sol drove his bare left hand straight into Vane’s right shoulder socket, his fingers digging directly into the joint tissue like iron hooks!

GRAB-RIP!

With a sickening, wet tearing sound of muscle, tendons, and blood vessels, Sol forcibly dislocated and tore Vane’s right arm completely out of its shoulder socket!

”GAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!” Vane’s eyes rolled back, his body convulsing in desperate agony as a fountain of dark arterial blood sprayed across the white limestone wall.

”You wanted to skin Lumi?” Sol whispered, his neon-crimson eyes flaring directly into Vane’s tear-filled gaze. ”Let me show you how a real monster skins his prey.”

Sol didn’t use a blade. He channeled a tiny, razor-sharp needle of Essence directly into his fingertips.

He pressed his fingers against Vane’s collarbone and dragged them downward.... not deep enough to cut arteries, but shallow enough to slice cleanly between the skin and the underlying muscle layer!

SLICE-TEAR!

Vane’s voice broke entirely, turning into a silent, wheezing gasp of pure torture as Sol methodically peeled a wide strip of skin straight off his chest, exposing raw, nerve-ending-rich red flesh to the cold mountain wind!

To ensure Vane didn’t pass out from shock, Sol used the same trick he had used with Gorr, he injected a tiny, precise amount of Free Use power straight into Vane’s brain stem, keeping his nervous system hyper-aware, hyper-sensitive, and completely incapable of falling unconscious!

Every nerve ending burned with a thousand times its normal intensity. Vane felt every microscopic tear of his flesh, every drop of air hitting his exposed muscles, every single fracture in his bones as if it were amplified by lightning!

”P-P...lease...” Vane whimpered, drool and blood dripping from his trembling jaw. ”M...mer...cy...”

”Mercy is for humans,” Sol rasped softly. And you are even worse than the wild beasts.

Sol grabbed Vane’s remaining left leg, placing his boot against his knee joint.

CRUNCH!

He stomped downward, bending the leg sideways at a grotesque, ninety-degree angle. Vane’s jaw opened in a soundless scream, his body twitching violently against the rock as Sol slowly peeled another strip of hide from his thigh.

For five agonizing, endless minutes, the quiet valley echoed only with the wet, sickening sounds of tearing flesh, snapping joints, and the choked, pathetic whimpers of the Zharun Chief being stripped of his humanity piece by piece.

The remaining Coalition warriors who witnessed the execution dropped their weapons and some even collapsed into unconsciousness out of sheer psychological horror.

It wasn’t that Sol was being too cruel, they had seen and done even crueler stuff themselves, it’s just maybe it was the grim atmosphere or maybe it was fear that they would be next, it really broke their mental defense.

Heck, even the hardened Veynar loyalists turned their heads away, their faces pale, terrified of the absolute, merciless demon that was fighting on their side.

Finally, when Vane was nothing more than a ruined, skinless heap of twitching, weeping meat like his son, Sol finally stopped.