FREE USE in Primitive World

Due to the sudden alarm at the front gate, the rear alleys were practically empty.

Sol slipped from the shadow of the hide stack, moving like a wraith between the crude dwellings.

His footsteps made almost zero sound on the hard earth, his expanded perception extended in all directions, tracking the heavy, vibrating heartbeats of the few remaining giants who were still stumbling out of their huts half-awake.

Ahead of him, near the central row of larger mud domes, two massive Layer 2 Marauder guards... each standing nearly eleven feet tall, with skin like cracked grey bark and arms as thick as tree trunks... were frantically trying to untangle a rack of heavy spiked clubs.

”Hurry up, you idiot!” one grunted in their thick, guttural dialect, his massive jaw jutting out. ”The chief didn’t come back, and now those apes are knocking on our gate! Grab the logs!”

WHOOSH.

Sol closed the twenty-pace distance in the space of a single breath.

He didn’t draw his blade; the sapphire blade, though very sharp, was too loud in close quarters. Instead, he channeled essence straight into his fists.

CRACK.

Sol materialized behind the first giant, his left palm driving upward into the base of the brute’s skull with terrifying, hydraulic force, and without any suspense, the brute’s cervical vertebrae pulverized instantly.

The giant didn’t even have time to gasp; his eyes rolled back, and his massive body went completely limp.

Before the corpse could hit the dirt and create a heavy thud, Sol caught the falling giant with his left arm, while his right hand snapped out, gripping the second Marauder’s thick throat from behind!

SQUEEZE-SNAP.

The second guard’s eyes bulged in shock as Sol’s fingers crushed his windpipe and severed his spinal cord in a single, brutal twist.

Sol eased both multi-hundred-pound bodies down onto a pile of dirty furs behind the hut without making a sound that carried past three paces.

Leaving the corpses behind, Sol pushed deeper toward the main gatehouse.

The main gate was the only fortified structure in the entire settlement... a massive double door constructed from at least ten-inch-thick petrified ironwood trunks, reinforced with heavy stone counterweights and locked by a massive horizontal timber beam that required four giants to lift.

Above the gate, perched on a raised stone platform overlooking the only way in, stood the remaining leadership of the camp: two prominent Layer 3 Marauder captains.

One was a hulking brute with a scarred chest holding a massive boulder above his head, ready to heave it down the path; the other was a one-eyed veteran shouting orders to other javelin throwers along the parapet.

Below them, through the murder holes, Veylara’s vanguard was making a tremendous racket, banging their shields and shouting challenges, drawing every single giant’s attention firmly outward toward the gorge.

”THROW THE BOULDERS!” the one-eyed captain roared, his spit flying across the parapet. ”CRUSH THEM BEFORE THEY REACH THE FIRST BEND!”

”Right behind you,” a cold, raspy voice whispered from the top of the wooden access stairs.

The one-eyed captain froze.

He spun around, his single eye widening in extreme shock as he found himself staring directly into the glowing neon-crimson embers of Sol’s eyes, barely two feet from his face.

Before the captain’s brain could even process how an enemy warrior had appeared on their sealed, high-altitude platform, Sol struck.

PLUCK-CRACK!

The sapphire Dreadwing Blade left its scabbard in a blinding arc of blue light!

The razor-sharp edge sheared cleanly through the one-eyed captain’s thick, bark-like neck, severing his massive head from his shoulders in a single, effortless stroke! A fountain of dark blood sprayed across the wooden timbers before the headless giant even began to tip backward.

The second captain, who was still holding a five-hundred-pound boulder above his head, gasped in horror, his jaw dropping as he saw his comrade decapitated in a fraction of a second.

”YOU—!”

Sol didn’t let him finish.

He stepped forward, driving a front kick infused with the crushing mass of the Great Badger directly into the giant’s exposed abdomen!

BANG!

The kick detonated with the kinetic force of a battering ram. The captain’s ribs shattered inward with a sickening crunch. The immense impact blasted the giant backward off the stone platform, sending him and the massive boulder hurtling off the edge into the open camp below, where he smashed into the dirt with a bone-shattering crash!

”THE CAPTAINS ARE DEAD!” a sentry on the walkway shrieked in absolute hysteria, dropping his bone bow. ”AN ASSASSIN IS IN THE GATEHOUSE!”

Instantly, panic gripped the whole settlement.

Sol ignored the screaming sentries, leaping down the wooden stairs to the ground level inside the gate. Four giants rushed him with raised stone axes, desperate to defend the entrance.

SLASH-SLASH-CRUNCH.

The Dreadwing Blade sang a song of brutal, high-frequency death. In three heartbeats, three stone axes were sheared in two along with the arms holding them, and a backhand sweep of the flat blade crushed the fourth warrior’s skull into the dirt.

Standing before the massive ironwood locking beam, Sol set the Greatblade aside for a brief second.

He placed both palms beneath the four-ton timber beam, his sun core flaring with pure, golden essence.

ROAAAR!

With a terrifying heave of pure physical might, Sol wrenched the massive beam out of its ironwood cradles and hurled it backward into the courtyard! He then grabbed the handles of the heavy double doors and shoved them outward with all his strength!

GROOOOAN-BANG!

The massive gates of the Gray Marauder stronghold were violently thrown wide open!

At the base, Warchief Veylara saw the heavy doors swing open and saw the towering, black-armored figure standing victorious in the breach.

”THE GATE IS BROKEN!” Veylara’s voice detonated across the canyon like rolling thunder. ”CHARGE! TAKE THE RIDGE!”

”RAAAAH!”

Eighty battle-hardened Veynar elites surged up the narrow path like a tide, their spears leveled, their shields locked! Without the threat of boulders or log-traps raining from above, the vanguard cleared the switchback in less than two minutes, pouring through the open gates and into the heart of the Marauder camp!