FREE USE in Primitive World

Zephyra watched the entire process, her milky eyes tracking his movements through essence ripples, her lips twitching with suppressed amusement.

But as the distant roar of snapping branches and guttural howls drew closer, her expression straightened. Her staff rose half an inch off the ground, a pale green gale coiling around the wooden shaft.

”I can cast a few spells,” Zephyra offered, her tone laced with genuine caution. ”Channeling a widespread wind-siphon will slow them down. Are you certain you do not need my assistance? There are dozens of them, Sol. Even small claws can bleed a man if they swarm from all sides.”

Sol turned his head, casting a sideways glance over his bare shoulder. His neon-crimson eyes flared in the moonlight, blazing with the pure, arrogant certainty of an apex predator looking down on vermin.

”Zephyra! Do you really think these overgrown lizards and mangy dogs can put a scratch on me?” Sol smirked, the edge of his mouth pulling into a sharp, predatory grin. ”Save your essence for Veylara. If she starts having trouble with all that power, you’re the only one who knows how to help her out.”

Zephyra paused.

Looking at the towering, blood-streaked man standing before her, clad only in a tied-up jungle leaf, the absurdity of her own worry suddenly hit her.

This was Sol.

This was the monster who had torn through the Coalition lines like tall reeds before a blade, who had executed Prince Gorr with indifferent brutality, and who had single-handedly broken four Layer 4 warlords, who had terrorized the northern tribes for decades, in the span of an afternoon.

He had just fractured the skull of a four-ton Layer 3 Blood-Bore with a broken tusk using his bare hands.

To him, an oncoming pack of Layer 2 jungle beasts wasn’t some existential threat... it was a collection of walking target dummies.

She let out a dry, self-mocking breath, the green gale around her staff dissipating into a gentle breeze.

”Go, then,” she murmured, a breathtaking smile of absolute trust gracing her pale features. ”Paint the jungle red, Champion. I will hold the sanctum.”

”Won’t take long,” Sol rasped.

He turned toward the dark, thrashing tree line.

BOOM!

The moss-covered earth exploded beneath his bare feet. Sol launched forward like a dark cannonball, clearing thirty paces in a single airborne arc, vanishing straight into the pitch-black maw of the Great Orrath jungle!

The instant Sol crossed the threshold of the dense scrub, the chaotic roar of the approaching horde slammed into his ears.

The air under the ancient canopy was suffocatingly hot, thick with the musk of wet fur, rotting peat, and rabid saliva.

Through the tangled briars and twisted ironwood roots, dozens of glowing eyes pierced the gloom... red, yellow, and pale green, all fixed in a single direction, racing blindly toward the beacon of light behind him.

Sol didn’t wait for them to breach the clearing. He became the breach.

He wasn’t worried but not having the dreadwing blade, in fact in the close, claustrophobic choke points of the jungle, weapons only got snagged on branches.

Flesh and bone were faster, quieter, and far more intimate.

Even though he could have tried to scare them away with his killing intent, seeing their rabid eyes, he knew it wasn’t going to be much useful as they had zero regard for self-preservation.

The first beasts to come in contact were the three Shadow Wolves bursting through a thick wall of hanging creepers, their lean, dark grey bodies moving like liquid smoke over the exposed roots, their jaws snapping shut on empty air in anticipation of prize.

Usually, they were fast, silent killers, adapted to ambushing in the dark. But they didn’t even register the naked shadow that was just a few paces away.

It was Sol who took the lead to show himself, immediately the lead wolf, a massive male at Layer 2 Peak with jaws long enough to clamp around a man’s torso, caught Sol’s scent. It let out a snarling, wet bark, leaping forward with claws splayed, aiming to pin him to the dirt.

WHOOSH.

Sol didn’t bother to dodge. Instead he accelerated straight into the leap.

His left hand shot out with terrifying precision, slipping past the snapping fangs to bury his fingers deep into the beast’s scruff.

Using the wolf’s own airborne momentum, Sol brought his right elbow crashing downward with astronomical force!

CRACK-BOOM!

The elbow struck the top of the wolf’s skull. The reinforced bone caved in instantly, the brain matter pulped beneath the sheer kinetic density of Sol’s strike.

The beast’s body didn’t even bounce; it wrapped around Sol’s shoulder before being violently propelled backward, smashing into the tree behind it in a spray of blood and splintered bone!

Before the corpse could hit the ground, the other two wolves lunged from his flanks, their jaws clamping down on his exposed bare thighs!

CLANG!

The sound was not the wet tearing of flesh, but the dull, hollow ring of teeth striking solid stone.

The wolves whined in sudden, confused agony as their fangs shattered against the unyielding density of Sol’s Great Badger physical enhancement. His skin didn’t even have a scratch, let alone an injury.

”Are you finished?” Sol looked towards the wolves who were trying hard to chew and break his skin, but to no avail.

Th wolves looked at him with pitiful expression, as they realize they had met a tough skin to chew.

Then it’s my turn,” Sol smirked evilly, seeing their expressions.

His hands moved like twin iron clamps. He snatched both wolves by the base of their throats, lifted the four-hundred-pound beasts off the ground as if they were made of dry straw, and smashed their heads together in front of his chest!

THUD-CRUNCH.

Skulls shattered in a spray of dark blood and bone fragments. Sol tossed the limp carcasses aside into the bushes, stepping over their twitching forms without breaking his forward stride.

Before the dead wolves’ soul-wisps had even finished siphoning into his mind, a deafening squeal tore through the undergrowth ahead.

Two Stone-Hide Boars... each the size of a wagon, their broad snouts lowered and their flint-ridged backs bristling with razor-sharp spines... charged abreast down the narrow game trail. They were tearing up the earth, using the tight confines of the gorge to ensure their target had nowhere to dive.

Sol looked at the charging wall of bone and flint, his neon-crimson eyes gleaming with raw contempt.

Dodge? Why waste the steps?