FREE USE in Primitive World

Chapter 192: Chapter 192: Beast Soul Power System

Kira didn’t stop, she walked forward briskly, her shoes clicking rhythmically against the petrified wood. Sol followed, his eyes darting toward the wounded being moved around.

He was a “guest” who was essentially a prisoner. And in three days, he was supposed to face some kind of “judgment” in a forest that apparently ate people.

“Kira,” Sol called out.

She spun around. “What? We need to get you to the Spire before Korash decides to grow a pair and come back for more.”

“Forget the Boar-thug. Why is this happening?” Sol asked, crossing his arms. “The Marauders, the Zeriths… you said it’s a coordinated attack and this Zharun tribe your mother mentioned. Why are they suddenly so bold? There must be some reason behind it right?”

Kira gritted her teeth, her stormy eyes flashing. “Because we’re isolated. “The Zharun are bastards, “They’re a human tribe to the North. Civilized, if you count being expansionist pricks as civilization. They have been looking for an excuse to swallow us for a decade. Their village chief… he’s a bastard who thinks he can claim my mother as a trophy wife. But that’s just his lustful fantasy.

As for the reason why, they are suddenly so bold, it because they recently had a warrior emerge who became an Earth-Blood King.”

Sol blinked, the term echoing in his mind. “Wait, wait. What the hell is an Earth-Blood King?”

Kira stared at him like he’d just asked what a tree was. She let out a frustrated huff, looking at his shimmering tunic and then his face. “You really are a ’Lost One,’ aren’t you? Fine. Listen. The Path we follow is the Path of the Totem Soul. Everything in this world… our strength, the phantoms, the very air we breathe.. is fueled by Primal Essence.”

“And what is Essence?” Sol asked.

“It’s the life-force the whole world runs on,” she explained, her voice dropping into a sharp, instructional tone. “It’s stored in the marrow, the blood, and the soul of every living thing. It is simply the ’weight’ of a being’s existence.

It roams freely in the world, and all living beings… us, the beasts, even the trees… use it to temper their bodies. It makes us faster, harder, and stronger. But unlike other, we humans can only truly use it after we awaken our Sun Core.”

“Sun Core?” Sol asked, his confusion mounting.

Kira stopped and stepped closer, her eyes narrowing as she scanned his torso. “Wait… now that I mention it, you don’t seem to have one. You really are strange.”

She reached out and pressed her fingers firmly into the center of his chest, right between his stomach and his lungs. The spot was warm, and Sol felt a jolt of Liquid Silver react to her touch.

“It’s located here.” she said. ” We call it the ’hidden sun’ within the body. It’s a fragment of the primordial sky-fire trapped inside the flesh at birth. It acts as a cradle. We absorb Essence from the world, condense it into the Sun Core, and that’s what fuels our transformations and spirit techniques. It nourishes the bound spirits, keeping them alive. Without a Core, a phantom would just eat your soul from the inside out.”

“Simply put, without a Sun Core, you are just an empty shell.”

Sol listened attentively, his Memory Palace already creating a new wing for ’Metaphysical Anatomy.’ So, they have a core at the Solar Plexus. He didn’t have a Sun Core, but he did had a void filled with silver liquid, he didn’t know if there was any connection between them. But of course, he didn’t tell her.

“So, everyone has one?”

“Yeah, almost everyone can awaken it. We sense the essence and awaken the core around sixteen,” Kira continued, beginning to walk again. ” “You get guidance from the elders, and you awaken it before the First Soul Rite. Once you have the Core, there’s a growth system. It’s divided into nine layers, with a major threshold after every three. You don’t need to know so much, so just these will do.”

She began to tick them off on her fingers.

“Threshold I: The Awakening.

Layer 1 is the Crimson Spark.

Layer 2 is the Roaring Heart.

Layer 3 is the Ravaging Storm.”

She looked back at him over her shoulder. “Most of our warriors are at the Roaring Heart,” she said. “Commanders and people like Korg… they reached the Ravaging Storm. That’s where you can manifest those massive, stable phantoms you saw.”

“And what about you?” Sol asked. “Which layer are you?”

Kira straightened her shoulders, a spark of pride cutting through her exhaustion. “Even though it hasn’t been long since I awakened, I’m at Layer 2…the Roaring Heart.”

Sol didn’t know the metrics of this world, but the way she held her head suggested this was an achievement. He offered a quick, “Wow, “So you’re actually powerful.” Which made her pride swell visibly, her stormy eyes softening just a fraction. “I work hard,” she said, her tone a little more cheerful.

Because no matter who tough she seemed she was in the end the same age as him.

“But then… what about the Warchief?” he asked.

Kira’s pride instantly vanished, replaced by a look of somber reverence and dread. “My mother… she crossed the first major threshold long ago. She is Layer 4… an Earth-Blood King

. In this entire region, for the last twenty years, only our tribe and the Zharun had a Layer 4.”

She stopped at a high junction where the wind whistled through the bone-arches. “Initially, we were balanced. But recently, another Zharun warrior advanced to Layer 4. Now they have two. That’s why they’ve become so arrogant. They’ve already annexed two smaller human tribes, and now they’ve set their sights on us.”

She gritted her teeth, her voice trembling with rage. “They sent a marriage proposal for my mother as a threat. They want to use it as an excuse to merge the tribes, which just means we become their servants. It’s an impossible demand. There’s no way anyone in the tribe would ever agree to it, especially my mother. I’m certain the Marauder attack today was also orchestrated by them.. .they want to bleed us dry until we have no choice but to beg for their ’protection.’ Those bastards have no morals.”

Sol fell into a deep, internal silence. Great. Just fucking great. Just what I expend from my shitty luck. He roared internally, his stoic face barely hiding the panic. I get dropped into this god-forsaken place, escape a giant snake, finally find a city with actual architecture, and it’s about to be annexed by a bunch of expansionist pricks with two Earth-Blood Kings. God, do you have a beef with me? Did I steal your wife or something?

He forced himself to stay calm, trying to get as much information as possible to get a better picture. He asked, steering the conversation toward the mechanics of the spirits. “How do you actually get them?”

Kira stopped at a high junction and turned to look at him deeply. For a second, Sol felt flustered by the intensity of her gaze, it was as if she were trying to see the Liquid Silver swirling beneath his skin. But thankfully, she then turned and explained.

“Taming, or subjugation, call whatever you want, ” she said. “To bind a spirit, you must kill the beast or defeat its spirit in a ’Mental Battle.’ For the first rite, the tribe usually provides ’Refined Soul-Stones’… basic spirits that are safe to bind. But of course, no one wants their first spirit to be weaker, so most warriors venture into the forest to find their own because the stored ones are pitifully weak.”

“But of course, it isn’t so easy to kill and tame a spirit, especially for those who have just awakened their sun-core. Beasts also have their own levels, but even the weakest beast is much stronger than a just awakened human. So, you can imagine the risk.

And of course, even if they do kill a beast, there is another bigger hurdle, which is how to subjugate it and place it into your sun-core, as even though they are dead, their spirit still contains their consciousness, and no one wants to be trapped in a goddamn place, so they resist fiercely.”

She continued, looking at him with grim expression. “The binding ritual is a battle of will. The human must draw the beast’s essence into the Sun Core, compressing it into the inner sun. If the beast’s will is stronger, the Sun Core cracks, spilling essence and shattering the warriors’s path. If the human prevails, the beast’s spirit becomes an anchor, feeding on essence and in turn nourishing the Sun Core.”

This is where aptitude comes in, as most ordinary people … those with Coal Cores … struggle.

“Oh, did I mention, sun core also has different grades.” She asked.Sol mechanically shook his head.

Well, you don’t need to know too much at once, just remember that those with Coal Core, their inner space is small, their absorption slow, their recovery sluggish. A single beast spirit can overwhelm them. But those born with better Flame Cores or rarer still, the legendary Sun Core, have vast inner chambers. Essence floods in like rivers, recovery is swift, and spirits find themselves nourished instead of suffocated.

The difference is night and day:

A Coal Core cultivator may take days to recover essence after a single binding attempt.

A Flame Core cultivator recovers in just a day, their spirits thriving.

A Sun Core cultivator recovers in hours, their spirits evolving rapidly, sometimes even reshaping themselves into higher forms.

Thus, the path of the Totem Soul is not only about courage in the hunt, but about the strength of the inner sun. Without it, the beast devours you from within. With it, you devour the beast, and your Sun Core grows brighter.