FREE USE in Primitive World

Chapter 223: Chapter 223: Orrath Forest

And it wasn’t just the plants. The deeper he went, the more he noticed the “small” inhabitants of the Great Orrath… creatures that would have been apex predators back on Earth, relegated to mere background hazards here.

A harsh, rhythmic scraping sound made him freeze mid-stride. Swarming around a pool of the acidic tree sap was a pack of pests that vaguely resembled armored rodents, except they were the size of a big house cat. Their thick carapaces were a rusted, blood-iron red, bristling with jagged spikes that gouged the damp moss with every heavy step.

They were busy dismantling the carcass of a massive wolf. Instead of merely biting, their blade-like teeth snapped like heavy iron shears, effortlessly crushing through bone while they spat a smoking, corrosive fluid onto the meat. They reduced the creature to a dissolving slurry that they greedily slurped up, stripping the carcass clean in a matter of seconds.

Further down the path, Sol almost stepped on what he thought was a fallen purple branch. But as his boot hovered over it, his newly evolved survival instincts flared. The “branch” suddenly uncoiled, revealing itself to be a heavily armored centipede as thick as a man’s thigh and at least ten feet long.

It possessed dozens of barbed, scythe-like legs and a pair of dripping, venomous pincers. It hissed a warning, clicking its mandibles violently, before seemingly deciding Sol’s heavy Golden Liquid essence filled body was too dense a meal.

It slithered rapidly up the side of a skyscraper-sized tree, defying gravity and disappearing into the canopy.

It didn’t just end here, even the seemingly harmless things were lethal traps. Hanging from the low branches were clusters of bright, plump blue berries that looked deliciously refreshing. But being as cautious as possible, as he deliberately tossed a pebble at a cluster to test them, as his intuition was warning him, the “berries” instantly uncurled dozens of tiny, needle-sharp legs.

They were massive, blood-sucking ticks waiting to drop onto the neck of anything foolish enough to walk underneath. Deprived of a meal, they scrambled back up the branches in a chaotic swarm, seeking a new vantage point.

Everything in this zone is designed to kill you, Sol analyzed, a cold sweat pricking his skin despite his formidable physical buffs. It’s an entire ecosystem built on active malice.

He tightened his grip on the heavy Void-Oak spear. The ambient essence hanging in the air was so thick it felt like wading through water, constantly interacting with his core. As the air was heavy, practically saturated with raw, untamed Primal Essence. Sol could feel his mutated core reacting. The Golden Liquid in his chest rippled constantly, acting like a magnet, passively drawing in the violent ambient energy and purifying it with brutal efficiency.

He kept his eyes peeled, moving with the silent, predatory caution of a man who knew that one wrong step meant becoming fertilizer for a bear-trap flower.

…

He had been walking in absolute silence for perhaps an hour, entirely reliant on the physical enhancements to move without snapping twigs, when suddenly his heightened intuition flared.

He felt a sharp, microscopic shift in the air pressure above and behind him.

Sol didn’t think. He didn’t even turn to look. Trusting his newly evolved reflexes entirely, he violently pivoted on his heel and lunged sideways, throwing his body into a rapid sidestep.

THWACK.

Something heavy, sharp, and incredibly fast slammed into the exact patch of moss where he had been standing a fraction of a second ago.

Sol spun around, lowering his center of gravity, his hand flying to the bone knife at his belt instead of the long spear, anticipating close-quarters combat.

He looked at his attacker carefully. It had dropped from the purple canopy above. It looked vaguely like an ant, but that was where the similarities to Earth biology ended.

It was the size of a fully grown, muscular house dog. Its exoskeleton was a matte, obsidian black, covered in fine, bristling red hairs that seemed to crackle with faint static electricity. Its mandibles were disproportionately massive… serrated, jagged shears that had just effortlessly cleaved through a thick, petrified tree root as if it were warm butter.

The beast chittered, a horrifying, metallic clicking sound, and its multi-faceted black eyes locked onto Sol. It didn’t hesitate. It immediately lunged again, its six legs propelling it forward with the speed of a fired arrow, its serrated jaws aiming directly for his kneecap.

Fast,

Sol’s mind analyzed in bullet time. But too linear.

He didn’t panic. The Golden Liquid in his chest pulsed, flooding his limbs with heavy, devastating physical power. To the giant ant, it was moving at blinding speed. To Sol, with newly-buffed perception, the creature was moving in slow motion.

Sol didn’t retreat. He stepped into the lunge.

As the ant soared through the air, Sol’s left hand shot out, his reinforced fingers clamping down with the grip of a hydraulic press onto the back of the insect’s armored thorax, halting its momentum entirely in mid-air. The creature shrieked, its legs flailing wildly, trying to twist its deadly mandibles toward his wrist.

Before it could even turn its head, Sol brought his right hand down in a brutal arc.

The short bone knife, infused with just a sliver of his dense, heavy essence, sheared cleanly through the gap in the creature’s armored neck.

Schhhhk.

The giant ant was decapitated in a single, fluid motion. The clicking instantly stopped.

Sol tossed the twitching, headless body to the side. A thick, foul-smelling, green slimy blood spewed from the stump, hissing faintly as it hit the moss, dissolving the plant life upon contact. Acidic blood. Of course.

Sol looked down at the blade of his bone knife. It was completely unblemished, the heavy golden essence having protected the fragile edge from the creature’s dense armor and acidic fluids.

Not bad for a tutorial mob, Sol thought, wiping the green slime off the blade onto a nearby leaf. He sheathed the knife. The creature didn’t possess a condensed soul or a core, confirming it was just a high-end Flesh-Bound, as according to newly acquired knowledge all the beast from essence born forward have a core inside their body.

So, this super ant was useless for binding, but a good test of his new powers.

He didn’t stay to examine the corpse. The smell of acidic blood would undoubtedly attract larger, hungrier things in this massive, untamed jungle.

Adjusting his grip on his spear, Sol turned his gaze back toward the North. The deep woods were calling, and he was just getting started.