FREE USE in Primitive World

Chapter 241: Chapter 241: Climax Of The Battle

The Great Orrath did not possess a concept of mercy. It was a realm entirely dictated by the primal, unapologetic laws of bone, essence, and absolute violence.

Likewise, the battle in the crater below had escalated from a chaotic skirmish into a localized, apocalyptic meat grinder.

Sol sat perched high up in the dense, violet foliage of the colossal Void-Oak branch, his legs dangling casually over the edge of the abyss, watching the Great Orrath demonstrate exactly why humanity hid behind wooden walls and heavily warded runes.

This wasn’t a mere territorial dispute. It was a biological war operating at maximum capacity, a pure, unfiltered display of the brutal, primitive laws that governed this Savage world.

It was a mesmerizing, horrifying spectacle of nature operating at its most ruthless capacity.

Down in the massive depression, the three-way war had entered its white-hot stage.

The initial shock of the clash had worn off, replaced by a suffocating, blood-crazed frenzy. The sheer volume of ambient Primal Essence being expelled by hundreds of high-tier beasts was visibly distorting the air above the crater.

The atmosphere had turned into a toxic soup of glowing green acid fumes, floating earth-dust, and the sickeningly sweet smell of vaporized, superheated insect blood.

And it was becoming incredibly clear who the ultimate victor was going to be.

The Dreadwings and the Great Badgers possessed vastly superior individual bloodlines. A single swipe from a Layer 2 Badger could crush a dozen ants into paste, and a single volley of acid from a Dreadwing could melt a trench through the horde. But the ants were an ocean, and you couldn’t punch an ocean to death.

The Dreadwings, the terrifying aerial bombers that the High Shaman Zephyra had spoken of with such profound dread, were being systematically eradicated. Their initial advantage of flight had been completely neutralized by the sheer, overwhelming volume of the ant colony.

In fact, their greatest advantage…their aerial mobility and ranged artillery…was rapidly turning into a fatal liability. The Layer 2 bombers had spent the first ten minutes carpet-bombing the ant swarm with radioactive-green venom, melting hundreds of the rusted-red drones into hissing sludge. But their venom sacks were biological, and under the frantic, terrified pace of the battle, they began to run dry.

Without their acid, they were forced to dive lower to use their hooked mandibles and razor-sharp crystal wings.

Every time a massive, crystal-winged insect dove to snatch an ant in its mandibles, a dozen more rusted-red soldier ants would launch themselves from the high embankments, latching onto the fragile, pulsing veins of the Dreadwing’s wings.

Sol watched, his jaw tight, as a massive Layer 2 Dreadwing was dragged from the sky. It hit the churning mud with a sickening crash, its mechanical shrieks instantly muffled as a literal tidal wave of black and red chitin washed over it. The insect’s stone armor was dissolved by a concentrated volley of formic acid, and within seconds, it was reduced to a twitching, hollowed-out husk.

And even if they didn’t get down, The massive, obsidian-black Layer 2 Commander ants didn’t just know how to bite, they possessed the horrifying ability to violently eject their own soldiers. Using their massive, superheated mandibles like organic catapults, the Commanders launched clusters of the smaller, rusted-red soldier ants directly into the air.

Sol continued to watch in morbid fascination as a massive, thirty-foot Dreadwing swooped down to bisect a batch of ants, and he successfully did so but, it didn’t knew that it was a trap all along, before the insect could pull up, a dozen catapulted ants slammed into its translucent crystal wings.

They didn’t try to bite the stone armor. They clamped their iron-like jaws directly onto the fragile, pulsing black veins within the crystal wings and violently twisted.

The Dreadwing shrieked, a deafening, mechanical sound of pure terror, as its left wing shattered like a pane of glass. Its flight pattern collapsed instantly. The massive beast spiraled out of the sky, crashing heavily into the very center of the ant swarm.

It didn’t even have time to react as a tidal wave of black and red armor washed over it. The massive insect thrashed, its remaining wing kicking up a storm of dirt, but it was useless. The ants swarmed over its faceted eyes, blinding it.

They poured into the gaps of its shattered stone armor, tearing at the soft, pulsing flesh beneath. Within sixty seconds, the shrieking stopped. The massive Dreadwing was reduced to a hollow, twitching husk of hollowed-out stone.

The Great Badgers weren’t faring much better. The undisputed kings of close-quarters brawling, these massive, silver-backed mammals were fighting with the hyper-aggressive, never-back-down tenacity that defined their Omen-Bloodlines.

They formed small, tightly packed defensive circles, their fur glowing blindingly bright with dense, yellow earth-essence that hardened their bodies into jagged, impenetrable stone spikes.

A single swipe from a Great Badger could crush twenty ants into paste. But the ants didn’t care. And continued their suicidal attacks.

The sheer, unimaginable numbers of the colony were simply drowning the mammals with their bodies. The ants willingly threw themselves onto the stone spikes, impaling themselves just to weigh the massive mammals down.

The corpses piled up into literal, fleshy ramps, allowing fresh waves of superheated Commander ants to swarm directly over the Badgers’ heads, biting at their eyes and tearing at their softer underbellies.

Sol watched a Layer 2 Great Badger, fighting to its absolute last breath. Its earth-armor was heavily cracked, weeping thick streams of dark red blood. One of its eyes had been melted by leftover Dreadwing acid, and three of its legs were completely buried under a writhing mound of biting ants.

But the Badger refused to fall. It let out a guttural, earth-shaking roar, channeling every last drop of its internal core into its jaws. It lunged forward, snapping its teeth completely through the thorax of an obsidian-black Layer 2 Commander ant.

CRUNCH. The massive ant was bisected. But as it died, the Commander’s superheated, dark red blood exploded outward, pouring directly down the Badger’s throat.

The Great Badger let out a horrific, gurgling scream as its internal organs were instantly flash-boiled. It thrashed violently, crushing a dozen more ants in its death throes, before finally collapsing, steam violently hissing from its open jaws as the light faded from its remaining eye.

The shrieks of the dying insects, the guttural, earth-shaking roars of the cornered Badgers, and the deafening, torrential clicking of thousands of mandibles created a physical wall of sound that made Sol’s eardrums throb.

It was a total, systematic annihilation. The ants were on the verge of entirely wiping out the combined horde that had chased Sol here.

Sol leaned back against the rough bark of his branch, pulling his waterskin from his belt to take a slow sip. He should have been relieved. He had successfully outsourced his absolute destruction to the local wildlife. The horde that had relentlessly chased him through the deep woods was currently being ground into fertilizer. He was safe, his pursuers were dying,and the path back South toward the Veynar tribe was wide open.

He could simply wait for the battle to die down, slip away into the shadows, and head back to the Veynar tribe with the Layer 1 Jaguar soul he had secured earlier.