FREE USE in Primitive World

Chapter 270: Chapter 270: Unleashing The Aura

Thorne’s booming voice echoed off the towering petrified walls, his words hanging like a physical weight in the tense, humid air.

The crowd, easily swayed by the massive Elder’s aggressive, righteous indignation, began to murmur in agreement.

The sheer absurdity of Sol’s claim… that a solitary, unranked outsider had slain and anchored a Layer 3 Lord Blood… combined with Thorne’s panicked, masterful incitement, was rapidly turning the tribe’s initial disbelief into a unified, hostile mob.

“Exile him!” one of Thorne’s lackey elder shouted from the back.

“Strip him of his weapons and cast him out to the rot!” another yelled.

Warchief Veylara raised her hand, the heavy bracelets of polished beast bone clicking together around her wrist. Her brow furrowed in deep, agonizing conflict. As a leader, she had to maintain order, and the outsider was threatening the very fabric of their tribal logic.

To the Veynar tribe, a Layer 3 Lord Blood wasn’t just a beast, it was a walking natural disaster, a creature that required the sacrifice of dozens of Elite Vanguard warriors just to drive away from their walls, let alone kill and harvest. For an unranked human to claim such a prize was not just a lie; it was a blasphemy against the blood spilled by generations of their ancestors.

She opened her mouth, her stormy eyes hardening, likely to demand Sol stand down, apologize for his outrageous boast, and accept a lesser spirit to appease the angry elders and restore the peace.

But before Warchief Veylara could speak a single word, a sound cut through the rising clamor.

It was actually a laugh.

It started low, a dark, vibrating chuckle. It was a sound entirely devoid of fear or panic, steadily rising into a cold, full-throated laugh that carried an unnerving, predatory edge.

The crowd fell silent, instantly unnerved by the sheer arrogance of it.

“You laugh?” Thorne snarled, his face contorting with ugly rage, though a single, telltale bead of cold sweat trailed down his temple, betraying his internal panic. “You stand on the precipice of exile and death, surrounded by the greatest warriors of the Veynar, and you dare to laugh at us?!”

Sol slowly shook his head. The manic amusement faded from his face, replaced by a mask of absolute, chilling indifference. His silver-crimson eyes locking onto Thorne with a gaze so heavy it felt entirely physical.

“I’m not laughing at the tribe, Elder,” Sol said, his voice dropping into a chilling, resonant timber that easily carried across the vast expanse, defying the need to shout. “I’m laughing at you. Because beneath all that bluster, beneath all that righteous anger and theatrical pity… I can smell it on you. You’re absolutely terrified.”

“Insolent brat!” Thorne roared, his face flushing a violent purple. His thick, calloused hand dropped toward the hilt of his heavy bone-cleaver, his muscles bunching to strike the outsider down where he stood. “I will personally—”

“You will do exactly nothing,” Sol interrupted rudely, freezing Thorne in place for a fraction of a second.

Now that he had not one but two Phantoms, Sol had decided he was done playing politics. He was done letting this primitive, big-fish-in-a-small-pond Elder control the narrative and twist the minds of the people. Words were wind in the Great Orrath. Only power dictated truth.

But he didn’t draw a weapon, nor did he drop into a defensive combat stance. He didn’t speak another word to justify his existence.

He simply stopped suppressing the monstrous, dual-layered core resting deep within his solar plexus.

Right now, he couldn’t unleash the phantom like the chief, but he didn’t need the full form. In the Great Orrath, just the raw, unadulterated essence was more than enough for the experts to recognize exactly what they were dealing with.

Suddenly, the ambient temperature in the square violently plummeted. The humid, tropical air itself grew heavy.

A wave of crushing essence erupted from Sol’s body, expanding outward in a terrifying shockwave.

It was the unadulterated, unrestrained aura of a Layer 3 Sovereign Vanguard. Specifically, the essence of the Lord Dreadwing, dripping with hyper-lethal malice and apex supremacy.

And just as he unleashed it, every single anchored warrior in the square felt their spirits violently cower, as if they had just met their ancient ancestor… or their ultimate, inescapable nemesis.

Even though the focus was not on the crowd, but still the impact on the tribe was instantaneous and utterly devastating.

It wasn’t just a scary, intimidating feeling, it was a biological override. The lesser, un-anchored tribesmen and women standing near the front of the crowd were instantly driven to their knees, their bodies betraying them.

They gasped desperately for breath, their mouths opening and closing like fish out of water, as if a massive, invisible boulder had just been dropped directly onto their chests.

The collective, horrifying sound of hundreds of people suddenly choking, wheezing, and crying out in the heavy air filled the courtyard. Dust kicked up as bodies collapsed into the dirt, entirely unable to support their own weight.

The lower layers… the Layer 1 warriors and the newly awakened ones… felt their anchored beasts completely shut down. Their spirits refused to manifest.

They cowered deep within their human hosts’ souls, whimpering in primal terror, entirely ignoring any frantic commands from their masters to defend them.

Korash, who had been sneering and demanding proof just seconds before, let out a pathetic, strangled yelp as the bones in his legs buckled entirely. He crashed face-first into the packed dirt, his nose bleeding instantly from the sheer, crushing atmospheric pressure.

He whimpered like a beaten dog, pressing his hands flat against the ground, completely unable to even push his own upper body up against the suffocating pressure.

“W-What is this?!” one of Thorne’s lackey elders choked out, his eyes bulging from their sockets. He fell heavily onto one knee, his bone spear clattering uselessly against the paving stones as his own Layer 2 spirit actively tried to bury itself deeper into his subconscious to hide.

Behind them, the arrogant young warrior who had confidently declared he would ’eat his spear’ if Sol was telling the truth was currently trembling so violently he looked like a leaf caught in a hurricane. His eyes had rolled back in his head in absolute, primal terror, his bladder completely letting go as he collapsed into a senseless heap.

Warchief Veylara, High Shaman Zephyra, and the other Layer 3 Elders fared slightly better, relying on their immense willpower and higher-tier foundations, though their faces instantly drained of color, as their inner beasts snarled in defensive panic.

Veylara stared at the outsider, her stormy eyes wide with profound, unutterable shock.

Zephyra’s jaw went completely slack, all pretense of shamanic wisdom evaporating. The ancient woman’s fingers trembled so badly that her prized bone pipe slipped from her grasp, falling on the hard earth as she stared at the sheer, miraculous density of the essence rolling in waves off the human.

Lord Blood. It’s real. By the Ancestors, it’s actually real, Veylara thought, her mind spinning as she tried to calculate the sheer impossibility of what she was witnessing.

But Sol wasn’t focused on the Warchief, the Shaman, or the suffocating commoners. He directed the absolute, crushing epicenter of the Badger’s gravity directly onto the man who had tried to ruin him.

Even though he was a real prick, Elder Thorne was a seasoned veteran. He was a Layer 3 warrior who had fought unspeakable horrors in the dark canopy of the jungle. He possessed an Omen Blood beast, making him one of the strongest pillars of the tribe.

He roared, a sound of desperate, furious defiance, his veins bulging like thick ropes against his thick neck. He poured every single ounce of his own spirit energy into his legs, his muscles screaming in protest, fighting with everything he had to remain standing and preserve his absolute authority.

But against a Lord Blood… the absolute apex of the food chain in the surrounding… his Layer 3 omen Blood resistance was nothing more than a dry twig trying to hold back a mountainous landslide.

The Elder groaned in pure, unadulterated agony, his right leg buckling under the invisible weight. He hit the ground hard, driven down violently onto one knee before the entire tribe. The mighty, condescending, politically untouchable Elder Thorne was now physically kneeling before the outsider he had just tried to banish.

He gritted his teeth so hard they threatened to crack. His face turned a mottled, bruised purple as he desperately tried to lift his head, to maintain some shred of his dignity, but the phantom weight of the Lord Blood was pressing directly against his spine, pinning him in place.

Sol slowly walked forward.