FREE USE in Primitive World

Chapter 296: Chapter 296: Veynar’s Response

Prince Gorr leaned forward, his elbows resting heavily on his knees. His bone armor clacked together, the sound seemed sharp and jarring in the tense atmosphere of the High Hall. His iridescent, oil-slick eyes gleamed with a dark, terrifying amusement.

He knew Kira was cornered. His informants weren’t random nobodies, so he knew that the Warchief’s daughter had no suitors, no bindings, and certainly no life partner.

She was bluffing to save her own skin, and he was going to enjoy tearing that bluff apart in front of her entire tribe.

“Oh?” Gorr asked, a slow, mocking smile stretching across his pale, corpse-like face. “It’s my first time hearing something like that. Perhaps my information network is failing me. Or maybe… you are just lying to avoid your duty to your people.”

He stood up, his towering frame casting a long shadow over the low wooden table. “Tell me then, little kitty. Who is it? Who is the man brave enough to claim what rightfully belongs to me?”

Kira’s heart hammered against her ribs. She was entirely out of her depth. She had thrown the lie out in a moment of extreme panic, desperate to escape the rotting aura of the Zharun Prince. Now, the entire High Hall was staring at her, waiting for a name.

“He is…” Kira stammered, her voice trembling slightly as she took a half-step backward. “He is…”

She frantically searched the room. Her feline eyes darted over the faces of the stunned Veynar elders, the nervous warriors guarding the doors, and finally swept toward the shadowed periphery of the hall.

Her gaze locked onto a tall figure leaning casually against a petrified timber pillar.

Sol.

Without thinking, driven entirely by the desperate instinct to survive, Kira pointed a trembling finger directly at him.

“It’s him!” Kira blurted out, her voice cracking loudly in the quiet hall. “Sol!”

Every single head in the High Hall snapped toward the shadows.

The Veynar elders, still reeling from the sheer disrespect of the Zharun, stared at the outsider in profound shock. Elder Thorne’s jaw practically unhinged, his eyes bulging from their sockets as he looked between Kira and the unranked foreigner who had humiliated him the day before.

Prince Gorr slowly turned his head, his rotting gray aura shifting direction like a toxic wind. Of course, Gorr already knew who Sol was. Other than internal informants, the Zharun had their own spies embedded near the Veynar borders.

He knew an anomaly had arrived, a man who allegedly had a high tier core and anchored a high-tier beast, though the rumors were wildly inconsistent, and were most likely fake rumors spread by Veynar to deter enemies.

Gorr glanced at Thorne, seeking confirmation, but the Veynar elder looked just as utterly stunned as everyone else.

In the shadows, Sol blinked.

He remained perfectly still, his expression carefully blank, but internally, his mind skipped a beat. Me? He hadn’t expected to be dragged into the center of this political crossfire.

He had planned to sit back, observe the enemy’s deployment strategies, and use the Veynar walls as a funnel to strengthen himself, I mean he had certainly had good feelings for Kira, but they were just slight feelings, he didn’t had any thoughts about her, because he knew that he’d eventually return, so it was useless to leave emotional baggage.

Even though he may be scumbag, he wasn’t scumbag enough to leave women after having sex, in that sense he was pretty responsible, or even somewhat possessive. So, becoming the fake fiancé of the Warchief’s daughter was definitely not on his agenda.

But his mind processed the reality of the room in a fraction of a second. Kira was backed into a corner. If she couldn’t produce a partner, Gorr would force the issue, Thorne would back him up to secure the alliance, and Veylara would be trapped between sacrificing her daughter or sacrificing her tribe.

Kira had picked him because he was the only variable in the room that Thorne couldn’t control, and the only man holding enough raw power to make Gorr hesitate.

It was a reckless, desperate play. But Sol was pragmatic. If the Warchief was indebted to him, his position in the tribe became absolutely untouchable.

Sol pushed off the petrified pillar.

He stepped out of the shadows and into the amber light of the hall, his Void-Oak spear resting casually against his shoulder. He didn’t look nervous. He didn’t look like a man who had just been thrown to the wolves. He projected an aura of absolute, unbothered confidence, his silver-crimson eyes locking directly onto the Zharun Prince.

He walked smoothly across the room, bypassing the gaping Veynar elders, and stepped right up next to Kira.

To sell the lie, he didn’t hesitate. Sol reached out and wrapped a strong, possessive arm around Kira’s waist, pulling her flush against his side. Kira stiffened for a microsecond in pure shock, her face burning a brilliant crimson, but she quickly recovered, leaning into his touch and resting her hand lightly against his chest.

“Is there a problem with my partner, ’Prince Gorr’?” Sol asked, his voice a low, resonant timber that carried effortlessly through the hall.

Prince Gorr’s eyes narrowed into dangerous, oily slits. He evaluated the man standing before him, trying to sense the depth of his core.

“You?” Gorr rasped, a harsh, grinding laugh escaping his throat. “An unranked outsider who just stumbled here? The Warchief’s daughter binds herself to a stray beast with no lineage? Do you take me for a fool?”

“I don’t care what you are,” Sol replied smoothly, his tone dripping with a calm, arrogant cynicism that perfectly matched Gorr’s toxicity. “Lineage doesn’t stop claws, and it doesn’t hold walls. Power does. And last I checked, my power was more than enough to claim what I want in this tribe. Kira had already made her choice. You’re late.”

Gorr took a heavy, intimidating step forward, his jawbone armor clacking. “You speak very boldly for a man for being an unranked warrior! I could crush you and take her anyway.”

“You could try,” Sol countered without missing a beat, a dark smirk touching his lips. “But I guarantee you’d leave this hall with fewer limbs than you walked in with.”

The absolute audacity of the threat made the Zharun elders bristle, drawing their weapons an inch from their scabbards. The tension in the room spiked to a lethal degree.

Warchief Veylara, who had been watching the exchange with profound, silent calculation, finally moved. She understood exactly what her daughter had done, and she saw how flawlessly Sol had stepped up to act as the shield. It was the perfect out.

Veylara stood up from her carved wooden throne.

She didn’t shout. She simply stopped suppressing her core.

A wave of crushing, suffocating pressure erupted from the dais. It wasn’t the rotting, toxic ash of the Zharun, nor was it the heavy, earthy density of Sol’s phantoms.

It was the sharp, ozone-scented, crackling fury of a true Layer 4 Vanguard Warchief. The air in the High Hall literally sparked with blue electricity, the sheer disparity in power forcing everyone in the room to brace themselves.

Prince Gorr’s rotting gray aura was instantly violently compressed, shoved back against his body by the overwhelming weight of Veylara’s presence.

“The matter is settled,” Veylara stated, her voice echoing with the authority of rolling thunder. She glared down at the Zharun Prince, her storm-colored eyes completely devoid of compromise. “My daughter has already chosen her partner. The bloodline of the Veynar Warchief is not a bargaining chip to be traded for temporary shields. This is non-negotiable, Prince Gorr. Do not push the issue further.”

Gorr stared at Veylara, his jaw clenched so tightly the bones of his armor ground together. He was arrogant, cruel, and accustomed to taking whatever he wanted from the weaker human settlements. But he was not suicidal.

He was a Layer 2 peak warrior facing down a seasoned Layer 4 Warchief in the heart of her own stronghold, surrounded by her Warriors. If he pushed this to a physical confrontation right now, Veylara would turn him into ash before his Grave-Hounds could even clear the gates.

He had to back down.

Gorr let out a slow, hissing breath, the rotting oil in his eyes swirling furiously. The heavy, toxic pressure he had been projecting receded slightly.

“Very well,” Gorr rasped, forcing his bloodless lips into a tight, ugly line. He slowly backed away from Sol and Kira, retreating toward his stone chair. “I am a reasonable man, Warchief. I respect the… established bonds of your people. Even if they are formed with stray beasts.”

But he also couldn’t accept the humiliation. He threw himself heavily back into the chair, his gaze sweeping over the room. He couldn’t let the insult stand without extracting some form of dominance. He needed to prove that the Veynar were still beneath his heel, desperate enough to pay whatever price he demanded.

His eyes roamed over the nervous serving girls huddled near the walls. They bypassed the elders, bypassed the warriors, and finally settled on the small, trembling figure trying to hide behind a wooden pillar.