FREE USE in Primitive World

The lanky monster let out a high-pitched, wet shriek… a sound so frantic and sharp it sounded exactly like the prey it had described. Its body convulsed, its brain desperately trying to trigger a shock-induced blackout to escape the agony.

But of course Sol wouldn’t let it.

“P-please—!”

High-pitched scream tore out of its throat .

Hearing this, Sol smiled even more coldly.

“Beautiful, isn’t it? That’s what you said.”

He crushed his bones and forced them in different angles again and again to crush them into even smaller pieces.

But of course, it wasn’t just that, he dug into the hollow space in his chest and pulsed a sharp, freezing needle of the silver “Free Use” liquid straight through its wrists and into its central nervous system.

This time, the silver power didn’t carry a single drop of euphoria.

Sol manipulated the energy with a dark, vicious intent, using it to violently strip away the body’s natural pain-blocking defenses, forcing him wide awake.

The silver liquid locked the creature’s mind into a state of absolute, hyper-focused clarity, magnifying its sensory pain receptors a hundredfold.

It could not pass out. It could not go into shock. It would feel everything with perfect, agonizing awareness.

The Zerith’s orange eyes rolled back, its long legs kicking weakly in the dirt, but its brain was forced to stay 100% conscious, absorbing every single millisecond of the torment.

He continued upward, shattering the shoulders, then reached down and began breaking the ribs one by one… slowly pushing each fractured bone inward so the jagged edges pierced its own lungs and organs.

Every time the monster’s screams weakened, Sol fed it another micro-dose of silver essence, keeping it alive and conscious.

For twenty agonizing minutes, Sol worked on the first stalker, turning its body into a living ruin of shattered bone and exposed tissue while it begged and sobbed in its clicking tongue. Only when it got too unsightly and he grew bored did he finally crush its throat … slowly … letting it suffocate for a long minute before moving on.

“One.”

Seeing this absolute horror unfold in front of them, the remaining five Zeriths completely lost their nerve.

Their arrogant talk about eating humans dissolved into pure, raw survival panic. Every single instinct in their freaky, skeletal bodies screamed at them to run.

Their horizontal orange eyes flared frantically, and their long, multi-jointed legs tensed, preparing to spring thirty feet back into the safety of the dark canopy or dissolve into the heavy brush.

But they didn’t move. In fact, they couldn’t.

Sol hadn’t just dropped out of the sky blindly. The exact moment his weight had shattered the bedrock upon landing, he had secretly and violently spread his silver liquid essence across the entire clearing.

The viscous, invisible power had rolled out like a tidal wave, seeping through the humid air and soaking directly into their porous, damp, yellowish-green flesh before they even realized what hit them.

With a single mental pulse, Sol had locked the trap tight, forcing their brains to an absolute, grinding standstill.

The silver energy completely hijacked their central nervous systems, severing the link between their minds and their muscles. In an instant, the five remaining elite stalkers became literal, frozen statues.

They were locked rigid mid-motion… one with a leg half-raised to leap, another with his hands clamped to his daggers, his double-length fingers frozen stiff in the air.

Even if they wanted to run, even if their minds were screaming in a frantic, wild panic to flee the butcher, their bodies completely refused to answer.

The silver liquid held their motor functions in a tight strangling grip.

They were entirely paralyzed, forced to stand there like grotesque monuments of terror, completely trapped inside their own unmoving meat while they watched what was coming for them next.

Sol turned around slowly, his silver-crimson eyes scanning the frozen lineup of yellow-green statues. A dark, terrifying smile cut across his face.

“Going somewhere?” Sol murmured, his voice sounding like grinding stones.

He walked up to the second and third stalkers… the daggers-men. Since they were completely paralyzed, unable to flinch or guard themselves, Sol took his sweet time.

He stepped right between them. He didn’t use his sword. He simply reached out, his bare hands wrapping around their long, stringy hair, and with a brutal, fluid heave, he slammed their heads together.

BANG.

The collision didn’t crush their skulls entirely, but it shattered their wide, slit-like mouths, sending a shower of yellow needle-teeth spraying across the dirt.

Sol let go of their hair, and because their brains were still held at a standstill by the silver liquid, they didn’t even fall. They just remained standing like statues, green blood pouring from their ruined mouths, their orange eyes trembling with an intense, silent agony.

Sol stepped inside their rigid guard. He grabbed the second stalker by its lanky right leg, lifted the seven-foot freak easily over his shoulder, and slammed it down across his knee.

SNAP.

The spine severed cleanly. Sol released his mental grip on the second one’s motor functions just enough to let it feel the gravity.

The monster fell into the mud, its lower half completely paralyzed, its upper body writhing and clawing at the dirt like a half-crushed insect, weeping a high-pitched, clicking wail.

He shattered its legs first, forcing it to kneel facing the other. Using his thumbs, he slowly gouged out one of the second stalker’s eyes, then made the third one watch as he crushed the eye in his fist.

“You loved making parents watch, didn’t you?” Sol asked calmly. “Well now you don’t even have eyes to watch anything.”

He spent a long time on his reproductive organs. Crushing, twisting, and slowly pulling them apart while the monster shrieked and vomited yellow bile.

His begging turned into animalistic howling. Sol kept feeding them silver essence, forcing its bodies to heal just enough to restore fresh nerves, only to destroy them again.

Of course, it couldn’t endure for long, in the end, it choked on its saliva and died ungracefully.