FREE USE in Primitive World

The lead Zerith let out their iconic wet, clicking laugh, its long arm reaching past its knees, its double-length fingers tapping against the mud. “Soft meat,” it hissed, its slit-mouth peeling back to show rows of needle teeth. “The little cubs in the tribe will taste much better than you old—”

It never got to finish the sentence.

Sol dropped from the branch like a falling boulder. He didn’t bother drawing the sapphire blade. He hit the lead Zerith directly from above, his heavy, Rockhorn-plated boots slamming squarely onto the creature’s shoulders.

CRUNCH.

The sheer physical mass of Sol’s Layer 2 foundation driven by gravity instantly pushed the monster’s spine through its own pelvis. The seven-foot freak collapsed into a flat, wide mess of shattered bones and yellow fluid before its needle teeth could even click together.

The remaining three Zeriths froze, their orange eyes pulsing in sudden confusion. But before their central nervous systems could even trigger a retreat, Sol snapped his fingers.

He violently pushed silver essence across the clearing like a physical wave. The invisible liquid soaked through their porous, yellowish-green skin, and with a single mental pulse, Sol locked their brains at an absolute standstill.

The three lanky monsters instantly turned into rigid, unmoving statues. One was caught mid-stride, its long arm extended; another had its serrated dagger half-raised toward Sol’s chest.

They were completely trapped inside their own paralyzed bodies, their minds fully aware but unable to command a single muscle, to others it looked like they were stunned from sudden shock and fear of Sol.

Sol walked past them casually, entirely unbothered. He stepped up to the injured scout who was writhing on the ground, his left arm already turning an ugly, bruised pitch-black. The necrotizing toxin was visibly crawling up the man’s bicep, liquefying the tissue beneath the leather sleeve into a heavy, foul-smelling grease.

Without breaking stride, Sol drew the Dreadwing Blade. With a single smooth arc, he cut the scout’s necrotized arm straight off at the shoulder.

SWISH.

The sapphire blade parted the flesh and bone so fast there was no immediate spray of blood… just a clean, mirror-smooth separation. The blackened, rotted limb thumped heavily into the mud, steaming with yellow venom.

The two surviving Veynar scouts, who had been staring at his pitch-black carapace armor with their mouths open, completely lost their minds. Their bone-shields lowered in pure shock, their eyes darting from the severed arm to Sol’s blood-stained blade.

They couldn’t understand how Sol was suddenly here in the deep jungle, and they damn sure couldn’t wrap their heads around why the legendary “Divine One” had just brutally mutilated one of their own comrades.

“What the fuck are you doing?!” the squad leader roared, his panic overriding his respect as he took a frantic step forward, raising his bone-sword toward Sol. “He’s one of us! Why did you attack him?!”

The other scout was already dropping to his knees, his hands shaking as he tried to pull the screaming, mutilated warrior away from Sol, expecting the black-armored monster to finish them all off.

Sol didn’t even blink at the raised sword. He didn’t shift his stance or engage his core. He just stood there, completely calm, looking down at them with flat, silver-crimson eyes that held zero emotion.

“Look at the mud,” Sol instructed, his voice a low, steady rasp that instantly cut through their shouting.

The squad leader hesitated, his eyes instinctively flicking down to the severed arm sizzling in the dirt. The black flesh was actively melting into a bubbling puddle of green sludge, and the dark toxin was already starting to hiss against the nearby grass, turning it to sludge.

“The venom liquefies everything it touches,” Sol explained, his tone completely practical, like a doctor describing a routine procedure. “If I had waited another ten seconds, the rot would have reached his chest cavity. His internal organs would be soup right now. I didn’t attack him. I saved his life.”

The squad leader’s breath hitched. He looked at the melting arm, then at his screaming comrade, finally realizing what Sol had just done.

The anger drained out of him, replaced by a sudden, heavy wave of shame and exhaustion. He lowered his bone-sword into the dirt.

“Pick up your man,” Sol commanded, the flat, cold authority returning to his voice. “Tie off the shoulder with a leather strap. Burn the flesh shut with a campfire torch to seal the veins and stop the blood loss, then drag him straight back to the main gates.

Get him to the High Shaman immediately. She can heal him, if you get him there before the remaining shock kills him.”

“Y-Yes, young master,” the leader stammered, his warrior pride completely melting away as he scrambled to help his kneeling comrade lift the heavily bleeding captain, the just as if he was about to walk away, his eyes darting to the three frozen monsters standing like grotesque wooden posts in the mud. “What about these freaks?”

“They’re already dead,” Sol said dryly, turning his back on them. “They’re just waiting for me to finish the paperwork. Now. Move, The perimeter is crawling with these things. If you’re still in these woods by dawn, you won’t make it back to see the spires.”

He drew the Dreadwing Blade with a fluid, crystalline whisper. Without a single theatrical movement, he flicked his wrist three times in short, horizontal arcs, engaging the high-frequency vortex along the sapphire edge.

ZIIING. ZIIING. ZIIING.

The vacuum lines sliced through the dark air. The three lanky heads cleanly slid off their necks, dropping into the mud with dull plops.

Sol didn’t even wait for the bodies to collapse.

He vaulted back into the canopy and vanished into the darkness before the scouts could even utter a word of thanks.

The night turned into a long, bloody tale. Sol swiftly moved through the peripheral boundary of the Veynar territory, turning himself into a silent, one-man meat grinder.

He had no mercy left, no hesitation, and no desire to use formal techniques when raw efficiency worked faster.