FREE USE in Primitive World

These warriors had fought their own brutal battles on the way here. Small ambushes, hidden patrols, sudden beast attacks.

Not a single squad had come through untouched, but every single one had completed their mission in silence.

Despite all the blood, sweat, and pain, right now their breathing was perfectly synchronized. Their exhausted but determined faces told the story of their own hard-fought journeys through the jungle.

One hundred and eighty elite fighters, all staring toward the same central position.

Sol.

He stood slightly elevated on a thick, moss-covered root, black Rockhorn armor still glistening with fresh enemy blood. The Dreadwing Blade rested quietly at his hip, its sapphire glow dimmed to almost nothing. His face was calm, but his silver-crimson eyes were sharp and focused as he surveyed the enemy camp through the morning mist.

The individual squads had done their jobs perfectly.

Every hidden path, every scout route, every weak point around the Zerith forward outpost had been cleared without a single warning horn being sounded. What was once an enemy stronghold was now quietly surrounded by an invisible, lethal ring of hornets... one hundred and eighty elite Veynar warriors hidden in the ferns, ready to strike.

The three Layer 3 sub-commanders emerged from the thick fern-growth like large, bloody shadows, dropping their knees onto the wet mud before Sol’s root. Behind them, several squad leaders stepped into the small perimeter, their breath coming out in short, ragged gasps.

The first sub-commander, a scarred veteran named Hargon who carried the spirit of a Great tusk-boar, wiped a thick layer of grey muck and greenish alien fluid from his chin.

His leather shoulder plates were entirely hacked to pieces, exposing fresh, raw gashes that were leaking dark blood onto his chest.

”We hit a four-man patrol of stalkers near the rocky creek.” Hargon reported, his voice low and raspy. ”These bastards tried to climb into the canopy, but we brought them down with heavy bone-spears. A few of our guys were injured before we could cut their throats, but we kept the silence. No alarms were sent.”

The second sub-commander, a tall woman named Mara with the lean, twitching muscles of a Cheetah spirit, stepped forward. Her tunic was ripped down the middle, a long, superficial claw mark running across her collarbone.

”Team Five and Six ran into a hidden nest of young Zerith near the swamp trenches. We had to use our daggers in close quarters to keep them from squeezing their warning bladders. We lost no one, but many from my squad is injured in some ways. The jungle is crawling with their sentries the closer we get to the center.”

Another commander, a tall woman with fresh claw marks across her shoulder, nodded respectfully. ”Team Seven cleared the southern path. Heavy resistance, but we handled it. Three injured, none dead.”

Sol listened to the reports, his arms crossed over his black Rockhorn carapace. His face remained completely flat, showing no emotion for the wounded, after all this much was expected when they decided to go through the jungle, as unlike Earth, humans didn’t rule them all.

”We ran into the perimeter patrol of four scouts in the willow clearing, and then the entire horde of Blood-Hounds down in the trench. Thirty-plus Layer 2 beasts, a few miscellaneous layer 1 and a Layer 3 alpha.”

Hargon’s single eye widened, as he looked up at Sol. ”The whole pack? And the alpha? By the ancestors, if those dogs had let out a single group howl, the main settlement would have been standing on our heads by now.”

”They didn’t howl,” Sol said casually, gesturing with his jaw toward his scabbard. ”We broke their lines before they could open their throats. The alpha’s head is sitting in the ferns back there.”

Mara shifted her gaze from Sol, her eyes scanning the five warriors standing right behind his shadow... Kira, Zeyra, Tala, and the three leopard boys, Torin, Bran, and Kael. She looked closely at their arms, their shoulders, and their leather bindings.

Her breath caught in her throat.

”Wait...” Mara muttered, stepping closer, her pale eyes full of sudden shock. ”Not a single one of you is bleeding. Torin... your armor is caked in hound fluid, but where are the claw marks? Kira, your bowstring is clean. Zeyra, you haven’t even bound your wrists with healing fiber.”

Hargon and the other squad leaders looked up, their eyes darting across Team One. It was true.

Every other squad that had converged on this position was caked in their own blood, their clothes torn from narrow escapes and frantic, direct clashes with the slippery stalkers.

But Sol’s team stood perfectly intact. Not a single scratch, not a single broken arrow, and not a single drop of human blood stained their leather.

”How did you clear a thirty-dog pack and an alpha without taking a hit?” Hargon demanded, his hoarse voice cracking with pure disbelief. ”Our heaviest veteran squads take casualties just dealing with a few beasts in the open brush.”

Torin hit his chest armor, a fierce, proud grin breaking through the mud on his face. ”The General... I mean, Sol... taught us an entirely different way of attack.

He told us to stop aiming for their chests like traditional warriors. We dropped low, shifted our weight into the mud, and cut their lower leg joints and jaw-membranes while they were mid-leap. We turned their own charging speed into a ramp that threw them off balance.

They didn’t even get the chance to snap their teeth before we drove our knives into their spines.”

Bran nodded frantically from behind. ”And Sol handled the center alone. He slid right under the alpha’s belly, ripped it open with the blue blade, and snapped its neck with his bare hands before it could even force air into its lungs. It wasn’t a fight. It was a massacre.”

The sub-commanders and squad leaders stared at Sol in absolute, dead silence.

The reverence in their eyes deepened until it was almost suffocating.

To these primitive spirit warriors who had spent generations fighting the Zerith through loose, bloody skirmishes where survival was a coin-toss, Sol’s mechanical breakdown of the monster’s biology was nothing short of divine logic.

He didn’t just have raw strength; he possessed a cold, calculating mind that stripped the jungle predators of their natural advantages.

Unconsciously, the last remnants of their tribal hesitation melted away.

They didn’t just trust his power anymore; they trusted his every breath.

”Enough chatter,” Sol said, his voice flat as he stepped off the root. ”The morning light is already hitting the high leaves. We’ve wasted enough precious time standing in this mud. Get your squads prepped. We keep moving.”

”Understood!” Hargon and Mara shouted in unison, their voices dropped to a heavy whisper as they hit their chests and turned to signal the one hundred and eighty spirit warriors.

The massive block of fighters melted back into the dense undergrowth, moving like a single, quiet multi-legged beast through the thick ferns.

They ran for another ten minutes, the ancient jungle growing tighter and darker around them.

The giant petrified ironwood trunks were so close together they formed natural wooden corridors, the ground turning from wet dirt into a foul, black swamp-sludge that gave off the thick, sour stench of alien secretions.

Suddenly, Sol raised his hand. The entire force stopped instantly, crouching low among the trees and ferns a good distance away.