FREE USE in Primitive World

Ten minutes later, Sol returned to the dry brush where the spirit warriors were crouching. His movement made no noise, his eyes were sharp as he looked at the nine squad leaders who instantly crowded around him.

”They are all out for good,” Sol said, his voice a low, rough whisper. ”The guards on the outer perimeter are fast asleep, with no hope of waking up anytime soon. But forget about the layout we saw at the Zerith camp.

This place doesn’t have any clean alleys or back escape paths to block off. It’s just a chaotic heap of mud houses and stitched hide tents sprawled randomly across the flat ridge.

They threw their shelters together wherever they felt like dropping their bones.”

Joran, frowned as he looked down at the mud. ”No paths? If there are no trails to channel them, how do we divide the squads? If a fight breaks out in the center, they’ll scatter in every direction like startled mountain hogs.”

”We don’t channel them,” Sol said, his lips curling into a cold, dangerous smirk. ”We alter the strategy completely. Instead of surrounding the camp or forming walls, we will use a sweeping swarm method.

We’ll divide our one hundred and eighty warriors into dozens of small, independent hunting packs... four to five men per cell and seep into the random sprawl from every single direction at the same time. Think of it like water swallowing a dry sand heap.”

He picked up a handful of small pebbles from the dirt, throwing them loosely across the mud to show the random, messy layout of the Marauder camp.

”Instead of advancing in order” Sol explained, his voice flat and direct. ”Each five-man pack picks one specific mud hut or hide tent on the outer edge. You move in, execute every sleeper inside in total silence, and then immediately move to the next closest shelter.

You work your way from the outside inward, swallowing the camp ring by ring. If there are no alleys, it means there are no clear lines of sight for them either. Use the random tents as your own cover.”

Hargon, hit his thick fist against his leather wrapped thigh. ”What if a giant wakes up in the middle of a random cluster? Without streets, a squad might get cut off by three different huts waking up at once.”

”That’s why you don’t fight them alone,” Sol growled, his eyes locking onto Hargon until the veteran dropped his gaze. ”If a giant stirs or a knife slips, the packs on the left and right will immediately rush in to help and immediately swarm the neighboring huts before the occupants can lift their heads out of the hide flaps to see what the noise is.

We will use our superior speed and numbers to choke them before they can gather their mass.

Focus entirely on their weak points like throats and their windpipes. Do not try to smash their thick chest-skins with heavy blows; that makes too much noise against their tough hide. We slide the bone-daggers in, and we move to the next pile.”

The sub-commanders and squad leaders listened intently, their expressions hardening into a fierce, absolute focus. And just like before even though this strategy was rough and unrefined, but full of dirty, efficient malice.

It completely stripped the ten-foot giants of their raw muscle power by turning the chaotic, unorganized layout of their own camp into a trap that would isolate them in their beds.

Internally they couldn’t help wandering about his past, what kind of hardships he had to suffer to learn this kind of stuff. They fully believed that he was a divine being sent to help their tribe, and his sudden falling from sky, which they had dismissed previously, made all the sense now.

Not knowing their wild imaginations, Sol muttered, ”Every warrior knows his squad. Move out in total silence. The moment I draw first blood, the slaughter begins.”

Everyone nodded without a word, and one hundred and eighty elite spirit warriors rose from the dry brush like an army of phantoms.

Without making a sound. They split into their designated squads with a tight, disciplined precision that the tribe had never managed before Sol took over their training.

Instead of moving in large blocks this time; they split into dozens of tiny four and five-man hunting squads, their torn leather tunics and blood-stained cloaks blending into the deep grey shadows of the early morning as they approached the random sprawl of mud huts from every side of the flat ridge.

Sol looked at scattering teams and nodded in approval. Kira and Zeyra were right behind him, while Torin, Bran, and Kael kept their weapons ready.

Tala stood just a pace behind, her pale, milky-grey eyes tracking the vibrations of the sleeping giants.

They moved down the dirt slope, their feet finding the soft grass patches to avoid causing a single thud on the stones.

Right at the entrance of the tribe’s entrance, two massive, ten-foot Marauder guards were leaning heavily against a tree trunk. Their thick, hairless arms were crossed over their massive chests, and their spiked clubs were resting a few paces away.

Their chests were heaving with deep, wet snores, completely oblivious to the black-armored hunter closing the distance.

Sol moved first. He broke from the shadow of the ridge, his figure blurring across the twenty-pace gap without causing a single ripple in the morning air.

The two giant guards never got to open their eyes. Sol reached them in two silent strides. His bare left hand shot forward like a stone bolt, his fingers clamping directly around the first giant’s throat, crushing the windpipe into a wet pulp before the beast could even draw a breath to gasp.

At the exact same micro-second, his right hand gripped the second guard’s skull. With a sudden, cold torque of his wrists, he twisted the massive head completely around.

CRACK.

The sound of the thick neck vertebrae fracturing was clean and dry. Both ten-foot giants went completely limp, their heavy bodies sliding down the trunk into the dirt without causing a single loud thud.