FREE USE in Primitive World

Meanwhile Sol moved through the chaos like a black reaper. He didn’t need to give many orders anymore. His team had fallen into perfect rhythm. Every time they entered a new tent, they killed with cold efficiency. No wasted movement. No unnecessary noise.

Kira’s arrows occasionally whistled softly from the darkness, taking out sentries on the edges who looked like they might raise an alarm. Tala and the leopard warriors handled the quicker, more agile targets with brutal coordination.

Zeyra stayed close to Sol the entire time, her obsession fueling her movements as she covered his blind spots with lethal grace.

At one point, they entered a larger tent where four giants were sleeping around a low fire. Sol gave a single hand signal. The team split instantly.

He took the biggest one himself... stepping forward and driving the Dreadwing Blade straight through the giant’s heart before he could even wake up fully. The blade’s high-frequency vibration made the kill almost completely silent, liquefying flesh and bone on contact.

The rest of the team handled the others with equal ruthlessness.

Within seconds, all four giants were dead, their blood soaking into the furs and dirt floor.

Sol pulled his blade free and wiped it once before sheathing it. He looked around at his team, their faces and clothes now heavily stained with enemy blood.

”No alarms yet,” he said quietly. ”Keep going. We clear as much of the outer ring as possible before they realize what’s happening.”

Zeyra stepped closer, her breathing slightly ragged, but her eyes were glowing with dark excitement as she looked at him.

”They’re dying so easily,” she whispered, almost reverently. ”Because of you.”

Sol didn’t reply. He simply turned and led the team toward the next cluster of tents, melting back into the shadows.

The silent massacre continued.

The Gray Marauders, once feared raiders of the badlands, were being slaughtered in their sleep like cattle... and they still had no idea that death had already come for them.

...

He stepped forward, his heavy boots crushing a dry tuft of grass as he headed toward a cluster of three large hide tents near the center of outer rings.

The cold silver pool inside his ribs was sloshing violently now. The souls of the giants killed by his surrounding squads weren’t fully entering his core since he wasn’t the one striking, but his close proximity to the mass slaughter allowed his expanded sensory grid to feed on the residual spiritual grease left in the air.

It felt like a tight knot ready to snap. He just needed a few more direct kills to force the evolution of the silver liquid.

Sol approached the first large hide tent in the center. Inside, his s senses detected two powerful Layer 2 Marauder warriors who were beginning to stir, their internal pathways naturally warming up as the early morning light began to seep through the leather seams. They weren’t fully awake, but they were no longer fully asleep either.

Sol didn’t waste time with a stealthy knife-glide. He reached out and tore the hide flap open with his bare left hand, ripping the fiber ties completely out of the dirt stakes.

The two ten-foot giants inside blinked heavily, sitting up from their mammoth pelts in confusion. The largest one reached out instinctively toward a massive spiked club resting against a log, his jaw opening to question the sudden draft.

Sol blurred. His Great Badger spirit power pushed his physical speed to a brutal level.

Before the giant’s fingers could even touch the wood of his club, Sol’s right hand closed around his face.

His thick fingers dug deep into the hairless skull, and with a heavy downward torque, Sol smashed the giant’s head straight into the hard stone-lined fire pit in the center of the tent.

BANG.

The skull fractured with a wet, heavy sound, the core essence instantly short-circuiting.

The second giant roared silently, his thick, stone-like hide bunching as he tried to launch his massive torso out of the furs to tackle Sol.

But Kira was already moving behind Sol’s flank. She didn’t shoot her bow in this tight space; she used the heavy bone-butt of her weapon to strike the giant’s knee joint, fracturing his balance, while Zeyra slipped in like a shadow, her long fingers driving a curved needle straight through the side of his throat.

The giant’s hands flew to his neck, his red eyes bulging as he tried to force a scream through the blood choking his windpipe. Sol turned and delivered a short, dense palm-strike directly to his chest-skin.

The kinetic torque shattered the giant’s breastbone, driving the internal core into complete ruin.

The sun core in Sol’s gut gave a massive, violent thrum. The unrefined Layer 2 essence from both captains flooded his Sun Core, but more importantly, the silver pool in his chest gave a terrifying, hungry roar.

The two core souls were violently pulled inward, the cold fluid spinning so fast it felt like a heavy block of ice was rotating beneath his ribs.

Almost there, Sol thought, his knuckles tightening as he felt the silver network expand further. One or two more high-tier souls and the doors blow open.

...

The sweeping swarm was now entering the next stage. Out of the four hundred Marauders who had been sleeping on the outer ring of the plateau, nearly half had been silently executed in their furs by the dozens of small Veynar packs.

The outer rings of the random settlement were now a silent graveyard of cold mud houses and bloody hide tents.

But as the small squads converged on the large stone-plastered huts in the next area, a sudden complication arose.

From one of the central huts, a door made of heavy timber swung open violently. A massive, ten-foot Marauder sub-chief stepped out into the grey dawn light. He was a Layer 3 warrior, his skin covered in thick grey bone-ridges that acted like natural armor plates.

He wasn’t wearing his full war-gear, but he carried a massive stone axe that was longer than a human was tall. He had smelled the sharp copper tang of blood drifting from the outer huts, and his red eyes were wide with sudden, volatile suspicion.