FREE USE in Primitive World

He pressed his bare palm directly onto her pale, poisoned skin right above her heart.

Instead of pushing internal essence forward, Sol opened his Free Use hollow, unleashing a razor-sharp, sweeping wave of absolute, unyielding mental command straight into her body.

He didn’t try to melt the poison, nor did he try to heal her flesh. He simply wrapped the absolute authority of his Free Use power around the toxic Bog-Marrow resin like an invisible, inescapable vice.

FREE USE: PURGE.

OBEY. EXTRACT.

The pitch-black resin, which had effortlessly rejected and retaliated against standard spirit essence, didn’t even get a chance to struggle.

Under the absolute, boundary-breaking pressure of the Free Use authority, the poison’s physical and spiritual properties were completely overridden.

It was treated not as a complex biological toxin, but as simple, unwanted matter to be forcibly removed!

SQUELCH!

Under Zephyra’s wide, stunned eyes, the thick, dark purple lines crawling up her chest, neck, and arms suddenly reversed trajectory at light-speed. The toxic resin was violently pulled straight up through her skin!

A glob of thick, pitch-black, foul-smelling sludge... resembling liquid obsidian... erupted out of her pores, gathering into a hovering, marble-sized sphere of pure poison directly above Sol’s bare palm!

The moment the resin left her body, the hot, suffocating pressure clamping down on Zephyra’s body vanished into thin air. Her frozen spirit channels unlocked and hot, clean blood flooded back into her face.

Zephyra gasped a deep, greedy, clear breath of fresh mountain air that filled her lungs without a single trace of pain!

”I-It’s... gone?” Zephyra stammered, her voice no longer raspy or weak, but full of her usual, deep spiritual resonance.

She looked at her forearms... the dark purple spiderwebs had completely disappeared, leaving behind smooth, unblemished skin.

She felt her core, finding the essence circulating freely once more, entirely unhindered.

The sudden, miraculous shift from the cold, terrifying brink of guaranteed death to complete, unburdened health was so overwhelming that her usual calm, enigmatic High Shaman persona completely shattered.

Before she could even think or filter her emotions, Zephyra impulsively lunged forward, throwing her arms tightly around Sol’s neck and burying her face into his armored shoulder!

”You insane fool!” she cried out, her voice trembling with a mixture of hysterical relief and unadulterated excitement, hugging him with all the strength of a fully recovered Layer 3 practitioner.

Sol froze, his bare hand holding the hovering sphere of black poison awkwardly off to the side so it wouldn’t touch her.

He let out a loud, dry cough, shifting uncomfortably under the tight, sudden embrace.

”Ahem...” Sol rasped, raising his voice so it carried across the clearing. ”High Shaman... please behave yourself. Everyone is watching.”

Zephyra blinked. The sudden realization of what she was doing hit her like a bucket of ice water.

She instantly released her grip, pushing herself backward, and turned her head to look around the battlefield.

Directly behind Sol, a dozen Veynar loyalist veterans, Commander Thauren, and even Kira and Zeyra were standing completely motionless.

Their eyes were wide, their jaws slightly slack, staring at their usually terrifying, sacred High Shaman... a woman who had ruled the tribe’s spiritual area with an iron fist for decades... spontaneously throwing herself into the arms of Sol like a starry-eyed maiden.

A heavy, deeply awkward silence fell over the immediate area.

Zephyra’s cheeks instantly flushed a deep, brilliant shade of crimson that extended all the way to the tips of her ears.

She let out a loud, sharp cough, smoothing down her wrinkled robes with rapid, aggressive flicks of her hands.

She stood up smoothly, adjusting her posture until she was standing straight, proud, and completely unbothered, as if nothing out of the ordinary had transpired.

”What is the matter with all of you?” Zephyra declared, her voice dropping into a severe, authoritative, and completely dignified tone, though the redness in her cheeks betrayed her entirely.

”Why are you staring at me with such absurd expressions? Anyone would have a similar, dramatic reaction upon being pulled back from certain death! It was merely a... a standard expression of tribal gratitude!”

She cleared her throat again, glaring fiercely at Commander Thauren, who immediately snapped his mouth shut and looked up at the sky as if suddenly fascinated by a passing cloud.

”Right! Exactly!” Thauren stammered, coughing into his fist. ”A... a standard tribal gratitude! Very logical!”

Beside him, Zeyra crossed her arms, letting out a small, quiet snort, while Kira hid a soft smile behind her hand.

Sol slowly stood back up, closing his bare fist around the hovering sphere of poison, using a thin layer of Free Use force to crush the toxic resin into microscopic, harmless ash before letting it drift away in the wind.

He looked at Zephyra, a dark, amused smirk visible on his face, then turned his gaze toward the center of the clearing where Warchief Veylara still lay paralyzed.

”Now that the High Shaman is done giving out free hugs,” Sol said, his voice dry and full of amusement, ”let’s go fix the Warchief.”

...

Shaking his head, he turned and approached the place where Warchief Veylara lay.

The fierce leader of the Veynar was in a miserable state. She lay motionless on the limestone slate, her powerful body reduced to near helplessness.

Dark purple veins crawled up her throat like poisonous spiderwebs, inching dangerously close to her jawline.

Her deep blue eyes were half-lidded, clouded with pain and lingering sorrow over the Veynar blood that had been spilled by Veynar blades.

Around her, Kira and Zeyra knelt protectively, while the bodies of fallen loyalist warriors formed a grim living barricade of those who had died shielding her.

Kira’s face was pale, her eyes red-rimmed. The moment she saw Sol approaching, she looked up with barely contained desperation.

”Sol...” her voice trembled. She was almost crying. ”Can you... can you heal her? Please. She’s my mother. The poison is still—”

”I know,” Sol interrupted gently, crouching down beside them. He met Kira’s worried gaze, then glanced at Zeyra, who was watching him with sharp, anxious eyes. ”I already purged the same poison from the High Shaman. It’ll be okay. Just give me a moment.”

Both girls nodded, though the tension in their shoulders didn’t fully ease.

Seeing him, Veylara tried to force her jaw to move, to speak, but her sun core was clamped shut in a block of absolute spiritual blockade, which caused her body to weaken beyond limit. It was already taking her all just to remain conscious,

”Don’t bother trying to talk, ”Sol shifted closer to Veylara, crouching beside her.

Now that he knew the poison was fully treatable, his mind relaxed a bit, which caused his thoughts to wander around.

From this angle, the Warchief’s condition was even clearer. Her tribal garb had been torn and loosened during the battle and the struggle against the poison, leaving a deep plunging neckline that exposed a generous amount of smooth, sun-darkened skin and the soft upper curves of her firm breasts.

Even in her weakened state, the powerful lines of her body remained striking.

He raised his right hand and pressed his palm firmly against her chest, right over the highest concentration of the dark purple spiderwebs... which happened to be centered over her right breast.