FREE USE in Primitive World

Chapter 457: Increasing Restless Disturbance

Behind him, the three leopard-spirit warriors... Torin, Bran, and Kael... hurriedly finished carving the jagged Veynar secret crests into the bark of the weeping willows.

Their bone-chisels made quick, scraping cuts into the wood, their hands moving with a frantic efficiency. They didn’t talk. The sight of four elite sentries dropping in five breaths without letting out a single vibration had entirely cured them of their earlier arrogance.

"Pick up the pace," Sol muttered, his voice a low, rough rasp. "The sun isn’t waiting for us to finish our business. Tala, take the lead line again. Keep us off the main beast-paths."

Tala didn’t say a word. Her small, wiry frame bent until her stomach nearly scraped the wet mud, her pale, milky-grey eyes staring blindly into the blue-grey fog while her ears twitched, sorting through the morning wind.

The squad fell back into their running formation.

Sol followed right behind Tala, his boots sinking just enough into the moss to avoid making a clear thud. The three leopard warriors.. Torin, Bran, and Kael... no longer tried to push their essence to the limit to show off their speed.

They stayed three paces back, their eyes locked onto the black plates of his Rockhorn carapace with a heavy, quiet focus. The cocky bouncing in their strides was completely dead, ground into the dirt by the four headless and broken carcasses they had just left behind in the willow grove.

Kira ran on his left flank, her long bow held loosely in her grip, her cat-pupils darting left and right across the tangled thorn-bushes. Zeyra stayed perfectly level on Sol’s right, her movements exceptionally smooth and liquid

As they moved deeper into the western sector of the Hunting Grounds, the ancient jungle grew increasingly hostile.

The petrified ironwood trees stood closer together, their massive trunks forming thick wooden walls that blocked out the sky completely, while their roots formed thick, overlapping walls of petrified wood, forcing them to climb or drop into deep mud-trenches to keep moving.

The air here was foul, smelling heavily of stagnant marsh water, rotting fungus, and the disgusting stench of Zerith territory.

The morning mist was also starting to rise from the low hollows, thick and cold, sticking to their leather clothes like wet wool.

After five minutes of rapid, silent travel, Tala suddenly skidded to a halt, her body pressing flat against a thick clump of weeping ferns.

Her phantom bat ears rotated backward, her nose twitching violently as she tasted the air currents.

"More of them ahead," Tala whispered, her voice like dry leaves scraping over rock. "A two-man sentinel post. They’re crouching on a high root bridge over the black water. One has a long bone-spear; the other is holding a hollow signaling reed."

"Hold position," Sol commanded quietly.

Behind him, Kira immediately dropped onto one knee, her fingers automatically lightly checking the notch of an obsidian-tipped arrow against her bowstring.

Zeyra slid closer to his right side, her dark leather gear rustling like a snake through dry grass, her eyes wide and fully locked onto his profile with that heavy, unblinking devotion.

He didn’t wait for Kira to pull an arrow. He simply stepped out from the fern-cover, his heavy body entering the grey mist like a ghost.

This time, as he moved, he didn’t focus on the golden essence inside his Sun Core. Instead, he pulled at the cold, viscous silver liquid sitting stagnant within his chest.

The moment his feet left the ground in a long, horizontal stride, the restless ripple in the silver liquid grew slightly sharper, a subtle tugging sensation pulling his awareness toward the two targets.

Sol closed the distance in three heartbeats, appearing directly behind the two lanky stalkers before they could register the shift in the damp air.

His bare hands moved with terrifyingly clean efficiency. His left hand shot forward, his fingers hooking inside the split-mouth of the first lanky and violently yanking its head backward, snapping the thin neck-chitin with a heavy crack.

At the exact same micro-second, his right hand gripped the throat of the second stalker, his thumb driving straight through the soft membrane beneath its jaw, completely crushing its internal vocal cords before it could force air into the signaling reed.

As both seven-foot monsters went entirely slack in his grip, Sol didn’t just let them drop into the black marsh water. He held them tight against his chest armor, his mind focusing entirely on the viscous silver liquid in his chest.

A cold, heavy pull flared within hisveins. Unlike the violent, hot thrum of the golden essence that usually fed his muscle density, the silver liquid acted like a freezing vacuum.

It reached into the dying bodies, ripping the very core souls and unrefined spiritual residue straight out of the stalkers’ bursting pathways.

The invisible cold and heavy essence washed up his arms, before settling directly into the silver pool in his chest.

The strange, restless disturbance inside him grew a fraction clearer. The silver liquid shifted lazily, its density increasing slightly, and the faint, distant tugging sensation from deeper within the jungle became more distinct.

It was like a modern compass needle finally catching a true magnetic northern line, pointing deeper toward the center of the Zerith settlement.

It’s definitely responding to the stalkers, Sol thought, his eyes narrowing as he dropped the two empty hulls into the moss. The more of their internal spirits I pull into the silver liquid, the stronger this connection gets. Seems like it is going to be even more exciting than I had thought.

He shook his hands, letting the cold fluid settle back into his chest before turning back to the squad. "Torin. Mark the wood and move."

Torin rushed forward, his eyes fixed on the grotesque angle of the stalkers’ necks, quickly hacking the Veynar secret sign into the root bridge.

The squad moved out again, but as they covered another half-mile through the dense, tangled vines, the density of the Zerith perimeters became noticeably thicker.