Chapter 490: Let Them Run!
Sol reached down casually, his fingers wrapping tightly around the back of the scout’s neck.
With a smooth, heavy heave, he hoisted the broken Zerith straight off the ground, lifting him up until they were completely eye-to-eye. Greenish-yellow fluid dripped from the stalker’s shattered joints, staining the wet grass stalks below.
"Now," Sol growled, his voice a low, rough rasp that carried a terrifying weight. "You’re going to talk, or do you still want to try running away?"
The Zerith stalker was completely beaten, his limbs hanging at unnatural, useless angles, but as he looked at the black-armored hunter, his horizontal orange eyes didn’t contain a single spark of fear.
Instead, they burned with a cold, unyielding tribal hatred. His split-mouth twitched, as he stared straight into Sol’s silver-crimson pupils.
Sol’s sharp senses suddenly caught a violent, erratic spike of toxic tension flaring deep within the monster’s throat membrane. An internal organ... a hidden suicide fluid-sac beneath his tongue... was violently compressing.
He’s gonna do something bad, Sol realized instantly.
He pushed his newly evolved golden-silver energy down through his fingertips, attempting to project his Free Use power straight into the stalker’s throat to freeze the muscles and stop him before the membrane could rupture.
The molten liquid inside his chest thrummed, sending a hot wave of golden light flickering across his skin.
But it was too late. The primitive anatomy of the high-layer scout was designed to execute the kill-switch within a single heartbeat.
The toxic fluid flooded the stalker’s body, short-circuiting his whole body instantly.
The monster’s horizontal eyes went entirely dull and glassy, his jaw freezing mid-click as his entire seven-foot frame went completely slack and heavy in Sol’s grip.
He was dead before the golden energy could even cross his jawline.
"Tch. Waste of breath," Sol muttered helplessly.
He released his grip, letting the useless, empty hull drop sideways into the thick mud of the clearing with a dull thud.
...
A moment later, the high wild-grass to the left violently parted. Commander Thauren stepped into the clearing, his colossal body caked in fresh, steaming green ichor.
His massive petrified blade was slung across his gold-scaled shoulder, but his large hands were entirely empty.
Thauren took one look at the dead shadow stalker sprawled at Sol’s feet, noted the dull look in its eyes, and let out a rough, booming laugh that shook the nearby reeds.
"Don’t look so sour, Sol," Thauren said, wiping a thick smear of alien fluid off his forearm bindings with a handful of dry leaves. "It was entirely expected.
These Zerith guys... even though they are the most crafty, insidious, and back-stabbing vermin in the entire Great Orrath, their loyalty to their primary spire is absolute. Especially these high-layer ones.
They’ve been bred for generations to believe that giving a single line of information to an enemy tribe is a permanent curse on their ancestors’ bones.
They’d rather swallow their own stinger venom and turn their insides to mush than speak a word to a human."
Sol nodded flatly, his expression recovering its usual cold detachment as he slid his hands back into his belt bindings.
He didn’t look back at the empty shell of the scout still twitching in the mud. To him, a dead enemy was just spent meat and absorbed fuel; the failure to extract words was simply a variable to be balanced in the next stride.
Thauren stepped closer, his heavy brow furrowing as he looked out across the shimmering green sea of the great plain. The heavy silence of the grassland had returned, but the tension in the air hadn’t faded.
"There is a big problem now, Sol," Thauren said, his rough voice dropping into a tight, worried rumble. "That earlier warning whistle... it didn’t just rattle the marsh birds. The sound traveled far and wide across the grassland.
It must have informed every other hidden Zerith scout scattered along the whole grassland. The moment they heard that metallic shriek cut off, they knew their patrol cell was compromised.
Right now, they must have already started rushing back toward the Orrath to alert their main army."
The gold scales on the Lion Commander’s shoulder plates clicked as he tightened his grip on his massive petrified sword.
"If even a single one of those lanky bastards reaches the Grand Chieftains of the Coalition with news that Veynar’s heaviest Layer 3 commanders are actively hunting the grasslands... the whole ruse fractures. The Chieftains will realize the children are just a bait, and no matter how stupid and angry they are, they’ll stop their four-thousand-man mass before they ever break the gravel threshold of the pass."
Sol didn’t show a single flicker of panic. Instead, his lips slowly curled into that familiar, dangerous smirk, his silver-crimson eyes reflecting the harsh morning light.
"Don’t worry, we had already anticipated this, and we already have a definitive countermeasure," Sol replied casual but flat. "Let them run. A terrified stalker only knows how to sprint in a straight line back to the shade of the high canopy when the sky gets too bright."
Thauren froze mid-breath, his head tilting to the side as his eyes tracked Sol’s absolute calmness. He began calculating the internal placement of their forces, the timing of the night march, and the strange, deliberate restrictions Sol had placed on the deployment before they left the central Spire.
"Wait..." Thauren’s jaw tightened, a sudden wave of raw understanding washing across his scarred face. He violently slapped his thick thighs with his hands, the heavy blow landing against his armor with a loud, resounding CRACK that shook the nearby weeds.
"You mean... the other hidden Veynar warriors rushing with Veylara?" Thauren barked, a rough, booming laugh tearing out of his throat as the pure genius of the net clicked into his mind. "By the blood of the first lion... so that’s why you asked us to separate our numbers! Instead of rushing the entire main force through the secret trails last night, you kept the heaviest vanguard tracking the inner treeline with the Chief!"