Chapter 492: Trapped
They immediately knew they were the dangers the whistle blower had warned about and seeing that they hadn’t returned even though they had already decided to meet at the edge of the jungle, in case of an emergency.
They knew they were already dead.
But even leaving those dead guys aside, they had realized that they were completely boxed in.
Behind them stood the solid, unyielding wall of the Veynar veteran vanguard; in front of them stood the black reaper who had already butchered their companions.
As if on a single, silent cue born from pure survival instinct, the seven stalkers didn’t try to form a coordinated spear-wall.
They scattered.
They exploded outward in seven completely different directions, their multi-jointed legs launching their lanky bodies into desperate sprints.
They tried to twist their torsos mid-air, attempting to scramble past Sol and Thauren’s flanks since they knew they couldn’t pass the heavy block of the Veynar warriors behind them.
But of course, it wasn’t going to be that easy to scatter back into the grassland.
Not now that they had all gathered into a single bottleneck, and Sol certainly wasn’t planning to waste any more precious time playing hide-and-seek in the weeds.
"Stay where you are," Sol muttered silently.
Without a single flashy movement, he immediately activated his newly evolved Golden Dominion skill.
A wave of invisible, radiant energy exploded outward from his body in a seamless, silent circle.
The molten golden-silver pool inside his ribs surged violently, spreading across the entire clearing like hot sunlight given physical form.
The effect hit the jumping stalkers instantly. Even though the suppression wasn’t as absolute on these high-layer elite scouts as it had been on the lower-layer fodder back at the mud huts, it was more than enough to completely shatter their coordination.
Mid-sprint, the lanky monsters suddenly gasped, their horizontal orange eyes turning hazy and unfocused as the golden dominion forced a sudden, heavy drop in their nervous systems.
Instantly, their nervous systems lagged like old computers.
Their hyper-reactive multi-jointed legs, which usually moved with the liquid speed of the brush, suddenly felt as if they were dragging through thick, heavy swamp muck.
Their balance broke completely, causing three of them to crash clumsily into the dirt before they could even complete their leaps.
To the Veynar veterans, this was nothing short of a miracle.
Every single warrior gathered in the vanguard knew, no matter how proud or unwilling they were to admit it, that a human spirit warrior was naturally no match for a Zerith stalker in terms of pure, unrefined agility.
In a normal skirmish, the lanky bastards would simply jump through the high branches, shifting their directions mid-air and picking off the slower humans from the dark.
But seeing the infamously slippery bastards suddenly slowing down, their limbs heavy and their movements clumsy like a kid scrambling through a dream, all the Veynar warriors’ eyes began spitting literal fire.
The ancient, built-up rage of generations of being ambushed erupted in their chests.
"Chop their legs! Don’t let them crawl!" a veteran sub-commander roared, as the warriors closed down on them like a ring of iron teeth.
Sol also wasn’t intending to stand by and watch the harvest from the margins. His silver-crimson eyes flashed with a cold, exciting light as he focused on the two largest Layer 3 scouts who were trying to drag their heavy, suppressed bodies past his right flank.
He moved like a black storm.
He didn’t utilize the vacuum edge of his saber for these broken mice; he relied entirely on the strength of his body.
In two long, silent strides, he closed the distance to the first stalker.
The stalker saw him coming, his hazy eyes wide with horror as he tried to raise a short spear to defend his throat.
Sol’s left hand shot forward, his fingers clamping around the wood of the shaft.
With a single, cold twist of his wrists, he snapped the thick spear in half like a dry reed, using the broken splinter to drive straight through the scout’s chest-shell in one fluid motion.
SHUCK.
Greenish-yellow fluid erupted from the gash, and Sol’s internal chest pool gave a sharp, ravenous thrum as the Layer 3 soul was violently torn out of the dying carcass, feeding the golden-silver liquid beneath his ribs.
To his left, Commander Thauren was executing his own line of destruction with absolute, savage joy. His Lion spirit traits were fully engorged, the gold scales along his shoulders glowing with a dull, heavy heat as he swung his blade in a massive horizontal arc.
"Die, you lanky roaches!" Thauren bellowed, his voice shaking the loose leaves off the branches.
A suppressed Zerith scout tried to use his upper claws to parry the massive blade, but against the raw physical torque of a fully prepped Layer 3 Lion commander, his thin limbs stood absolutely no chance.
CRUNCH.
The blade shattered the arms completely, continuing its path to slice straight through the stalker’s neck membrane.
The severed head popped cleanly off the shoulders, rolling into the mud while the body collapsed into the weeds like a deflated hide-sac.
The remaining five scouts were systematically dismantled by the roaring wall of the Veynar veterans.
Moved by Sol’s tactical instructions from the morning, the hunters didn’t try to trade high blows with the stalkers’ venomous claws.
They dove low into the grass in small groups of three, their heavy bone-axes and short daggers targeting the monsters’ lower knee joints and ankle membranes.
SNAP. CRUNCH. SCREECH.
The sounds of fracturing chitin and wet, muffled chokes filled the small clearing as the scouts’ legendary balance was completely ground into dust.
With their bodies frozen by the golden dominion and their joints severed by the veterans’ knives, the elites of the Coalition were turned into nothing more than helpless, thrashing logs on the floor of the jungle.
The Veynar warriors swarmed them with grim determination, driving their spears deep into their spines until the last Zerith scout went completely silent.
The entire clearing fell dead silent once more.
Sol stood motionless amid the carnage, the Golden Silver inside him humming with satisfaction as it absorbed the fresh essence from the fallen enemies.
The field around him pulsed once before fading, leaving the air strangely still.