Chapter 508: Kindhearted Lumi
Sol stopped in front of them, his expression calm as ever. He swept his sharp silver-crimson eyes over the three hundred kids sitting in the dirt, expecting to see the usual anxious faces.
Instead, he found something entirely weird.
The air around the recruits felt thick and hot, but it wasn’t just from the blazing midday sun beating down on the parched flats.
Their eyes were burning.
Every single one of them was staring up at him with a wild, fierce passion, their jaws clenched so tightly that the bone structure beneath their charcoal-smeared cheeks stood out like rock ridges.
Some of the boys looked like they wanted to chew straight through their wooden spear shafts, and even the girl with the bubbly face who had been weeping into her hands just a few minutes ago was now gripping her weapon with knuckles so white they looked like carved ivory.
The deep, heavy shame that had been crushing them a moment ago had somehow morphed into a strange, volatile fire.
Sol blinked, his brow raising slightly. He was genuinely confused.
I was only gone for a short bit, he thought, What the hell happened here while my back was turned? Did a poisonous desert snake bite every single one of them? Or did the heat finally rot their brains?
He glanced around the barren wasteland, checking the empty horizon for any stray beasts or sudden threats that might have triggered such a weird reaction, but the dry clay flats were as empty and quiet as before.
Finding no plausible or logical reason for their sudden transformation into a pack of angry wolf pups, he simply shrugged his shoulders.
In a brutal world like the Orrath, it was always a hell of a lot better for your warriors to be too angry than too scared.
He didn’t have the time or the patience to play medicine man or guess the internal thoughts of a bunch of tribal teenagers anyway. The enemy could be reaching here any minute.
"Listen up," Sol said, his rough voice carrying easily over the gravel flats without him even needing to shout.
The casual, heavy weight of his tone instantly made every single kid straighten their back and lock their eyes onto his face. "The layout on the other side of the ridge changed a little. The Zharun tribe just arrived at the pass. They brought a thousand warriors, and they’re currently taking up positions along the rear trails."
He paused, watching their expressions closely.
When he had broken the exact same news to the old elders up on the slate cliffs, those wrinkled fools had nearly wept with relief.
They had thrown their hands into the air, babbling happily about ancestral blessings, divine timing, and how the ancient laws of the sacred pact had saved their lineage from certain destruction.
Sol fully expected these kids to let out a similar collective sigh of relief. After all, having an extra thousand spears on their side meant that their chances of surviving this dangerous bait run just went up significantly. They weren’t completely alone in the ditch anymore.
But the reaction he got from the recruits was the exact opposite of the elder’s joy.
The moment the name Zharun left his mouth, the passionate fire in the kids’ eyes didn’t fade... it seemed to turn into a freezing, heavy hatred.
Sol even heard the sharp, furious grinding of teeth from the ranks.
The boy who had spoken about being a useless burden earlier looked down at the limestone gravel, his chest heaving as he spat into the dust with pure, unvarnished disgust.
The bubbly-faced girl didn’t start crying again; instead, her eyes narrowed into sharp, dark slits, her small fingers digging so hard into her shield that the crude leather straps creaked under the strain.
Sol raised an eyebrow, a faint, amused look touching his lips.
He had to admit, this reaction was a hell of a lot better than the pathetic, spineless display the elders had put on back at the clearing.
These kids actually had some grit in their bones. But it still puzzled him. Why would a bunch of green, unblooded recruits hate a powerful neighboring tribe that had just arrived to help them fight off a four-thousand-man slaughter?
Of course, Sol didn’t know about the private scars these children carried.
To the old elders in the council huts, the Zharun tribe was a complicated political neighbor bound by ancient sacred pact.
But to the youth of the Veynar, the Zharun were nothing but thieves who had torn a gaping hole in their world.
And the reason was Lumi.
Lumi had been one of them. She was a young girl from their exact generation, but she was entirely different from the rest of the harsh, survival-obsessed tribe.
In a world where children were taught from the moment they could walk to respect only raw physical power, look down on the weak, and ignore those who couldn’t hunt, Lumi didn’t care about any of that nonsense.
She was always carefree, running through the dusty paths with a bright, happy-going smile that could make even the grimmest veteran pause.
She was kindhearted to a fault.
When the younger kids came home bruised and bloodied after failing their training bouts, Lumi was always the one waiting with wet leaves to soothe their wounds.
When the weaker orphans couldn’t carry the heavy water logs from the river, she would quietly slip her own shoulder under the wood to help them bear the weight.
She shared her small meat rations with anyone who went hungry, and she never judged a single person by their layer potential or their spirit traits.
She was just Lumi... the only warm, gentle thing in a very cold, dangerous jungle.
And then, the Zharun had arrived into the Spire.
It hadn’t been an open war, but a brutal, one-sided demand disguised as a political trade.
Right in front of the youths’ eyes, the heavy Zharun warriors had forcibly taken Lumi away, dragging her out of the village gates like a caught animal.
She hadn’t screamed or fought; she had just looked back at her friends with wide, helpless eyes, her legendary bright smile completely vanishing into the shadow of the jungle.