Chapter 662: Butchering The Beasts

Sol was so fast that, it didn’t even notice the naked shadow descending from the above.

WHOOSH.

Sol dropped out of the night sky like a falling meteor, both feet slamming directly onto the beast’s thick, armored shoulders.

CRACK-CRUNCH!

The sheer, terrifying momentum of Sol slammed into the beast with astronomical kinetic force.

The beast didn’t even have the chance to roar. The bone plating along its spine shattered instantly like brittle pottery, its forelegs snapping outward as its massive chest was violently driven six inches deep into the hard, gravel-strewn ground!

Before the dying monster could convulse, Sol dropped his weight, planted his bare left hand onto its snout to pin its thrashing jaws shut, and cocked his right fist back.

A pale, golden aura flared around his knuckles... the concentrated, crushing essence density of his sun core.

BANG!

Sol drove a single, straight hammer-fist straight through the center of the beast’s skull.

The reinforced cranial bone caved in with a wet, hollow thud. Brain matter and grey spinal fluid splattered across the dirt, and the beast’s twitching body went completely limp, its soul-wisp immediately snatched by that unknown power in Sol’s mind like a drop of water into a boiling furnace.

He didn’t pause for half a breath.

To his left, barely fifteen paces away, a second roar tore through the trees.

Another Gray-Stalker, slightly smaller than the first but seemed twice as agile, lunged from the shadow. Seeing its pack mate crushed in a fraction of a second, the beast bypassed the path to the pond entirely, its predatory malice locking onto the naked human standing over the corpse.

It sprang forward, its broad, dinner-plate-sized paws extending four-inch curved claws designed to shear through tree bark and bones, aiming to rip Sol’s throat out in a single pounce!

Sol stood his ground, his crimson eyes cold and completely unbothered.

As the beast leaped, claws whistling through the air, Sol simply leaned half an inch to the right. The razor-sharp claws grazed past his bare collarbone, cutting nothing but empty wind.

Before the beast could clear past him in mid-air, Sol’s left hand shot out, clamping hard around the creature’s lower jaw, while his right hand seized the thick scruff of its neck!

RIP-CRACK!

Using the beast’s own airborne momentum against it, Sol twisted his hips and slammed the seven-hundred-pound predator horizontally into the solid face of a boulder behind him!

The stone wall cracked in spiderweb fractures. The breath exploded from the beast’s lungs in a bloody wheeze, but Sol wasn’t finished. With a guttural grunt, he drove his bare knee upward with savage, brutality right into the soft underbelly of the pinned monster.

THUD-SPLAT.

The impact ruptured the creature’s internal organs, turning its intestines to paste and forcing a fountain of dark blood out of its nostrils.

Sol tossed the limp carcass aside into the bushes like a bundle of dirty rags, wiping a streak of warm, dark beast blood from his bare ribs with his forearm.

"Two down," Sol muttered, his breathing barely elevated, the neon embers in his eyes burning hotter as the familiar thrill of brutal, close-quarters combat washed the lingering sexual haze out of his blood.

From the southern side, a piercing, unholy screech answered him.

SKREEEECH!

A violent gust of wind battered the tops of the willow trees, tearing away leaves and branches as a massive silhouette descended from the tree.

It wasn’t a ground predator. It was a Grey-Feathered Gale-Hawk... another not so common beast around here, but still it was a terrifying, broad-winged raptor sitting firmly at the peak of Layer 2.

With a wingspan stretching nearly twenty-five feet, its feathers were tipped with metallic grey quills, and its curved, foot-long talons were hard enough to gouge grooves into solid granite.

Drawn by the spiritual vortex, the massive raptor couldn’t continue to fly forward towards veylara so it folded its wings and entered a steep, blinding dive, targeting Sol’s exposed head like a falling spear!

Sol looked up into the dark sky, watching the talons drop toward his face.

But even though it may seem scary and intimidating, for him it was just a child’s play.

He calmly channeled the strength straight through his calf muscles.

Right when the razor-sharp talons were two feet from his skull, Sol exploded upward.

WHOOSH.

He leaped straight into the teeth of the dive!

His bare hands moved with supernatural precision, bypassing the lethal talons entirely to grab both of the raptor’s massive, scaly legs just above the ankle joints. The bird shrieked in utter bewilderment as the naked prey suddenly became a predator, dragging it downward!

Using his sudden weight to unbalance the beast mid-glide, Sol wrenched the raptor’s legs in opposite directions and twisted his entire torso in mid-air.

SNAP!

The sound of the bird’s hip sockets dislocating echoed across the surrounding like dry timber breaking.

The Gale Hawk screamed in agony, its wings flapping erratically as it lost all aerodynamic control. Sol leveraged the beast’s body and jumped on its back mid air and rode the flailing monster straight into the ground, using its feathered body as a cushion as they crashed through a thick patch of shrub in a cloud of dirt, feathers, and snapping twigs.

Before the bird could attempt to peck with its massive beak, Sol straddled the creature’s back. He wrapped his thick forearms around the base of its long neck, locked his elbows into a ruthless sleeper grip, and wrenched backward with every ounce of his Layer 3 Peak muscle.

CRACK.

The cervical vertebrae gave way with a sharp, final snap. The massive wings gave one last, weak flutter against the dirt before settling into eternal stillness.

Sol stood up, shaking off the loose feathers clinging to his sweat-and-cum-streaked skin. His bare knuckles were bruised, his chest bore a faint red scratch from the wing, but with his vitality roaring like an unchained furnace, they all disappeared in seconds.

He had just butchered three peak Layer 2 apex predators with his bare hands in the span of less than sixty seconds.

Yet, he didn’t lower his guard.

Through the thick haze of blood and torn foliage, his perception locked onto the final, most dangerous signature.