FREE USE in Primitive World - Chapter 209: The Golden Ocean

Chapter 209: Chapter 209: The Golden Ocean

“Gah… hhh…”

The sound tore from Sol’s throat, ragged and wet. He reached inward with his mind, desperately trying to navigate the terrifying new landscape of his own body.

Now, the Sun Core wasn’t just a spark. It was a roaring, cataclysmic furnace.

It made him feel like he could shatter the petrified Void-Oak beneath his boots and jump to the very canopy of the Great Heartwood in a single, explosive bound. But that raw, terrifying power came with a price. It was pulling Primal Essence… the shimmering, golden motes he had seen bleeding from the trees… directly from the atmosphere.

And It wasn’t a gentle absorption by any means, it was a violent, passive suction. The very air in his room felt charged, swirling into his chest like water spiraling down a drain.

He squeezed his eyes shut, his fingernails digging into the mossy floorboards until blood welled beneath them. He expected the heat to incinerate him. He expected the sheer volume of energy to crack his ribs open.

But strangely his body held firm. The absorbed essence was being consumed as it turned hyper-regenerative mode, as his flesh was torn on a microscopic level, it healed a millisecond later, locked in a brutal, invisible war of expansion and containment.

He didn’t know how long he stayed curled against the door, drowning in the torrential flood of his own awakening. Hours bled into one another. The roaring in his ears slowly shifted from the sound of a raging wildfire to the rhythmic, oceanic crashing of heavy tides.

Eventually, the exhaustion of the transmutation overtook the pain. His consciousness slipped away, pulling him down into a deep, dreamless dark.

…

Next Day.

When Sol opened his eyes again, the violent fever had broken.

He didn’t wake with up feeling tired. Instead, consciousness returned to him with absolute, crystalline clarity. He was lying flat on the mossy floor, the cool, damp texture of the plant life a soothing balm against his skin.

He blinked, turning his head toward the narrow slit of his window. The sun was rising over Veynar. The morning light pierced the gloom of the forest, turning the millions of silver leaves on the Great Heartwood into sheets of hammered platinum. The wind carried the scent of wet soil, crushed pine, and a faint, sweet floral note that belonged entirely to this alien world.

I survived, he thought, the realization ringing clearly in his quiet mind.

He didn’t feel the unbearable, melting heat of the previous night. Cautiously, holding his breath, he turned his inner eye toward his solar plexus to examine the damage. He expected to find a scarred, volatile mess of energy barely contained within his flesh.

Instead, he found absolute, terrifying stillness.

His core had calmed down entirely. It was filled to the brim, humming with a quiet, suppressed resonance. But what truly paralyzed Sol’s mind was the scale of it.

Kira had described the Sun Core as a container… a specialized organ of the soul where hunters stored their essence and housed their phantom beasts. Sol had naturally assumed it was like a fuel tank. A normal hunter might have a tank the size of a barrel; a genius might have one the size of a lake. He had assumed his would just be a slightly bigger lake.

He looked deeper into the space beneath his ribs. It wasn’t a lake. It wasn’t a cavern.

It was an endless sky.

The internal space expanded infinitely in all directions, an absolute void painted in hues of twilight and gold. At the bottom of this boundless horizon rested an ocean. It wasn’t made of water, but of thick, viscous liquid that shimmered with a heavy, metallic luster… it was like an ocean of gold.

He didn’t know the specific mechanics of what made this core so different or so inherently dangerous, but his Earth-bound logic screamed that this was an anomaly. It was infinitely more powerful than the standard S-Grade “Sun Core” he had heard the elders whisper about. As for what primitive rank it truly belonged to, he knew the upcoming Rite of Soul would test its limits.

A sharp, rhythmic knocking on the heavy oak door pulled him from his internal abyss.

Sol pushed himself off the floor. The movement was effortless. He felt light, yet impossibly dense… like a coiled spring made of titanium. He crossed the room and pulled the heavy door open.

Kira stood in the threshold.

She looked entirely out of place against the backdrop of the serene morning. Her normally immaculate bone-armor was scuffed, and dark, heavy bags hung beneath her stormy eyes. She was leaning slightly against the doorframe, her posture betraying a bone-deep fatigue that her stubborn expression tried to hide. It was immediately clear she hadn’t moved from this spot since she left him last night.

Despite her exhaustion, the moment the door opened, a bright, cheerful smile broke across her face.

“You woke up!” she said, her voice carrying a forced lightness. “It’s time to go to the Shamanic Grove to get your phantom.”

Sol stared at her, ignoring her prompt. His crimson-tinted eyes scanned her rigid posture, the way her hand hovered near her bone-sword despite her smile.

“Did you stand guard all night?” he asked quietly.

“Yes,” she replied, her tone perfectly matter-of-fact, as if he had asked if the sky was blue.

A pang of genuine guilt hit Sol’s chest. In his past life, people didn’t inconvenience themselves for strangers. They certainly didn’t sacrifice a night of sleep to stand in a cold, damp corridor just to ensure someone else’s peace of mind.

“You didn’t have to do that, Kira,” Sol said, his voice softening into the deep, resonant rumble that had become his natural timbre. “I’m sorry. I don’t even know when I fell asleep. I could have been out for hours.”

“It’s okay,” she brushed off his concern with a wave of her calloused hand. “That’s what I should do. You are the tribe’s hope now. Besides, it’s not like I was alone.”

She motioned her chin toward the distant end of the suspension bridge. Sol leaned out of the doorway and followed her gaze. Standing like twin statues of muscle and fur at the archway were two massive warriors. Sol recognized them instantly… the bear-totem warriors he had seen earlier during his chaotic march to the High Hall. Their faces were painted in harsh geometric lines of red and black, and their eyes were locked onto Sol with a reverent intensity.

When they saw Sol looking, the two giants immediately slammed their fists over their hearts in a unified, resounding thud, bowing their heads in deep greeting.

Sol, slightly taken aback by the sheer respect, hurriedly nodded his head in return.

He looked back down the corridor, his enhanced hearing picking up the ambient sounds of the waking spire, but noticing a distinct lack of high-pitched, rapid-fire questioning.

“Where is Lumi?” he asked curiously.

Kira let out a fond, exasperated sigh. “I had to send her back. That silly girl insisted on waiting out here with me. But after a few hours, the adrenaline wore off. She started nodding off, falling against the walls, tripping over her own feet… but she still insisted on staying. Ultimately, she just collapsed into a pile of limbs and fell asleep right there on the moss. I had to send one of the night-watchers to carry her back to her mother’s hut.”

Sol couldn’t help but chuckle, the sound vibrating warmly in his chest. It was a stark contrast to the divine pressure and tribal politics that were currently suffocating him.

“Anyway,” Kira said, clapping her hands together to dispel the fatigue settling over her. “Freshen up, and let’s go. It’s time for the Rite of Soul. You need to claim your first beast. The other awakened youths should have already reached the Grove.”

Sol nodded. “Give me a minute.”

He retreated into the room. He walked over to the carved stone basin in the corner, splashing the ice-cold, crystal-clear spring water over his face and neck. He scrubbed his teeth with a frayed, mint-tasting twig provided on the table, and quickly changed out of his sweat-drenched, ozone-smelling clothes into a new set of clean, dark leathers left folded on his bed.

Before leaving, his eyes fell on the wooden bowl resting near the window. It was piled high with Star-Fruits… glowing, translucent spheres that looked like they were made of captured starlight.

His stomach gave a low, predatory growl. He was ravenous.

He picked up three of the fruits and ate them in rapid succession. The taste was explosive… sweet, tangy, and almost electric on his tongue. But this time, unlike his previous meals, he could feel exactly what the fruit was doing. With his newly mutated core and crimson-sight, he could intuitively sense the raw, untamed Primal Essence contained within the juice.

As the fruit hit his stomach, his body didn’t just digest it, it devoured the energy, tearing the essence from the physical matter and routing it directly into his heavy, golden-silver ocean.

So, Sol thought, wiping a stray drop of glowing juice from his chin. This is what made me feel so instantly refreshed before. My body is a literal sponge for this world’s energy.

The walk down the winding roots of the Feline Spire was quieter than the night before. The chaotic jubilation had died down into a tense, thrumming anticipation. The tribe was holding its collective breath, waiting to see what kind of phantom the “Divine One” would pull from the Shamanic Grove.

As they walked side-by-side, Sol’s mind was not on the spiritual weight of the Rite. It was indexing the political landscape he had witnessed in the High Hall, And something that had been bugging him since yesterday.