FREE USE in Primitive World

Chapter 184: Chapter 184: The Weight of a Heart

“Don’t look!” the girl carrying Sol grunted, her breath coming in short, sharp bursts that sprayed a fine mist of sweat and blood into the air. “Just stay still if you want to keep your head!”

She didn’t wait for an answer. Her muscles, slick with sweat and the blood of others, bunched and exploded with a rhythmic, violent power. As she accelerated. Her speed was incredible… she was moving faster than Sol’s current top speed, even while carrying his heavy body. Her legs were glowing with a faint, feline-like phantom, her footsteps nearly silent as she wove through the carnage.

Every time her feet slammed into the churned earth, Sol felt the vibration travel through her shoulder and into his chest. The wind began to scream in his ears, a high-pitched whistling that almost drowned out the noise of the massacre behind them.

Sol felt the Silver Liquid energy in his core finally settling. The nausea and vertigo that had made him a dead weight were receding, replaced by a cold, sharpened clarity, until the blurred chaos of the battlefield resolved into a high-definition nightmare.

He could feel the power humming in his fingertips, the Attribute Exchange shard pulsing with a hungry, golden light. For a split second, his ego flared again. He shouldn’t be carried like a sack of grain. He was about to struggle, to demand that she put him down so he could show these leathery freaks what a “Divine Mortal” could do. He wanted to test his new muscles, to see if he could crack a Grey Marauder’s skull with his bare hands.

But then, he saw him, his crimson eyes narrowing as they locked onto a scene that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

A human warrior, easily twice the size of the original Sol, stood like a lighthouse in a sea of grey and yellow madness. This man was a titan in human form, his skin bronzed and mapped with countless battle scars. A brilliant, golden Bear phantom… massive, translucent, and roaring with the sound of a mountain collapsing… wrapped around his body like living armor. Every swing of his heavy stone mace sent ripples of shockwaves through the air, pulverizing the ground and liquefying any Lanky Stalker that dared to get within ten feet.

With a guttural shout, he swiped a spectral claw that caught one of the nine-foot Grey monsters across the neck.

The beast’s head didn’t just fall, it was launched into the brush, its leathery grey skin and dense muscle offering no more resistance than wet paper against the golden light.

For a heartbeat, Sol thought, He’s winning. He’s a god.

As this was a man who looked far stronger than the version of Sol that had just stepped out of the Void. He was a master of his craft, a veteran of a thousand battles.

Then, three Grey monsters, clearly much bigger and stronger than the others, cut through the chaos, ignoring everyone around them.

They didn’t roar or get into any special posture. They just moved with a chilling, hive-mind precision, that made Sol’s blood turn to slush as the other grey monsters fought and cleared the way for them, it was clear that they weren’t nobodies.

The Bear-warrior let out a defiant scream. His golden phantom roared in unison, swiping a spectral claw that caught the lead monster mid-leap. The force was astronomical; the monster’s head was torn clean off its shoulders, spinning into the canopy in a spray of thick, grey ichor.

But the other two didn’t even flinch. They didn’t pause to mourn their comrade. They simply used the opening.

As the warrior’s arm was extended from the strike, one grey monster lunged low, its massive grey arms wrapping around the warrior’s waist. The second monster leapt high, its hinged maw opening to reveal that terrifying second set of jaws.

The Bear phantom swiped again, but the grey monster moved with a dogged, suicidal brutality. They ignored the spectral claws tearing into their leathery hides, focusing entirely on the kill.

The first grey monster caught the spectral bear’s claw with its own chest, bone-deep gouges appearing in its grey skin. It ignored the pain. It reached out with its massive hands and grabbed the phantom’s snout.

Then, it bit.

The second set of jaws… those horrific inner pharyngeal teeth seemed to be able to bite even the phantom, as they… shot forward, snapping shut on the spectral Bear’s throat. The phantom roared in metaphysical agony, its golden light flickering.

“NO!” the warrior roared, his voice thick with the strain of his fading power.

He tried to swing his mace, but the high-leaping monster was already there as it slammed into the warrior’s chest, its pharyngeal jaws shooting forward like a hydraulic piston.

CRUNCH.

The sound was sickening… Sol heard the bone snap like a dry twig even over the roar of the wind.

The golden Bear phantom flickered violently, its roar turning into a distorted glitch as the warrior’s concentration shattered. The Bear Phantom flickered, let out one last, mournful roar, flickered once, twice, and then shattered into thousands of golden sparks.

The man was strong, but his resolve seemed even stronger than his strength. Even with his bones crushed and his phantom gone, he didn’t stop. His eyes went wide with a frantic, desperate light. Maybe he knew his end was coming. Maybe he knew there was no escape. He disregarded all his defense, dropping his mace and reaching for the monster’s throat with his bare hands, his hands glowing with the last of his golden energy.

He let out a scream that sounded more like a roar than anything the phantom had produced. in an instant, he began to glow… not with steady power, but with a volatile, exploding brilliance. He was trying to detonate his remaining power, to take at least one more of these bastards into the dark with him.

But maybe the monster knew what he was doing.

The monster pinned to his chest didn’t go for his throat. It didn’t even go for his head. With a movement so fast Sol’s dynamic vision could barely track it, it punched its massive hand directly into the warrior’s chest cavity.

SHLICK.

Sol watched, paralyzed, as the monster’s arm disappeared up to the elbow into the man’s ribcage. A split second later, the monster ripped its hand back out, in one swift, wet motion.

Held in its grey, blood-slicked fingers was the warrior’s heart.

It was huge, red, and still beating with a frantic, desperate rhythm, spraying rhythmic jets of life across the monster’s face, and slowly squeezed and crushed it.

The warrior froze. The golden light in his eyes didn’t vanish instantly; it lingered, a tragic, dying ember. He mechanically looked down at the gaping, smoking hole in his chest, then at the pulsating muscle in the monster’s hand. He couldn’t seem to believe what he was seeing.

Blood sprayed from his mouth, bubbling over his lips as he let out a ragged, wet wheeze. And then, as if drawn by a magnet, or maybe to look at the world for one last time his eyes moved.

Across the chaos, across the screams, clashes and the flying gore, his eyes happened to meet Sol’s.

Time seemed to slow down. Sol felt like his own heart was being squeezed by an invisible, frozen fist. His throat tightened, the air suddenly feeling too thick to breathe. He wanted to look away. He wanted to shut his eyes and pretend this wasn’t happening.

But he couldn’t.

His gaze was locked, tethered to the dying man by a thread of pure, unadulterated tragedy.

The warrior didn’t scream, beg or even curse. Instead, a slow, heartbreaking smile spread across his blood-stained face. It wasn’t a smile of victory, but one of profound, weary acceptance… the smile of a man who had fought his entire life for a world that didn’t care, and was finally being allowed to leave. He looked at Sol, shimmering white tunic, his crimson eyes, unique the aura radiating from his skin, and in that gaze, there was a flicker of something… recognition? Hope? Or maybe just the shared silence of two souls caught in the teeth of a cruel universe.

Run, the man’s eyes seemed to say. Live, you lucky brat.

In that look, Sol saw the entire cold, tragic reality of this world. This wasn’t a game where the “NPCs” respawned. This was a place where heroes were eaten by things that didn’t know their names.

Sol’s eyes burned. He felt a primal, irrational urge to struggle out of the girl’s grip, to throw himself into that meat grinder and do… something. Anything. He felt like his heart was being shredded.

He opened his mouth to shout, to scream, to do something, use the Law of Exchange, throw a silver sphere, anything… but he was already fifty yards away, and the girl’s grip was like iron.

Then, the final horror began.

Seeing the man slowly lose his breath, the grey monsters roared in victory, the humans warriors around looked with intense sadness, some wanted to help, but they were already occupied with their own enemies, and couldn’t get out, some just looked with a heavy gaze and instantly turned away, channeling their rage into killing the monsters.

The monster with the heart didn’t even eat it. It just crushed the organ in its fist, letting the life-blood spray into the dirt.

Another Grey Monster stepped forward and grabbed the man’s shoulders. The other grabbed his legs. They braced themselves against the earth, their leathery muscles bulging until they looked like they would burst.

“CLOSE YOUR EYES!” the girl screamed at Sol, but it was too late.

RRRRIP.

In a monstrous spray of gore, shattered bone, and twisting entrails, they tore the Bear-warrior in half like a piece of wet parchment. His guts spilled onto the mud, his blood mixing with the black rot of the jungle floor.

The two halves of the man hit the mud with a wet, heavy thud, forgotten before the blood had even settled.

Sol went cold. Not the cold of the Void, but a deep, spiritual frost.

Sol went limp over her shoulder.

He squeezed his eyes shut, his forehead pressing against the girl’s sweat-soaked back. The smell of the warrior’s blood was everywhere… metallic, hot, and sickeningly sweet.

“I told you not to look,” the girl hissed, her voice trembling slightly now. “That was Captain Korg. He just bought us ten seconds. Don’t waste them.”

Sol didn’t respond. He couldn’t.

She hadn’t seen the smile, but she’d heard the sound. She let out a sob of pure, unadulterated terror, her feet slamming into the ground as she pushed herself past her breaking point.

The “Overlord” plan wasn’t just a dream; it was a joke. The daydreams weren’t just gone; they were pulverized. The ego, the smugness, the “cheat code” arrogance… it all dissolved into the iron-scented air.

He had thought he was a big deal because he could lift a rock and jump high. He had thought he was a genius because he remembered how to make soap. He had looked at the tribe as “savages” and “primitives” he could “advance.”

But he hadn’t seen this. He hadn’t seen the price of a single inch of ground in this world.

And now in the face of Korg’s death, all of it felt like ash.

Korg had a phantom. Korg had a clan. Korg was a hero. And Korg was now just two piles of meat in a nameless clearing.

He realized then that the “layman” knowledge in his head wasn’t a nuke. It was a candle in a hurricane. Without the strength to protect it, without the sheer, brutal willpower to stand against things that rip men in half, his “civilization” would just be a prettier slaughterhouse.

“He’s gone,” Sol whispered, his forehead pressing against the girl’s sweat-soaked shoulder.

His eyes were burning, not from the wind, but from a sudden, sharp grief for a man whose name he would never know. The image of that tragic smile was burned into his retinas, a permanent scar on his soul.

This isn’t a story, Sol thought tragically, There are no plot-protected heroes here. There is only the hunter and the meat.