Chapter 667: Celestial Parasite

The lizard’s snout exploded almost instantly against the ground. But Sol didn’t let go; he hauled the heavy reptile upward again and slammed it down a second time, pulping its chest cavity and reducing the armored predator to a motionless smear of scales and broken bone.

The slaughter had become a rhythm.

Sol moved through the narrow choke point like a force of nature. He was an unarmored, naked reaper, wielding the broken stag antler in one hand while his other fist delivered absolute, kinetic execution to anything that stepped into reach.

PUNCH. SNAP. CRACK.

A Shadow Wolf leaped... Sol caught it in mid-air by the throat and crushed its windpipe with his bare thumb.

Another Stone-Hide Boar charged... Sol vaulted over its tusks, brought his heel down on its spine, and severed its spinal cord with a single stomp.

Two more beetles scuttled forward... Sol hurled the jagged antler like a spear, piercing straight through the eye of the first, while his bare fist punched through the underbelly of the second, ripping out its central nerve cluster in a shower of foul green ichor.

Every strike was clean, efficient, and devoid of wasted motion.

He didn’t use grand essence blasts. He didn’t waste his energy on flashy techniques. He relied purely on the terrifying, unyielding density of his Layer 3 Peak body, the mountain-like durability of the Great Badger, and the terrifying speed of his Dreadwing reflexes.

His skin was painted with a grotesque mosaic of black wolf blood, dark red boar gore, and green insect bile. The leaf tied around his waist was stained, but fortunately held firm.

The ground beneath his bare feet grew slick with viscera, strewn with the shattered carcasses of over forty beasts. And with every life he extinguished, a steady stream of pure, refined soul-wisps was silently drawn into the bottomless furnace of his mind.

The remaining beasts... barely a dozen surviving wolves, two trembling stags, and a solitary lizard... finally realzied the gravity of situation and stopped.

The blind, maddening pull of the essence tornado behind him was completely overwhelmed by something far more terrifying: the primal, absolute horror of the monster standing before them.

They looked at the mountain of butchered carcasses. They looked at the dark, steaming pool of blood spreading across the slate path. And then they looked at Sol.

The naked human stood in the center of the carnage, his chest broad, his knuckles dripping, his breathing slow and even.

The faint, neon-crimson glow behind his eyes didn’t look like the light of a man; it looked like the gaze of an ancient, abyssal demon that had clawed its way out of the earth just to feed.

A low, broken whine tore from the throat of the lead wolf.

It tucked its tail between its legs, took two frantic steps backward, and bolted.

The rest of the survivors didn’t hesitate. The stags turned, the lizard scrambled up the rocks, and the remaining wolves scattered into the southern dark, running for their lives with a desperation far greater than the greed that had brought them here.

Sol didn’t pursue them.

He stood alone in the dark corridor, letting the silence settle back over the Great Orrath jungle. The cool night wind blew through the trees, carrying away the heat of the slaughter and rustling the broad green leaf tied to his hip.

"Done," Sol muttered, shaking a glob of dark blood from his knuckles.

He turned his back on the field of corpses, walking with slow, unhurried steps back down the rocky path toward the willow grove.

As he parted the final curtain of hanging creepers and stepped back into the secluded pond clearing.

At the edge of the water, High Shaman Zephyra stood watching him approach. Her milky eyes took in his blood-drenched, gore-painted frame, the crude leaf tied to his waist, and the absolute, unbothered calm on his face.

"I assume," Zephyra said softly, her lips curving into a dry, respectful smile, "the jungle is significantly quieter now."

"They won’t be making any noise from now on," Sol muttered, stepping past her onto the damp moss and shaking off a stray droplet of black ichor from his knuckles.

Zephyra simply nodded, the answer coming as no surprise whatsoever. After all, standing in front of her was Sol. Expecting a pack of mindless, low-tier beasts to give him trouble was like expecting the autumn wind to topple a mountain.

Instead of dwelling on the butchery, she raised her free hand. Her pale fingers traced an intricate, swirling pattern in the cool night air, and her lips parted, chanting a soft, melodic incantation in an ancient, flowing tongue Sol had never heard before.

It sounded like running brook-water scraping over smooth pebbles, completely alien to the harsh, guttural dialects of the northern tribes.

Slowly, the moisture hanging in the humid air condensed, gathering into a shimmering, perfectly spherical globe of pure water that hovered just before her palm.

With a flick of her wrist, she pointed toward him.

The sphere surged forward, expanding into a swirling cloak of clear, pressurized liquid that instantly enveloped Sol from head to toe.

The water moved with an eerie, intelligent life of its own, peeling the dried viscera, grease, sweat, and caked gore away from his pores in a single, fluid sweep before collapsing harmlessly into the damp soil at his feet.

Even though he was left thoroughly drenched, cool mountain runoff dripping from his hair and chin, Sol looked down at his spotless skin with genuine astonishment.

No matter how many times he saw her do it, he was always amazed. Except that mysterious Free Use power, his own abilities... the overwhelming density of the Great Badger, the terrifying speed of the Dreadwing, and the raw physical strikes... were rooted entirely in the realm of tangible, brutal force. It was muscle, bone, and condensed kinetic mass pushed to superhuman extremes.

What Zephyra possessed, however, was pure magic.

Magic, across any world or reality, had an eternal, intoxicating grip on human fascination.

For someone like Sol, who carried the memories of an ordinary life on Earth... growing up on modern tales of sorcerers, Cultivators, elemental spells, and reality-bending wonders... seeing actual arcane arts performed right in front of his eyes never failed to strike a deep chord of wonder.

He had actually asked her about it once, curious if he could weave spells alongside his brutal physical style.

Unfortunately, the truth had quickly killed that ambition.

Shamanic sorcery was not a science one simply studied; it was an act of total divine surrender.

To tread the path of the elements, an initiate had to violently shatter their own sun core, severing their self-forged spirit beast foundation to become a hollow vessel dedicated entirely to the worship of an ancestral God or primordial spirit.

The spells were actually not their own; they were channeled blessings, granted or withheld at the whim of an unseen entity.

For an fiercely independent soul like Sol, who believed only in the strength forged by his own hands and blood, that requirement was dead on arrival.

The idea of destroying his own hard-won power just to bow his head, forfeit his sovereignty, and beg on his knees for the scraps of an arrogant God’s favor was completely, utterly unacceptable.

He would rather beat his enemies to death with his bare knuckles for the rest of his days than let his fate hang on the blessing of some celestial parasite.