Before Sol could even open his mouth, Elder Thorne pushed his massive fra to the front of the crowd, his Vulture-feather cloak rustling. He looked Sol up and down, his eyes lingering mockingly on the human’s ragged clothes and empty hands. A condescending, highly theatrical smile of false sympathy spread across Thorne’s face.
"It’s okay, ’Divine’ One," Thorne spoke, especially punctuating the word ’Divine’, his voice booming across the silent square, so that every single tribesman could hear his pity. "The Great Orrath is unforgiving to those who walk it alone and your lack of experience is not a cri.
If you didn’t manage to get one, there is no sha in retreating with your life. You can always select from so of the lesser On-Blood beasts our hunting parties have stored away. We will not let you go without an anchor, andIt’s safer that way."
Standing just behind Thorne, his son Korash let out a sharp, poorly disguised scoff, looking at Sol with a smug, victorious smirk, crossing his arms over his chest.
A few of the other lackey elders, firmly in Thorne’s political camp, imdiately chid in to twist the knife.
"Indeed," an older, gray-haired elder nodded sagely. "An On-Blood anchor is better than dying in the mud."
"It takes years for our best vanguards to even track a proper beast, let alone kill it," another added, shaking his head with feigned sorrow.
Hearing the elders essentially declare the expedition a failure, the gathered tribe seed to collectively imagine the worst. A low murmur of profound disappointnt rippled through the crowd. So won wailed softly in dismay, while the younger warriors sighed, looking down at the dirt.
Even Warchief Veylara’s expression tightened fractionally, her stormy eyes dimming with unspoken regret, while Zephyra simply watched Sol with sharp, calculating intensity, taking a slow puff from her blue-bone pipe.
Sol watched the entire theatrical display calmly. He didn’t look angry, nor did he look humiliated. Instead, a slow, very slight smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth.
He let the murmurs of disappointnt build for a few seconds, intentionally letting Thorne and Korash marinate in their perceived victory, letting them dig their own graves. You know he was a bit of dark-hearted himself, just a bit not more, just a tiny bit.
Then, Sol took a deliberate step forward. He specially took a deeper look at Thorne, his silver-crimson eyes locking onto the Elder with a piercing, heavy intensity that made him subconsciously stiffen.
"I didn’t fail," Sol announced loudly, his deep voice carrying effortlessly across the entire square, ringing with absolute, unshakeable authority. "I got a Layer 3 Lord Blood Soul."
There was silence.
Absolute, suffocating, pin-drop silence. For a good few seconds, not a single person in the tribe so much as drew a breath. The words simply failed to compute in their primitive, deeply ingrained understanding of reality. To them, a Lord Blood wasn’t just an animal, it was a walking natural disaster.
Then, almost imdiately, a massive, chaotic uproar detonated across the square.
"What did he just say? Layer 3? Lord Blood?" a warrior near the front stamred, his eyes wide as dinner plates, looking around as if he had misheard.
"Am I hearing that right? Right, that... that must be a mistake. It must have been an Essence-Born Layer 3," another tribesman rationalized loudly in the crowd, trying to force the impossible statent into a believable, logical box. "Yeah, yeah, haha. Even though it is just an Essence-Born, it is very good that he managed to get a Layer 3 Essence-Born! That’s a great achievent in itself!"
"But... he specifically said Lord Blood," soone else muttered, looking around in confusion.
The first man imdiately shut him down. "The Divine One must be joking, or he misspoke! It’s definitely a Layer 3 Essence-Born. Do you know how big of a campaign it takes to even challenge a Lord Blood? Let alone kill one solo! I would literally eat this spear if it was even an On-Blood. We are talking about Layer 3, not Layer 1. It’s absolutely impossible."
The crowd erupted into a flurry of frantic, awkward rationalizations. For a mont, there were deeply awkward voices clashing in the field. Even though they knew they had heard "Lord Blood," clearly, the concept of a single, newly awakened human returning with a Lord Blood-tier spirit was logically and biologically absurd.
But strangely, Elder Thorne’s condescending smile had completely vanished. He looked at Sol with intense, grave eyes, his jaw clenched tight. Beside him, Korash had snapped his mouth shut, his smug smirk wiped away by a sudden, sinking dread as if sothing had physically sealed his lips.
High Shaman Zephyra stepped forward, raising her bone staff to silence the imdiate area. She looked at Sol, her milky eyes boring into his with desperate intensity.
"Divine One," Zephyra asked, her voice tight, completely devoid of its usual airy mysticism. "There is no need to joke with the tribe on such matters. Hope is a fragile thing. Please, just tell us clearly which spirit you anchored."
Sol’s smirk widened slightly. He looked around at the sea of skeptical, disbelieving faces.
"Why would I lie or joke about this?" Sol said, shrugging his shoulders casually, his voice loud enough for everyone in the back to hear clearly. "It is exactly what I said. A Layer 3. Lord Blood."
Once again, the silence dropped like an anvil.
And then, a true uproar, ten tis stronger and far more chaotic than before, ripped through the tribe. It was a massive wave of absolute, vocal skepticism mixed with outright denial. People were shouting over each other, creating an awkward, chaotic din in the field.
Unable to contain his bruised ego and the sheer panic of the implications, Korash violently shoved his way to the front, his face flushed an ugly, mottled red with anger.
"Prove it then!" Korash shouted, pointing a thick, calloused finger directly at Sol’s chest, his voice cracking at the edges.
Elder Thorne watched Sol’s reaction to his son’s demand. The human didn’t flinch. He didn’t sweat. He didn’t try to backtrack. Sol simply stood there, his spear resting casually on his shoulder, that infuriating, knowing smirk still playing on his lips, his silver-crimson eyes glinting with a dark, predatory amusent.
A sudden, icy spike of genuine dread pierced straight through Thorne’s chest.
He isn’t bluffing, Thorne’s veteran instincts suddenly scread at him. The sheer, suffocating confidence radiating from the outsider was unnatural. There was no desperation in his posture. If Sol actually manifested a Layer 3 Lord Blood aura right here, right now, the balance of power in the Veynar tribe would shift irreversibly in a matter of seconds. Sol would instantly beco untouchable... a living legend.. and Thorne’s entire political faction would be rendered completely obsolete.
Thorne realized he couldn’t let it reach the point of manifestation. If the tribe saw the aura, he was finished. He had to shut this down imdiately, before Sol even had a chance to flex his spirit.
Fearing the absolute worst, and seeing a fleeting opening to crush Sol’s reputation prematurely, Elder Thorne stepped sharply forward, roughly pushing his own son behind him to cut off the demand for proof. His massive, scarred presence attempted to dominate the square as he desperately sought to control the narrative.
He looked directly at Warchief Veylara, his voice hard, uncompromising, and laced with a panicked urgency, sharply pivoting his strategy from false pity to aggressive condemnation.
"Proof? We do not need proof of a madman’s delusions!" Thorne bood, his voice echoing off the massive petrified walls, turning the crowd’s chaotic skepticism into a sharpened weapon. "Warchief, listen to this madness! I had already warned you that this outsider does not seem like soone good or honorable. He makes a mockery of our sacred hunts and the blood we shed!"
Thorne gestured broadly toward the crowd, whipping up their outrage. "To stand before the entire tribe and tell such a blatant, insulting lie about a Lord Blood beast... it is a spit in the face of every vanguard warrior who has ever died protecting these walls from such horrors! It is an insult to the jungle itself!"
He turned his glaring eyes back to Veylara, stepping closer to force her hand. "We should not humor his lies by giving him a stage! We should absolutely punish him for this disrespect right now. We should strip him and throw a liar like him out of the gates imdiately, before his arrogance brings a curse upon us all!"
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