Thirty miles north, near the edge of a swamp, he caught a squad of four Zeriths tracking a lone Vanguard ssenger. He didn’t even drop from the trees for them. Sol simply pulled three throwing bone-daggers from his belt, infused them with his Sun Core’s golde essence, and hurled them down.
The projectiles traveled like ballista bolts, punching straight through the skulls of three stalkers and pinning them deep into the forest floor before they could even twitch.
The fourth monster turned to leap into the brush, but Sol was already down. He caught the creature by its long skeletal neck mid-air and slamd its body repeatedly into a petrified trunk until the head was nothing but a yellow paste.
He didn’t take their information. He didn’t care about their nas. It was an all-out war, and every throat he cut ant fewer monsters reaching the tribe.
But the Great Orrath was vast, and even with Layer 2 speed, he couldn’t be everywhere at once.
Around two in the morning, Sol dropped into a shallow ravine near the eastern border ridges, drawn by the unmistakable, heavy stench of a massive necrotizing discharge. The air here was so thick with the sll of rotted grease that it made his throat burn.
He was too late.
A four-man Veynar hunting party was scattered across the damp ferns. Their bodies were already entirely pitch-black, their flesh deflated and liquefied into an ugly soup that stained the mud. Their bone armor was lted, and their shields were shattered into fragnts.
Two Zeriths were kneeling over the remains of a young Vanguard scout, their long, multi-jointed arms buried wrist-deep in his open chest cavity as they fought over his vital organs. Their slit-mouths were clicking with gross, gluttonous satisfaction as they swallowed the raw at.
Sol didn’t say a word. The freezing disgust in his gut simply solidified into a flat command to eradicate.
He blurred forward, the sapphire edge of the Dreadwing Blade flaring with a sharp, blinding golden light. The two monsters didn’t even have ti to look up from their al before Sol’s vortex shield passed straight through them.
The rotating vacuum shear didn’t just cut their skeletal fras; it literally disintegrated them into an airborne mist of yellow flesh, bone dust, and green ichor.
Sol stood in the quiet ravine, looking down at the liquefied remains of his tribe’s warriors. He felt a cold, hard knot tighten in his stomach.
The Coalition wasn’t just testing the borders; they were sweeping the periter clean, establishing positions inside the Veynar’s territory.
Every group he killed was just a small cell of a massive, coordinated invasion network that was tightening its grip around the Veynar Tribe’s throat.
He didn’t waste ti mourning. He couldn’t afford to. The dark vortex of gold in his gut thrumd, demanding he move before the remaining tracks grew cold.
Sol turned on his heel, leaving the ruined gully behind, and lted back into the shadows of the canopy.
As the hours ticked past three in the morning, the atmosphere of the peripheral jungle subtly changed. Sol was in the middle of tracking a pair of stray Zeriths through a ridge of petrified brambles when his enhanced hearing picked up a low, rhythmic vibration rolling through the damp earth.
It wasn’t so beast. It was the heavy, synchronized beat of Veynar war drums echoing from the distant walls, accompanied by the sharp blare of the Warriors’ horn.
The ergency signal for a general recall.
The tribe had finally realized the scouts were failing to check in. The survivors he had saved earlier had clearly made it back to the main gates, and now the entire military apparatus of the Veynar tribe was waking up.
They weren’t just defending the walls anymore; they were calling every single active patrol back into the inner rings to consolidate their forces before the periter was entirely choked out.
Soon, Sol started encountering the visual proof of the recall.
From his high vantage point in the branches, he watched a six-man heavy Vanguard party move through a ravine below him. Their bone-shields were locked, their eyes scanning the dark leaves with raw, tense discipline.
They were moving fast, retreating toward the Veynar tribe under the cover of the war drums.
Sol didn’t drop down. He didn’t reveal himself, nor did he offer a word of greeting. If he showed himself now, those warriors would stop their retreat, try to surround him as their "Divine One," and drag him back into the safety of the walls. It would waste ti he didn’t have.
"Let the Vanguard handle the retreat," Sol whispered, his silver-crimson eyes shifting away from his people and back into the deep rot. "I’ll handle the clean-up."
The lanky monsters had also heard the drums. The Zeriths weren’t stupid; they realized that the sudden, aggressive mobilization of the entire Veynar tribe ant their stealthy infiltration had completely fallen apart.
The smokescreen was blown. The periter was alive with human blades, and worse, so unseen monster had spent the last six hours systematically hunting down their elite squads and turning them into red mush.
They were running away.
Sol picked up their trace near a narrow dried creek bed. Three separate heat signatures, moving with a frantic, jerky, twitching speed toward the eastern border ridges.
They were abandoning their positions, trying to slip back into badlands of the Coalition before the Veynar vanguard could cut off their escape routes.
But Sol had absolutely no intention of letting them reach the border. At least, not alive.
He blurred through the upper branches, using the Dreadwing’s natural vacuum-shear properties to slice through the air resistance, multiplying his sprint speed without making a sound. He caught up to the fleeing trio right at the mouth of a rocky pass.
The three Zeriths were leaping over boulders and fallen logs in desperate, insect-like bounds. Their long, multi-jointed arms flailed wildly for balance as they scrambled for speed, their horizontal orange eyes flashing with frantic panic.
Mud and rotting leaves sprayed behind them with every frantic leap.
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