Neantherthal Man? Uhtred remained completely still, his eyes locked onto the giant figure beyond the border. The Neanderthal man t his gaze with unblinking intensity before slowly taking a step back, lting deeper into the darkness of Zone 1.
It was a silent, unmistakable invitation to Uhtred, asking him to step out of the safe zone.
Even with a hood shadowing the Neantherthal’s face, Uhtred could clearly see the burning anger in his eyes. The hood concealed the finer details of his features, but enough was exposed for Uhtred to recognize the classic markers he had read about in biology and science textbooks: the thick, continuous brow ridge, the wide, flat nasal cavity built to process freezing air, and a heavy bone structure that made modern human skeletons look fragile by comparison.
The raw fury in the Neanderthal’s stare made it obvious that Uhtred’s capture of the Homo erectus scout had deeply surprised and insulted him. He was clearly seeking imdiate retribution, because, logically, the intruders should have just retreated.
They had already achieved their primary objective, as the other scouts had successfully escaped into the deep forest with dozens of modern human children they’d obviously co for. There was no practical reason to stay behind and expose himself like this.
Yet, this Neanderthal clearly despised the fact that a modern human had managed to capture one of their kind. It was an outco that was never supposed to happen. He had now firmly identified Uhtred as a major threat, and his murderous glare made it clear that he did not want Uhtred to live or grow any further.
Standing right at the edge of the transparent blue barrier, Uhtred stared at the silent challenge, weighing his options. His analytical mind quickly deduced the chanics behind the Neanderthal’s positioning.
There was a reason this towering warrior was holding his ground outside the safe zone while the Level 7 Homo erectus scout had been able to slip inside unnoticed. It had to be the level threshold. Level 10 was almost certainly the deciding factor.
Because the System blocked high-level non-human... or rather, non-homo sapien entities from breaching Zone 0, this Level 13 vanguard was physically barred from entering.
This ant Uhtred could simply choose to stand his ground on the safe side of the line, completely untouchable. The System had not triggered any mandatory quest or forced trial that stripped away his choice. He was entirely free to wait it out. He could even turn around, enter the newly discovered dungeon at the center of the sector, grind for levels, and co back to face this Level 13 threat on equal terms later.
Every logical tric told him to stay inside... Yet, staring at the Neanderthal waiting in the gloom, Uhtred felt a powerful, undeniable urge override his usual caution.
He took a step forward, crossing cleanly out of Zone 0.
In his mind, he tried to justify the reckless choice by making it about the stolen children. He tried to tell himself that he was stepping into the lawless wilderness solely to hunt down the abductors and save the infants. That he needed to find out where they were taking them, and what exactly they needed them for.
It was a solid excuse, and it was certainly part of the driving factor... but if he was being genuinely truthful to himself, he knew this choice was purely personal.
It was born from a selfish, intensely competitive desire to test his limits against a sentient, bipedal opponent that could pose a threat to him. Not a mindless beast... not a lizard or a wolf. Rather, he wanted to face a thinking, calculating adversary. He wanted to see how we would fare against soone, not sothing that could actually threaten him.
As Uhtred walked past the shimring blue line, a flash of genuine surprise crossed the Neanderthal’s eyes. He clearly had not expected the modern human to actually abandon the safety of the sanctuary. The ancient warrior had likely expected Uhtred to cower behind the system barrier just like the task force mbers who were literally trembling at their knees just looking at him. Quickly, however, his gaze fird up, and he muttered a string of deep, guttural words in a completely foreign tongue.
But thanks to the language translator pendant resting against Uhtred’s chest, the harsh sounds smoothed out into perfectly clear English in his mind, and he understood the foreign words perfectly:
"It would seem the elders were wrong about these Homo sapiens," the Neanderthal grunted.
"Elders?" Uhtred asked, the question slipping out of his lips before he could even think to hold it back. Once he realized he had blurted his internal thoughts out loud, he leaned into it, narrowing his eyes. "There are more of you?"
The Neanderthal’s eyes widened significantly, his heavy brow twitching in shock.
"You can understand my speech?" The giant warrior blurted out first, then caught himself imdiately, his gaze flitting down to the smooth tal translator pendant around Uhtred’s neck. He realized right away that this human had already unlocked access to the Multiversal Store and the surprise in his eyes deepened even further.
From the sheer surprise on his rugged face, it was obvious that he had no idea the System was already giving certain modern humans the opportunity to earn multiversal tokens so early.
Uhtred noted his shock at that revelation, and filed the reaction away at the back of his mind as a vital piece of information for later.
"You are a severe problem," the Neanderthal spoke again, his voice dropping into a deadly rumble. "I will have to kill you here, child."
Uhtred barely had ti to process the threat, as suddenly, without a single inch of preamble, the towering warrior burst forward with terrifying speed.
The sudden, violent rush of movent blew the dark hood completely off his head, exposing his broad, rugged face to the night air. At the exact sa mont, a massive, dense club materialized directly into his large hands, pulled seamlessly out of a separate storage space.
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