The barren wasteland blurred past... dried riverbeds, bleached skeletons of ancient titans, and jagged fissures all becoming streaks of grey and white.
Within minutes, the dead landscape began to transition back into the lush, vibrant hunting grounds they had left behind. The cracked soil gave way to patches of green, then to thick, rolling waves of wild-grass. The air grew richer, filled with the scent of life once more.
As they tore back into the edge of the massive grassland at breakneck speed, the primitive environment reacted violently to their sudden, high-speed intrusion.
A pack of shadow-wolves that had just brought down a young tusk-deer looked up in panic. The lead wolf had its jaws locked around the deer’s throat, saliva dripping from its fangs.
But the moment the two warriors blasted past, a violent gust of wind and pressure slammed into them.
The entire pack was thrown off balance, tumbling across the grass in a chaotic heap.
The dying tusk-deer, sensing its chance, kicked wildly and broke free, bolting into the high reeds with desperate speed... its would-be killers left stunned and empty-mouthed.
Nearby, a massive herd of six-horned grass-eaters suddenly lifted their enormous heads, their thick necks craning aggressively. The ground trembled under their heavy hooves as they stamped in alarm, low bellows rumbling across the plains.
Several younger ones panicked and broke into a full stampede, crashing through the reeds and flattening everything in their path.
Packs of swift-footed tusk-deer scattered in every direction, their long ears twitching wildly as they leaped and bounded away in blind terror. Flocks of brightly colored sky-wingers exploded upward from the grass in a chaotic storm of wings and screeches, filling the air with frantic cries.
Even the more dangerous predators weren’t spared.
A lone shadow-panther that had been stalking a grazing herd from the tall grass suddenly flattened itself to the ground, ears pinned back, as the two warriors shot past. Its yellow eyes widened in primal fear... something its instincts recognized as an apex threat far beyond its understanding.
It didn’t even attempt to chase; it simply turned and vanished into the undergrowth like a scolded kitten.
Sol and Thauren were simply too fast.
To the beasts of the grassland, the two warriors were nothing more than a sudden, violent blast of wind and pressure... a terrifying ripple that flattened grass, scattered herds, and disrupted the natural order before vanishing over the horizon in the blink of an eye.
But the two warriors didn’t care and continued their blistering sprint across the endless green sea, leaving behind a trail of startled animals and chaotic herds in their wake... a silent warning that war was coming to paradise.
...
While running, Sol extended his sensory network, pulling at the molten Golden Silver liquid in his chest.
The evolved pool hummed inside his ribs, sending an invisible wave of heavy perception across the plain.
Within three heartbeats, his sharp senses caught a faint, frantic movement deep between the stalks of the tall wild-grass a hundred paces out.
Sol shifted his gaze toward Thauren, pointing a finger toward the shifting reeds. The Lion Commander understood the sign instantly, altering his stride to angle around the flank.
The hidden presence in the tall grass realized it had been spotted. Its movements became even more frantic, its internal essence spiking as it attempted to increase its agility to escape deeper into the jungle.
But against Sol’s brutal baseline speed, the effort was entirely useless.
The tall grass parted violently, revealing the lanky, escaping silhouette of a Zerith elite shadow stalker.... one of the few remaining high-tier scouts who had survived the morning purge and had been tracking them to report back to the main horde.
In fact, Sol had already detected them much earlier.
Even before they had fully left the burning Gray Marauder camp, his sharp senses had picked up the faint but unmistakable presence of several powerful tails following at a careful distance.
These weren’t ordinary scouts. They were elite operatives... almost all of them are high Layer 3 powerhouses... sent directly by the Coalition after the raid.
They had stopped relying on traitors like Thorne. Now they wanted real, firsthand intelligence.
After a brief internal discussion, Sol and the others had made a cold, calculated decision: let them follow.
Killing them in the dense jungle would have been extremely risky. High Layer 3 experts could easily escape or send warning signals if cornered.
A messy fight in the thick undergrowth could ruin the entire deception plan. So instead, they chose to use the enemy’s own spies against them.
By allowing these powerful tails to shadow the "desperate" group of young recruits, the Veynar could feed them exactly the false information they wanted the Coalition to believe... that the tribe was exhausted, low on manpower, and throwing their last reserves of young, inexperienced fighters into a reckless final stand.
And by now, those spies had swallowed every lie whole.
They had seen the youths marching with slumped shoulders and dragging weapons. They had watched the "broken" formation and the seemingly exhausted pace. The false narrative had been perfectly delivered.
The real plan was to surround and eliminate them later, in the open grassland, when Sol linked up with High Commander Thauren.
Out in the wide plains, there would be nowhere to hide, no thick jungle to escape into.
It would be much easier to flank them, trap them, and wipe them out cleanly without risking the exposure of their core strategy.
...
Sol exploded forward, his boots tearing the ground.
With a single, massive vertical jump, he launched his body through the air, closing the final ten paces in a fraction of a heartbeat.
His bare hand shot out like an eagle’s claw, clamping directly around the stalker’s long neck mid-flight.
BOOM.
The sheer momentum of Sol’s heavy landing drove the seven-foot alien scout face-first into the dirt, scraping his body forcefully across the rough, hard ground for several paces before they finally ground to a dead stop in a cloud of dust.
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