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Thauren caught up a second later, his heavy blade already drawn as he skidded into the grass.

Sol stood up slowly, his fingers still locked into the back of the Zerith scout’s neck like iron hooks.

The body was limp and heavy in his grip, but Sol didn’t care. He needed answers. He needed to know exactly how far the main Coalition army was, how many they were bringing, and which route they planned to take. With a sharp yank, he pulled the scout’s face upward, ready to begin a brutal interrogation.

Then he froze.

His silver-crimson eyes narrowed.

Half of the Zerith scout’s face was completely gone.

What remained was a horrifying, pulped mess. The brutal friction of being slammed and dragged across the hard clay ground at that terrifying speed had acted like a giant grinder.

The entire left side of the scout’s face... cheek, jaw, eye socket, and part of the skull... had been scraped away layer by layer until only raw, shredded meat and exposed bone remained.

The right side wasn’t much better. It was swollen, split open, and caved in, with shattered teeth visible through the torn flesh.

The scout’s remaining eye was rolled back, glassy and lifeless.

He was already dead.

Couldn’t be more dead than this.

Sol stared at the ruined face for a long second, the wind gently blowing across the grassland around him. A thin trail of blood and pulped tissue dripped from what was left of the scout’s head onto the dry clay.

"...Tch."

Sol clicked his tongue in mild annoyance and let the corpse drop back to the ground with a dull thud. The body landed face-down, the horrific wound hidden once more against the earth.

Thauren looked at the ruined corpse, then looked up at Sol, completely speechless.

Sol shrugged, his tone casual but rough as he tossed the useless hull into the weeds. "I didn’t expect him to be so fragile."

"Fragile?" Thauren barked, his hoarse voice full of exasperation. "He is a Layer 3 shadow stalker! Their skin is reinforced with native outer chitin. They survive falls from the highest ironwood canopies!"

"Still, he is too weak," Sol retorted, wiping a smear of green fluid from his palm armor.

Thauren let out a low, disbelieving grunt, a grim smile touching his lips. "Or maybe you are just too damn strong."

"It could be," Sol replied flatly, his silver-crimson eyes already shifting back toward the high grass. "Anyway, let’s get moving. There are many other mice to catch in this grass."

...

They started running again, their movements cutting wide paths through the green sea of wild-grass. Within less than half a mile, the golden-silver pool in Sol’s chest gave two distinct, sharp throbs. His expanded perception had picked up two more high-tier spiritual signatures trying to split up and escape toward the western treeline.

Sol motioned with his hand, directing Thauren to take the flank on the left while he personally moved to intercept the signature on the right.

Sensing the sudden division of the two human apex predators, both hidden scouts panicked. Their bodies flared with a desperate yellow light as they accelerated to their absolute limits, trying to split up and escape back to the safety of the Great Orrath.

But within less than ten heartbeats, Sol and Thauren had thoroughly caught up with their respective targets.

Sol cleared the distance behind his target like a rising shadow. Remembering the face-scrape from before, he didn’t jump or grab the neck immediately to avoid accidentally killing him before he could speak.

The Zerith scout, realizing he couldn’t outrun the black-armored monster behind him, skidded to a halt in a muddy patch of grass. He turned his body around, his horizontal eyes burning with a desperate, defensive rage as he suddenly blew a concealed bone whistle and lifted two long, curved bone-daggers to fight for his life.

The sharp whistle’s sound went far and wide, a piercing, metallic shriek that sliced through the open air of the plain and echoed off the distant rock faces.

A flock of long-necked colorful birds violently erupted from the high reeds a few hundred paces away, scattering into the sky in a panicked flight.

But to Sol, the sound was nothing more than a minor vibration in his wide-area sensory grid. He didn’t flinch, and he didn’t slow down.

The Zerith stalker didn’t wait for the echo of his whistle to die. Moving with the desperate, frantic speed of a cornered predator, he lunged forward. His multi-jointed arms blurred as he drove the two curved bone-daggers straight toward the gaps in Sol’s black Rockhorn carapace, aiming directly for the soft leather linings at the throat and hip.

Sol met the attack head-on, his expression completely flat.

Instead of drawing the Dreadwing Blade, he relied entirely on the sheer physical density of his foundation and the liquid fire of his molten Golden Silver pool. As the first bone-dagger snipped through the air toward his neck, Sol’s left hand shot out like an iron clamp. He effortlessly caught the stalker’s wrist mid-strike.

CRUNCH.

The force of his grip crushed the thin joint instantly. The scout let out a sharp, wet hiss of agony as his fingers involuntarily opened, dropping the first bone-dagger into the mud. Before the monster could torque his hips to thrust the second blade, Sol stepped deep into his guard line. His right palm drove forward in a short, heavy strike targeting the stalker’s upper shoulder joint.

THUD.

The kinetic energy traveled straight through his body, cleanly dislocating the bone from the socket. The second dagger also fell uselessly into the grass.

Remembering his previous mistake with the first scout, Sol deliberately controlled his force, ensuring his strikes were calculated only to disable, not to pulp.

He dropped his gaze to the stalker’s lower limbs. Before the lanky beast could utilize his legs to spring backward into the thick vegetation, Sol delivered two rapid, low-sweeping kicks straight to the knee membranes.

SNAP. SNAP.

The distinct, dry cracks of fracturing bone echoed through the clearing. The shadow stalker’s balance shattered completely, his lanky seven-foot frame buckling under his own weight as he collapsed face-first into the dirt, his broken limbs twitching in the grass.

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