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Chapter 455: Ambushing The Ambushers!

Up ahead, Tala would occasionally raise her fist, signaling everyone to freeze. The group would drop low, barely breathing, as she listened to the jungle. After a few tense seconds, she’d wave them forward again.

The three leopard warriors... Torin, Bran, and Kael... were still quietly losing their minds behind them. Sol could practically hear their confused, frustrated breathing. They kept pushing harder, burning more essence, trying to prove something. But no matter how fast they ran, they couldn’t pull ahead.

Sol, Kira, and Zeyra stayed comfortably in formation, moving like they belonged to the jungle itself.

Sol kept his senses wide open. His Dreadwing Blade rested comfortably at his hip. Behind him, he could hear Kira’s steady breathing and the occasional soft rustle of Zeyra’s clothing as she moved.

After nearly twenty minutes of silent travel, Zeyra shifted closer to him. Her hand brushed against his for a brief second... not affectionate, but grounding.

"You okay?" she whispered, barely loud enough for him to hear.

Sol gave a small nod without turning around.

"Focus," he replied quietly. "We’re not alone out here."

Zeyra didn’t argue. She simply fell back into position, but Sol could feel her eyes on his back the entire time. Her obsession from earlier hadn’t faded... if anything, the danger of the mission seemed to make it sharper.

They continued deeper into the western sector of the Hunting Grounds. The trees grew taller and closer together. The starlight barely reached the forest floor. Tala suddenly stopped again, crouching low behind a fallen log.

She pointed ahead.

Her milky-grey eyes were fixed on the empty space ahead, her bat-spirit ears rotating aggressively.

"Zerith scouts," Tala whispered, her nose twitching as she tasted the air. "Four of them. They’re sitting on the high branches of the weeping willows thirty paces out. They aren’t looking down... they’re most likely here watching the trails for any sign of us."

"Stay here," Sol commanded flatly.

Before Kira could even raise her bow, Sol’s figure broke from the root. He didn’t utilize his full speed or make a sound that would alert the enemy, but compared to before his speed almost tripled in a fraction of a heartbeat.

He reached the base of the first weeping willow before the senses of the stalkers could even register the displacement of the mist. With a single, vertical leap, Sol launched his body twenty feet into the air, landing silently on the thick, mossy branch right behind the first two Zerith scouts.

The lanky monsters were huddled together, their horizontal orange eyes focused entirely on the distant jungle.

They never got the chance to turn around.

Sol’s bare hands shot out like two heavy stone clamps. His left hand wrapped around the first stalker’s face, crushing its split-mouth into a wet pulp of chitin, while his right hand gripped the second scout’s skull.

\With a violent, synchronized twist of his shoulders, he snapped both of their necks completely around. The bone cracked with a dull pop, and Sol forcefully pinned their heavy, seven-foot carcasses against the tree trunk so they wouldn’t crash into the undergrowth below and make noise.

The golden essence in his gut gave a sharp, ravenous thrum, violently sucking the fresh Layer 1 essence straight out of the dying scouts and funneling it into his Sun Core.

Two paces away on a higher branch, the third scout spotted the movement through the corner of its eye. Its skin turned a pale, defensive hue, and its chest cavity began to expand as it prepared to squeeze its internal lungs to sound the camp-wide alarm horn.

But of course, that was just his dream, Sol didn’t give it the chance to breathe.

His right hand flew to his hip, drawing the Dreadwing Blade just three inches out of its scabbard. The high-frequency vacuum effect along the sapphire edge flared with a sharp ZIIING.\

With a clean, horizontal flick of his wrist, Sol launched a concentrated crescent of dense, vibrating kinetic force straight through the fog.

The invisible, high-frequency blade sliced through the morning air, parting the third scout’s neck like a warm knife through the butter, though the butter here was really ugly.

Before the monster could emit a single vibration, the severed head popped cleanly off the shoulders, green ichor spraying across the leaves as the body went totally slack.

Without even waiting a mirco-second, Sol blurred to the final branch where the fourth scout was frozen in terror.

Before the monster could even drop its bone-spear to flee into the high canopy, Sol’s heavy boot came down directly onto its chest, driving the alien flat against the wood and crushing its lungs instantly.

Within exactly five breaths, the whole scouting party was completely wiped out.

Sol dropped from the high branch, landing in the damp ferns with a soft, cushioned thud, barely disturbing the leaves around him.

He casually slid the sapphire blade back into its sheath. The Dreadwing Blade hummed once before falling silent. His breathing was perfectly even, his expression calm, like he had just taken a casual stroll instead of carving up four elite Zerith sentries in the pitch black.

Blood... thick, greenish-yellow... dripped slowly from the edge of his knuckles before he shook them to disperse it all in one smooth motion.

Torin, Bran, and Kael finally snapped out of their stunned silence. They scrambled over thick roots and fallen logs, eyes wide, faces pale with a messy mix of shock, disbelief, and raw awe.

They had spent their whole lives watching and even personally participating with veteran hunters to coordinate long, multi-man ambushes to bring down stalkers without taking casualties.

As these bastards were infamously slippery, their senses are extremely sharp, usually they detected the enemy before it got close to them, let alone ambushing them, which was just a pipe dream.

As they were the ones always ambushed by Zerith not the other way around.

And every time Veynar did manage to kill them, it was almost always through brutal, direct confrontation, after cutting off every escape route. Even then, it usually costs blood, due to their venom.