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Chapter 460: Blood Hound Pack

If the horde started baying and howling, the sound would carry straight to the Zerith scouts, waking up the entire enemy army before the dawn rotation could even begin.

"We can’t run," Kira muttered, her jaw tight as she quickly pulled three heavy bone-tipped arrows from her leather quiver, holding them between her fingers. "If we turn our backs, their noses will track us through the roots in minutes. Once they lock on a prey, they’ll chase it straight back. "

"Who said anything about running?" Sol smirked, his silver-crimson eyes flashing with a dark, predatory light. Fear was the last thing he was worried about. He adjusted his stance, his heavy boots digging into the wet clay until he felt the solid rock beneath the mud. "I told you before, we are here to clear the path. If even one of these mutts howls, the zerith and other monsters will be on us before we can blink.

Kira, target their windpipes. If you see a chest expanding to bark, put a piece of arrow through it. Boys, stay low and cut the tendons just like before. Zeyra, stay sharp and kill any stray one. I’ll handle the big one."

"Understood," Zeyra whispered, her eyes wide and completely unblinking as she dropped into a liquid stance right behind his left shoulder, her mid-stage Layer 1 essence warming her limbs.

Just then mist violently parted.

The first wave of the horde burst through the mist like a red flood. Six massive Blood-Hounds charged together, their hairless, muscular bodies caked in grey mud, their jaws dripping with foul, stringy saliva.

They didn’t bark; they kept their heads low, their red eyes fixed entirely on the scent of the human spirit warriors.

Sol moved first.

In an instant his physical speed tripled instantly. He blurred straight into the center of the charging pack, his large frame moving with a cold, mechanical precision that bypassed their wide jaws entirely.

His right hand drew the sapphire blade fully from its leather scabbard. The high-frequency vacuum effect along the edge flared with a sharp, localized ZIIING that cut right through the ambient noise of the jungle. Sol executed a fast, low-horizontal sweep. The invisible, vibrating kinetic edge sliced through the morning mist, parting the front legs and chests of the first three hounds simultaneously.

There was no loud impact, no dramatic clash of bones... just the wet, clean shlick of dense muscle tissue being separated like warm fat.

The three hounds collapsed into the mud mid-stride, their bodies cut completely in half before their brains could even process the pain.

The golden ocean in Sol’s gut spun violently, but this time, he didn’t feed the essence to his Sun Core.

He directed the cold, raw spiritual residue straight into the silver pool inside his chest. The viscous silver liquid greedily sucked the three Layer 2 hound souls inward.

He could feel the exact weight and trajectory of every single beast moving through the mist behind the root-wall.

"Left flank! Two coming through the roots!" Sol barked.

Torin and Bran reacted instantly. Using their Wind-Leopard speed traits, they dropped flat onto their stomachs, sliding beneath the extended claws of two lunging hounds. Their bone-daggers drove deep into the lower knee-joints of the beasts, twisting the rough edges to tear the ligaments apart.

The hounds let out a muffled, choked gasp as their balance fractured, their heavy bodies crashing into the mud.

Before they could roll over, Kael leaped from a high root, driving his heavy knife straight through the base of the skull of the nearest beast, killing it instantly.

On the right, three more hounds tried to leap over a fallen log to overwhelm Zeyra.

TWANG! TWANG! TWANG!

Three arrows cut through the grey fog in a single heartbeat. Kira’s aim was terrifyingly precise.

The obsidian-tipped arrows drove straight into the throats of the leaping hounds, the force of the impact carrying them backward and pinning their windpipes to the wood.

They thrashed wildly, but the arrows had completely shattered their vocal structures; they could only emit wet, gurgling bubbles of blood instead of a pack-alerting bay.

Zeyra glided past the thrashed bodies with liquid grace, her fingers hooking around the neck of a fourth layer 1 hound that had slipped through the line.

She didn’t use a weapon; she cycled her Layer 1 mid-stage essence, driving her palm straight down into the top of the hound’s skull, forcing its head deep into a wet clay hole until the neck bone snapped with a clean pop.

"Second wave! Ten more coming from the ditch!" Tala called out, her curved bone-needles extended as she guarded the rear.

The pack had realized their forward units were being slaughtered in total silence. The main mass of thirty hairless beasts surged through the narrow gap together, creating a chaotic jam of red muscle and snapping canines.

They were trying to fan out into the high grass to wrap around the squad’s edges, just like the Zerith scouts had done before.

"Use the plow stance!" Sol shouted, his voice a low, heavy command that reached the boys instantly. "Don’t take the attacks face-on!"

Torin and Bran snapped together, locking their leather-wrapped forearms and shoulders as they angled their bodies toward the sides of the narrow trench.

As three massive hounds slammed into them, the boys dropped their hips, letting the beasts’ charging momentum glide off their angled sides.

The hounds stumbled off-balance into the petrified root-walls, where Kael and Kira immediately executed them with fast, silent thrusts to the spine and eyes.

Sol was already moving deeper into the center of the jam. He was a reaper in black armor. As a hound leaped at his chest, he shifted his weight by half a step to let the beast pass before catching it by the hind leg and violently slamming it into the ground, breaking its spine.

But just at this moment, a pack of 7 hounds jumped towards him together, their red eyes, glinting with madness.