Torin scrambled up from the ground and finished it with a clean knife-thrust through the neck joint.

Within ten breaths, the three-man patrol was completely destroyed.

The three leopard warriors stood over the carcasses, their chests heaving, their faces caked in green fluid and grey mud. They looked down at their bloody daggers and then back at Sol, who was walking out of the shadow of the ironwood trunk with his arms crossed over his chest.

Their faces were flushed with a messy mix of wild excitement and profound realization. The strategy had worked perfectly.

By systematically destroying the stalkers’ lower joint stability instead of fighting their high agility, a fight that usually cost Veynar blood had been executed without a single scratch on their leather gear.

"Not bad," Sol said, his voice flat but holding a small note of approval, as he touched every lanky to suck their souls out, but to others it was as if he was checking the bodies. "Torin, you leaned too far to the left during the slide. If that stalker had a side-dagger, your ribs would be open right now. Bran, your grip on the bone-knife is too loose; if you hit a thick piece of chest armor instead of the joint, the weapon will fly out of your hand. We don’t have time for mistakes."

"Understood," Torin said, his voice dropping into a disciplined, serious register.

They didn’t feel insulted by his criticism anymore; they craved it. They knew that every cold word out of this monster’s mouth was the difference between living through the next sunrise or rotting in a ditch.

"Torin, carve the marks. We don’t have time to celebrate."

"Right away, General Sol!" Torin said, his earlier nervousness completely gone, replaced by a fierce, serious pride as he quickly dug the Veynar war sign into the dead captain’s chest shell.

As they began to move again, the jungle around them grew increasingly quiet. The small nocturnal insects had stopped their snapping, and the dense morning fog had settled completely over the hollows, dropping the visibility down to less than ten paces.

Suddenly, Tala stopped, her pale grey eyes tilting upward as her ears twitched toward the canopy. "I smell blood ahead. Not Zerith blood. Omen beasts."

Sol stepped to the front of the line, his hand resting on the hilt of the sapphire blade. "What kind?"

"Layer 2 Blood-Hounds," Tala whispered, her nose wrinkling in disgust. "They are common beasts around here. Even though they don’t have sharp eyes, their sense of smell can pierce through any normal camouflage. There are three of them sitting near the hollow path."

"So, it means we can’t avoid them?"

Tala nodded gravely, but she wasn’t too worried. Her pale, milky-grey eyes remained fixed on the dark trail, her posture completely steady.

She had been secretly won over by Sol’s terrifying display of strength against the previous scouts, and she knew exactly what his blade could do.

"Stay sharp," Sol commanded with a smirk. "Since we can’t avoid them, we’ll clear them fast. It’s bad luck for the poor dogs for having such a sharp nose."

They moved through a narrow gap in the petrified roots, and within twenty paces, three massive, hairless beasts appeared through the white mist.

The Omen Blood-Hounds were the size of adult Ice Bears, their skin a dark, raw red that looked like exposed muscle tissue, their massive jaws filled with thick, bone-crushing canines instead of normal teeth.

The moment their wet snouts caught the foreign scent of humans, their red eyes rolled back, and they let out a low, vibrating growl that shook the ferns.

The first hound launched itself forward, its massive jaws snapping, targeted straight at Sol’s throat.

Sol didn’t even shift his feet. As the heavy beast met his line, his right hand shot out like a bolt of lightning, his fingers clamping directly around the dog’s upper muzzle, stopping its full charging momentum instantly through the sheer density of his Layer 2 foundation.

Before the hound could claw at his stomach, Sol’s left fist drove straight into its ribcage with a wet, shattering BOOM. The force of the impact drove the bones straight into its internal organ, killing the beast instantly.

The second and third hounds lunged from the sides, their jaws wide.

Kira and the three leopard warriors didn’t hesitate. Riding the wave of their earlier success, Torin and Bran dove low along the mud, their blades cutting the hounds’ front leg tendons while Kira drove a heavy arrow straight into the eye of the third beast.

Kael and Zeyra followed through with immediate, heavy knife-strikes to the spines, dropping both Omen beasts into the dirt within three heartbeats.

The three carcasses lay twitching in the mud, green and red fluids mixing with the grey swamp water. Torin let out a short breath, raising his blade to wipe the grease off the edge, but before his arm could even move halfway, Tala violently grabbed his shoulder, dragging him back into the ferns.

"Don’t move!" Tala hissed, her ears rotating frantically like two wild leaves in a storm. Her nose was twitching so fast it looked erratic. "More... there are way more. It’s a whole pack."

Sol didn’t look back. He kept his eyes fixed on the thick, white veil of mist ahead. Through the heavy mist, the wet slapping sound of dozens of heavy paws hitting the mud began to echo from the deep.

The three hounds they had just killed were just the forward sentries of an entire perimeter guard horde.

"How many?" Sol asked, his voice entirely casual as he finally gripped the handle of the Dreadwing Blade.

"Thirty... no, forty," Tala whispered, her pale face turning tight with sudden pressure. "And there’s a big one in the center. The core energy is heavy. It’s most likely a Layer 3 alpha. It’s leading the whole pack straight up the trench."

The three leopard boys... Torin, Bran, Kael... felt their stomachs drop. Their earlier excitement from killing the stalkers vanished, replaced by a cold, heavy weight.

Fighting forty Layer 2 beasts led by a Layer 3 alpha in a narrow, muddy jungle was a death sentence for a normal six-man squad.