Sol stopped his blurring sprint and turned his hyper-focused gaze toward the opposite end of the crater.
There, half-buried in the churned, acidic mud, lay the colossal corpse of the Lord Blood Great Badger.
"You magnificent, stubborn bastard," Sol murmured.
He didn't say it with the flippant, casual arrogance of a gamer who had just cleared a difficult boss. There was a heavy, genuine reverence in his voice.
Walking briskly across the ruined earth, his boots splashing through deep puddles of cooling green plasma and churned mud, Sol looked at the trail of absolute, linear devastation the mammal had carved through the valley in its final seconds.
It hadn't just fought to survive. It had fought for its family. When faced with the agonizing eradication of its bloodline, it hadn't retreated into the jungle to lick its wounds and live another day. It had weaponized its own death, burning its very soul to ash just to ensure the architect of its misery died with it.
