R. A. T. H

Twenty-Five

A dune buggy stopped. Rose hopped out of the vehicle and brought out her pad as she waited. Sand and hills, hills of rock and sand, stretched over the horizon and there didn't seem to be much of a movement of anything. Well, she could see some more motors driving through the terrain and she certainly could see, with her eyes, what looked like a battle miles ahead. However, she could only wait for now, hoping for what she sought to pop out.

She went over the research she had collected in her head. The sandworm was a beast that lived and moved within sand, it could even eat the thing, but it mostly hunted other creatures that also lived inside and around the desert surrounding Alos. Its outer body, although looking rough, was dense enough to not be easily pierced by blades but its innards were soft and palatable for human consumption. It also had a mild ability to sense concentrations of mana, and its blood—which had various antibodies to the poisons of other beasts and was a great mana conductor—was used for medicine and biotech purposes, like homunculi.

The easiest way to kill it, as she had found out through both the Mana Web and the Beast Hunters platform, was to puncture a hole from the innards of its mouth and through its head. Most people would blast through its mouth using a 'blast mode' on their gun or a mana bomb but she had neither.

The ground rumbled ahead and she saw a cloud of dust zig zagging across the desert floors. From time to time, the body lept out then dived right back in. This had been the specific beast she had followed and decided to cut off.

"Alright." Rose summoned her weapon in a blaze of fire, unsheathing it under the gleam of the high sun.

First came a mouth leaping out of sand, then came a large, brown, limbless body to follow. The sandworm broke through the ground, spotted her, and rushed over like a slithering snake. Its body was as massive as her motor, and it looked about thrice longer. She readied her blade and ran to meet it.

Its maw opened and it raised into the air before striking down with the intent to swallow her along with the floor. Of course, she dodged the thing, jumping up, and riding the rolling body before leaping to find her place back on sand.

Her eyes scanned the area and the ground rumbled below her.

She pierced her weapon down and the sand roared with flames. A beast's cry followed the massive body of the sandworm squirming out and tossing her into the air. Its burning figure opened its maw right below her.

Her eyes blinked, receiving every single ounce of information. Rose raised her weapon and flames spurted, stopping her spin as she brought herself towards a hole of jagged teeth.

The beast moved its mouth, crunching down on her side. Blood flew from her body. Her core hummed, it shook her, trying to disorient her. She was an homunculus, however, and that didn't work.

Rose gritted her teeth, the pain was unlike anything else she had ever felt. When she felt something scrap against a bone, she gripped her weapon tighter, her blade burned orange and she sliced, tearing through the inside of the mouth before her.

Fire erupted and it shrieked, spitting her out like poison. Slamming into the desert floor, her face met sand. She sucked in a breath, forcing herself back up as dirt fell from her black hair along with drops of blood from her head.

'Drats,' She winced, feeling the side of her abdomen—a flesh wound of holes and blood, her clothing ripped to shreds. This type of injury wasn't enough to stop her normal functions, but its healing was rapidly lowering her charge as mana rolled through her body. 'It'll probably cut a day off.'

Behind her, a Sandworm fell to the ground in cries with flames burning within its mouth. Soon, its body stopped squirming and it was dead. She looked at her sword that slowly lost its fiery hue and waved a hand, releasing it from the world then glanced back, not a difference in her breathing, staring at the corpse of the beast.

'That. . .could have been handled better,' She thought, realizing that maybe her sparring did not translate to the ability to fight beasts well. 'I'll need more experience.' Her figure shifted across sand, a bit wobbly, and arriving at the dune-buggy.

She hefted a large cylinder, made of clear glass, from the passenger seat and dragged it across the floor to the creature

She grabbed a hose type attachment of the container, which had a rather large needle that looked more akin to a knife, and stabbed it into the innards of the creature. The blood of the beast soon flowed out. It took a few minutes for the screen at the base of the cylinder to read '3 Gallons', the Sandworm had become a shriveled mass of meat and, after that, all she had to do was remove the needle and carry the container back into place in the passenger sit of her dune-buggy.

Turning it in would net her 1.5k lixels. So, at this rate, killing at least two every 5 days would be enough to keep her well alive.

Yet, as she hopped in her car, hurried winds blew overhead, sending dust flying with beating wings as a bird's screech rang. Rose turned her eyes to see feathers, large feathers, flap—jagged claws extended down and picked up her dead prey before a flap sent sand into the air and the creature screeched back up into the sky, flying away as a roasted Sandworm dangled on its feet.

'A blaze falcon—'

The natural enemies of sandworms, they usually flew in the air and swooped down to catch them when they broke out of the ground to eat beasts. Sometimes it would turn into a battle between the two, with the flying creature lighting the innards of the sand on fire and forcing the other out—a tactic she had stolen—sometimes it would be a clean swoop—just like now.

'I gave it a free meal.'

She laughed at that thought as she hurriedly drove away. Like the sandworm; most beasts were still attracted to mana. She learned that the 'Black Towers' of iron she had passed before to bury Maria and Lux were made to disrupt mana signatures from escaping out of the slums and city, and keep most creatures away from them. However, she was currently nowhere close to one and her core hummed as she sped through the desert plains.

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