The sun had not risen, so much as it had switched on like a light. Their moment of peace and respite under the moon was just a flash in a monotonous and deadly slog, but it was incredibly revitalizing. The broken moon hanging above him was a sight Rowan would never forget, he was sure.

  But all good things must eventually come to an end, and so they returned to trudging through their sandy oblivion. In the several weeks since the mad moon incident, they had seen several more gigantic beings battling throughout the dunes, but none had been as large as the Wyvern and Horned Viper.

  That didn’t mean that Vorn didn’t have a blast recording what he could ascertain about them in his Bestiary. Rowan didn’t think about the side project of his Soulmate very often, but he was glad that Vorn had managed to find a way to consistently progress. It wasn’t blazing progress like he got for making a spell on the fly, but it was rewarding work that could– No, would– benefit thousands. The content smile on Vorn’s face was proof enough that it was worth doing.

  Rowan paused for a moment. He could feel a rumble in his feet, faint and distant. Their camouflage had worked a treat against most of the gigantic monsters that wandered this awful desert, but whether it was because of the camo itself or because of their relatively diminutive size remained unknown.

  Ark stopped a moment later.

  “That feels close. We should find somewhere to hide before something that can detect movement decides to take a nibble out of one of us.” Ark said.

  “Out of one of you.” Rexen pointed out with a slight grin.

  “I’d like to see how you find the desert without us, Ghosty. If anything, I would prefer being eaten than having to wander this place alone.” She shuddered while scouting out a cave.

  The cave itself was shallow, but a perfectly reasonable place to rest out of the sun. Hopefully a great place for waiting out a Kaiju, too.

  “Ghosty? I’ll have you know that I’m much harder to detect than one of those sacs of ectoplasm.” Rexen said, faux-offended.

  Rowan had greatly enjoyed seeing him come into his own during their delve. He didn’t stutter as much and could actually hold a conversation, though it was clear he was most comfortable with Ark. That was to be expected, though. They had known each other for a few weeks longer than him, so it was only fair.

  The party relaxed and settled down into a calm conversation in the shallow cave. More a stone divot in the sand, if anything. Still, at least it kept the sun out, and hopefully the monsters too. The rumbling did continue unabated, but at the very least it seemed to be heading away from their direction. Small hairline cracks in the cave’s walls and floor made them glad for that fact.

  They waited for more than an hour, but less than five. In the desert, precise measurements of time were hard to come by. The sun never set. Never even inched forward, so what use was time? They had all the daylight they would ever need. Hell, more than enough.

  The party gingerly stepped out of their stone divot in the sand and was met by… Nothing. Clean, if dusty, air was all that welcomed them.

  Ark sighed in relief, then started-

  Like lightning, a gargantuan beige scorpion rose out of the sand and lashed out with its stinger. Ark was caught flatfooted, but still narrowly managed to avoid the sharp barbed point, the poisoned appendage only managing to leave a thin red line along her ribs.

  Rowan rushed forward before a word was spoken or even a shocked exclamation could meet the air. His feet stomped and carved furrows through the sand as he charged his way forward, only to be met with abject disappointment when his daggers, their edges formed by potent wells of gravity magic, simply skirted off the edge of the creature's sandy carapace.

  The scorpion whipped its tail around to flatten him, but he swiftly ducked and retreated back. He quickly spun his daggers back in their sheaths with a flair that only hundreds of points of Dexterity could provide. If sharp focused attacks didn’t work, then blunt damage was the only option he had.

  But while he launched himself at the huge arachnid, Rexen and Ark weren’t just sitting idly. This was an organic creature, and if it breathed, then it was in their twin malevolent spheres of influence. Ark was quick to beam a modified virus at the eyes of the beast but was horrified that the disease found no purchase. Rexen was similarly stumped at the closed system that was the Sand Scorpion. It had no unprotected surface to infect.

  “Rowan, Vorn, we need an opening! Anything, just crack that shell however you can!” Ark called out while retreating towards the cave. With her stats, a cave-in would be little more than an inconvenience, especially one as shallow as this. Much better some stone than a thirty foot long scorpion tail. That, and the wound the Scorpion had left on her was already throbbing in time with her heart. It was poisoned, for sure.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  The monster itself was relatively flat, the top of its head only being seven feet from the ground, but it more than made up for that with its length. From tip to tail, it had to be more than two dozen feet long. Thankfully, that was remarkably small for this desert of giants. Still, even just the head of the creature was taller than Voran by more than a foot.

  The scorpion, clearly realizing that the only true threat was the small human wailing on it ineffectually with its fists, scuttled its eight-legged clumsy figure around to meet them head-on.

  Unfortunately, its, hopefully soft, underbelly was hidden by the creature staying completely level with the sand, and Rowan’s fists had absolutely zero effect on the creature’s invincible carapace.

  Rowan’s adrenaline was already pumping, increasing his stats more than twice over, but that only left him twice as useless as his fists wailed ineffectually at twice his base speed. Rowan’s mind was clear, but his heart was pounding in his ears. Aggression was getting him nowhere.

  The amped-up berserker leaped backward, avoiding a crushing blow by the Scorpion's colossal pincer. He needed more power. An easy solution to that was [Elenia’s Blessing], but Rowan couldn’t afford to purposely take a hit. Then, like a flash of lightning, inspiration struck.

  “Vorn, do you think you could take over for a second? I need to focus for a moment. No more than fifteen seconds.” Rowan asked quickly.

  “Go ahead, I got this.” Vorn said confidently. Rowan could hear the undercurrent of nerves in his voice but didn’t mention it.

  Vorn and Rowan shared stats. That was a fact. However, giving someone a body that could go from zero to sixty in less than a second took some adjustment. So Vorn took that out of the equation.

  Mana-charged wind accumulated in currents around his legs, and with a burst of motion, launched him into the air. Vorn carefully managed his strength so he only jumped at normal human strength, and that still launched him over forty feet into the sky. [Jet Vault] was one of the first sorceries Vorn had ever made, and being sorcery, it was easily modified at a cost.

  Vorn couldn’t help the wide grin that split his face as he floated in mid-air at the cost of half an exceptional mage’s entire mana pool... Per second. The feeling of raw power flooding through his mana channels was intoxicating but unsustainable. Vorn could tell that he would run out of power within eight seconds at his current rate.

  So Vorn did something he never thought he would. He took advantage of his mana-addled brain, of his unearned confidence... And released the shackles on his perception.

  Vorn nearly started hyperventilating as the world around him slowed to a crawl but barely managed to keep his breathing even. Ark was injured and most likely poisoned, though he couldn’t tell her condition because she retreated to the cave. Rexen was… Somewhere. Most likely with Ark, attempting to cure her, but it was possible he was still attempting to poison the Scorpion.

  The sooner he ended this battle, the sooner Ark could be treated. At most, he had to hold the monster off for another twelve seconds while Rowan finished working on whatever it was he was doing now. But Vorn would be damned if he didn’t try to end this sooner.

  Realistically, Vorn knew he only had one real shot before the Scorpion actually considered him a threat. Right now, it was toying with them, letting them ineffectually struggle. Why an arachnid of all things was doing so, he had no idea, but he wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Or, well, he wouldn’t until the fight was over.

  Vorn calmed and cleared his mind. He would need his full focus for what came next. One shot.

  /// //// ///

  Rexen wasn’t quite panicking, but he was close. This Scorpion needed to die, now. He had already inspected the gash on Ark’s ribs, and it was bad. The venom was traveling quickly, and nothing Rexen had worked as an antivenom. He needed to make the antivenom from the source, the Scorpions stinger.

  But the damn thing was secured more than the Emperor’s Palace. The infernal creature’s exoskeleton was impenetrable. Even the more flexible leather-like flesh between the hardened outer plates was too strong to penetrate.

  A flash of movement and gale-force winds drew his eye and shocked Rexen for a moment. Really, he should have expected Vorn to crack flight eventually, but seeing him floating in mid-air with an evil grin really put into perspective the sheer power he had at his disposal should he choose to use it. Flight wasn’t usually seen until the Second Evolution, and only rarely the first. Rexen hadn’t even heard stories of someone below the first Threshold using it.

  Then, the grin vanished, and Vorn’s already pale visage lightened to the point that paper would seem darker in comparison. It was clear he was about to do something he would hate. Rexen couldn’t help but grimace. If he had been stronger, then whatever Vorn was about to do wouldn’t have been necessary.

  But what happened next, not even Rexen thought possible. Dozens of neon blue spell circles lit up the already bright desert sky simultaneously in a display of skill so outrageous, that Rexen could hardly believe his eyes.

  Each matrix began pouring rain onto the dry desert sand, but the very same instant that the rain touched to Scorpion, it instantly turned to ice. In moments, the hardened carapace of the creature was weighed down by pounds of freezing rain.

  Before Rexen could question the choice, the spell circles inverted, turning orange. Each turned into a portal to hell as quantities of fire never before seen spewed forth from the unceasing pits of fire.

  As the fire died down, Rexen couldn’t help but hope that the monster was finally dead, only to be sorely disappointed. The arachnid was blackened and charred, but very much alive.

  Before the Half-Elf could exhale his stress and disappointment, a flash of something hit the charred creature like a ton of bricks. There, with his fist sticking over a foot into the side of the Scorpion was Rowan, absolutely covered in blood.

  His skin was covered in the Bark of Elenia and his eyes were her signature green that his ancestors worshipped back home. All over Rowan’s body, a disconcerting red glow flashed and tore open his skin before swiftly regenerating.

  But Rexen couldn’t care less about that. There was an open wound on the Arachnid’s body.

  With a malevolent grin, Rexen pricked his finger. Blackened blood slowly welled up from the wound. Blood that could kill with a touch. He wiped his not-quite-lifeblood on a dagger from his bag and simply walked up to the monster and shoved the dagger into the wound. He couldn’t afford to miss.

  The blueish-green blood burned his skin where it touched him, but he had done it. The giant creature was swiftly dying.

  /// //// ///

  Rowan barely noticed as the wound where his fist used to be sprouted a new dagger, but he did catalog it in his mind. The monster would rapidly weaken from here.

  And it did. The temperature-shocked exoskeleton further weakened, and from there, it was hardly a fight to put the giant monster down. It was almost disappointing, but considering that two of his comrades were seriously unwell from this encounter, he would relish in that disappointment if it saved his friends.

  Rowan ignored the blinking notification at the top right of his vision as Rexen popped out of nowhere and began sawing into the creature's stinger. From his severely burned right hand, Rowan amended his earlier thought. Three of his friends were unwell from this encounter.

  Rowan followed the frantic alchemist into the cave and watched as he swiftly created an anti-venom with what had to be a Skill. He simply put the scorpion venom in a cauldron and stirred it for a second before feeding it to Ark. Her pale complexion rapidly returned to normal like magic.

  Rowan didn’t think he’d ever get used to this world. But that was fine. It made it more interesting. Now, onto Vorn. At least Rowan knew how to help this time.