Chapter 199: Nightfall
It took less than a minute for the three Scorpions to come into view.
They dashed towards Karrakas and Akira, sand spraying into the air behind them. Their vivid red shells reflected the light of the sun as their stingers rose and began charging.
Karrakas was already drawing his bow, a wide grin on his face.
He released two arrows in quick succession, both aimed at the leftmost scorpion.
The first arrow grazed the shell, cracking it but doing no lasting damage, while the second punched through the joint between the stinger and the body, severing it.
The scorpion’s body shook in pain, the charge from the stinger dissipating harmlessly into the air above them.
Akira fired two [Death Bolts] at the center beast before its stinger even reached full charge.
The first bolt hit the shell and began to spread, the rot eating through the outer layer in a fast ring. The second bolt found the gap the rot had opened and drove through into the flesh beneath.
The beast staggered.
The third scorpion managed to fire its bolt.
Karrakas dropped flat, the beam passing over him close enough for him to feel it. He rolled, came up on one knee, and put an arrow through the scorpion’s eye socket.
Its head exploded, chunks of meat and blood showering the area around it.
The center beast was still moving, its legs carrying it forward on instinct despite the rot spreading through its midsection.
Akira dashed forward to meet it, stepping inside the reach of its claws and driving her palm forward. She fired a [Death Bolt] point blank into the gap between its head and its body.
The rot hit the brain stem, and the beast folded.
The first scorpion, still without a stinger, tried to close the distance on Karrakas with its claws.
He sidestepped the first snap, stamping on it. There was a soft snap as the joint cracked, and he drew his bow back, putting an arrow through the top of its head at close range.
Ding!
[You have killed a D-rank Deathstalker Scorpion.]
Karrakas straightened, rolled his shoulder, and looked at Akira.
"How’d I do?" He asked.
"Good enough," she confirmed, already storing the corpses.
With that sorted, they kept walking.
Soon, they fell into an almost meditative state of walking, scanning the desert, and more walking.
As always, the desert remained unchanging in every direction except for the slow movement of the sun across the sky above them.
Akira’s [Corpse Explosion] had done what Karrakas feared it might, drawing attention in the immediate aftermath, but the beast population in the area was thin enough that the encounters came in ones and twos rather than groups, and Karrakas and Akira handled them before they became problems.
The [Kairos’ Fillet] helped a lot, with Akira anticipating the danger before it arrived, and with Karrakas, eliminating it.
As time went on, even the beasts stopped coming.
They doused themselves in water twice more during the afternoon, lifting the containers above their heads and letting the liquid run over them.
Just like the first time they’d done it, the brief coolness evaporated almost instantly in the heat but still gave them enough relief to keep moving.
Lukas poured the last of his portion over his feet both times, crouching slightly to direct the water across his soles.
The redness of his feet had only increased through the day, but he’d long since learned to manage the pain that came along with it.
The sun began its descent towards the horizon, and the color of the sand shifted as the light changed, the shadows lengthening across the dunes.
The heat dropped slowly at first, then more noticeably as the sun reached the halfway point on the horizon.
Karrakas called a stop.
"It’s time to change our clothes," he said. "Everything. The cooling layers we currently have on will work against you when night falls. This time, we want the heat staying in, not bleeding out."
They all reached into their spatial rings, intending to change.
Just like the others, Lukas swapped his clothes with the set inside the spatial ring, equipping it onto himself.
It was as if there was a blink, and his clothes changed. His cooling underwear was replaced by a heating underwear, while he wore thick clothes over it which would trap the heat close to his body rather than letting it breathe through.
With all of them changed, they ate standing up, mostly out of solidarity for Lukas, who had to stay standing throughout the quest.
They pulled their rations from their rings and chewed, drinking water to wash it down.
When they were done, Karrakas checked the compass and they began moving again.
The sun finished its descent while they walked, and the desert changed with it.
Night came quickly out here, the darkness arriving with it. A half moon sat high in the sky, its light falling across the sand and making it seem a muted grey.
The stars were dense and close around it, looking absolutely beautiful in the sky.
The temperature dropped sharply once the sun was gone.
The cold came in from everywhere at once. From the air, the sand beneath their feet, and from the slight wind that had appeared from the northwest.
Lukas could see his own breath in front of him, small clouds forming and dissolving with every exhale. Beside him, Melody’s breath did the same.
The cold was harder to ignore than he’d expected, but it was different from the heat.
The heat had been like standing in front of a furnace that could not be put off, but the cold was different. While it was just as present, their clothes managed to keep it out, making their bodies warm as they walked.
But the best part about the night was that there were no beasts.
Since the sun had gone down, the desert had been completely silent. They hadn’t had any eruptions from the sand, and Akira hadn’t seen a single beast, even with the use of the headband.
Lukas didn’t know if that was the effect of the Turtle or simply the nature of the desert at night.
Either way, he kept walking.
But a part of him couldn’t help but wonder if this was simply the calm before the storm.
