Chapter 202: Terrifying
Akira activated the headband.
The world fractured, and she watched as the four vultures began their approach in the next few seconds.
Two were coming in from the northeast, diving in sequence.
The third was circling wide to the left, waiting for the group to focus on the first two before committing and blindsiding them.
While the fourth was hanging back entirely, staying higher up above the ground in the air, watching it all.
Akira had to admit it was actually a good tactic that had probably killed hundreds before them. Unfortunately for the beasts, they’d met her.
The cracks sealed and time resumed.
She looked up at her two resurrected vultures circling above and pushed her will into them through [Resurrect], directing them without words.
They moved.
The first undead vulture drove into the lead diver from the northeast, the collision sending both of them tumbling sideways through the air.
The living vulture screeched, clawing to free itself, flipping in every direction as it fell.
Akira fired a [Death Bolt] into the struggling pair, targeting the living one. The bolt hit it across the wing joint, decaying the limb. The rot spread fast, and in the next second, the s screeching stopped.
[You have killed a D-rank Vampire Vulture]
The second vulture abandoned its dive, spooked by what had happened to the first.
The second undead vulture hit it from below, driving upwards into its chest with both talons. The living vulture shrieked, thrashing, unable to climb or dive.
Akira fired.
The bolt hit it in the throat and it dropped from the sky.
The third vulture, the one that had been circling wide, dove downwards, absolutely sure that the humans had been distracted by the two birds, even if they were dead.
It dove in from the left and Akira turned, activating the headband for a single fractured second, studying its exact path as it descended, and fired without waiting for it to get closer.
The [Death Bolt] crossed the dark air and hit the vulture at the peak of its dive.
It fell.
She looked up at the fourth and final vulture, still hanging high above them.
She raised her hand.
It screeched loudly, then dove towards her.
She fired a single [Death Bolt], and it never had a chance to reach them.
In the silence that followed, Karrakas turned to look at Akira.
He was quiet for a moment, and on his face was an expression of both admiration and genuine unease. It was as if he didn’t know which to feel.
"Do you know how terrifying the three of you are to normal new Adepts? If Lady Morgana hadn’t told me, I’d have thought you three were veterans who were taking their time with their leveling," he said.
"I’ve guided new Adepts before. Many of them." He gestured at the scattered vulture corpses around them. "None of them have ever done this before."
"And I have a feeling," he glanced back at Melody and Lukas, "that the two of them are not really weaker than you are."
Akira chuckled, but said nothing in response. She simply activated [Resurrect] again, one of the corpses rising to their feet and into the air to join the two already there.
Karrakas shook his head and turned back to his compass.
They moved on.
The Vampire Vultures came twice more through the night, once in a loose group of three and once as a pair hunting together.
Akira handled both encounters before anything reached Lukas and Melody. After the second group, the sky stayed quiet.
Three Deathstalker Scorpions came up from the sand an hour later, firing their beams at them. Karrakas and Akira put them down in under thirty seconds.
Then there was nothing. The desert went quiet again and stayed that way.
The cold slowly intensified as the night passed, trying to sleep into their bones. They walked through it, putting one foot in front of the other and not speaking much.
At intervals, Karrakas called short rest stops. They ate rations standing up and drank water, let their legs recover, then moved again.
After several hours, the darkness at the edge of the sky began to thin.
Grey light crept in from the east, slowly washing the stars out one by one.
"Stop," Karrakas said, holding up a hand. "It’s time to change into our day gear."
They reached into their spatial rings and swapped out the night layers for the breathable day set, the cooling underwear feeling cold against their skin in the lingering morning chill.
The air still carried the night’s temperature, and the cooling underlayer made it seem even colder, but the sun was already pulling itself above the horizon, its light reaching across the desert floor ahead of its heat.
As they walked, Lukas looked out at the desert around them.
It was empty in every direction. There was not a single beast visible anywhere across the red expanse.
He couldn’t help but wonder about the Spiked Turtle.
Has it already passed through? Was it somewhere behind them? Or was it on a path that led straight towards them?
Or worse, was it already somewhere ahead of them, its shell blending in with the sand the way Karrakas had described?
He had no way of knowing, but what he knew was that he had no intentions of failing this quest.
Around them, the heat rose faster than normal. Within thirty minutes of the sun rising above the horizon, the sand was burning again, the temperature climbing with an intensity that surprised Lukas.
He felt the heat come back through the soles of his feet in stages, and this time it was more manageable. He wasn’t sure if it was because he’d built some kind of tolerance to it, or because the heat rose slowly instead of all at once.
The first thing he felt was the warmth of the sand, then the temperature began to rise, until it was burning with every step he took. His feet began to turn red again.
Melody looked down at them and exhaled slowly through her nose, but she didn’t say anything about his feet.
Instead, she looked out at the desert around them, scanning the empty dunes.
"I have a bad feeling," she said quietly. "About how empty the desert is."
"Be calm, Melody." Lukas grinned. "Nothing bad is going to happen."
"You don’t know that."
"No," he admitted. "But I’m choosing to believe it."
He reached into his spatial ring and pulled out his pocket watch, checking the time.
He still has a few hours left, and the quest would be complete.
He put the watch away and kept walking.
Nobody spoke as they walked. It was as if everyone was tense, treating the last stretch of the journey as the calm before the storm.
Only Lukas had a confident smile on his face, knowing the universe wouldn’t fuck him over at this stage of his quest.
Akira glanced back at him after a while, catching his eye. She smiled, and he nodded back.
They stopped to eat, standing in the morning heat, chewing through their rations as always.
Lukas pulled out another water container and poured it over himself, then directed the last of it onto his feet. The water hissed where it reached the sand.
They rested briefly, then continued.
Time passed, and before he knew it, a notification appeared in front of Lukas.
Ding!
[You have completed the class change quest!]
