Chapter 252: Sowing Discord
The first few hours of the journey were quiet in the same way a drawn blade was quiet. Nothing had happened yet, but tension lingered beneath every movement and exchanged glance like something waiting for permission to become violence.
No one openly challenged Garron’s authority, though nobody looked particularly pleased about the arrangement either. The newly appointed leader walked at the front of the group with the satchel secured tightly across his shoulder, one hand drifting back toward it every few seconds as though he expected the thing to disappear if he stopped checking.
Kael walked near the middle of the formation, his boots sinking slightly into the loose sand with every step. The heat was miserable. Not unbearable exactly, but constant in a way that slowly wore on the nerves.
It pressed against him relentlessly, seeping through his leather jacket and clothing alike until it stopped feeling like weather and started feeling personal. After seven straight days trapped in freezing forests and relentless cold, transitioning directly into an endless desert somehow felt deliberate.
The Tower was mocking him.
His armor trapped warmth efficiently, which under normal circumstances would have been useful. Under a sun that felt determined to slowly cook him alive, however, it became significantly less practical. Sweat gathered beneath his clothing in uncomfortable layers while heat radiated upward from the sand itself, turning every step into another reminder that this floor intended to grind people down slowly rather than kill them outright.
The others looked equally miserable. The rookie was already breathing harder than everyone else, wiping sweat from his brow every few minutes while unsuccessfully trying to hide how exhausted he was becoming. The injured woman fared worse. She kept pace through sheer stubbornness alone, favoring her bandaged leg while doing her best not to visibly show weakness. Unfortunately for her, the limp had become obvious nearly an hour ago.
Eventually, the middle-aged man slowed his pace until he was walking beside Kael. His expression carried the same distrustful irritation it always seemed to, though now there was calculation mixed into it as well.
"You’re taking this surprisingly well," he muttered quietly.
Kael glanced sideways at him.
"Taking what?"
"The current arrangement."
Kael raised an eyebrow beneath his helmet, and the man subtly tilted his head toward Garron walking ahead.
"That bastard."
Ah.
That.
Kael sighed internally. The conversation had been inevitable from the moment Garron received the satchel.
Here we go.
The man lowered his voice further, just enough to avoid carrying to the others. "No offense, but you’re clearly the strongest person here."
Based on what, Kael wasn’t entirely sure.
Probably size.
People had become disturbingly fixated on his build today.
"You’re bigger, calmer, and judging by that stunt with the fracture score, probably harder to break than the rest of us combined." The man shrugged slightly. "If I were built like you, I wouldn’t be following someone weaker while he controls whether I get food or water."
The implication settled naturally into the conversation without ever being spoken outright. The man never directly suggested removing Garron, nor did he openly encourage violence, but he got close enough that the meaning became obvious anyway. Control the supplies, control the group. Remove the current leader, and the balance holding this little expedition together would collapse immediately.
Kael kept his gaze fixed ahead as the dunes rolled endlessly beneath the blazing sky, heat distortion warping the horizon into something unstable and unreal. Sand shifted beneath his boots with every step while dry wind scraped against his armor. He could practically feel the expectation hanging beside him, the middle-aged man waiting to see whether Kael would entertain the idea.
"I’m not interested."
The answer came immediately, flat and without hesitation.
The man blinked in visible confusion, like the response genuinely hadn’t occurred to him as a possibility.
"In food?"
"In leadership."
That confusion lingered a moment longer before suspicion started replacing it. Kael could almost hear the recalculating happening inside the man’s head as he tried to determine whether Kael was being honest, cautious, or simply stupid.
"You really just plan to follow orders?"
"I plan to clear the floor."
That was the only objective that mattered. Politics, ego contests, and murdering each other over a satchel full of supplies all sounded like exhausting distractions from the actual problem.
Apparently dissatisfied with the answer, the middle-aged man clicked his tongue and gradually drifted back toward the others.
But the seed had already been planted.
Kael could feel it.
Not just from him either.
From everyone.
The signs were subtle, but obvious once noticed. Glances lingered slightly too long whenever Garron touched the satchel. Eyes shifted toward the supplies, then toward Kael, then back again. Nobody said anything openly, but everyone had already started doing the same calculations in their heads.
How much food.
How much water.
How many mouths.
And more importantly, how many people actually needed to survive.
Three.
That number alone was enough to poison a group if given enough time.
Eventually, the rookie voiced what everyone else had already been thinking.
"We only need three survivors, right?"
Nobody answered immediately, and that silence by itself said more than an actual response would have. The injured woman looked up sharply, her narrowed eyes locking onto the rookie almost instantly.
"Say what you actually mean."
The rookie visibly shrank beneath the attention.
"I didn’t mean anything."
"Bullshit."
She was sharper than her condition suggested.
The rookie avoided eye contact entirely after that.
Kael sighed quietly behind his visor.
Predictable.
The woman adjusted the bloodstained bandages wrapped around her leg and exhaled through clenched teeth before speaking again.
"For anyone curious, the injury is from the previous floor."
Nobody responded immediately.
She laughed dryly.
"Might as well explain before one of you gets creative. Trial of Pain. Forest biome. Thought I could sleep in a cave."
"That sounds reasonable," Kael said.
"It was," she replied. "Until a bear disagreed."
That earned a few reactions. Even Garron glanced back over his shoulder.
"You survived a bear?"
"I killed a bear," she corrected. "Important distinction."
That explained the leg.
And why her fracture level sat at thirty-three.
Kael silently revised his earlier assessment upward. She was tougher than she initially looked.
As the hours dragged onward and her pace slowed further, Kael gradually shifted closer without saying anything. He slowed his own stride to match hers naturally until they walked side by side through the dunes.
The woman noticed almost immediately.
"...What are you doing?"
"Walking."
"You were faster five seconds ago."
Kael shrugged beneath the armor.
"You’re limping."
"And?"
"And you’re slower."
Her eyes narrowed suspiciously.
"You trying to help?"
Kael considered the question seriously for a moment before answering.
"...I dislike inefficiency."
That answer seemed to satisfy her more than actual kindness probably would have.
"Terrible bedside manners."
"I’m told I’m very charming."
She snorted quietly.
"How about this, if you feel unable to move, I’ll carry you."
"I’m not that desperate..." she replied.
Kael looked up at the sun, "You’ll have time to change your mind..."
The conversation died there.
Hours continued to pass beneath the merciless sun. The heat only worsened as the day stretched onward, slowly grinding away at everyone’s patience. Frustration spread through the group like an infection, subtle at first but steadily becoming more obvious with every mile.
Kael knew he could reduce his own discomfort.
Activating Presence would make traversing the desert substantially easier by dulling his awareness of the oppressive environment around him. The heat would fade into the background. The irritation would soften.
But doing that here would be idiotic.
First, it consumed internal reserves.
Second, activating a utility that literally made him difficult to perceive while trapped in a tense survival scenario with five increasingly paranoid strangers sounded like an excellent way to convince everyone he had vanished to murder them.
Not worth the trouble.
So he endured.
Again.
A notification flickered briefly before his eyes.
[Mental Fracture +1]
[Mental Fracture: 4/100]
Still manageable.
Far ahead, something green finally appeared through the shimmering haze of the desert. The rookie nearly sounded ready to cry from relief.
"An oasis!"
Movement throughout the group accelerated almost immediately. Even Garron picked up his pace, the promise of shade and water cutting through exhaustion like a blade.
Kael narrowed his eyes behind the visor.
Something felt wrong about it.
Too easy.
Too conveniently placed.
His gaze sharpened instinctively as he checked the minimap, and the answer became obvious immediately. There was no terrain marker. No water signature. No environmental indicator whatsoever.
Nothing.
Just sand.
"A mirage," Kael muttered.
"What?" the injured woman asked.
Before he could explain, disappointment spread through the group in real time. The distant greenery distorted unnaturally, wavering beneath the heat before dissolving completely back into endless desert.
The rookie swore loudly.
Morale visibly cratered.
"This floor is bullshit," Garron muttered.
Reasonable conclusion.
The group continued onward in silence after that.
Eventually, the terrain began to shift. The dunes grew taller and more irregular, carved by the wind into steep slopes and narrow valleys between massive hills of sand. Visibility worsened as the landscape became increasingly uneven.
Kael checked the minimap again.
Then immediately stopped walking.
A large red dot moving mass lurked beneath the sand ahead of them, circling slowly below the surface.
Waiting.
Directly beneath where Garron was about to step.
Kael moved instantly.
He grabbed Garron by the back of his armor and yanked him backward.
Harder than intended.
Much harder.
Garron launched violently through the air with all the dignity of thrown luggage before crashing several meters away into the sand.
A split second later, the dune where he had been standing exploded upward.
Sand erupted skyward in a violent spray as a gigantic segmented maw burst from beneath the earth. Rotating rows of jagged teeth snapped shut with a deafening crack loud enough to shake the air itself.
The worm missed.
Barely.
Its body was enormous, far larger than any creature had any right being. Segmented armor plated its length as it twisted violently before diving back beneath the sand almost immediately, disappearing below the dunes like it had never existed at all.
Silence settled over the group after that. Everyone stared first at the disturbed sand where the creature vanished, then toward Kael, and finally toward Garron, who was currently half-buried upside down several meters away.
The leader sputtered violently while clawing himself upright, coughing sand from his mouth as he staggered back onto his feet.
"What the fuck was that?!"
Kael pointed calmly toward the shifting dunes.
"Monster."
"Yes, I SAW THAT PART!"
Garron stomped back toward him furiously, sand still falling from his clothes.
"You could’ve warned me!"
"You were already stepping."
"So you threw me?!"
"I relocated you."
That somehow failed to improve Garron’s mood.
The middle-aged man looked between them with an expression that suggested he was actively reevaluating everything he thought he understood. Kael had just casually launched a grown man several meters backward using one arm.
That was not normal.
Not even slightly.
Garron appeared to realize this too.
His anger didn’t disappear, but something else entered his expression alongside it.
Unease.
A realization.
This giant idiot he’d spent half the day lightly mocking could probably fold him in half without much effort if he genuinely wanted to.
Garron dusted himself off stiffly.
"...Next time, warn me."
Kael tilted his head slightly.
"You’re welcome."
That somehow made things even worse.
Garron’s jaw tightened visibly before he turned away without another word, clutching the satchel slightly tighter against his side.
Interesting.
Kael stared at his back thoughtfully.
That reaction was strange.
Saving someone from becoming worm food should have improved relations.
Apparently not. And it made him more hostile.
Instead, Garron now looked like a man who had suddenly become deeply aware of his own replaceability. That makes a person dangerous. That makes a person desperate. And that is not fun.
And that, Kael suspected, was going to become a problem.
