Chapter 61: Desert of Bones
The circle clearly remembered everything that had happened during the past seven days.
They remembered what they had said, what they had done, and what they had felt about one another. It was a strange feeling that Rudy didn’t like a bit; on the contrary, he hated it.
These memories that they had made under the influence of the hex were false to him, yet they were affecting his thoughts without his permission.
It was as if he no longer had any right over himself, and if there was anything Rudy despised most, it was losing control of his own life.
"We have to leave this place," Sera commented and pointed towards the dunes before them.
"We have to traverse those, and some distance later, we will reach a settlement."
Rudy nodded silently, and his gaze shifted towards Kalien, who was staring at him with a horrified expression.
"Get up, we don’t have time for this," Rudy rasped in an annoyed tone and set off toward the dunes in the distance.
Kalien stared at Rudy’s back and thought, ’How is he not tired?’
Sera shook her head and offered her hand to him. "We have to go."
Kalien gazed at her hand, encased in a pale white gauntlet, and asked, "Did you know?"
She glanced at Rudy, who was already moving forward, and answered with a shake of her head, "I didn’t know... he never told me."
"He is dangerous..." Kalien whispered, remembering how he had toyed with the two of them.
An unexpected chuckle escaped Sera’s lips.
"What is not dangerous in this maleficent old realm? Death itself is not safe here."
Kalien’s eyes peered into Sera’s for a moment before he grabbed her hand and rose to his feet.
He forced his usual charming smile and added, "I believe I would be cursed for worrying a beautiful woman such as yourself, Lady Sera."
Sera said nothing and shook her head before the two of them began to follow behind Rudy.
Under the extreme heat of the pale desert, Rudy walked with sweat dripping down his mostly healed body and focused on the runes before him with glowing eyes.
×××××××
Name: Rudric Ironwell
Moniker: Crimson Saint
Path: [Blood]
Rank: [Deviant]
Attribute: [Scarlet Scion]
○ Grade: [Apex]
○ Description: [You are the last child of the Blood God]
Traits: [Divine Blooded], [Cold Headed], [Lesser Vampire], [Blood Expert]
Skills: [Scarlet Sight], [Blood Manipulation], [Crimstone Construct], [Blood Usurpation]
Artifacts: [Dark Spatial Ring #15692], [Haloband #17394738], [Night Earring], [Obsidian Aegis]
Essence Shards: [275 / 1000]
×××××××
"275... killing all those ravenous piranhas and the slumber bellfish should have landed me with 250, where did I get the other 25 from?"
For now, he pushed the question away and focused on his new artifact and first armor.
×××××××
Obsidian Aegis
Rank: [Deviant]
Grade: [Epic]
Description: [An armor forged in love of the night.]
Enchantments: [Weightless], [Silent Stir], [Restore]
×××××××
’Three enchantments...’ his lips curled upwards.
×××××××
Weightless
Grade: [Common]
Description: [This armor weighs nothing.]
×××××××
×××××××
Silent Stir
Grade: [Common]
Description: [Upon channeled with essence, this armor produces no noise.]
×××××××
×××××××
Restore
Grade: [Rare]
Description: [Upon dismission, this armor heals itself in the wearer’s soul lake.]
×××××××
Rudy finished reading them and knit his brow.
’Don’t all artifacts get mended in the soul lake?’ he remembered reading about it, and he could confirm it with [Night Earring]
’Then what makes this special? Also, I don’t even have a soul lake... I have a soul world.’
Rudy felt a headache coming on from the constant rise of questions. The more questions he had, the more difficult it would be for him.
With a deep, dry sigh, he focused away from the runes, and they disappeared.
Even though he had started walking before the two, he had made sure to move at a pace slow enough for them to catch up.
Under the ravaging heat, the circle climbed the dunes.
Their boots sank in the pale sand, and after about three hours, they reached the top.
At this point, the circle was completely fatigued and out of essence because of the pale desert’s siphoning curse.
Even then, they couldn’t stop because the desert before them was littered with remains of the dreadborns, which wasn’t abnormal here, but the sheer number of them was.
The three stared at the desert with more bones than sand, with their faces shrouded in pure terror.
"How are we going to survive this...?" Kalien asked darkly while biting his lower lip to stop his body from trembling.
Sera had always known that the part in which they were before had the lowest amount of dreadborn; however, not even in her dreams had she imagined there to be such an absurd amount of them in other parts.
A few minutes passed in silence, and upon not receiving an answer, Kalien called out, "Lady Sera?"
Sera shook her head and answered in a hopeless tone, "I... I don’t know."
Meanwhile, Rudy had a completely different thought going on in his mind. ’No... not from there. Hmm... that place would work, and we can use that bone.’
Seeing him look around with a thoughtful expression on his face, Sera asked, "What are you doing?"
"Hmm?" he turned toward her with a tilted head and said, "We have to get out of here, don’t we?"
Hearing him, the two stared at him with deadpan faces, and he shrugged. "I am just looking for the path we can use."
"How do you plan for us to cross this place before nightfall?" Sera muttered with an annoyed expression. She didn’t like how he was so composed in such a disastrous situation.
"On foot, we can’t cross it in a whole day, let alone with the time we have left..." he responded and began to walk.
Baffled, Sera blinked a few times, and Kalien asked, "What are you doing?"
He pointed at a giant bone sticking out a couple of meters away and said, "Only idiots would try to cross it in the remaining time."
Kalien frowned, unable to understand what Rudy meant, and Sera said, "He wants us to camp over that bone for tonight."
Kalien gazed at the giant bone and mumbled, "Is he crazy...?"
"Let’s go." Sera followed.
His gaze shifted to her back, and he commented, "Are you crazy?!"
She ignored him and kept walking.
He took a deep breath and shouted, "Wait for me!" before hurrying behind her.
