The brawler's body was dragged through the scorched dirt, his arms limp and bloodied and burnt. His face was completely slack from unconsciousness. If it wasn't for the slight rising of his chest, Sandra would have assumed that Sunless was dragging his corpse.
Not that he treated Kade like a living person. The lusterless sleeper refused to properly pick him up; Kade's face was dragging against the sand or getting cut up by the broken coral and rocks that came upon their path.
Sunny didn't mind the weight at all, strolling at the head of the pack with a casual expression. Sandra couldn't help but steal glances at Kade, and beside her, Ike seemed to be the same.
The person who had just murdered their classmate brutally was allowed to live, and Sandra would have promised herself to get revenge for the sweet girl he had killed. But when she tried, Sunless had stopped her.
Even after hearing the events that occurred.
Sandra could guess that they were somewhat acquainted, but that wouldn't be a good enough reason. And she didn't let the thought die.
"Why are you so adamant about keeping him alive?" She questioned harshly.
The shadowy sleeper glanced back lazily. As if she were stating the obvious.
"You said he killed eight, no, eleven carapace scavengers on his own?" --Even if he nearly killed himself doing so, it's impressive."
He paused, then shrugged. "As for that Sleeper… Ayen, was it? I don't care. Her memory isn't worth losing a potential ally that strong."
Sandra gritted her teeth, the wind stirring slightly as anger twisted her face.
"She was a classmate. A young girl who didn't ask for any of this!" She snapped, her voice sharp with fury. Ike cast her a worried glance but said nothing.
'He saved us... But killing her was a cruel act that befitted a nightmare creature instead."
"And if you think he's going to be some great ally… Remember, Ayen trusted him too. Just for a moment. And look where it got her."
She narrowed her eyes.
"What's to say you're not next?"
Sunny scoffed.
"I won't have to worry about that; I'll just ask the brute some questions when—or if—he does wake up. Because the Kade I know would never kill someone like that, I mean for no reason.
Sandra responded sternly.
"He already did."
Sunny sighed.
"That's why I'll ask him about it."
Sandra clicked her tongue, switching her gaze away to the forest of crimson coral.
"Never would I ever think about trusting the infamous pervert with anything."
Sunny suddenly stopped his stride. The casual attitude stripped it of the bone immediately.
"Hey! I'm not really a pervert, you know! I just… uhm… said a few things. To a few girls. It was all a misunderstanding."
Sandra nodded, yet Sunny could tell that she was not trusting his word.
'I'm the most honest person in one—no, TWO worlds. She's hopeless if she can't believe me of all people!'
It didn't help that Sandra was already suspicious of him. After the aftermath of the battle, he didn't once offer to take or instruct to acquire any of the soul shards farmed off by the carapace scavengers.
as if she expected him to be a thief through and through, by his reputation and standing. But the outskirts kid refused any such boon.
Not that surprising to Sunny, he was used to people seeing less in him. Either way, it would help him gain the advantage in the future.
The two joined Ike in his perpetual silence. The only noise was their footsteps and the continual sound of Kade's face dragging through the sand.
But eventually Sunny stopped, concern marking his face.
"What's wrong?" Sandra inquired, Ike raising his eyebrows with her, summoning his newly acquired memory-sword [Forgotten Hope] to his side.
Sunny narrowed his eyes, speaking calmly. "Three carapace scavengers. Four hundred meters. Two fine, one cracked. Probably waiting to ambush."
Sandra and Ike's eyes widened.
"You're able to scout that far away?" ... If that's the case, we should avoid them, even if the route is longer."
She was very tired from the earlier battle; fatigue was a deadly curse if one accumulated enough.
Sunny ruffled his hair.
"Yes, it's part of my aspect. And the thing is, every other path has us encountering five or more. Luckily, I spotted them sooner rather than later."
Sandra grimaced.
"I don't know if we can take that on, Ike, and we are fatigued from the earlier fight. Well, probably die or get heavily injured."
Ike, despite her claim, brought his sword at the ready, insinuating that he was fine to fight.
Sunny nodded.
"We're going to have to, no matter what. Give me a quick rundown of your aspects again." Sandra bit her lips and spoke, hesitant for the upcoming battle.
"My aspect is Blessed by Wind." It enables me to control all different types of wind and air in a 50-meter radius, with my strength over it dramatically dropping off after 10." --
"I can use it to guide my movements to become more agile, push enemies down, or push allies up. And I can somewhat compress it to cut things."
Sunny nodded. Before shifting his attention to the mute sleeper.
"That's great... What about you, Ike?"
Ike opened his mouth to explain, but no noise came out of his moving lips. Realizing his mistake, Ike flushed and quickly dropped to one knee, using his sword to scribble into the sand.
Sunny watched keenly, while Sandra kept her notice on the surroundings.
Eventually, he was done, and Sunny could make out the text written down messily in the sand.
"Can teleport 1 meter next to person. Range: 100 m. Gets tiring with use."
'Teleportation, huh? Despite the limitations, it's a strong aspect. Spacing, positioning, and flow were key points of battle. And teleportation would allow one to dominate in those three, gaining a significant advantage in when and where the fight would take place.
Sandra quickly glanced at the writing, confirming her suspicions of her allies' aspect. Before she glanced at Sunny.
"What does your aspect accomplish?"
Sunny's lips were sealed, but his face was suddenly filled with pain, as if he swallowed a thumbtack, before finally answering roughly.
"I can scout with shadows and increase the strength of myself or my memories."
Sandra raised an eyebrow. 'I thought he was the second-lowest ranked sleeper behind that poor blind girl, but his aspect sounds strong.'
Sunless exhaled, scratching at his head in irritation. Clearly, he didn't want to give away such information, yet he did anyway. The two didn't pay much attention to the details, just assuming the sleeper was strange, like expected.
"Either way, let's make a plan; we'll need one if we want this fight quick and easy."
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Sandra paced slowly on the sand. In front of her lay the three carapace scavengers Sunless had spotted. The environment he described was exactly as said, a small outcrop in the shallow pathing, a copula of crimson coral, holding two scavengers picking away at another's corpse, while the other one with the cracked shell watched in envy.
Her allies were off, ready to strike when needed. Ike was hiding away to teleport in later, while Sunless was with her, just hiding in shadows that she couldn't seem to find. Sandra only had her word that he was there, ready to strike.
'God, I hope this works.'
The two who feasted at the corpse suddenly sparked up, their mandibles dripping with the blue blood of their fallen brethren. The sight made Sandra flinch, bringing back the mental image of Grudge being devoured in an instant by the swarm of scavengers.
The distant, injured beast stared blankly at her, its mandibles clicking, as if it had finally found a gift from the heavens to relieve its starvation.
Sandra inhaled sharply, steadying her stance.
One wrong move and she would meet Grudge soon after.
Sandra called for the wind. Its warm embrace followed like a home, controlling the flow to be at the ready. The carapace scavengers screeched at their new prey. Departing from the corpse and bolting from the corner. All three charged at Sandra.
A shadow detached from the crimson coral above. Sunless descended, his azure blade at the ready. Like a hungry reaper, his blade darkened like dusk into night. And shot forward to the rearmost healthy scavenger.
SCREECH.
The scavenger shouted in pain, the Azure Blade piercing the top of its head and running all the way down past its jaw. Yet to his surprise, the beast violently struggled instead of succumbing to death. Sunless gritted his teeth and grasped onto his blade, refusing to be thrown off.
'Things are already not going to plan,' Sandra figured. She couldn't do much about that; it was not her job to worry about that scavenger, but the other two.
The healthy scavenger ignored his dying brother, continuing his charge at her. She sized up the beast and sighed in acceptance. Of course, the most dangerous part of the plan had to fall to her. Not the boys. Naturally.
She summoned a gale. The wind roared to her call, swirling at her heels, and she sprinted with its force.
Sandra and the beast shot towards each other, the scavenger preparing to crush her with one swipe of its devastating pincer. Sandra melted into focus, speeding up more and more instead of avoiding or breaking.
Just moments before the pincer would break her, Sandra burst up with the wind, her locks of hair lashing against her cheeks, wild and weightless.
She flipped upside down midair, her eyes locking with the scavenger's as time seemed to stretch.
Its pincers jerked, adjusting course mid-swing to snatch her from the sky—but a sudden howl of wind surged beneath her, catching her like a breeze to a leaf.
Sandra twisted with it, her body gliding just beyond the crushing strike, wind trailing along her limbs like silk. She barely slipped past, the tip of the pincer grazing her boot as she spun through the air.
Adrenaline rushed through her veins, and the relief crashed into her, along with the jubilation of pulling off a stunt. The thought of potentially retelling such a story to her father filled her with joy.
If she managed to live through the solstice, of course. 'Now is not the time to think!'
"IKE!!!" Sandra yelled, her voice painted with exhaustion and jubilation.
The signal rang through the coral maze. sharp and clear. A puff of mist burst beside her, revealing Ike at the ready.
She had launched herself into the air for a reason, placing herself just beside the scavenger's hulking form…
Right above the scavenger. Sword in hand.
Ike's cape fluttered wildly in Sandra's gale as the reserved knight plummeted downward. His sword sliced cleanly through the scavenger's back, severing its spine in a single, brutal strike. Sandra could hear the beast fall as she passed it, carried forward by the momentum.
'Great, only one more," Sandra mused. The injured scavenger was there for her to deal with.
The flipped world tilting right up as she flipped midair, she landed on her feet with a sharp twist, her heels digging into the loose sand, plowing through it like a snowboarder carving down a slope.
The injured scavenger in question charging with bloodlust eyes. Its pincers are forward, ready to dissect her. She gathered the wind, coiling it tightly around her front leg; she kicked forward, releasing the built-up force; the wind exploded out, launching sand in a rising wall, veiling the beast in a cascading wave.
Continuing the pivot, she swept her arm outward like a blade, twisting her torso with the motion. Compressed air flared from her fingertips, forming a thin, silver arc, like the trace of a blade's edge, cleaving horizontally through the haze like a wind-carved slash.
The scavenger broke through the sand easily but was met with the compressed blade of air. The projectile landed, cutting deeply into nearly all of its pitch-black eyes. It screeched violently, the singular eye staring death into Sandra.
She retained her balance and took control of the wind around the scavenger. Just before the awakened beast slammed into her.
By reading the subtle shifts in the air surrounding it, Sandra could predict its movement. Just as a fly senses the swat of a hand, only magnified a hundredfold. The wind whispered of motion, and she moved with it, ducking under a massive pincer that would have torn her in half a heartbeat later.
And in the short moment of respite, she dug into her pocket and slung forward one of her many throwing knives. The small projectile shot forward with the wind and dug into the beast's final remaining eye.
'Perfect'
The now blind scavenger roared in anger, throwing its pincers widely like a flopping fish, desperate to destroy everything around it in a rage. Sandra slid by the wild attacks. Now without aim, the scavenger's attacks, despite how furious, had no correction to the impact.
She weaved through the flurry like an acrobat, slipping past death by mere centimeters, until she stood right before the raging beast.
Any other one might have been difficult for her to kill directly.
But the injured one she was facing had its armor cracked and weakened.
With that, she could finish the job.
She shot forward with her twin daggers, stabbing the first blade deeply into its neck, the carapace cracking further with the insertion of the blade. The scavenger tilted its head down, as if sensing her position through some primal instinct. Its pincers shot inward, aimed directly at its own chest.
Sandra ducked, the pincer slamming past her shoulder. She didn't hesitate, grabbing the curve of the beast's arm to vault herself upward, flipping through the air, and landing roughly on its back. Where she reached forward past its mandibles and sunk her second dagger beside the first.
The carapace crumbled apart down onto the sand, revealing the soft, fleshy underside of the beast's neck. It screamed in anger and reached its pincers up to cleave her. Sandra felt the wind's warning; she answered with a burst of motion, twisting around the scavenger's neck like a bottle cap.
Face-to-face with its twitching mandibles that reared closer, saliva spitting down at her, the beast eager to eat the flesh of her face.
'Disgusting'
She let herself fall, narrowly evading the crushing embrace. Her back slammed into the sand—pain flared, but she held her focus, her [Blessed by Wind] calling to the nearby breeze, forming a tightly sealed tornado of compressed air around her right arm.
"This is where I win, beast."
She shot up from the sand, rising like a ballista aimed for the sun. The updraft soaring her up directly to the scavenger's shattered armor. Where she prepared a devastating uppercut. Her fist impacted between her two daggers with a bang!
The pressure from the tornado around her arm burst forward, desperate to disperse; with only the flesh blocking its path, the pressure shot into the fleshy neck of the scavenger.
And burst.
The embedded daggers drove deeper as the beast's head erupted in a shower of gore. Brain matter sprayed the roof of the carapace, then dripped down in steaming strands from its ruined neck.
[You have slain an awakened beast: Carapace Scavenger.]
Sandra watched with satisfaction as the carapace scavenger fell back slowly and slammed into the bloodied sand.
[You have received a memory!]
She had won today's battle.
Many more were to come.