A day passes, and we’re still flying. The rusty thing we are trapped in has not fallen.
There were some incidents where guides had to rush towards somewhere in the center of the Deathtrap as we started losing altitude.
It looks like it's fixed now as we fly at the height from before.
I wonder what would have happened if we had crashed. Just how long would the power source last maintaining the inscriptions on the metal plates and the field around the deck? How long would it take for the white sand to grind us to nothing without it?
As pretty as the sand looks now, we also know how deadly it is.
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A day goes by, and as we make our way deeper into the Mana Desert, the attacks start.
Huge swarms of insects. Scarab-like monsters, each one as big as a human head. There are dozens of them, each around level 150.
As far as I notice, they never touch the ground, and their chitin armor seems to have no trouble handling the white sand for some reason.
They attempt to land on the side of the Deathtrap and bite through the armor or otherwise damage it, but so far they’ve failed to do so. All the groups currently on deck start a barrage of attacks, and they even call in a few support groups.
Most of the scarab-like monsters die even before fully approaching us, their bodies ground to dust as they fall to the white sands after being hit by our attacks.
But what's surprising is that there are monsters down in the sand, their heads and tails poking out as they shoot projectiles laced with acid and poison, literally launching pieces of their bodies at us. For some reason, these monsters aren’t affected by the white sand.
The mood had been starting to get better but this has thoroughly soured it, and it shows in the eyes of everyone aboard.
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It's our turn on the deck, along with a few of the other groups.
I approach a tall man with four arms and bluish skin. His clothes have clearly been tailored for his anatomy, and each of his arms is covered in a dense set of white paintings, some of them having been traced out with mana-conductive paint.
"I wanted to ask, what does your race call themselves?” I say as I approach.
At first, he seemed to have his guard up, but hearing my question, he smiles, glancing towards his group, who chuckle as well.
“Crazed human, who walks like a drunk and throws people overboard, why should I answer?”
I throw him a small pouch which he catches, glancing at me, as he uses his senses to examine it. Only then does he open the pouch to find the mana batteries inside.
“Crazed human, my race is called thylarin.”
“And the little ones with scaly legs?”
“They are called vyssari.”
“Got it. Anything else?”
“I will need more…”
“Don’t push it.”
His eyes meet mine, and I can see him thinking about it. His group even moves to get ready behind his back. For a long moment, I return his gaze and wait. I don’t even bother to move kinetic energy or mana, knowing I can activate it quickly enough to deal with them.
“I was joking, joking with you, human,” he smiles in the end, waving his four arms defensively. “I won’t tell you much about thylarin, as one of them, I won’t share information that could give me a disadvantage. But I can say that vyssari are said to be a result of experimentation by a Ruler that has long since been forgotten and replaced. They have a talent for elemental magic and don’t tend to be very smart if I have to say so myself.”
To that, the group behind him, most of them thylarin, laugh. This group doesn’t seem to be very smart either.
“Got it. One last thing.”
“What is it, crazed human?”
“A few hours ago, two of your group members left an item near our room. It was well hidden and contained a mix of sleeping and poisonous gas. I got curious so I tested it a bit. It hurt a lot, even for someone like me.”
The mood immediately turns quiet, and silence encompasses the deck.
“I swear I didn’t know, human. I…”
After I lift my finger, he shuts his mouth, and I observe him.
(Is he lying?) I ask through the link.
(He is not.) Izzy confirms.
“I trust you,” I tell the thylarin man, “but I also believe you can imagine how unhappy I am.”
“Yes, human, yes… here, take your mana batteries back. It will never happen again, I swear.”
I take the pouch and gesture, “You can throw in that pouch on your waist as well. Not the one with stones, but the one with the mana-conductive paint and ground mana stones.”
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“Sure sure, here, take it all.” he babbles, hurrying to hand them over.
I do just that and nod, “Good. Now throw this and this thylarin overboard. They’re the ones who planted the bomb.”
The tall thylarin stares at me for a moment, and I gradually start releasing my mana. Bit by bit, I loosen my hold over my Mana Cycling, and it starts seeping out. It feels comfortable as my mana surrounds me, but I can see their reactions as I do.
At first, he seems calm, but when I fail to stop and my mana continues to increase without any attempts on my part to hide it, his demeanor changes.
He quickly shouts something, and the other members of his group jump on the two thylarin I pointed out.
There is a little bit of fighting, and mana explodes into the air, but the two are quickly subdued by the others before they can cause any real damage or engage any of their more powerful attacks.
Both of them are thrown overboard, and I watch as they land in the sand below, their bodies instantly pierced through by the white sand washing over them. Even falling from this height doesn’t seem to have harmed them, but the sand did. They try to crawl on top of each other, even as their bodies get ground to dust by the sand caught in the wind.
They seem to be more durable than the other man, given that they survive a bit longer, but they have no chance at all. Even as they struggle in vain to jump high into the air, their landings inevitably cause the sand to explode beneath them and cause more damage.
And just like before, their bodies disintegrate into the dunes.
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As the time passes a small group ends up picking a fight with Maya, Izzy, and Sophie, who delved into another part of the Deathtrap, seeking out a place Izzy wanted to explore, having grown bored with shuttling herself between our room and the deck.
The attacking group was dealt with in short order.
Tensions are high and there’s not much to be done, as Izzy confirms later. Our group isn’t the only one getting into fights like this.
The deeper into the Mana Desert we delve, the stronger the monsters are, and the less mana remains after their shifts at the deck for defense. Some groups try to refuse to take these shifts or choose not to fight and waste their mana, but they quickly find themselves threatened by the others.
In these situations, the guides speak to the more powerful groups and make threats of their own, and the smaller groups are quickly dealt with and forced to cooperate.
There is another smaller group who still refuses to cooperate no matter what, most of their members were unlucky and had to rebuff monster attacks twice in a row while they were on shifts. Their mana reserves have noticeably dwindled.
The other groups can see that, and that group is bullied like sheep surrounded by wolves, cornered deep in the ship as their possessions are slowly taken away, knowing they cannot dare to waste mana.
So that group refuses to go to the deck.
They are thrown overboard, without mercy, down to a man.
One of their members is capable of levitating and slowly flies after us, screaming in desperation as the rest of his group gets ground down by the white sand. Even as he flies, small particles of sand pierce his body. A single speck every few seconds, sometimes more.
It takes minutes, but gradually he stops and falls into the sand, the damage accumulating until he can no longer maintain his flight. The grains having burrowed through his head, brain, and heart as if they were never there, and that damage accumulated.
(What do you think?) I ask Sophie, who is standing next to me, watching this go down over the railing of the deck.
(I think you may be right. It really felt just like you said. But I don’t know how it’s going to help. Even you wouldn’t be so crazy.)
(Anything can happen. Just think about it and tell the others.)
(Other than you and me, there’s no one even close to being able to do that. It would take them months, probably years to pull it off. Even you would probably fail.)
I just shrug my shoulders, and as she leaves, I stay and stare deep into the never-ending desert. It’s night again, the nebulas hanging in the sky as the cold air fights the heat rising from the white sands below.
The monsters here in the desert attack both day and night, unlike the ones outside. And I can sense another group coming. They’re stronger than the ones we encountered before.
I give them one more look and leave the deck, letting the scheduled group deal with them.
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The hours stretch into another day. The monsters are getting closer and closer to level 200 and we even see a few stronger than that, and 4 more days remain. This time even our group got to fight during our time on deck.
I make the others hang back and save their mana, as I take on the monsters with the other groups on deck. I even do well enough that no one dared to say a thing about the rest of group 4 hanging back to watch.
[Mana Manipulation - lvl 53 > Mana Manipulation - lvl 54]
[Mana Crown - lvl 35 > Mana Crown - lvl 36]
It’s almost laughable how much mana there is still stored in my crown. Even with all this fighting, my training, and using it for the emblem, there is so much remaining.
The monsters die, killed by mana arrows as long as my finger. Each of the arrows having been boosted by a bit of kinetic energy and infused with a little extra to increase the piercing and impact damage as it hits the monsters.
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A few hours later, one of the guides dies.
There were 7 guides when we started, now we’re down to 6. Each one is over level 200, wearing thick robes even in this heat, their faces covered by simple white masks.
I watch with interest as panic ensues, as people push and shove to stand over the guide’s corpse. There is no mana hanging around the body, there are no wounds. The only damage we find is his broken mask, revealing the face of a human with a terrified expression even in death. The corpse is unusually pale. Extremely pale, and I don’t think it’s just from the lack of sun.
Izzy shares the emotions of the crowd with me, and I let them flow through.
Fear, a hint of panic, distrust, anger, opportunity, hunger. It’s overwhelming, so I cut it off, and so does the 11-year-old girl.
There is no mana anywhere near the body that I could examine. No matter how much I try, I can’t detect anything.
I glance at the guides who are speaking to each other in frantic whispers. Three of them clustered together, examining the scene, while the remaining three focus on controlling the Deathtrap, and that seems to be the bare minimum. They cover most of their body, and I can’t see their faces, so it’s hard to guess what they’re feeling, and Izzy says they’re protected well enough that she can’t either. But they still seem a bit panicked.
There shouldn’t be anyone on this ship willing to risk their own lives by killing them. It’s strange.
The proximity of that many people and all the shouting gets the better of me, and I use my anchor, reappearing in our room.
I get back to my training and wait for the others to return, which happens a few minutes later.
Tess confirms that I don’t have to do anything at the moment, so I continue and let them talk it out.
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Some hours down the line, another guide dies, along with the group of three men assigned to his protection after the first guide died.
We still have almost four days until we reach our destination.