Why did I think this journey would only take two weeks? At the rate we were going, we wouldn’t make it to the temple within a month!

The problems had started the moment we had entered the dessert and Aho’s valley gave way to loose sand and endless dunes.

Unsurprisingly, the sand was difficult to traverse. Each step felt like a slog. Use too much strength and your foot would simply slide along the surface. Use too little, and you would make no headway.

The reason why I hadn’t thought of this as an issue until we actually entered Caltian’s scorch itself was because I felt confident in using a movement skill to travel long stretches at a time. Unfortunately, I hadn’t foreseen that the monsters of this desert would be quite the voracious hunter’s that we quickly found out they were.

I had attempted to use aura step to launch myself over a dune, only to be pulled out of the sky by a sandworm that shot out of the sand with no warning. Even Emeri’s cry of concern hadn’t distracted me from slaying the beast with just a few skills down its throat, but then its buddies came along, attracted by the noise.

Half an hour of tedious battling later, we had slaughtered all the submerged creatures nearby, though I hadn’t gained any levels from it. Expecting Emeri to be as educated when it came to monsters as Cerion was, I turned to her for answers.

“Those worms are attracted by vibrations, which means that your movement skill will attract them. Even if they can’t hurt you, their speed makes them difficult to run away from…” Emeri admitted.

“So I see!” I said, somewhat frustratedly. “And were you aware that we might encounter such beast on our ‘pilgrimage’?” I asked accusatorily.

With a shy nod, Emeri affirmed my suspicions.

I sighed and put my head in my hand.

“So that was why you insisted on buying far more food than I felt we needed. You knew this would be a slow journey, since we now have to travel on foot.”

“On a brighter note, traveling on foot aligns with the spirit of the pilgrimage! Helios will favour our actions!” Emeri said in an upbeat manner, hoping to cheer me up.

“Helios can stuff it…” I grumbled beneath my breath, before turning around and recommencing our walk.

“What was that?” Emeri asked, confused.

“Nothing…”

“Oh… By the way, you’re heading in the wrong direction! The temple is this way!”

“I knew that!” I shot back, before following after her anyway.

As we traveled and conversed, time began to pass unnoticeably. Within a few days, we entered the desert properly. The dunes, which were the size of houses before, also grew to match the sheer vastness of this place. Soon, they became as large as any hill, traversing them meant climbing up and then sliding down with a whoop.

“At least there’s a little fun to be had around here!” I shouted at Emeri, who slid a few meters away from me. Gliding along the sand like this was different from anything I had ever done or seen. The smooth movement with which we made our way down made it feel like I was floating in the sky.

I couldn’t wait until I could fly unaided, without needing to use aura step…

Unfortunately, as the dunes grew in size, so did the monsters. Unlike the dark forest, which had been packed with hordes of weaker creatures, the desert favoured lone hunters. As a result, most monsters we encountered tended to be of a higher tier and of larger size. Quite a few of the sandworms that had popped out of the sand when a battle occurred were tier 2 or 3, but the massive antlions that hid at the bottom of pits between the dunes were nearly always tier 4.

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Only their slow speed made them easy kills for Emeri and I. Otherwise, we would be having far more trouble.

Thankfully, our fights had stayed limited to those two species so far, so without much issue, we continued our journey.

The next few days passed uneventfully and, before we knew it, we were halfway there. Due to the dangers of the desert at night, we had limited ourselves to short naps during the day, where one person would guard the other while they slept. I would have had Revan do the guarding, but his weight made it so that every monster in the area became aware of us with each step he took.

Because of this sleep schedule, we were starting to tire out. It was starting to take a toll on us, especially on Emeri, since she didn’t invest as many points into constitution as I did.

We both knew that we would have to find a spot to sleep safely soon, or we would risk becoming sluggish and unalert.

Thankfully, Caltian’s scorch blessed us with such a spot merely a day of travel later.

On the horizon, a strange rock formation stuck out of the sand. It seemed to be made out of several pillars, each the size of a castle on its own. Each pillar was covered in holes, which allowed the horde of monsters that surrounded it to move unimpeded.

“Caltian termites.” Emeri introduced.

“Termites?! Those things?!” I exclaimed. I had seen termites before, of course. They were practically our neighbors back at the village, eating the old wood that was starting to fall apart to build their nests. Yet, to compare those little insects to these monsters was unimaginable. Each one was the size of a tier 2 creature, and there were thousands.

“Termites.” She confirmed.

“How, exactly, would this solve our sleeping problem?” I asked, regarding Emeri suspiciously.

“Well…” she began, “Not all monsters are mindless. Don’t get me wrong, those termites are. But their leaders, the termite king and queen, supposedly possess the same intelligence as a human child. There are many stories of travelers convincing the royals to let them stay in the colony safely for a night. We’re too small to be a worthy snack, after all.”

“Right…” I replied, not quite believing her. “And you’re sure these stories aren’t just stories?”

“It’s worth a try, right?” she said hopefully.

I sighed. “Fine… It’s not like we have many other options. So how do we approach them without starting a fight?”

“We have to offer them something. I think a heap of monster corpses should work.” She proposed.

“Right. Well, I’ll draw some worms from the area with aura step. Then, we can just hunt anything that comes looking for food. How do we offer it, afterward?”

“You’ll see. As long as we don’t interfere once they start taking the worms apart, they’ll realize what we’re doing. As long as we do that a few times, they’ll let us in.”

“So in other words, we have to court the nest.”

Emeri’s blush didn’t quite reach her ears as she fell silent and considered the thought, before shooting me down.

“Don’t say stuff like that, Arthur.” She complained, before walking off briskly.

After a light chuckle, we got to work.

A few minutes of blowing up the sand later, monsters of a select few kinds started to arrive. Not all desert monster hunter on the surface, but of those that did, at least one of each was trying to kill us. Thankfully, even their chitinous shells couldn’t protect the various monsters from our weapons and skills, so they were defeated one by one. A few tier 3 creatures showed up, but no tier 4 ones. The tier 4’s we had seen so far were always the territorial kind, so this occurrence didn’t catch us by surprise. In fact, we had counted on it, because it allowed us to kill all the nearby skulking monsters before the termites came over to investigate the fight that had started so close to their nest.

By the time a dozen or so termite scouts had scuttled over to us, we had vacated to the top of a small nearby dune. We were close by, but not so close so as to interfere with the termites. Nonetheless, one of the scouts came over to us, stopping within about ten meters of where we were set up. The horse-sized bug clacked its short mandibles threateningly and started to shimmy back and forth as if to attack us. We stayed in place, but only because Emeri had warned that they would try this. She, for one, was absolutely fascinated by the creatures. She kept ooh’ing and ahh’ing at every small new development, as if she was a scholar. Maybe in a different universe…

Despite the implicit threat, the termite eventually backed off. Maybe it knew that we were strong when it noticed the mound of monster corpses we had left behind, or maybe it didn’t consider us worthy prey… Either way, we were left alone, even as more termites arrived to dissect their meal. Once they were finally gone and most of everything barring some pieces of chitin had been harvested, I breathed a sigh of relief.

I wasn’t scared of these creatures, but a large-scale battle would only escalate in their favour. Furthermore, I didn’t feel particularly safe, surrounded by a few hundred giant termites.

“Great!” Emeri exclaimed, “Now we only have to do that like five more times!” she said with a bright smile.

I groaned.