She was greeted with the sight of sand spiders scurrying away from her group and down the opposite end of the butte. Towards the center of their platform was a spider who was sprawled out and twitching. On the ground beside it was a raider with bulging, milky eyes and blue lips who still clutched at his throat even in death. Harold stood over the corpse and dying spirit beast with a vial in his raised hand–ready to throw at a moment’s notice. Silas continued to scan the area for further, unseen dangers.
Although the Mid Bronze had called for a retreat and Cain had fallen back after encountering Nethershot, that didn’t mean that her group was safe. She remained alert and waited to see what would happen next. After a minute, Samantha decided to quickly scout in spectral form. Once her spirit left her body, she circled the butte and found the remaining enemies towards the bottom of the rock formation. She followed them as they raced to a mesa several thousand feet away and hid on the far side away from her group.
The raiders directed their mounts to begin digging into the sand, and as the spiders formed a human-sized tunnel they appeared to secrete a liquid from their abdomen that bound the sand together into a sturdy, stone-like material. This material solidified the tunnel walls and prevented a cave-in. With the short tunnel completed, the spiders used the same process to make a cave which would serve as an underground shelter. Once the small cavern was stabilized, the entire group of surviving raiders gathered inside of it and the entrance was closed off. The sand spiders then buried themselves in various random spots around the shelter. If she hadn’t watched where the group had gone, the area would seem completely nondescript.
She peeked her ghostly head through the sands and into the structure briefly to see if there was anything more to discover, but only found the raiders tending to injuries. Most were focused on the man bonded to the alpha sand spider, who looked to have one foot in the grave already. Cain was practically forcing potions down the man’s throat while the other raiders put pressure on open wounds. While consuming so many concoctions in quick succession would put someone at risk of severe draff poisoning, the alternative in this case would likely be death. The Mid Bronze’s entire lower half was soaked with blood, and his left hand was thickly wrapped in makeshift bandages. Each breath he took between choking down the potions sounded gurgling and wet, and a puddle of blood slowly pooled beneath him despite the many hands seeking to plug the weeping wounds.
It took several minutes for the raiders to stabilize the man’s condition, after which they gathered together in a close huddle and began communicating with some sort of sign language. She couldn’t understand the foreign hand motions, and they showed no sign of preparing to launch a follow-up attack, so she canceled the art and snapped back to her body. For now, her group was safe from them. She just didn’t know for how long.
In the time she’d been scouting Harold had put away his unused poison vial and now stood near the still-twitching spider. He stared down at it with a sort of distant gaze, like he was lost in thought. She cleared her throat to get his attention, “The raiders have gone for the moment. Are you alright?”
He turned towards her and his eyes came back into focus, “I’m unharmed. What do you mean, ‘for the moment’?”
“They’ve called for a retreat, but it seems like they aren’t giving up entirely.” She pointed to the mesa off in the distance, “They’re hiding out over there and it seems they’re making plans. I don’t know what though, since they’re speaking only in sign language.”
Harold scoffed once before he spat on the ground, “Fantastic. Just… great.”
“We’ve done well so far!” she hedged, “I’ve killed a Low Copper and two sand spiders, and injured a few raiders. Your concoctions were obviously effective too.” She gestured to the downed spirit beast and rider to emphasize the point.
“Not as much as I’d expected.” he said with a scowl, “My insecticide killed this Mid Copper, but not the mount. As you can see, it’s still got some life in it. I’ll try to reevaluate the recipe before they come back.”
“Would you like for me to finish it off, or are you going to?”
He paused for a moment, “Actually, I think I’m going to keep it.”
Samantha tilted her head, “Keep it?”
Harold turned his attention towards the pitiful creature, “It offered to bond with me if I cured it of the poisoning and returned it to health. I’ve given it some thought and, seeing how useful your spirit beast is to you, I think it’s in my best interest to accept.”
Her eyes widened, “Another spirit beast would certainly be helpful.”
He nodded to himself, “A neutralizing agent shouldn’t be too troublesome. Let me know if you see the raiders coming back to kill us, will you?”
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“We should leave. Now.” the Low Bronze signed, “Too much death.”
“No. Not yet.” Cain signaled back,“We’ll wait them out. See if the biters get them.”
“How many must die before we go?” The Low Bronze protested, voicing the anger that was evident in the other remaining raiders' expressions, “You said this was an easy kill. Easy reward. Not worth it now.”
Uttu signed weakly from his makeshift cot, “Still worth it. We hoped to kill for cultivation. Found out too strong. Now, we wait for the desert to take them. We’ll lose cultivation, but still get gear. Just need to wait.” Uttu’s signs were harder to understand now that he was missing two fingers and half of his left hand, but context clues were enough to fill in any gaps. They had used almost their entire stock of healing items to prevent him from bleeding out, but it would still take several hours for the potions to fully take effect.
The Low Bronze signed more aggressively, his hands loudly clapping together at several points due to the force with which he moved them, “Our supplies are low too! That’s why we came here!”
“How long can they survive? One week? We have shelter, shade, and cool air. We will last longer.” Uttu pressed.
“Forget this.” The Low Bronze said aloud, forgoing the use of signs entirely. “I didn’t join you just to be treated as disposable and die in the sands. I’m out. And, if any of you have any sense of self-preservation you’ll come with me. I’m headed straight for the valley.”
Cain was through being tolerant. Clearly, his men needed a reminder of why they obeyed him.
In a blink he had closed the gap with the Low Bronze and restrained him, wrapping both arms around the smaller man’s waist as if in embrace. The Low Bronze immediately began to panic, knowing what was coming. He lashed out at Cain with feeble kicks and punches, but Cain hardly felt the blows. Then, Cain activated [Constrict]--doubling his already impressive strength for this one, deadly movement. With a jerk he clenched his arms and squeezed.
The Low Bronze’s spine promptly snapped in half and the man folded over backwards, as if the top portion of his body was attached to a hinge. His legs went limp as he screamed and his arms flailed helplessly. Cain set the wailing man down on the ground and grabbed hold of his head with his right hand.
“No! NO!” the Low Bronze begged as Cain began twisting his head to the side.
Cain smiled, “I need forward thinkers in my crew. Not people who are always looking backwards.” Upon finishing his sentence, he fully turned the man’s head around until his neck broke and he was indeed ‘looking backwards’. The surrounding raiders watched the macabre scene in abject horror–most of them never having witnessed Cain’s raw strength until this moment.
Cain stood and dusted off his hands nonchalantly, and spoke to the room at large “Someone bury him outside so he doesn’t stink up the shelter. We’ll dig him up tomorrow morning to attract some new vultures to bond.”
As one of the Coppers scrambled to follow his command Cain turned to the remaining raiders. Resuming the use of hand signals he said, “Now, we wait.”
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Samantha kept watch as Silas happily absorbed the spirit pearl scavenged from the nearby desert vulture carcass and Harold nursed the sand spider back to health. It had been around an hour since the raiders fled, and they showed no sign of returning thus far.
Towards the beginning of her guard shift she switched her mindset back to [Sage’s Rumination] and had been periodically scouting around in spectral form to make sure nothing new had come up. As time passed and her group settled into a tentative peace, she reflected on her latest Third Eye Insight and what she had glimpsed from her past life.
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One thing that stood out to her was her past life’s use of something called a spirit vault. She recalled how she had pulled a physical object from a designated storage space inside her dantian. She wondered if that was some sort of utility art, or if it was something she would gain as she continued to advance into the Silver tier of cultivation. Although, given how much qi her past self had been casually spending, perhaps she had been seeing the Gold tier or beyond. Since that information hadn’t come up in the memory, she hadn’t learned it from her insight, either. Perhaps with her Mid Bronze insight she could look into what the spirit vault was and how to get it. It seemed incredibly useful.
Harold left the spider–who was looking significantly better–and walked over to her. “Hey, Samantha. I just wanted to say your plan really worked well. I didn’t think we had much of a chance, but you pulled through for all of us and proved me wrong. Good job…” He patted her somewhat awkwardly on the shoulder in thanks.
She couldn’t help but smile at his kind words. The delivery was odd, but she was pleased that the usually-abrasive man seemed to be having a change of heart. Just as she was going to respond, he added “...and I need a spirit pearl of at least Rank 2 - Low. Do you have one?”
Her smile was effectively wiped from her face and the small spark of fondness that had formed was snuffed out. She asked flatly, “Why do you need it?”
“The system notification says I need it to complete the bond.” he explained.
She sighed, “Fine. Silas ate the one from that vulture over there, but there should be another vulture and two sand spiders at the bottom of the butte. You and Silas take over my watch while I grab them, I’ll be back in a bit.”
She conveyed the same information to Silas and climbed down the rock face.
Upon reaching the sands, she circled the butte until she found and gathered the cores from all three spirit beasts’ remains. She recovered a Rank 2 - High from the vulture and two Rank 3 - Mid cores from the spiders. She didn’t want to linger in the area with her qi so low, so she quickly climbed back up the butte and handed the weakest core to Harold for his bonding while keeping the Rank 3 pearls for herself and Silas.
She observed with interest as the sand spider grabbed hold of the small beast core in its crab-like pincers, then crushed it into dust. The sparkling blue powder swirled around both the spider and Harold for a few seconds before gathering into a solid line and disappearing from sight. Bonding now complete, the spider stood and shook itself like a dog, and Harold stared into its two black, beady eyes for several long moments. He suddenly turned to Samantha with a smile, “I can hear her! It’s–well it’s not exactly speech. It’s… wow!”
She nodded in understanding, remembering going through something similar after first bonding with Silas. “Now that you’ve finished, perhaps we should set up a tent? The raiders look like they have no intention of leaving, so we might be here a while. It’s better to get camp ready before the sun comes out.”
Harold nodded, “Good idea. You should get started on that while I cultivate this corpse. I think I’ll get a good amount off of him since he was Mid Copper! It only lasts a week though, so I need to get started right away. Oh! And you’ll need to protect me until I’m done because once I start I can’t travel far from the body.”
“Mhmm.” she hummed, trying to clamp down on her rising irritation, “So… rather than help me set up camp right now–which will take maybe thirty minutes–you want to start cultivation that’ll be there for a week? Then you want me to guard you and… I’m guessing… bring you food and water too?”
Harold clapped, “That would be perfect! I’m glad you understand.”
Before she could protest the unreasonable request he spoke up again, “And I found another one of those things–casters, was it? This raider had one. So you should probably look into that as well.” He picked up the weapon from nearby and handed it to her. “Hopefully this one is a little less intense than the other. That would be more suitable for me at this stage.”
Samantha just shook her head in disbelief. This man had some audacity. Harold sat down and began cultivating off the Mid Copper, and she focused her attention on the new weapon to avoid becoming downright angry. Harold had gladly left Aiden to his fate, so she shouldn’t be all that surprised that he was self absorbed. She’d just need to deal with it until they reached that town.
Fetching Nethershot, she compared the two weapons and noted that their basic construction was similar. They both consisted of engraved metal rods with wooden stocks in the shape of a ‘Y’ at the end. However, that was where the similarities ended. Not only were the quality of materials clearly different between the weapons, but the engravings were also unique. Nethershot seemed to have much neater, defined symbols, while the other caster was a touch rougher and imprecise in nature.
She tested the new caster by placing only her pinky on the smallest rune–what they had determined was the weakest setting on Nethershot–and trickling qi into it to fire a beam. The caster lit up with dim yellow light and shot out three short, weak beams in less than a second. The projectiles struck the rock of the butte and left small scarring and pits in the rock. Its damage wasn’t anything impressive, but the qi cost shocked her. It had only cost her 0.1 qi to fire each beam.
Skipping to the max powered setting she fired again. This time, three yellow beams costing 1 qi each left noticeable indents in the rock. However, each was still less powerful than Nethershot at its weakest setting. In short, Nethershot was at a baseline more expensive to use, but could potentially deliver over 10 times the power that this caster could with a single shot.
Harold called out, “My bond says to stop firing the caster. You’re going to attract enemies to us. I’m not sure what exactly, but she’s sending me images of thousands of mouths filled with razor sharp teeth.”
“Something’s coming!” Silas warned, his low growl causing the air the rumble.
“Silas just told me something is coming, so it’s probably too late already.” Samantha called back with a sigh, “Can you get any more information about what it is or how to fight it?”
“Look up, Samantha!” Silas exclaimed.
Heeding Silas, she looked to the sky. The stars were twinkling at an abnormally rapid pace, disappearing and reappearing in a large swath until sections in the sky began to darken entirely.
“Harold! What are those?” she demanded, feeling increasingly nervous.
“She says we need to hide under the sand. She can make a haven for us and tunnel us away.”
Samantha stood and pointed the low powered caster at the sky. She checked her qi pool and found that she had 95.6/177.6, which would amount to 956 beams at the lowest powered setting on this caster. Given the veritable swarm of something above them, she didn’t know if even that would be enough. “Not an option! If we leave the top of this butte then the raiders will kill us.”
“Before those things kill us?” he retorted, “We might be able to make it back to the top before the raiders reach us. You said yourself they were hiding out over by that mesa, right?”
“If your spider can tunnel, the raider’s spiders can tunnel! They’ll just ambush us while we’re blind under the sands. Can’t you make poison smoke or something?” she asked, preparing herself to start firing wildly into the cloud that was slowly descending on them. She was desperately trying to [Inspect] the amorphous mass, but since she couldn’t focus on any single one of the creatures the art wasn’t activating.
Harold let out a creative string of expletives, “Curse this floor! Fine! Get me a carcass to test on and I’ll tell you what I can make for it.”
“Everyone gather near the spider!” she ordered, giving Silas further instructions to sit on top of it to defend it. The sand spiders had relatively low Resilience, and she didn’t want Harold’s cultivation base to be immediately crippled if it happened to die. It would make traveling with him even more difficult than it already was. The spider in question also seemed to recognize its frailty, as it wrapped its long abdomen under its torso and curled its legs defensively around its body. It then tilted back slightly so its fangs faced upwards, ready to snap at anything that came too close to its face.
“Ouch!” Silas yelped, then with a loud snap bit down on his attacker with [Savage Bite]. He ripped the small, round creature from his body and shook it side to side like a dog before tossing its carcass away. Samantha was also impacted by something small that latched onto the front of her greaves, but it wasn’t able to penetrate the thick leather covering her shin. Reaching down and ripping it free, she held it out in front of her to get a better look.
At first she thought the animal in question was a bird, but the cold, slimy texture of its scales, combined with its long, fin-like appendages and gills, led her to believe it was actually some sort of fish. The fish was mostly mouth, with a slightly protruding lower jaw filled with teeth like honed daggers opening and closing hungrily in her grasp. She took this opportunity to finally [Inspect] it.
Winged Snapper (Rank 1 - High)
Highest Attribute: Strength (15)
Lowest Attribute: Resilience (2)
Winged Snappers, though primarily aquatic creatures, can survive outside of water for several hours so long as they are not exposed to direct sunlight. Gathering in large schools to compensate for their individually low Resilience, these predators strip unsuspecting prey of their flesh in minutes.
She easily crushed the winged snapper in her grasp and tossed it to Harold, “This is what we’re dealing with! Some sort of flying fish with really low Resilience!”
Harold caught the spirit beast and promptly began testing different solutions and mixtures on various parts of its body, “Finally, some good news! Poison usually works well on low Resilience beings. I’ll need a few minutes, but I can definitely find something that works.”
Samantha looked at the cloud that was closing in by the second and killed a couple more winged snappers that flew too close to her, “I don’t know if I can buy you that kind of time. Make something quick and dirty! It doesn’t have to be perfect, just drive them away!”
Harold looked completely appalled, “Quick and dirty?! Alchemy is a fine science! You can’t just–”
A winged snapper latched onto his forearm and he let out a cry of pain before slapping the fish to the ground. His expression immediately changed, “Quick and dirty it is! Buy me one minute.”