Samantha looked towards where she knew the raiders had dug their shelter and noticed a small dust cloud through the heat-warped haze. If it weren’t for Silas’s warning the innocuous sight wouldn’t have caught her attention right away. Unfortunately, judging by how quickly they were approaching, she didn’t have much time to get to safety.
She started climbing as fast as she could while using [Cloud Step] and [Swift] to accelerate her upward pace further. Though she made exceptional progress in short order the dust cloud clearly outpaced her. They already made it more than halfway to the butte and she had scarcely made it 100 feet. Witnessing firsthand how quickly the sand spiders could ascend the rock face, she knew if she didn’t change tactics they would catch her before she reached the top. While [Cloud Step] did give her an advantage while fighting against someone forced to cling to the butte, she wouldn’t be able to fend off all the raiders at once. She had barely been able to run off Cain when she faced him one-on-one during her surprise attack.
“Silas, can you glide down and cling to the wall a few hundred feet down? That’ll let me teleport to you. Otherwise they’ll catch me.”
She could feel his initial apprehension, but her perilous situation gave him the courage to push through his fear, “Coming!”
It didn’t take long for Silas to enter the range of [Jackalope of All Trades], and she didn’t hesitate to spend the 50 qi to immediately jump up 500 feet. Catching herself from falling with another use of [Cloud Step], she grabbed hold of Silas, placed him across her shoulders, and continued climbing.
“They’re slowing down! Wait… I think they’re going back.” Silas informed her a few seconds later.
Giving up since I’m so close to the top again? I’ll teach you not to try and chase me down…
With the raiders in full retreat, Samantha gave up on any sort of qi conservation and launched herself up the final 250 feet with [Cloud Step]. By the time she completed the climb, the raiders had nearly made it back to their shelter already, but she didn’t want them to escape without consequences. She immediately sat in the lotus position and instructed Silas to fire as large a horn as he could at the raiders. As he charged the attack, she entered spectral form and grabbed hold of the energy gathering at Silas’s forehead.
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“Did you see that? She used a limited-range teleport!” Uttu yelled to Cain.
“I saw. If it wasn’t for that we would’ve caught her!” Cain growled.
“We still would have if she was a slower climber. We’ll just need to tunnel closer.” Uttu offered.
“You think she can hit us from this distance?”
“She took out the vulture earlier. So, probably. Let’s just get back to the tunnels as quickly as we can, then–”
Cain looked back and saw something rapidly approaching, “Incoming! Dodge!”
His crew began guiding their mounts to swerve in random directions. He was confident that the foreign object would miss, but then the projectile altered course mid-flight. Right before it struck the rearmost rider it tumbled through the air end over end. Then it violently collided, sending both mount and rider sprawling and skipping across the sands.
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Samantha tsked as she watched the fallen rider stumble back to his feet and hobble over to the now-righted spider. The spider was missing a leg and had one twisted at an odd angle, but it was still mobile enough to carry both of them into the safety of an opening in the sand. She had hoped to spear them directly, but their irregular, jerky movements made precise aiming more difficult than she could manage at the moment. Still, she thought she got the message ‘stay in your hole’ across well enough.
Following the raider down into the opening–which ended up being a tunnel entrance–she was troubled to discover that the raiders had apparently been busy last night. They had made several hundred feet worth of tunnels towards the butte and likely would continue to do so. This meant that if Samantha wanted to make future trips down to the sands she’d have less and less time to escape to safety because they’d need to travel shorter distances to catch her.
She flew deeper into the tunnels and found that the raiders were already closing off the inner cave where the raiders sheltered with the spiders. She frowned. She had hoped to flood the tunnels with more insecticide or some other concoction if they left the entrance unsealed, but it seemed they weren’t totally stupid. Moving into the shelter, she observed the raiders for a few moments but couldn’t glean any new information. They were still using that unfamiliar sign language.
Sighing, she returned to her body to communicate the news to Harold.
After giving Silas and Harold the rundown of what was going on, Harold cursed, “So they’re just going to inch closer until they’re right beneath us? What will it take to get them to leave?”
“Higher cost or easier prey, I’d guess.” Samantha answered dejectedly. She knew the questions were rhetorical, but doing a bit of commiserating made her feel better. “I’ve got to give them credit for sheer stubbornness. You’d think they’d cut their losses by this point.”
“How many of them are left now?”
“They have four raiders and five spiders–I crippled one spider in that last attack though. On the bright side…” She emptied the canvas sack and set its contents in front of Harold, “I managed to grab the saddlebag supplies. I’ve got more flares for us, as well as another caster that you can use. There’s also some partially filled canteens you can have since I have my own water supply.”
“And these?” he asked, gesturing to the four potion vials she’d picked up.
“I was hoping you’d know. I don’t want to waste qi on [Inspect] if you can figure it out.”
Harold picked up and sorted the various items he planned on using, then looked closely at the vials. He uncorked one of them, sniffed it, and put a drop of the liquid on his tongue. After smacking his lips a few times he answered confidently, “Healing tinctures. Low quality but good in a pinch. Shall we split them?”
“Sure. We’ll each take two.”
Harold grunted his approval and pocketed two of the tinctures, “What now?”
She mulled over the issue for a moment before responding, “Given the supplies available to us we can reasonably survive up here for at least a couple of weeks. The raiders didn’t seem to have a massive stockpile of supplies either, so I think our best bet is to wait them out. If they try to attack us again, we can pick them off and further lessen their threat to us. Our top priorities are preserving as much of this food as we can, and getting that shelter built so we can survive another winged snapper attack, if necessary. These flares give us two nights of protection from the swarm, so that’ll be our deadline for shelter.”
“Can you use your… floaty ability to get us more water somehow?” Harold inquired.
Samantha nodded slowly, “Actually yes, but not much. I’d have to transport one of these canteens all the way to that canyon over there, fill it, and then carry it back. It’ll probably take my entire qi pool–maybe more–to make a single trip like that.”
“At least we have that option if we get truly desperate.”
“I think the raiders will be wary of approaching right away after this failed attempt, so I’m going to gather as much sand as quickly as I can. How much longer do you need to cultivate that nexus for?”
“I can feel that I’m near a breakthrough. Another day if I focus mostly on cultivation, perhaps?”
“Good. Once you advance you’ll gain another bond ability point. However, before you start on that I need you to cook and dry as much of this fish as you can. Let me get you a pile.” Samantha retrieved an armful of fish from the butte edge and set it next to Harold.
He side-eyed the pile, clearly unhappy with the assignment, but dutifully got to work at prepping the food. She was mildly surprised he hadn’t complained more before pitching in.
“As for you Silas...” she started.
“Yes?” her bonded replied, eager to help.
“I need you to learn how to properly fly.”
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Samantha strained upwards against the 200 pounds of sand slung across her back. The first handful of trips up and down this butte had been relatively easy. The raiders hadn’t come out to challenge her again, and the weight itself was not too burdensome with 14 base Strength plus the 2 Strength gained from eating the winged snapper meat. As the number of trips increased and the buff wore off, however, Samantha felt her stamina being pushed to the limit. This reminded her of her days training with the sadist when he made her climb up the waterfall over and over again. It was interesting how her change in circumstances affected how she recalled the experience. What before was pure misery was now almost bittersweet. She certainly wouldn’t mind that sensation of bone-deep chill right about now.
After completing her 13th round trip up and down the butte–a feat that accounted for nearly six straight hours of hard labor–the system recognized her efforts with a notification.
Your efforts to improve yourself have borne fruit! Training to master your body movements in combination with pushing your body beyond its current limits has granted +1 to Endurance.
She suspected that the increase to Endurance was not solely due to her prolonged exercise, but also a result of the desert environment. The ever-present heat just seemed to make every task more difficult. Though two examples weren’t much to go off of, both the sand spiders and desert vultures had high Endurance. Perhaps living in this arid climate was Endurance training all on its own.
As she was heading down to begin the 14th trip, Silas dove past her while wobbling slightly from side to side. She watched his unsteady glide with amusement until he began vigorously flapping his wings and slowly gained altitude. He was still far from an expert flier–crash landing more often than not–but he was steadily improving his in-air maneuvering.
“You’re doing great, Silas!” she encouraged as she continued her descent.
“I know! I’m awesome!” he cheered happily. His fear of heights was nearly gone now that he was gaining confidence in his wings. After hours of tossing himself over a cliff he hardly hesitated at all any longer. In fact, he seemed to be fostering a new enjoyment for the activity.
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She had long given up on looking for slow and safe routes, instead flinging herself recklessly from handhold to handhold for the quickest progress. If she fell, she knew she could easily use [Cloud Step] to save herself, even in cases where she was flipping over or upside down.
After another few trips and a particularly tricky fall where she was barely able to catch herself with the tips of her fingers, she received another notification.
Your efforts to improve yourself have borne fruit! Training to master your body movements in combination with pushing your body beyond its current limits has granted +1 to Agility.
She smiled. At least there were some small bright spots in this generally horrible situation.
After a total of 21 trips up and down the butte, night had fallen and Samantha called it quits for the day. Their sand structure had come along very nicely while she delivered materials. It was beginning to resemble a sort of dome with round walls that were around six inches thick and four feet tall. There was a three foot wide gap in the walls that looked like it would turn into a sort of doorway, though she didn’t understand yet how the creature planned to enclose them later. She had to assume that it planned to craft a door at the very end of the process.
She knocked lightly on the outside with her fist a couple of times and nodded to herself. Unlike the loose, sandy material from which it was made, the addition of the spider’s secretions had turned it into a sturdy, rock-like substance. It certainly felt as though it could hold up against the ravenous snappers.
“So, what’s the plan for tonight?” Harold asked. “Driving them off right away or killing more of them?” He stood next to a sizable mound of cooked and dried fish, which she promptly stashed in her enchanted pack to preserve it.
“Hopefully they don’t come at all, but if they do we’ll drive them off straight away. Until we have a complete structure we can retreat into, I don’t want to try and fight that swarm again.”
“I’ll craft the ‘False Dawn’, then. My bond says they will keep coming back here until there is no food left–us or the carcasses from last night.”
“False Dawn?” she asked with a chuckle.
“You prefer something like ‘flare orb?’” he questioned with a raised eyebrow. “‘Hot big bright ball’, maybe?”
“Ooh, yeah that’s a way better name. It’s more descriptive.” she joked.
He gave her a flat stare, “I’ll stick with ‘False Dawn’.”
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The winged snapper swarm was upon them a few hours after darkness fell. Luckily, once again, False Dawn worked to push the spirit beasts back to the river and give them a much-needed reprieve. The sand spider worked tirelessly throughout the night and into the next day continuing to build up the shelter, and by the time night fell again it was completed.
As it turned out, Samantha had guessed correctly about the door being crafted at the very end of the process. Unlike a standard door there were no hinge or sliding mechanisms. Instead, the slightly curved, wedge-like block slotted near-perfectly into the dome opening. It was a bit tricky to line up, but once it was correctly placed it couldn’t be easily opened from the outside. Once closed, the only other openings in the dome was a row of regularly spaced narrow slits a few feet off the ground that allowed for airflow and visibility. As they discovered later that night during the next snapper swarm, these slits were just wide enough to aim their casters through while still keeping the spirit beasts out.
As much as she wanted to take advantage of their newfound safety to harvest mountains of spirit pearls and fish filets, it wasn’t very practical to do so. The door was unwieldy and took time to close, so it wasn’t safe to open the shelter just to retrieve a few carcasses. Unless they were able to kill off the entire school or drive them away with their last False Dawn, there wouldn’t be anything to retrieve. The swarm left nothing behind.
On the bright side, the presence of the swarm nearly guaranteed their safety against other would-be attackers. Harold had the clever idea to cull a number of the spirit beasts each night and strengthen their association of this area with food, thus ensuring the snappers would return again. This would not only protect the group from a surprise attack in the night, but would give them a regular time block where they could sleep in relative peace.
During the first night sheltering within the sturdy sand-dome, Samantha took some time to prepare Harold for his upcoming advancement and third eye vision. While he had clearly made it through the disorienting Low Copper vision intact, she doubted he would be able to pull anything useful from the vision without direction. After explaining in more detail what the visions were, how he could somewhat-safely interact with the memories, and how he could potentially gain new arts, Harold finished cultivating the temporary nexus and broke through to Mid-Copper. He didn’t tell her if he gained anything from his insight or whether or not he decided to purchase a new bond ability, but she didn’t pry. The man had respected her privacy around her abilities thus far, so she gave him the same courtesy.
For the next week their group settled into a routine. From the shaded safety of their shelter Samantha kept an eye on the surrounding area with [Spectral Projection] while using the [Sage’s Rumination] mindset to prolong the time she was able to spend in spectral form. She kept the others informed on the raiders’ movements and their continued tunneling progress. When her qi pool was around half-empty, the other three would take on watch duties for the remainder of the day.
While spending her free time doing some attribute training was tempting, she ultimately decided against it. She didn’t want to risk taxing their limited water and food supply. Instead, she alternated between cultivating ambient qi, absorbing energy from beast cores, and reading through Xiao Qian’s Compendium to figure out how she could forge her own combat arts.
Since buying the book in the black market a little over a month ago she had been periodically making her way through the dense material. The language was flowery and the content was highly theoretical in areas, which made progress slow. But, with long hours and not much else to do now, she was finally able to dedicate more time to the venture.
As she completed the final chapters of the book, the pieces began falling into place and she started to understand the overall process of creating and manipulating her own arts. There was still a lot she needed to reflect on and plan out before she made her first attempt, but she already had a vague idea of what she wanted to do.
During this week the raiders entered a routine of their own. They continued to tunnel until they had completed a full loop around the base of the butte, then began expanding the network to have many branching paths. It became increasingly difficult to keep track of their activities during Samantha’s guard shifts, as they split up and divided her attention. At some point the two Coppers had managed to bond with new desert vultures, but Samantha never caught them above ground long enough to strike. The raiders’ spiders were equally elusive, only briefly peeking out of the sands at random locations and times to confirm that Samantha and her group hadn’t ventured down from the butte.
Neither group took chances on exposing themselves to attack from the other, and so, an uncomfortable stalemate had ensued.
As the standoff stretched on day after day, both groups began getting restless. The heat was unrelenting regardless of time of day, and the cramped proximity and general stress culminated in short tempers and tense atmospheres. The situation was reaching a breaking point. Something was going to give soon. It was only a question of what and when.
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“This is unsustainable. They’re faring better than expected. No signs of weakening.” the High Copper scout reported, looking tired and stressed. “I’m bringing my vulture back before the biters arrive.”
Even sending out a vulture for a quick peek at the top of the butte was a risk, but they couldn’t solely rely on the occasional reports from the grounded sand spiders. To try and minimize the chance of the bird being spotted and attacked they had been sending it out through a hidden tunnel exit after dark. There wasn’t any assurance that the girl couldn’t slay the bird at night as easily as during the day, but they had also been keeping it high and far from the butte top. It had been working well enough so far.
Uttu frowned and looked to Cain, “Bonding with the spider saved them. Waiting them out is going to take longer than expected. We should send out someone for resupply.”
Cain considered Uttu’s suggestion carefully. In truth, doubts about this hunt had been nagging at him for several days. Not only were they low on everything from food to medicine, but the information they had about their prey wasn’t adding up. When he had fought the girl during his ascent he sensed that she was a mere Low Bronze. However, if that were true, she wouldn’t have been able to fight off Uttu and him so effectively. They had used their entire stock of poultices to stabilize Uttu and keep him from bleeding out, but he still hadn’t fully recovered from his injuries. Not to mention that Cain himself was still healing from the fractured arm he sustained.
That a ‘Low Bronze’ managed to penetrate his 42 Resilience with a kick of all things was mind boggling, especially when she didn’t seem to be a Strength-focused fighter. Taking into account she was also significantly faster than him, and the wide variety of arts she had used… she had to be at least a Peak Bronze like he was. Anything less insulted his pride. He had spoken with Uttu earlier about the possibility of her possessing some art that disguised her cultivation level from others, but their discussion was inconclusive. Considering she already had an ability to feign death it wouldn’t be too surprising that she would have such a thing. The question was why she had such underhanded skills. It defied conventional thinking around what a cultivator should be: unapologetically dominating.
He looked around at his crew. They were exhausted. Disgruntled. Morale was at an all time low and trust in his leadership was all but spent. It had been nearly a week and a half now, and with no sign that their quarry would fold under the pressure he needed something to reestablish his position soon. If he couldn’t, he wouldn’t be able to return to base at all. Getting over a dozen of their members killed, losing Nethershot, and having nothing to show for it? The clan leader would torture and kill him! If he couldn’t bring back anything worthwhile then he was better off killing everyone here to keep his failure a secret and making a run for it by himself.
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Samantha floated above the butte and scanned her spectral eyes over the various tunnel exits nearby. As usual, there were no notable movements from the raiders. She was mentally preparing herself for yet another long, uneventful watch, when a bright blue beam unexpectedly descended from the heavens about 15 miles away. It landed somewhere inside the line of buttes, plateaus, and mesas, and only lasted for a handful of seconds before it suddenly vanished with the same lack of fanfare as when it had appeared.
“What was that?” Silas asked, “An attack? They missed.”
“I don’t think so, but I’m going to find out. Can you take over my watch for a few minutes?”
“Okay!”
The beam looked similar to when someone ascended to the second floor from Yivesh, but she couldn’t be certain that it was another ascendant based on that information alone. She quickly flew over to the general area where the beam landed and scouted around for anything out of the ordinary. Since the beam was so far away and only lasted for a short time she wasn’t certain she was in the right spot, but she was hopeful she would find something soon with how quickly spectral form allowed her to move.
“The raiders are leaving!” Silas cheered.
This timing can’t be a coincidence.
“Are you sure? They aren’t attacking?” she confirmed.
“They’re riding towards where the blue light was.”
Now she definitely wanted to know what had landed here. For the raiders to finally give up it must be something good. It would take a while for the raiders to arrive, and it wouldn’t be safe to descend the butte until they had gotten further away anyways, so she continued her search without too much pressure.
Several minutes later she finally found what the blue beam had left behind.
She immediately canceled her art and rushed into the shelter to where Harold was currently cultivating.
“Pack your things, we’ve got to go!”
The man started and looked irritated at the interruption for a split second before her words registered. He did a double take, “Wait. Did you say–?”
“Yes! Go! Now, hurry!”
Samantha was already stuffing what few personal items were left out into her bag. They had been keeping most of their gear packed and ready so it wouldn’t take long to get moving, so she would be finished in a minute or two at most.
Harold scrambled to his feet and followed suit, “What’s going on? Are they finally leaving?”
“Yes, but something worse has arrived. If we don’t get out of here soon we’re going to have bigger problems.”
“You’re not making any sense. Explain more clearly!” Harold complained, Samantha’s own stress causing him to become anxious.
Her bag now packed, she slung the straps over each shoulder and exited the shelter at a brisk pace, “I’ll explain on the way. Let’s just make a run for it.”
“We’re leaving, Silas! Head towards the gorge.”
In response to her words, he sprinted to the northern edge of the butte and leapt out into open air with extended wings.
Samantha also leapt off the butte, using [Cloud Step] to run towards the canyon while descending 10 or more feet at a time with each step. With [Prey’s Awareness] she spotted Harold riding down the tall rock pillar on the back of his mount and making fast progress as well. She prayed they could get away in time.