I’m so damn unlucky!

As I flee down a hill with Aria and Kiku in close formation behind; trees explode in a hail of splinters behind us. It's that thing called a Crawler that was mentioned before by Kiku. Basically a giant 20 foot long centipede with a sandworm mouth, it is an apex desert predator and more nightmare fuel.

So why is after us through a grove of trees? I have no idea.

From my danger sense spiking again an hour ago, we quickly pulled up camp, just in time. I'm now thinking it was this, not the sky whale thing which caused the reaction.

I'm glad for my stat boost again right now. The old me would have tripped over a rock and died an ignoble death ages ago.

"Why is that thing so angry!?" I shout.

"Um...Probably the fangs I took from the pygmie..." Kiku sounds apologetic and a bit out of breath.

"They're not normally this persistent!" Aria complains.

"We're not going to get away at this rate. Where is the best place to fight it?" I suggest.

"Fuck. Pissing stupid crawlers. But Elijah is right, Aria. That; is that a clearing." Rowdy Kiku points out a location.

"Yeah... Kiku has the right idea... we don't want to be full of splinters from its berserker rage... let’s also take it across the brook to trip it a bit."

We take a sixty degree swerve to the left, and simultaneously leap over a little brook we had been following for a while. It's a mere trickle of water, but has clearly been around awhile by the trench it has bored into the ground.

I look back, and the crawler indeed it trips a few of its forelegs in the gap. This just enrages it even further, but does give us a twenty second time checkpoint extension.

We run further downhill into the large clearing that seems to be the result of a crater. We leap off the lip of crater and slide down the slope of glassy black sand.

Aria and Kiku pull to a stop to catch their breath, and I do the same. The Crawler has made it out of the trip hazard now and is still coming.

"How do we fight it?" I urgently query.

"Stab it in shoulder joints above the legs. The carapace is too thick elsewhere, and going for the soft belly is suicide with it flailing all the spiked limbs. We need to disable it... it will be a long and hard fight." Aria looks worried as pulls her spear of her back and twirls it in preparation.

"Is this why you normally have a mage to fight one?" I ask, remembering Kiku's comment from before.

"Yes. Um... the fighters distract it, and then the mages roast its underbelly with flames." Kiku nods.

"Then we have a chance after all." I say, grinning.

Both Aria and Kiku turn to look at me as if I'm mad… but this could work!

"Just trust me... and be ready to throw a sword hard, Kiku."

The girls swallow, look at each other, then acknowledge with a nod.

They don't have time to say anything further as the enraged crawler smashes through the trees again, falling into the crater in front of it in its blind fury and flailing around from lost balance.

It's now or never, whilst it's being dumb and exposing itself. I break into a sprint.

"E-Elijah!!" Aria cries.

Clearly they were not expecting me to immediately charge it, but to the girl’s credit, they also bound off the ground and quickly begin to catch up.

I feel time dilate slightly as adrenaline takes over. Who'd have thought I’d get to use the Molotov immediately? I grasp the bottle underhand; and as I get twenty feet from the thrashing crawler, my chance finally shows.

I fling the bottle with all my Etranger might. It soars like a mighty baseball pitch and lands perfectly on the exposed belly next to one of its chitin plates.

"Kiku, the plate above! Do it!"

I don't see her face, but a blade whistles past my shoulder as if shot from a cannon; at an oblique angle which shears past the chitin plate in a spray of sparks.

"Perfect! I love you, Kiku!" I shout.

The Crawler erupts in a cacophony of orange flames. That cider was some real potent stuff, which is why I only had half of it in the first place. And Kiku's cooking oil is also high quality, as to be expected.

I leap back as the thing thrashes like a fish out of water, attempting some monstrous form of stop, drop and roll. But Molotov’s are sticky napalm like things, and continue to burn even in situations like this.

Its chitterling grows increasingly frenzied amongst the stench of burnt flesh. If wasn't such a scary, alien looking thing, I might have had a second heaving incident.

It eventually stops resisting, and flops silently in to a heap.

I turn to the girls with a smug expression. Both of their faces are still illuminated by the crackling flames and they have expressions of sheer shock. Kiku is fidgeting nervously while Aria is gawking like a fish.

"Thanks for trusting me, ladies. This is all thanks to you."

"W-what the hell did you do to that bottle, Elijah?" Aria shouts.

"Eh...? Oh right. This is a common and easy to make weapon from my world, usually used by angry mobs." I explain, hand on my cheek.

"C-c-common?! Holy crap and shit from the sky, Elijah, a boom-potion similar to that is fifty silvers from a skilled alchemist." Rowdy Kiku exclaims.

Overcharging old sods, no doubt.

"Really?" I cock my head. "Took me twenty minutes last night. If I had a workshop or something, I could do even better things. Besides, it has a terrible weakness of short range."

Aria almost falls over in shock.

"Y-you mean to say there are things that can do this... at a longer range?" She exclaims

"Um... Fireballs normally peter out after about 50 Klecksels, Elijah, maybe 70, 100 for a very good mage with lots of power..." Kiku adds.

"How far is that, Kiku?" I ask, doing ‘a fish this big’ motions with my hands.

"Um... eh wot? F-Fifty is a-about five times the length of that crawler? Good shortbow range?"

"A hundred feet then. So, yes, there are things called rocket launchers that can make explosions twice that size and power from about a hundred times the distance... at least."

"Holy fuck and sods for sandwiches. I... um... I'm starting to see why you think your own world is scared of their weapons..." Kiku shudders.

Hmm... looks like explosives was a good idea after all.