Rune was not physically dying from the heat, but he was feeling dead inside. The heat was getting to everyone, even with the cooling devices. Rune wanted to freeze the whole desert, but decided against it as it would cause a massive amount of flooding after it melted. Also, it would be hard to drive on ice.

The group was traveling in their two wagons to the Stormy Isles as the sun beat down on them with its evil rays of sunlight. Rune turned into Cursed Armor for a little bit, but found out that he felt way too stuffy when he did so in the sunlight.

It was also very unfair if he didn’t have to face the same punishment of heat that the others faced. When he first transformed into Cursed Armor, Rouna opened the small hatch that allowed people in the first wagon to communicate to the driver directly. She glared at him as his scent was lost when he transformed and she knew something was off.

“Turn back.”

She spoke in a stern voice that made Rune, who was stronger than her, shiver a small bit before turning back. He decided to not make an enemy of his entire group before they attacked the Stormy Isles.

As per usual, they had embarked on their journey and were taking the wagons and not the platform because they “have no protection from the sun”. Also, they needed multiple different pieces of equipment out to radio each other and to keep them cool.

The wagon was built with more protection than the platform as well and alerted them as to what dangers arose around them. The wagons moved easily across the sand dunes as it floated above the sand by about half of a meter.

They were about half way there when they stopped for camp as it was getting dark and the two moons were rising. Nothing exciting had happened due to the extreme heat and no one wanting to do anything in that heat.

The two moons shone brightly in the night sky as they set up their tents with a new material made with synthetic fibers fused with the hides of monsters. This allowed the tents to be near indestructible as the fibers used were made of some of the hardest monster hides in the Human continent.

The poles for the three tents were made of mana infused steel that made a barrier on the tent fabrics that they were connected to. They could extend or shorten depending on what the user wanted.

There were three tents for the seven people. Rouna and Elisa took one, Rena, Riika, and Hika took another, and Erin and Rune took the last. The one with three people had the most room for the three as well as the large radio Riika had.

Erin was sleeping soundly and Rune was sitting on the platform above the camp in his Cursed Armor form. One leg dangled off of the floating hexagon and his other foot was flat against the smooth crystal platform.

He was going to be the person who was to guard the people in his group and he wanted to be prepared for basically anything. His armor hadn’t changed much from the usual armor made of strange materials. At least, not the look of everything except his helmet.

His helmet now had a “jaw” that used springs to control. There were small fangs in the “jaw” made of mana infused dragon fangs from the Black Dragon. They had the ability to corrode that which he bit.

His helmet also had a visor which two eyes lay behind. They were mechanical of course, but were able to rotate in their sockets and the right eye gained the effect of the Healing Magic eye. The left eye was able to see in the dark and track heat signatures.

He had worked on this helm for a whole two months in the lab just trying to understand how the eyes could pick up heat signatures and see in the dark. That took a month and a half alone. The other half month required him to create the jaw and the eyes that could rotate.

Inside the helm itself was a skull that used motors that moved with mana poured into them. Since a Cursed Armor’s entire inner being was magic, there was no need to constantly concentrate on pouring mana in when he could do it as if he were breathing. It felt natural for him to turn his eyes and open and close his mouth.

To change his Cursed Armor form, all he needed to do was to take off his helmet from before and fit the new helmet head onto the open space. Afterwards, all he needed to do was to transform into Cursed Armor and it would appear on him. When he turned back, the helmet head would be transferred to the storage, but nothing else would be.

He looked around with his new eyes and saw that something small was moving towards them quite quickly. It was like a blur with his eyes that could even see in the dark and the heat.

Since the colors of heat were warm colors like red and yellow, he figured that a creature would give off those colors, but this thing did not. It was giving off cool colors such as blue and purple.

He knew that it was a creature due to the way it moved about. It was flying at high speeds, but was being so close to the ground that it had to maneuver its way around small areas of dried brush.

It had tentacles dragging behind it and, when he looked with just his dark vision, he saw that it was a pale white color and looked like a squid with its ten tentacles. Underneath and behind it, he could see that it was making a trail of frozen ice as it sped its way towards them.

Rune pulled out a Cursed Bolt Action Rifle that used the same enchantments and abilities as the Cursed Assault Rifle except that the bolt action rifle had less ammunition and more firepower. It also had enough firepower to break the Black Dragon’s hide easily and then some.

Each bullet was long and extremely aerodynamic. The rounds could fly through the air at almost mach 1, but couldn’t reach and break the sound barrier just yet. This was his second most deadly type of bullet and gun.

His most deadly was like his trench knife where he stuffed it to the brim full of enchantments. Enchantments had a limit depending on the user’s skill and his skill was beyond perfect. Perfect was, for most people, four enchantments, but he was able to add up to ten enchantments into a single item and then combine the items with his fusion magic to have a single item able to have up to fifty enchantments.

Unfortunately, this was the limit as, if he tried to fuse any more, the new item being fused would lose its enchantments. Also, another unusual effect he could use was that he could add his skills and magic into the enchantments instead of just regular enchantments such as sharp or auto repair.

His trench knife had too many enchantments to count and it was quite deadly against any being. It even had long range so that it could slice apart enemies up to ten meters away.

His rifle had an effect to accelerate the objects in the muzzle and it was more durable than a dragon scale as it was fused with it. The explosions in the chamber were ten times as powerful as before and everything in the gun itself would be extremely durable.

Anything that entered the gun would be protected by a thin and powerful barrier that allowed nothing in there to get damaged. The bullets could then survive the blast forces and be launched at tremendous speeds while the user wouldn’t even feel the recoil of such a force.

He trained his gun on the mysterious being flying towards them. It got closer and closer and he soon realized something about it.

It was semi transparent and it was shimmering in and out of existence. It looked strange as it seemed to move towards him and the tents. Then, it suddenly, as it reached the camp, dug itself into the ground and made a hole where it was.

Rune was awfully suspicious of it and thought about whether or not he should drop a bomb in the hole. The hole was perfect for a grenade to just roll down it and explode, but Rune had no idea what it was.

Suddenly, the earth around them shifted and a ring of sand rose around them. Suddenly, hundreds of the strange squid beings were rising up from the sand. Sand flowed off from their smooth bodies as they rose into the sky, but still kept within 1 or 2 meters from the ground.

They tightened the circle around the group and Rune stood up on his platform. He unhooked a cylindrical device with a black grip from his belt. He pressed a button on top of it and threw up the device in his hand.

It rotated in the air and, after it reached its highest point, it exploded. It made a loud sound as blinding white light breached the surrounding night. The squids had two eyes each on the sides of their head and they closed their eyes.

The loud bang woke up the surrounding people in the tents. Rena and Hika were the first to pop up and out of their tents. Rena had roused Hika from her light sleep and both were sleeping with their weapons.

Rouna was the only one who hadn’t woken up and Elisa was forced to princess carry her out of the tent. Since the light was still bright and glowing, Rouna opened her eyes slowly and was greeted with the sight of Elisa holding her.

Rouna was beginning to get extra clingy to Elisa and was even found in the palace in her living quarters. Apparently she was sleep flying and somehow, unconsciously, found her way into her bed.

Also, for Dragons, they didn’t differentiate between genders for their lovers. They only actively found the opposite gender when extinction of their entire race was near. However, that hadn’t happened for about 3,000 years.

Elisa was also warming up to Rouna, but wasn’t quite ready for a lover of the same gender. She was unsure of whether she should go down the path that Rouna was leading her on or the straight path.

Also, for the entire world, people could become lovers with the opposite gender, but it was quite rare.

Elisa placed Rouna down and the two of them looked around at the surrounding events. The squids were starting to move around again and their eyes started to get used to the light.

Rune was looking down upon the squid like beings with rifle in hand. He pulled back the bolt of the rifle and was now ready to fire. He fired off ten shots and reloaded.

Eight of the shots passed right through their bodies as they shimmered and floated in the air. The other two landed right in their heads and they flopped onto the ground and stopped shimmering. Their blood flew into the air as the silver droplets gushed out from within their bodies.

He sighed as the bullets weren’t killing as many as he had hoped and he hopped down from the platform. He put his rifle over his shoulder and drew his katana. He rushed one of them and slashed it across its slimy, smooth head.

He was about halfway through when his blade fell out of it. He hadn’t been sawing at it and was just slicing with a single stroke when the blade was removed from the creature. He wanted to click his tongue, but couldn’t and, with his immense speed and using [Breakneck], he slashed one hundred times, but only about twenty slashes hit.

The good news was that it was dead it that amount of attacks and the bad news was that there were at least 300 remained. He readied his blade and used an enchantment from it known as far reach. He swung his blade at his fastest speed and it cut down thirty at once, but the rest remained unharmed.

They suddenly all retreated, likely from Rune’s attack, and they buried themselves in the sand once more. Then the sand started to float upwards and past the group and the tents.

Rune sent everyone the same message via telepathy.