Finally, they'd reached the desert. It had taken them a few hours, having encountered another herd of snails on the way. This time they used their weapons to kill and collect them, Elisa also received a vast range of herbs and plants along the way. Slaughtering their way through the snails was a hundred times better the sneaking through and a lot faster to boot.

Looking out onto the desert, Neo hadn't realised how big it was from up on the cliff. Taking in the sand dunes, they hesitated to continue on due to the fear of something coming out from under the ground. So, not really having any better idea, Neo threw a rock into the sand dunes. Waiting for a few moments as they listened, they couldn't hear anything which was a bit creepy by itself.

But they had grown used to the quietness after the forest of quietness and, just to make sure, Neo threw a second stone in the same place as last time and waited. With another pregnant pause, nothing happened.

Shrugging at the group, he intended to suggest they move off before the light travelled too far overhead. But, as Neo moved to step across the dividing line, Sordelia and Tan's ears swivelled and Sordelia pulled him back slightly onto the green grass. Neo waited, trying to hear what they did.

Barely within the edge of his hearing, Neo caught a rasping sound. After a moment of quiet, the rasping continued and the four sat patiently, waiting for the next challenge to show itself.

It wasn't a long wait. The rasping grew louder before something about the size of a dog burst out of one of the sand dunes before plunging towards the place where he had thrown the stone. It paused when it realised that there was nothing there but the rasping noise hadn't ended. Dozens more shot out of the sand dunes, they were smaller than the first one, but they still hurtled towards the area where the stone was. The creatures continued to randomly shoot out from the sandy ground, sometimes bumping into the stone, but they soon settled when they to realised that there wasn't anything there.

Neo whispered hopefully, "So I don't suppose we know what these things are?"

Elisa whispered happily, "Actual, yes. They're, sand weavers, they are found in three bubbles with desert biomes and have an affinity to earth mana, which allows them to weave through the ground. Along with the large amount of energy expended with the way they move, they also consume large amounts of oxygen. They can’t recover that underground, so they have to return to the surface after no longer than three hours, which is why ."

Before Elisa could start explaining their feeding habits Neo interrupted her, "Sorry, Elisa, could you shorten to what we can use to kill it or avoid it?"

Elisa's eyes lightened and then dimed before brightening again. With slightly greener cheeks she said, "They're hard to kill within their natural environment. Their skin is super hard and they have a small number of regenerative abilities. They also use their earth magic to feel the earth for disturbances."

Neo though through the information, "Hmm, as they are still in their biome I guess they can't, or don't want to leave. Can they enter harder ground?"

"No only, sandy, grainy terrain."

Sordelia made some hand signals which Tan explained, "How about water, do they avoid it?"

Elisa took a moment to remember before replying, "They don't like it of course, as it damages their skin and weakens them."

Sordelia pointed to the left where the lake biome ran beside the desert zone. She then flung her hand about again. "She says that she could use the water from the lake biome to soak the sand while we’re running on it."

Neo’s eyebrows rose with surprise. He liked the idea, but that was if Sordelia had enough mana to reach over the 2 kilometres of desert. As he aired his question, Sordelia replied with hand waving, "If I produced the water, then yes, I doubt we'd get one hundred metres out before we were doomed! But, if I can draw it from the lake, then maybe. The closer to a source of water, the less mana I use."

The team had no other ideas so they collected anything and everything as they followed the borders until they arrived at a T-intersection that had a lake a mere centimetre from the desert. They then tested the hypothesis but dropping another stone heavily on to the ground Sordelia also sloshed a large sphere of water on top of it.

Neo could hear the rasping sound of the sand weavers as they jumped and dove through the sand. They soon leapt out of dunes, but instead of going directly towards the stone they moved around it, surrounding it. They still jumped over the rock, not hitting it, but it would be annoying to anything that stood tall.

Neo and the team discussed what they should do. What they came up with was a formation like a kite. Tan taking the lead, Elisa taking the left side, and Sordelia taking the right side, placing her by the lake.

Everyone else had a fake ring to confuse anyone who might fight them. The idea came from Sordelia when they'd found out about the rings, she'd spoken about how there was no stopping someone from just stealing it.

Using his telekinesis, Neo threw a stone over a dune and well out of sight. Within moments the sand weavers had disappeared, weaving away towards where the stone landed. They waited for a while before they started the operation. Using the kite formation, it almost instantly failed once they had crossed over into the desert biome after having run into a wall of oppressive heat that tripped them up and made Elisa shrink a little.

Everyone looked towards each other and Neo nodded with confidence and determination which seemed to infect the team with spirit. Since they had already gathered the attention of the weavers, which were now charging at them, they quickly continued on with the operation.

In the distance, the sound of rasping started to grow louder as they ran through the stifling air and moving sand. As they ran Sordelia pulled the water from the lake biome to the sand, which steamed and disappeared shortly after they ran over it.

After a short while the sand weavers were bashing at the glass-like screen that was covering the team’s back and side. Unfortunately, Neo couldn't cover the whole group, which the sand weavers quickly figured out. Thankfully, since his mana had been falling rapidly, they stopped the constant bashing on his shield. But the pressure on Tan at the front was heavy. Her shield seemed to never stop bashing and slashing at anything that flew at them.

Neo assisted with his telekinesis, rotating his blades so that they would shoot around, slicing up or redirecting the sand weavers. Fortunately, it was getting very easy for him to predict how they would move. Meanwhile, Elisa would collect any corpses and assist in her own unique way, though, the tough hide of the beasts made killing them quite tricky, so they only gathered a few.

But as Elisa couldn't stop and ground herself she couldn't use a lot of her moves, but the moving vine whips slowed or redirected the creatures that escaped Neo’s blades, giving Tan enough time to stab them.

It was going well, which made Neo nervous. He was sweating and shaking from his exertion, but he didn't want to relieve his exhaustion by infusing his mana in his body. That would most likely use up the rest of his available mana, so, for now, he just had to keep it up and live with the pain.

As they ran across the sand dunes, he was thankful that the dunes that had been cut off by the lake biome had slid into the water, so at least they didn't have to worry about rising heights. Unfortunately, there was still no end in sight. Meanwhile, Sordelia’s water magic was getting weaker and weaker as time went on, which in turn strained the rest of them to adjust making the shield small so the sand weavers couldn't just go under the shield. It made moving and adjusting their position difficult and caused some bumping into each other while Tan was trying to avoid Sordelia.

It wasn't long before something happened. It started a chain reaction as Tan dodged out of the way of a leaping weaver, killing it. At the same time, she knocked Elisa back, who then started flailing about and sent vines out to catch herself. Elisa in turn ended up knocking Neo down giving him a hard impact on the ground. He dropped the blades, which landed soundlessly on the sand, and his mana shield fell as well. Thankfully for Neo, a lot of the sand weavers were moving ahead and then shooting back towards Tan as the weakest link. The only ones who were hitting the shield were the smaller, younger, and more stupid ones.

When those smaller ones didn't meet any resistance, they flew through the group and through Neo’s abdomen, spraying Sordelia and Elisa with his organs and blood. Thankfully, Elisa jumped in front of Sordelia knocking her out of the way while slicing and stabbing as the weavers approached the two of them. Tan turned up the heat and speed, defending their backs without the support of the Elisa or Neo.

Neo stared down at the pooling blood and organs that were falling out of him. He didn't take the time to worry about others as he grasped at his fleeting mana and injected it into his body to slow his perception of time and increase the power of his body. The move managed to keep him alive long enough to sloppily pull his ring off with his bloody fingers, . His fingers kept slipping as is his mana disappeared as fast as his blood exited his body.

Even once he had pulled the ring off, and the scales crepe up his skin, his horns grew out of his head, and his tail whipped about, there was still a hole through his stomach. He knew he didn't have a long before time moved on too much so he grasped at the huge mana pool that was now available to him. His instincts were eerily quiet.

He made a space bubble that confined his local area and started to turn all of the pearls in one direction toward him. The world slowed around him and then began to reverse causing the images of weavers to fly back past him. Eventually the picture of the weaver who had made its way through him travelled back and, as it did, the skin started reforming over the weaver. From an observer’s perspective, it looked as if it was being pushed out the area it had first penetrated without even leaving a scar.

Half of his mana had been taken in a few seconds and once he had his wound healed he only had one-tenth of his mana available. He dropped the bubble to see his blood covered friends who also saw him and were surprised to find that he was standing. Their surprise was quickly overruled by the shock of seeing his dragon features.

His Instinct came back with avengeance, and Neo took a deep breath and roared at the sand weavers before he jumped forward, slicing up dozens of them and maddingly pounding the ground with sand shaking force. Many of the weavers died before they could leave the ground. He threw space slashes at anything he couldn't lay his hand on. Neo watched rationally from the inside wondering how to make those space slashes, and his Instincts didn't even notice that he had been getting farther and farther from the group.

Tan realised that she wasn't defending any more, and took off to chase Neo down to make him stop before they lost him in the desert. Elisa and Sordelia had been doing their best to recover and set up the kite again while they had been covered in their teammate's blood.

Tan had to use her mana infusion to gain on the chasing figure, and, once she did, she tackled him to the ground to stop him. Instead, she bounced off of him, landing on her backside. As her quick reflexes allowed her to stand back up to face a growling, snarling Neo who was now holding up a hand and intending to slice her into pieces.

Neo was grappling with his instincts when he felt the bump of Tan's attempted rescue, 'Whoa, friendly! She's friendly! Don’t harm her!' Instinct stopped his slash, staring at the flaming Tan. Instinct seemed to realise that she wasn't an enemy, so instead he looked toward the water only to find itself on the top of dunes about a kilometre away. Neo’s instincts felt stupid, as it was safer over there, and gave Neo back some control.

He picked up Tan and ran back, and it started its usual instinctual thoughts as it looked down on the slightly protesting Tan, who had relaxed into his arm. As they arrived at the water's edge, Neo was putting Tan down when Instinct flooded his mind with lustful thoughts. As she slid out of his arms he bent down to her face and, with arms on her waist, kissed her on the lips.

Neo jerked back, shocked at his own actions, and mentally shouted at the once prideful Instinct who was now confused. Neo trudged back to where he had taken off his ring while the wanted him to turn back toward the young women and claim them as his own. The feelings that were pulling at him constricted when he saw them in their now blood red stained equipment with shocked faces.

He bent over to grab the ring and fought the urge to stop and turn. Sliding the ring on to his finger his scales, horns, and tail retreated. He collapsed on to the floor causing his team to jump to his aid.

As they stood him up on wobbly legs, he saw Tan's rosy red cheeks and slightly vacant expression as she seemed to lose herself in memory.

As the two controlling members of the team where visible shaken, Elisa stepped up and ordered them onward. She told Sordelia to continue the water path and Tan to cover the front, while she held the back. While supporting the team they moved on without being harassed until they found the end of the desert biome.