Yuriko spun away from the stream of venom ejected by one of the giant scorpions, only for her to almost get her hand caught by a pincer as another scorpion scooted forward. She managed to parry and cut off the pedipalp, handily avoiding the ichor spray even as she sidestepped a stinger.

Her flared Anima made things far easier than she expected. For one thing, anything that entered it was visibly slowed down. With a range of seventeen inches from her skin, it was more than enough time for her to react to a sudden attack. She also felt it when things entered the glow, even if it was directly behind her.

She wasn’t quite used to it yet, but the sensation of feeling a stinger come close to her back had saved her more times than she could count.

Like right now.

She jerked her head to the right, grabbed the stinger with her hand, and pulled. The scorpion flew over her shoulder and landed on its back. It wiggled desperately to get right side up but she stabbed a blade into its face and cut it apart.

“How many left?”

Her breathing was still even though sweat clung to her eyelashes. But there was barely a reprieve. The giant bugs surrounded and snapped at her with their pincers. She leapt out of the way when another sprayed venom from the stinger, but that only put her in the path of another spray. Her Anima repulsed some of the liquid, but a few droplets touched her arm, causing a burning sensation.

With a wordless growl, she dove into their midst. They weren’t big enough that she could easily use their bodies to protect her from the crossfire, but it still limited their movements. She cut, stabbed, punched, and kicked them until none were left standing.

Their ichor smelled worse than the underground beast, hard as that was to believe.

“Do they have something I can harvest?” she asked Damien.

La la la lah!

“Damien?”

Huh? Oh, just cut into them. There may be something to harvest. As long as it’s glowing, you should get it. Ha hah!

Why did he sound drunk?

Shaking her head, Yuriko kicked one of the scorpions over to its back then stabbed into the carapace then sawed it open. Cutting into the chitin was difficult without the force of her swing, so she retracted and reformed one of her blades to have saw-like teeth.

A minute into it and she just gave up. It was too disgusting.

“Ick.” The internal fluids clung to her skin and there were no bones inside, just internal organs and whatever passed for blood for these creatures.

She scrubbed off what stuck to her skin, and channelled her Recovery Pattern to soothe the venom burns on her skin. None of it made it to her bloodstream but she didn’t want to take the risk. Afterwards, she just left the corpses there and continued on her way.

“Maybe those things like shaded places?” she muttered.

Well, it was easy enough to avoid the shadow of the sand dunes, even though the formations rose ten to fifteen paces high. The spire, oh the spire. When will she get there? How far must she walk? How long will she remain alone?

What am I? Chopped liver?

“You’re a voice in my head.”

But I’m nonetheless real.

“Unless I’m crazy.”

What, you don’t think your current power was brought about by mad delusions?

“If it weren’t then tell me why they aren’t used now?”

How would I know? The last thing I remember before I woke up as a disembodied voice was the departing from the Siderious and fighting the Great Old Ones. Why is there so much Chaos anyway?

“What’s the Siderious?” Yuriko asked, though by now she was doing so just to be able to speak rather than out of curiosity.

Hmmm, I don’t remember. There are gaps.

“Oh?” Yuriko frowned. “Uhm, do you think advancing my Facet would help with your memories?”

...Maybe.

“And what do you mean the Great Old Ones?”

The Creators. The World Shapers. Fate Spinners. And… Destroyers.

Creators and Destroyers? There had been no mention of such beings in the Empire’s histories. Not that she had actually delved into that many books in school.

“What about Chaos Lords?”

What about them? They’re remnants.

“The Shattering?”

That cataclysm featured prominently in History class. Or rather, the role of the Empress in preserving humanity from the excesses of the God-Monarchs. Those beings were the ones to cause the Shattering. Imagine that all the myriad planes were one big continent floating above the Chaos Sea. Then the God-Monarchs caused it to shatter to what they had now.

How and why it happened was shrouded in deep shadow. Honestly, Yuriko thought it had happened too far back in time. Knights lived up to three hundred years, and the higher levels lived even longer. The Empress had reached a point where she no longer aged. Perhaps the older rulers of the Empire remembered.

Well, the Empress certainly did.

Why did it matter now though? The Chaos Lords wanted everything to dissolve back into the Chaos Sea, but Master Alfein’s lectures hinted at a different thing. Unformed were the Chaos dwellers who couldn’t enter the planes, otherwise, they’d become Chaos Lords. But did it mean that those jumped up Wyldlings could return to that state once they’ve succeeded in their goals?

What’s the Shattering?

Yuriko stumbled on her feet. “You don’t know?”

Perhaps I simply don’t remember.

“Ahh.”

Damien lapsed into silence which was good since his tuneless humming had been bothering her for longstrides now. The sun set and Yuriko found a relatively stable place to rest and make camp. She boiled stew while meditating.

She hadn’t used her Facet in weeks. The last time had been when she’d found the obelisk. As she had half-expected, the Golden Silhouette had recreated the skin toughening technique. Yuriko still couldn’t execute it properly though, and the silhouette didn’t create a scaled-down version.

It also didn’t demonstrate that amazingly powerful sword strike it once showed Yuriko. She’d tried to recreate it but she couldn’t remember the correct runescript sequence. She honestly didn’t expect Rune Scribing to be pertinent in Martial Sciences. From how the Ancients used their techniques, it involved a lot of runescript and raw Animus manipulation.

Nothing attacked her throughout the night. She heard clicking, hissing, and chirping but there was no howling, barking, or roaring though, thank the Ancestors.

Halfway through the next day, Yuriko rubbed her eyes and blinked. “Is that?” She muttered.

Off in the distance, perhaps a couple of leagues southwest, were shapes that looked like…houses? It certainly broke the monotony of rolling dunes. And were those trees? Maybe she was seeing things too. She shifted her path and headed to it.

It was actually farther than she thought. Maybe four leagues away. The hot and dry heat caused the air to shimmer and more than once she abruptly found herself oriented several degrees away from the buildings. Eventually, after most of the afternoon spent walking, she crossed a ridge and found herself looking down on a small group of stone houses. There were coconut trees surrounding a small oasis that was probably more mud than anything else. The water was a tepid pool three paces wide surrounded by a radius of mud five paces in length.

“Hello? Anybody here?” she called out.

The houses didn’t look to be in good repair, and half of them had collapsed ceilings. Each house was only five paces to a side, with small windows.

Yuriko cautiously peeked into one of the intact dwellings, but there was nothing inside other than dust, sand, spiderwebs, and some kind of mouse that darted into a hole in the wall as soon as it saw her.

The other dwelling with an intact roof was similarly empty, and of course, the three roofless ones had nothing but rubble inside. Shrugging, she walked up to the waterhole and tested the water by dipping her finger in it and tasting.

“Ptuie!”

She spat out. It was salty. How was she to replenish her supplies now? Yuriko tapped a finger on her lip. There’s water here and presumably, water vapour. The condenser canteen should work, right?

She transferred the contents of the metal canteen into an empty bamboo canister and placed it on the ground after she powered it up with her Animus. She came to it after an hour and there was some water inside. A quick taste revealed that it was fresh water but the canteen was only a fifth full. She couldn’t afford to wait several days to refill her canisters.

Or she could etch the bamboo with condenser runescript. Yeah. She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of it before. Ehehe.

The rest of the day was spent resting, meditating, and carving the runescript. It took her an hour to carve the first set on a bamboo container, though she took a bit less time for the rest. She invested ten lumens to power the runescript. By the next day, She refilled all of her water supply and the oasis had shrunk to a puddle.

She left the abandoned settlement by dawn. Throughout most of the day, she just kept walking. Some sand got into her boots and the constant abrasion destroyed what was left of her socks. Her storage of Radiant energy was full though Damien hadn’t spoken or otherwise made his presence known since the day before.

Acting out of a hunch, she sent Pure Animus into the Facet, and lo and behold, the Radiant energy transferred over to the strand. The golden colour of her Animus suddenly intensified tenfold. She wasn’t sure what to do with it though, so she tried to form an Animus blade within. The Radiant energy didn’t mould to her wishes though and it felt like she tried to weave an oil slick thread. The way she finally made it word was by first creating a regular Animus blade and then she injected a strand laden with Radiant energy into it. The blade glowed like it had a flame within, which she supposed was true. That attempt drained half of the reserve, though at the rate it was refilling, it shouldn’t take more than an hour before it filled up again.

“I wonder what will happen if I use that strand when I use Body Forging?” she asked herself. Or even just when she did her post-training meditation. Anima Refinement? So many things to try, though of course, she couldn’t do it right now. She’d wait until it was time to camp. Hmmm.

There was just a split second warning from her Anima, just enough for her to dodge out of the way. More scorpions rose out of the sand, pedipalps clicking and their tails raised.

“Oh, not again,” she muttered.

Well, there were only a dozen of them this time. She created a blade on each hand and filled the one on her right with Radiant energy. Time to test things out.

Since she already knew the measure of the bugs, they posed absolutely no threat to her. If anything, with the radiant blade, the fight went even faster. Each of her strikes seemed to burn as if her weapon was made of flame. It left cauterized wounds, and blackened carapace in its wake.

At the end of it all, dismembered pincers, tails, and bisected bodies littered the desert dunes. Yuriko shook her head. What did these things even eat to get this large?

A swift shadow was her only warning.

The next thing she knew, she was flying over the air, with sand bursting from an impact she narrowly avoided.

A creature that was three times as tall as Yuriko crouched on all fours, scaled wings mantled. A reptilian maw gaped open, and a forked tongue flicked in and out. The Skybeast stared at her with its slit-pupilled golden eyes for an eternal moment. Then it pounced, foreclaws opened and a snarl on its face.

Yuriko growled and met its charge. She ducked under the claw and swiped at its forearm with her blade. Sparks flew from the contact and a single drop of red blood.

Yuriko slipped under its body, dodging legs and tail, while she left a couple of cuts on its abdomen. A roar of anger greeted her when she came out from under it, and a vicious bite caught her backpack. It jerked her to a halt and all of her momentum bled off through a spray of sand.

“Hey, let go!” she screamed as she twisted and swung. But the creature lifted its neck and kept its limbs out of the way. Yuriko was completely off balance, and she thought to cut her backpack straps before it got her killed. Before she could do it though, the Skybeast crouched and leapt, dragging her with it into the sky.