As the moonlit night fell, Ksaz led the group across the sandy ground. They had been marching for several hours under the constant harassment of the griffins.
These cunning beasts had stopped engaging in close combat ever since they realized Karu and the others' bone spears could injure them. They didn't even have any intention of flying low anymore.
They remained high in the sky, occasionally sending down wind blades that landed precisely at their feet, driving them forward.
Their purpose was simple: they wanted to exhaust this group of people to death.
“How much further to Silver Sand Lake?”
Mira came to Ksaz's side, her breathing ragged from the long trek. “My clansmen can barely hold on much longer. They...”
Before she could finish her sentence, a dull thud echoed from the rear of the group.
Ksaz immediately looked back and saw an elderly sand scaler at the very back of the line already kneeling on the ground.
His hands supported him in front, clearly showing his intent to stand back up, but before he could push himself up, two sharp whistling sounds suddenly pierced the air.
“Danger!”
Ksaz's roar arrived almost at the exact same moment as the wind blades.
Two translucent wind blades materialized from the air, striking the elderly man with precision. Dark red blood instantly splattered out.
“Grandfather!”
A child's voice suddenly cried out from the group. The young sand scaler wanted to rush to his grandfather's side but was held back tightly by a companion.
The group ground to a halt instantly. Everyone froze in place, staring at the figure collapsed on the sand, their eyes filled with grief and rage.
But before a second could pass, two wind blades descended from the sky, landing precisely beside the group. Ksaz glared furiously at the figures in the sky and shouted, “Move! Don't stop!”
He then gave Mira's nearby clansmen a push, growling, “What are you standing around for? Keep moving!”
Only then did everyone snap out of it, stumbling as they resumed their steps.
After a while, one of Mira's clansmen suddenly stopped. He was a hunter in his prime, but at this moment, his chest heaved violently as he gasped for air.
“I can't do this... I can't walk anymore...”
He spoke with great difficulty, his gaze landing on Ksaz. He slowly raised his hand, his eyes filled with grim determination. “Give me a weapon. I'll stay behind and see if I can take one down with me.”
His voice sounded calm, but his constantly trembling body betrayed his composure.
The group stopped once more, everyone turning their gaze toward Ksaz.
Mira did the same. She looked at her clansman, wanting to say something to urge him to keep pushing, but at the thought of the clansman who had just fallen, she couldn't bring herself to speak.
Thus, she could only look at Ksaz, wanting to see what this tall outsider would do.
Ksaz turned around and first swept his gaze over the sand scaler's condition. He noticed that the man's scales were dull and his stance was visibly unstable; his stamina had clearly reached its limit.
The rest of Mira's group was basically in the same state.
But he knew this was no reason to abandon someone. So, he turned and walked up to Mira's clansman, bent down, and hoisted the man onto his shoulders under everyone's astonished gazes.
“W-What are you doing?”
The hoisted sand scaler struggled weakly, trying to get off Ksaz's back, but his exhausted body simply wouldn't allow it.
“Don't move.”
Ksaz adjusted his posture to make the sand scaler more secure, then said in a deep voice, “Instead of wasting your energy struggling, you should focus on recovering your strength. If I collapse, you'll still have to run on your own.”
“The gentleman said that to survive in this sea of sand, we must unite all forces that can be united.”
The sand scaler froze and stopped struggling. After glancing at his clansmen, he merely turned his head away.
Ksaz glanced at him, said nothing more, and continued walking forward.
Mira stood in place, staring at Ksaz's back. She could see that his scales were no longer as bright as when they first met, which meant his stamina was not limitless either. He was tired too, yet he did not stop.
She couldn't describe what she was feeling in her heart at this moment.
But as her gaze fell upon that broad back, a sudden warmth surged in her chest, causing her to unconsciously purse her lips before quickly catching up.
Karu and the others looked at each other after seeing Ksaz's actions. They silently turned and picked up the few young children in the group.
No one spoke, but as the group resumed their march, their steps were slightly steadier than before.
Eileen watched their figures and softly muttered the words Ksaz had just spoken. A smile graced her lips as she murmured to herself, “This 'gentleman' the sand scaler speaks of is rather interesting.”
Eileen then stepped forward and followed them.
After marching for nearly another two hours, the griffins overhead finally seemed to lose their patience.
First, the one on the right let out a sharp, long screech, immediately followed by the one on the left. Then, the four griffins began to draw closer to one another in the air, their wings flapping in an interlocking pattern as their scattered circling paths synchronized into a perfect circle.
They flew closer and closer, spinning faster and faster, until the four figures were practically pressed together, forming a swirling vortex.
Sensing that something was wrong, Ksaz glanced back, and his expression instantly changed. “Oh no, it's a combined spell!”
He then looked at the others around him and shouted at the top of his lungs, “Run! Everyone run!”
As soon as the words left his mouth, he set the man on his shoulders onto the ground and took the lead, sprinting diagonally forward.
The others reacted quickly, desperately struggling to keep pace. Several sand scalers holding children stumbled as they ran, but none dared to stop.
The airflow behind them expanded rapidly.
The sound of the wind turned from a whistle into a roar. Sand was swept up and pelted against their backs like being struck by countless tiny pebbles at once.
Then, the tornado fully materialized. A dusty yellow pillar of wind soared from the ground to the sky, carrying sand and gravel as it rolled toward the group with devastating force.
Mira ran in the middle of the group, holding her child. She could no longer feel her legs, merely moving them mechanically. Listening to the howling wind growing closer behind her, her heart sank bit by bit.
There was no escape.
She squeezed the child in her arms tightly, mentally preparing herself to be swept away.
Whoosh!
A sharp whistling sound pierced the air. Mira looked up and saw a grayish-white bone spear shoot out from the night sky, precisely piercing the chest of the griffin at the peak of the vortex.
Screech!
The griffin let out a miserable shriek, its entire body stiffening in midair. It then spun out of the vortex and plummeted toward the ground.
Then came three more ear-splitting whistling sounds, and the other griffins plunged from the sky one after another.
However, they did not die immediately. Instead, they struggled on the ground, desperately trying to take flight once more.
But suddenly, the sandy ground nearby swelled up, and Sara's figure emerged from the soil. A Petrification Ray struck one of the griffins with pinpoint accuracy, turning it into a stone statue in the blink of an eye.
On the other side, three small earth stingers poked their heads out of the sand at the same time, lining up and raising their tail stingers in unison.
Three beams of light shot toward another wounded griffin, petrifying it in an instant.
The last griffin, with a broken wing, was still rolling on the sand, letting out desperate wails.
Two small earth stingers burrowed out of the sand from its left and right, combining their Petrification Rays to strike the base of its wing. Grayish-white stone spread outward from the wound, quickly swallowing half of its body.
After a brief struggle, it completely stopped moving.
All the sand scalers came to a halt.
No one spoke. They simply stood in place, staring blankly at the grayish-white griffin statues, before turning their heads to look in the direction the bone spears had been thrown.
Under the moonlight, atop the distant ridge of a sand dune, a slender figure sat astride a skeletal warhorse.
The warhorse's four hooves stood firmly and motionlessly on the sand, the two clusters of eerie blue flames in its eye sockets flickering slightly in the night wind.
And the figure on its back sat upright, enveloped in a deathly aura.
As soon as Ksaz saw the figure, a joyful expression immediately appeared on his face as he called out loudly, “Sir!”
Mira stood in the distance, gazing at the slender figure mounted on the skeletal warhorse. All three of her eyelids snapped open, her pupils trembling slightly.
A necromancer—she had only ever heard of them from merchants in her entire life.
Meanwhile, after the initial surprise of seeing the necromancer appear, Eileen wore a playful expression.
“A necromancer, huh? Now that really is interesting.”
Rate on N.U.
