Vale watched as the words slipped out of her mouth with an authority he couldn’t understand, but they weren’t directed at him. They were directed at the earth. The ground beneath the giant’s feet.
The soil caught his attention in the next second; it started bubbling, like boiling water and the giant imdiately lost its footing.
It desperately tried to swim out of the quicksand’s range, but it just sank deeper, with its weight dragging it to the depths of the earth. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been so easy to drown it if the body was still possessed by the original owner, but with a corpse flower in control, it lacked the instinct to manoeuvre its way out.
To say Vale was shocked would do his current emotions no justice. He looked at Rein in a different light: perhaps he hadn’t been duped by Corvis.
Just then, Rein who now stood in front of the drowning giant lost all strength and crumbled towards the ground.
With hope now within reach, Vale jumped to his feet and rushed to the mute girl. He picked her from the ground in a single swift motion and turned to Roxy who had a look of awe plastered on her face.
Even soone like her, who was hard to impress, found Rein’s ability to be absurd.
"Let’s go before it escapes," Vale shouted, getting her attention.
Roxy quickly got herself together and nodded. The earth was already nding itself and it would be long before the titan was able to free itself.
They had to move as quickly as possible.
Both of them imdiately continued running with Vale carrying the unconscious Rein.
He pointed in the direction of the Forest of Inverted spears and they both sprinted in that direction. Luckily, they both had more stamina than any regular human and even after an hour their legs hadn’t given out.
Fortunately, the titan seed to have lost them on the way and they weren’t attacked by any other creature.
This peace, however, didn’t comfort them in the least.
They were currently in the middle of nowhere with nothing other than sand stretching into the horizon. The world was so open that it was hard not to lose one’s sense of direction. Hopefully, they were still on the right path.
In the end, they decided to rest after another hour. It didn’t seem like the titan was going to catch up anyti soon, so they might as well use this opportunity to catch their breath.
Vale, still holding Rein who still hadn’t regained consciousness, dropped to the sand while gasping for air.
After stabilising his breath he opened the bag that Rein had brought along, hoping she hadn’t forgotten to carry so water.
Thankfully she had, and without thinking too much, Vale took out the bottle and drank to the halfway mark.
Roxy was in a ditative state, trying to conserve and recover her energy.
There was a short silence which was eventually broken by Vale.
"Have any idea why that...thing was chasing us?"
Roxy was definitely more knowledgeable on demonic creatures than him, after all if not for this incident she would’ve gone back to teaching at the military academy.
She should at least know sothing that might help. It would be quite inconvenient if all the demonic creatures in this area were after them.
A weird and flustered look manifested on Roxy’s face as she was caught between telling and withholding the information.
This made Vale frown as such a simple question shouldn’t put her on edge.
"Well, I might—"
Then she abruptly stopped talking. Vale’s mouth moved but the words got stuck in his throat when he noticed Roxy’s expression tensing up.
Just when he was about to ask what was wrong, he felt it.
Beneath them, he could feel the ground gently shifting as if sothing was moving underneath it, and it didn’t take a genius to realise that sothing was moving underneath.
He didn’t dare move an inch, sitting as quietly as possible on the ground, and the undulation of the soil lasted for more than a minute.
And just when he thought it was finally over, the unconscious Rein shifted slightly.
Imdiately both of them tensed up and the movent beneath them also ca to a halt. Vale and Roxy could only pray that the creature grew tired of waiting and left.
Alas, their prayers weren’t answered as Rein shifted again.
Vale cursed under his breath and imdiately started moving. Imdiately he grabbed Rein and dragged her away from her current position. In the next instant, a large worm-like creature over seven feet long and three feet wide dove out of the ground.
This creature had a whirlwind of sharp teeth in place of a mouth.
Seeing as it hadn’t caught anything the creature imdiately dove back into the ground and began circling around the group hoping to catch them unaware.
Vale imdiately fished for his dagger as he tried his best to feel the vibrations under his feet.
Vale looked at Roxy and asked, "Should we retreat?"
She shook her head. "It’ll be impossible to outpace it while it’s in the soil."
Vale could only bla his shitty luck; he hadn’t recovered enough to get into another fight, but the heavens had turned a blind eye to his predicant.
The shifting sand beca still and Vale’s heart sank.
Imdiately, he kicked his feet against the soil and pushed himself backwards. The worm-like creature erging from the ground missed him by a few millitres. The creature dove into the soil a second later.
Roxy hadn’t moved the whole ti so the worm probably hadn’t even noticed her existence.
As for Vale, he had been locked on.
Seeing there was no easy way out, his expression grew sharp and he dropped the bag he was holding beside him. With a light thumb, the sack fell on the sand.
The disturbed sand went quiet again and not long after, the worm-like creature dove out from underneath the leather bag.
This ti though, Vale was prepared and as quickly as it erged from the ground, he plunged his dagger into what he assud to be the creature’s skull.
Without any struggles, the creature went limp, with its teeth still buried in the bag.
______
You successfully killed a sand worm.
You have gained 7 common demon points.
______
Reviews
All reviews (0)