The mont Ethan, Lia, and Luna stepped through the portal, they were greeted by a wave of dry, scorching heat. The sudden shift from the damp swamp to an arid desert left them montarily disoriented.
Luna coughed, waving a hand in front of her face as the hot wind carried fine grains of sand around them. "Ugh! Big brother, it's in my mouth!"
Ethan squinted against the sunlight and took in their surroundings. The landscape stretched endlessly in every direction, filled with golden dunes and jagged sandstone cliffs. The sky was a brilliant, cloudless blue, the heat shimring over the sand like a mirage.
He imdiately noticed the difference in atmosphere compared to the previous dungeons. The swamp had been thick with mist and predators lurking in the shadows. Here, it was open—yet strangely quiet.
Too quiet.
Lia shaded her eyes with her hand, scanning the horizon. "Master… I don't see any monsters."
Ethan frowned. That was odd. Usually, the dungeon's ecosystem would throw a few imdiate threats at newcors. "Stay alert," he warned. "Just because we can't see them, doesn't an they aren't watching."
And then—just as he said that—the ground shifted beneath them. A ripple ran across the sand, like sothing moving below.
BOOM!
The sand exploded upward as dozens of scaled beasts erupted from below, desert scorpions, each the size of a cat. Its crimson carapace glead under the sun, its deadly pincers snapping open with a loud clack, and its long, segnted tail arched high above, dripping with thick, black venom.
Luna yelped, grabbing Ethan's sleeve. "B-Big brother—!"
Ethan had already started summoning his minions. At his command, his horde surged forward. The insectoids leaped onto the scorpions, their mandibles clicking as they tried to pierce their tough exoskeletons. Though it took a couple of tries, they eventually managed to break in.
The lesser demons had all reached level 10 already, but a few of them succumbed to the venom attacks. Lia managed to step in at the nick of ti and healed them before they could deal lasting damage.
Otherwise, the fight was mostly uneventful. Lia was the only one struggling a bit because of the atmosphere. Ethan's high stats made him immune to the climate, and Luna did not seem bothered by the sand anymore.
"I told them not to annoy , and they stopped it!" She answered with a smile when asked.
Ethan raised an eyebrow at Luna's words. She told the sand not to bother her? He gave up on trying to understand the way her magic worked. He sidelined a scorpion for Luna to attack, and a ball of angry flas did the creature in.
"Yay! I got it! I got my level!" Luna imdiately clapped in delight.
Ethan let out a relieved breath, ruffling Luna's hair. "Good job. But don't celebrate too much, there is still a long way to go."
Luna puffed out her cheeks but nodded enthusiastically. "Okay, okay! But I really did it! I got stronger!"
Ethan smirked. "Yeah, and we'll make sure you keep getting stronger. By the way, how many stats did you get from the level up?"
"What are stats, big brother?"
"Luna, open your system status and take a look at everything properly. Ummm… Your na and other details."
A few seconds later, she mumbled in confusion, "Xerthamia Thalia? Who the hell is that?"
"Ugh. That's your na. Rember? You forgot many things. This is your original na."
Ethan stared at her, wondering if this would trigger any mories, but the next mont, the girl simply scoffed and crossed her arms in front of her, puffing out her chest. "I reject it. I am Luna."
Ethan blinked, then let out a short laugh. "You reject it?"
Luna nodded firmly, crossing her arms. "Yes! Luna is my na. That other one sounds weird and stuffy. I don't like it."
Lia, who had been listening quietly, pressed her lips together. "But Luna… that is your true na. Your identity."
Luna puffed her cheeks in defiance. "Nope! Big brother calls Luna, and I like Luna better! So I'm Luna!"
Ethan snorted, shaking his head. "Alright, alright. If you want to be Luna, you're Luna."
Honestly, after everything that had happened, he wasn't going to force a na on her. But wait…
He glanced at Luna again, considering the implications. If she rejected her na, did that an she was rejecting sothing deeper—her past? Her existence as Xerthamia Thalia? Or was it just a stubborn child's whim?
Argh. He felt his mind spinning with theories. How could he possibly understand a situation like this? Who knew what a primordial neonate was capable of? He decided to let it be and go along with the flow.
"Luna, did anything else show up when you tried to look at your system?" he asked. "Or did you rember sothing else? Maybe where you are from?"
Luna scrunched her nose, thinking hard. "Ummm… it was mostly empty? Just my na—and I changed it to Luna!—and sothing about being a 'Primordial Neonate' or whatever that ans. It's too boring, big brother. I don't want to read these things. I want to kill more things!"
She looked at him, stars twinkling in her eyes, and Ethan felt a chill run down his spine. "Okay. You can kill whatever you want. Here, so more monsters are coming out from that hole."
He watched her run and wreak havoc on the sand beetles that seed to keep crawling out of the ground. Already, his minions were fighting with each other and clearing out the dungeon at an insane speed.
With Luna on the side, the whole dungeon looked emptier by the second, except for the mountain of corpses that were beginning to pile up. "I need to buy another storage pouch or maybe more."
Ethan then rembered he did not get an actual answer from Luna. "How many stats did you get?"
"20, big brother!" Ca the imdiate response, and his jaw dropped on the ground. This little girl was a monster!
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