Chapter 517: Chapter 517: Trafalgar vs Sand Worm [I]
Trafalgar stood in the middle of the mini desert with Maledicta in hand and obsidian armor wrapped close around his body, the black plates drinking in the light until he looked less like a student taking an exam and more like sothing the dunes themselves should have feared.
Around him, the terrain had already started changing. Low ridges shifted shape with every buried movent, shallow slopes caved inward, and the hard ribs of cracked earth that broke through the surface were swallowed little by little each ti the thing below passed near them.
’It is slow when it rises, but large enough to force the whole field to move around it.’
That was the first thing worth rembering.
The second ca a breath later, when the sand ahead of him tightened into a long advancing swell. It did not co in a straight line. The disturbance curved, widened, vanished for an instant, then surfaced again farther to the right. The worm was not mindless enough to rush headlong without adjustnt. Even under the ground, it was already asuring him.
Trafalgar lowered his center of gravity slightly and waited.
The oncoming surge drew closer, its shape clearer now beneath the surface. A broad ridge raced through the dunes with unnerving speed, rolling under the earth like a hidden tide. Heat rose from the ground in twisting waves. Grains skittered against his greaves. The whole desert seed to lean toward the point where the thing would erge.
He kept waiting.
A lesser fighter would have moved early. Trafalgar did not. He let the distance close until the tremor beneath his boots beca a violent shudder and the sand directly under him bulged upward.
Then the worm ca for him.
Its head burst out of the desert in a towering eruption, dragging a wall of sand and dust behind it as its circular maw opened wide enough to swallow a horse whole. Rings of hooked teeth turned inward as if the creature were nothing but hunger wrapped in flesh and stone. It shot up with such force that the air itself seed to split around it.
Trafalgar vanished into [Severance Step].
His movent bent in a clean curve, blurred for a heartbeat, and returned him to solid form behind the ascending bulk just as the worm reached the height of its attack. He reappeared in a low stance, boots sliding half a step through loose sand, Maledicta already cutting across the exposed side in a fast, testing line.
[Arc Slash] spilled from the blade in a dark-blue wave and struck one of the plated rings along the worm’s body. The impact sheared off stone-colored growth and carved a visible mark across the flesh beneath, but the creature’s montum hardly changed. It crashed back down into the dunes with enough weight to throw up a fresh storm around them, the surface shuddering from the landing.
Trafalgar clicked his tongue inside the helt.
’So it can be cut, but not deep enough. Need a better angle.’
The worm vanished below the surface again before the dust had fully settled. Only the broad depression it left behind remained, collapsing inward as the sand rushed to fill it. A mont later, a new surge split across the desert farther away.
This ti Trafalgar moved first.
[Crosswind Edge] flashed from Maledicta in a narrow compressed crescent that tore low over the dunes, shaving off the top of the advancing swell and blasting loose sand away from the line of approach. The attack did not harm the worm directly, but it gave him sothing more useful. A clearer read.
The buried movent sharpened in his mind. The thing gathered force in a long push, altered direction only in wide arcs, and committed fully once it decided on a strike. Under the surface it was faster than it had any right to be for sothing that massive, but every ergence ca with the sa cost. It needed a mont to rise. A mont to turn its hidden speed into vertical violence.
That was the opening.
The ground broke again, not beneath him this ti, but slightly to his left. Trafalgar pivoted toward the eruption and saw the upper body of the worm wrench upward through the sand in a crooked lunge ant to catch him while he adjusted. The maw opened. Dust and old heat poured out with the stench of buried flesh.
Maledicta ca down at once.
[Severing Fang] burst from the sword in a diagonal pressure slash so dense the air scread around it. The cut struck across the side of the worm’s neck and ripped through one of the armored ridges with enough force to send broken fragnts spinning away into the dunes. Dark fluid burst from the wound, thicker than blood, and the creature recoiled in mid-ergence before slamming back into the ground harder than before.
A good hit.
Not a decisive one.
The worm answered with rage.
The entire desert lurched. Not just the patch of sand around the wound, but a broad stretch of it, as though the creature had thrown its full bulk sideways under the surface. The dune beneath Trafalgar’s right foot caved in without warning. He shifted his weight in ti, but the next surge ca from behind him, fast enough that even he only sensed it at the last instant.
He spun and cut.
Maledicta t the lip of the erging maw instead of the flesh behind it, and sparks burst where blade and hooked teeth collided. The force of the impact hurled Trafalgar backward across the sand. He landed in a low slide, one knee carving a trench through the dune as grains lashed against his armor.
The worm did not stay up.
It never stayed up long.
That was the real problem.
Trafalgar straightened and watched the fresh ridge racing below the surface, his mind already reorganizing the fight.
’As long as it keeps control from underneath, I am the one reacting.’
That conclusion settled cleanly.
The worm could choose distance, angle, and timing every ti it buried itself. He could wound it when it ca out, yes, but that only ant waiting for windows the creature itself created. Against sothing weaker that would have been enough. Against this, it ant surrendering initiative.
He disliked that imdiately.
The next attack ca in a wider sweep ant less to devour him than to break his footing. A buried mass drove under one dune and collapsed it into another, turning the terrain into a rolling trap. Trafalgar sprinted across the shifting ground, keeping his balance through sheer precision, and the worm burst up beside him in a slanted eruption that sent a rain of hot sand against his helm and shoulders.
He answered with steel.
One cut to the outer ring. Another lower, harder, aid where flesh t plated ridges. Maledicta bit, withdrew, bit again. The second slash opened a cleaner line and drew another heavy spill of dark fluid, but the worm’s body twisted with brutal force before he could follow through. The impact of that movent alone forced him back a full step.
Then it buried itself again.
Trafalgar stood amid collapsing dunes and exhaled slowly.
No irritation showed on his face, but his thoughts had turned colder.
The creature was not elegant. Every attack was brute violence shaped by size, underground speed, and the simple fact that fifteen to twenty ters of armored body could afford to trade shallow wounds if it ant controlling the rhythm of the battle. The worm did not need refinent. It only needed one clean swallow.
Another tremor ran underfoot.
This one passed close.
Closer than the others.
Trafalgar did not attack. He watched the line moving beneath the desert, followed the way the surface lifted above its path, noted how the ridge tightened before the worm chose to rise, and saw at last the one thing he had been missing.
When it committed to an ergence, part of the upper body ran just beneath the surface for a breath longer than the rest.
Close enough for sothing smaller than a sword.
A low laugh escaped him.
"So that’s how you want to fight."
The buried surge ca straight at him. Trafalgar remained where he was until the last possible mont, then shifted sideways just enough for the worm to burst up past him in another towering strike. Its maw tore through the space his body had occupied, sand exploding in a golden sheet around them.
This ti he did not answer with a sword skill.
His left hand moved instead.
Widow’s Whisper slipped free in a sharp flash, the rare dagger snapping into his grip with its concealed blade chanism ready. Trafalgar drove it forward with all his strength into the softer seam between one plated ring and the next, just as the worm’s upper body surged past him.
The blade sank in.
For one wild instant, the whole world beca motion.
The worm crashed back down beneath the surface and Trafalgar went with it, boots losing purchase as the dagger held fast. Sand roared around him, the desert floor splitting open under the force of the creature’s descent. His body slamd low, dragged forward at terrifying speed while grains and stone burst against his armor like shrapnel.
He did not let go.
Good.
That was exactly what he wanted.
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