Chapter 520: Chapter 520: Trafalgar vs Sand Worm [IV]
The swell crossed the last stretch of broken sand in an instant and the worm burst upward with the full rage of its massive body behind it. Dunes collapsed and stone cracked under the force of the ergence. Its circular maw opened into a monstrous tunnel of torn flesh and broken teeth, wider than before because Trafalgar had made it that way, the inner seam stretching pale and vulnerable beneath the darkness of its throat.
That was the mont.
Trafalgar moved.
Mana rushed through Maledicta so violently that the blade seed to drag the air into itself. The pressure around him narrowed until there was nothing left but the worm’s open maw and the line he had been building this whole fight toward. He had read its rhythm above the sand, followed it beneath the earth, carved its mouth apart piece by piece, and dragged it into the exact charge he wanted. There was nothing improvised in what ca next.
[Morgain’s Final Crescent]
The strike left his body in one ruthless motion.
An inverted crescent of compressed power tore upward through the centerline of the worm’s charge.The blade cut through the pale seam deep inside the throat, where armor gave way to softer structure, and the force packed into the technique exploded through the rest of the body a heartbeat later.
The worm did not stop imdiately.
Its montum carried it forward another fraction, its jaws still open, its weight still monstrous, as if sothing that large refused to understand it had already died.
Then the line took hold.
From the throat outward, the creature split.
The rupture raced through flesh, plated rings, buried muscle, and everything else that had made the beast feel invincible a mont earlier. The sound was hideous, half tearing at, half collapsing stone. The body opened in two great halves and crashed apart around him, one side slamming down to the left, the other to the right, both heavy enough to shake the entire stretch of desert when they hit.
Trafalgar stood in the middle of it.
For one breath, all he heard was the fading echo of the strike and the wet, collapsing noise of the worm’s insides spilling into the heat.
Then the fight was over.
The obsidian armor dissolved first. Black plates broke apart into dark motes and scattered into the air until only his normal clothes remained beneath. Maledicta followed a mont later, the sword turning to mana dust in his hand before vanishing completely. Without the blade and armor carrying him, the weight of what he had just done settled over his body at once. His breathing turned heavier. Mana exhaustion did not crash into him, not with the Primordial Body and everything else reinforcing him, but the drain was there.
In front of him and behind him lay two severed halves of the sand worm, each one a ruin of split flesh, shattered rings, and steaming entrails now pouring out onto the desert floor. Thick cords of inner tissue sagged into the sand. Dark blood spread into the dunes in slow, ugly streams, turning the golden ground almost black in places. The sll hit a mont later, foul and hot and deep enough to seem buried in the earth itself.
Trafalgar looked from one half to the other.
He had completed his hunt.
That much was clear.
What was less clear was how exactly he was supposed to drag that monstrosity back for evaluation.
’How the hell do I do this?’
The thought ca with enough disbelief to make him let out a tired breath through his nose. He walked toward one of the severed sections and crouched beside it, as if proximity alone might sohow make the problem smaller. It did not. The thing was still enormous. Even cut in half, it looked closer to a collapsed piece of landscape than sothing a student should be expected to carry anywhere.
Trafalgar reached down, grabbed the edge of one of the plated segnts, and pulled.
It moved.
Barely.
The mass shifted with a wet grinding drag, enough to remind him that he was dealing with several tons of monster and not so wolf carcass he could sling over his shoulder.
He straightened and glanced around the desert, half expecting the place itself to mock him for getting this far only to be beaten by logistics. Heat rolled over the shattered dunes. Wind pushed thin sheets of sand against the blood-darkened ground. No miracle waiting just out of sight.
Far above, Eryndor had been watching the entire thing with open enjoynt ever since the first proper exchange. Watching Trafalgar kill the worm had been satisfying. Watching him try to drag a severed half of it afterward was becoming even better.
He snorted once and looked toward Kaelen.
"Send
there."
Kaelen did not answer. He simply lifted one hand and made it happen.
The desert air rippled a short distance from Trafalgar, and Eryndor appeared beside him as if he had simply stepped out from behind the heat itself.
Trafalgar turned imdiately, hand already half-lifting on instinct before he recognized who it was.
"Director Eryndor?" He frowned. "What are you doing here? Did sothing happen? Did I do sothing I wasn’t supposed to?"
Eryndor glanced down at one of the worm’s severed halves, then back at him. "No, Trafalgar. I ca to carry the worm."
Trafalgar blinked once, clearly not expecting that answer. "Shouldn’t I be the one doing that?"
Eryndor gave him a flat look. "Just say that after taking my hit in the sparring, you can’t carry sothing like this. So leave it to ."
That was such a ridiculous thing to hear that Trafalgar almost argued out of reflex alone. ’So how do I explain that I hunted this if I was injured? Although I don’t think anyone would dare go against a director’s word.’
Then he looked at the corpse again.
Then at Eryndor.
Then back at the corpse.
There really was not much left to say.
It helped him. That was the truth of it.
And right now, he was in no mood to pretend otherwise.
"...Alright," Trafalgar said at last.
Eryndor’s mouth twitched faintly, pleased enough by the lack of stubbornness that he did not bother teasing him further. He stepped toward the nearest half of the worm, planted one foot beside it, and bent down as if preparing to lift sothing rely inconvenient rather than absurdly heavy.
Before he could, Kaelen’s voice spread across the entire hunting ground, carried through mana so cleanly that it seed to co from the air itself rather than any one direction.
"There is one hour left before the exam ends. Start bringing the beasts you have hunted for evaluation."
The announcent rolled across desert, forest, lake, and broken stone alike.
Trafalgar lifted his head slightly at the sound.
One hour.
More than enough now.
The hard part was already done.
Reviews
All reviews (0)