"...Found it!"
Patchouli's violet eyes snapped open, a flash of delight gleaming within them.
Fingers still interlaced with Zeroy's, she quietly felt the resonance for a moment before breaking the silence.
"Where?" Zeroy arched a brow, her tone tinged with expectation.
Two hours later, the humid breath of the primeval jungle had long faded as Zeroy followed Patchouli into a boundless desert.
Scorching sunlight baked the sea of sand, golden grains rolling in the wind, the air heavy with a searing, desiccated heat like flowing fire.
"We need to lure it out..."
Following Patchouli's instructions, Zeroy swung her blade and slew a Special-Class Danger Beast.
Among these creatures, the larger the body, the stronger the power. Special-Class specimens were typically enormous, often tens of meters long.
But for Zeroy and Patchouli, anything below Super Danger Beast was mere fodder; a Special-Class held no threat.
With a single flash of her blade, the colossal beast collapsed, and they dragged the carcass to an open stretch of sand.
Scarlet blood slowly seeped into the grains, like an offering to awaken some ancient presence.
Before long, the ground began to tremble lightly, the sand undulating like waves, the air filling with an unseen pressure.
"It's coming!"
Zeroy and Patchouli rose into the sky, hovering hundreds of meters high to watch the anomaly below.
The earth's trembling grew stronger, sand roiling like boiling water. A deep rumble echoed from the depths, as if an ancient will were awakening.
The yellow sand swelled, as though a massive bubble was inflating beneath it.
The next instant—
Boom!
The sea of sand exploded like a volcanic eruption, a golden storm of sand sweeping across the heavens.
A colossal creature burst from the sands, its immense shadow blotting out the dying sun, casting a suffocating oppression.
It opened a blood-red maw, saw-like fangs glinting with metallic light, and effortlessly devoured the mountain-sized corpse of the Special-Class Danger Beast.
It was a giant shark, its scale terrifying beyond imagination. The head alone, protruding above the sand, stretched for hundreds of meters. Its full length could rival a moving mountain range, and the torrents of sand cascading from its body were like waterfalls.
Unlike the smooth hide of ordinary sharks, this one's surface was rough as rock, sheathed in a natural armor of solidified yellow sand—or perhaps the armor was part of its body, crocodilian in texture.
After swallowing the carcass, it did not disappear but cruised through the sand as if the desert itself had become a flowing sea.
Its vast body stirred endless sandstorms, like a mythical sea god ruling a golden ocean.
It seemed to have sensed the two figures above.
"Shark of the Sand Sea..."
Patchouli murmured softly, her magic book flipping open of its own accord, emitting a faint violet glow.
This shark had no recorded sightings, no name ever given by humans.
Patchouli simply called it by the most fitting description.
Zeroy tightened her grip on the black-and-red Striker Blade, eyes igniting with battle spirit. "Well? Can the material you need be negotiated for, Patchi?"
Danger Beasts were ranked in five tiers: Third-Class, Second-Class, First-Class, Special-Class, and Super-Class.
Anything below Super was fodder.
Even within the Super Danger Beasts, the differences were vast.
The strongest were like the Cloud Sea Dragon—or Dragon God of the Cloud Sea—bodies rivaling a range of mountains, and possessed of unquestionable intelligence, capable of speech.
The weaker lacked such intellect and could be defeated by Zeroy alone.
Considering the possibility of an even match and the creature's potential intelligence, slaying it outright would be reckless. The death of a region's sovereign would inevitably cause chaos, chaos that might spread to humans.
So when collecting materials, Zeroy and Patchouli never planned to kill first.
They would attempt negotiation, or use magic to acquire the material peacefully.
Only if peace failed would they consider killing.
"Not likely. What I need lies in its heart, and it doesn't seem capable of communication."
"Can we defeat it?"
"I don't know."
When facing a Super Danger Beast, every form of divination yielded three results:
Can't win, Don't know, Can win.
Can't win meant the foe's power was far beyond their own.
Can win meant their power far exceeded the foe's.
Don't know meant their strengths were about equal, impossible to gauge.
"Then let's fight first—Flames, Reignite!"
Zeroy slowly widened the gap between herself and the giant shark, then her body became a crimson meteor, trailing a blazing tail as she streaked straight toward the monster's massive head.
Even the air along her descent screamed apart, bursting into sharp detonations.
The giant shark began to roll and swim through the sand sea, trying to change angles to dodge and planning to counterattack the instant Zeroy landed.
Yet even in a high-speed dive, Zeroy could adjust her position at will without losing momentum.
The Multi-Purpose Striker disassembled before her, reconfiguring into a teleportation gate.
Each time she passed through, the crimson meteor's trajectory was realigned.
No matter how the giant shark evaded, the crimson meteor kept appearing over its head.
Finally, she struck precisely at the creature's skull—
Boom!
The meteor collided with its rock armor with overwhelming force, a deafening roar echoing across the sand sea.
Zeroy's Striker Blade cleaved into the giant shark's head, the hellfire wrapped around the blade splattering and spreading outward.
Yet the shark's rocky armor was unbelievably tough. Sparks burst as the blade wedged in the crevices.
At the point of impact, only a blackened crater remained.
—Armor not pierced!
The giant shark released a low roar, and the sand sea erupted in fury.
The yellow sand seemed to gain life, twisting into countless tentacles bristling with spikes and gaping maws, lunging toward Zeroy.
The saw-toothed tendrils screeched with a grating sound, as though they could shred rock at a touch.
Zeroy's figure flashed, teleporting back into the high sky, evading the tentacles' grasp.
Meanwhile, the hellfire clinging to the giant shark failed to spread as expected.
The yellow sand covered the flames, actually extinguishing the crimson fire.
Though hellfire possessed a physical form in the material world, it was fundamentally a flame of the soul. Ordinary matter could never snuff it out—clearly, this desert sand, under the giant shark's control, was something else entirely.
The first clash ended without a victor.
...
If you want to support, please consider Patreon, and read advanced chapters! Your support keeps this series going!
[Patreon.com/RedZTL]