According to their original itinerary, the group's carriage had no intention of traveling along the formal, heavily guarded arterial highways. Instead, they planned to cut diagonally across the lawless heart of Kazdel to reach the borders of Rim Billiton.
However, the southern expanse happened to be one of the few geographic sectors within Kazdel that retained a microscopic amount of wild greenery. Consequently, a significantly higher density of desperate Scavengers naturally drifted toward this region in search of any edible vegetation or forage.
In less than half an hour, the carriage encountered a second band of local residents.
This particular gathering was distinctly different from the wary, solitary scavenger they had crossed paths with earlier. They were moving in a organized formation, and every single member held a improvised weapon firmly within their grip.
Although these tools weren't refined, military-grade armaments like traditional sabers, war spears, or heavy halberds—consisting merely of coarse, everyday civilian implements like wood-cutting axes and iron crowbars—the terrifying baseline physical attributes inherent to the Sarkaz race meant these crude items still possessed extreme, lethal force in a melee clash.
Under normal circumstances, when facing a well-armed warband or an official military escort, these individuals would remain perfectly quiet, acting as honest Sarkaz Scavengers trying to eke out an existence.
However, if a passing traveler happened to resemble a fat sheep completely devoid of combat capability...
Then they would offer a silent apology in their hearts. In the exact next microsecond, these desperate Scavengers would instantly transform into a ruthless mob of predatory thugs.
It just so happened that in the eyes of these local scavengers, a lavish, incredibly wealthy transport was currently being driven by a pair of seemingly delicate, ordinary women. To their desperate eyes, this wasn't merely a standard fat sheep—it was a target practically dripping with rich, unearned grease.
Thus, when they witnessed the carriage make zero effort to detour around their formation—instead proceeding down the center of the trail in an ostentatious fashion—the Sarkaz who had been standing by the roadside with lowered eyes a second prior, appearing thoroughly intimidated by the vehicle's luxury, experienced a total, instantaneous shift in demeanor.
In the next second, they raised their heavy axes and rusted tools, surging forward toward the moving carriage with fierce, bloodthirsty expressions painted across their faces.
Hong Meiling, sitting on the driver's bench, gently opened her eyes the exact instant the aggressors brandished their weapons.
"A-ta!"
With a crisp, energetic cry, Meiling launched herself directly off the carriage, descending like a falling feather before planting a singular, precise punch squarely into the chest of the vanguard rushing at the absolute front of the pack.
A split second ago, the charging man was actively mocking her in his heart, arrogantly assuming that with Meiling's slender, porcelain arms, a physical strike against his heavy frame would feel like little more than an insignificant itch; he hadn't even bothered to raise his axe to parry the blow.
The very next second, an overwhelming, internal shockwave completely bypassed his skin and muscular layer, detonating directly within his vital organs.
With just a single, seamless punch, the man who had been charging with the momentum of a runaway beast came to a complete, violent stop—as if he had slammed his feet onto an absolute set of brakes.
He staggered back two steps in total, uncomprehending disbelief. A second later, he coughed up a massive mouthful of dark blood laced with shredded tissue, collapsing flat onto the hard dirt as blood seeped from all seven facial orifices. His breath vanished instantly.
By this time, the remaining members of the mob had already swarmed into close quarters.
Meiling moved through their ranks like a violent dance, her martial strikes fluid and relentless. Her delicate, pristine fists delivered precise, absolute lethality with every subtle movement of her wrists.
Of the dozen or so attackers, the front five or six main combatants were killed outright in the opening exchanges. Not a single target possessed the physical capacity to survive a second exchange against her style.
That pair of seemingly fair, smooth hands delivered a staggering, existential shock to the remaining survivors.
One had to understand that although these individuals hadn't formally enlisted in the standing armies of the Royal Court or earned a reputation as high-tier international mercenaries, not a single one among them lacked practical, cutthroat survival skills. Their three core leaders were actually retired mercenary veterans who had survived dozens of violent campaigns. Even without standard armor or high-grade weapons, a ten-man Sarkaz scavenger squad of this caliber could comfortably overwhelm a Rim Billiton frontier patrol or a Siracusa guard unit of equal size and far superior equipment.
Yet, the five strongest combatants of such a formidable survival team hadn't even managed to endure a single minute against those light, seemingly weightless fists.
What terrified the surviving Sarkaz most was that they couldn't even comprehend how their comrades were dying. Those punches clearly appeared no different from the standard strikes thrown in a street brawl; their visible velocity and kinetic wind seemed almost slow to the naked eye. Yet, it was those exact, unhurried fists that had casually extinguished half their number in the blink of an eye.
In the very next microsecond, the remaining Sarkaz turned on their heels and fled into the rocky ridges without the slightest shred of hesitation; even Meiling hadn't anticipated that their decision to abandon their fallen comrades would be so absolute and decisive.
Regarding this sudden retreat, Clever, who had been peeking quietly through the side window of the carriage throughout the brief encounter, felt the behavior was entirely normal for the territory.
This was the fundamental reality of the Sarkaz.
Individuals gathered into bands strictly to maximize their collective odds of daily survival. If a member fell in battle, they were dead and gone; the survivors had to immediately prioritize how to preserve their own lives to see the next sunrise. As for the concept of seeking violent revenge, one only pursued such a path if victory was mathematically assured; attempting to fight an unwinnable monster was viewed as nothing more than throwing one's life away for zero return.
It just so happened that the Sarkaz were thoroughly accustomed to the daily cycle of life and death—or rather, their entire culture had long since grown numb to its weight.
"Let them depart," Patchouli stated calmly from inside the cabin. The magician reasoned that encountering a higher frequency of local wanderers simply indicated they were maintaining the correct geographical trajectory toward populated nodes.
Since their heading was correct, whether they captured a survivor to interrogate for directions made very little practical difference to their progress. Furthermore, they had just executed several of their squad members; if a captive held a deep, hidden grudge and deliberately directed their carriage toward a high-risk hazard like a active Originium vein or a major military outpost, it would merely invite tedious annoyance.
Seeing that her companions held no desire to pursue, Meiling didn't bother chasing down the fleeing survivors. Instead, after verifying that the signatures had retreated far beyond the horizon, she lightly dusted off her sleeves and resumed her seat on the driver's bench.
Ten minutes after the carriage rolled away from the scene, a separate group of local Scavengers cautiously approached the battle site.
Catching sight of the motionless bodies laying in the dirt alongside their scattered possessions, the newcomers hurriedly scrambled forward to strip the remains. Although these wandering bands hadn't descended to the extreme horror of consuming raw corpses, they certainly wouldn't permit valuable personal items, metal scraps, or boots to go to waste in the badlands. After stripping every single useful item from the dead, they dispersed into the rocky canyons.
Shortly after their departure, a distinct, five-person unit arrived at the clearing.
Despite numbering only five individuals, any passing Sarkaz wanderer who caught sight of their silhouettes immediately veered far away from the sector, their eyes filled with deep-seated reverence and fear.
The cloth wrappings bound tightly around their frames clearly signaled their distinct sub-race—Nachzehrers.
This was the very sub-race that supplied the massive, unyielding Vanguard force for the modern Sarkaz Royal Court. And their absolute leader, whom they reverently hailed as the Patriarch, was none other than the legendary Sarkaz God of War—Nezzsalem.
Because of his awe-inspiring existence, virtually no faction within Kazdel would ever dare to deliberately seek trouble with the Nachzehrers . Furthermore, due to their unique physical traits and specialized lifestyle, the Nachzehrers rarely manifested before ordinary civilian populations.
At this moment, the five elites stood over the bare corpses, examining the structural damage with meticulous precision before quietly retrieving the bodies to bring back to their encampment.
Before long, the highly unusual internal cause of death recorded on these individuals was formally submitted to the senior leadership of the Nachzehrers host.
The death of five low-tier Sarkaz in the badlands was a matter of zero strategic consequence. However, the fact that every single subject had perished from catastrophic, localized internal organ rupture while their outer bone structures remained entirely unbroken was remarkably noteworthy. The specialized medical casters of the Scavengers analyzed the precise trauma for a considerable duration without reaching a definitive conclusion as to what classification of Originium Arts or siege weapon could inflict such internal destruction without breaking the skin.
It wasn't until a month later—after their intelligence operatives tracked down and thoroughly questioned one of the fleeing survivors who had witnessed the brief skirmish—that the truth finally surfaced.
Upon learning that these catastrophic internal ruptures had been inflicted by a single, unarmored physical punch from a bare hand, the high-ranking members of the Nachzehrers were all struck by a profound wave of astonishment.
Meanwhile, on Flandre's side, as the carriage steadily pushed further along its path, Remilia expressed her view that it was best to avoid continuously entering into physical conflicts with the local inhabitants.
After all, she was well aware that a substantial number of Sarkaz operators were currently employed within the ranks of Rhodes Island. What if the random scavengers or mercenaries they happened to eliminate in the wild turned out to be personal acquaintances or family members of the personnel stationed on the landship?
Taking her master's preference into account, Patchouli once again deployed a passive perception-filtering barrier over the entirety of the carriage—an intricate spatial formula designed to cause any observing entity to completely ignore the vehicle's physical presence.
In this manner, although they still crossed paths with various Sarkaz groups on several occasions as they traversed the territory... including one instance where their transport passed within meters of a major Sarkaz military column numbering several hundred fully armed soldiers... the opposing force failed to notice their existence entirely.
This seamless, ghost-like transit made Clever, who watched the clueless army march past her window, exceptionally excited.
Two days later, the carriage successfully crossed the remaining sovereign boundaries of Kazdel, leaving the bleak, volcanic badlands behind them.
They were now merely a single step away from their final geographic destination—the mobile landship of Rhodes Island.