Chapter 438 - SDAT

POV Kim Min-Jae

“That idiot! We need more testing!” Sophie shouts, and together we rush to the railing to watch what happens next.

I've seen it before, the other passengers ground to nothing by this white sand. I still remember the screams and the image of their flesh being torn.

But it doesn’t happen to Nat.

Before hitting the sand, he slows down and then gently lands on it. He then stands there, butt naked, and watches as the wind brings a huge amount of white sand towards him. The sand moves over the surface of the dunes like waves.

I could swear I saw him smiling at that moment.

Lily screams and covers her eyes as the sand smashes against Nat’s body, and I just can’t look away even though he could be dead the next second. A part of me can’t even imagine him dying. Not him. Not like this.

And just like that, he still stands there when the wave of sand is gone.

There are wounds on his body, blood flowing down his skin. More than a failure, they seem like a small mistake and lack of efficiency in whatever he did.

Nat spits bits of sand from his mouth and then charges towards the two blue figures. He moves in that weird twitchy movement of his and uses boosts of kinetic energy to get him over larger distances, quickly catching up to the two thylarin.

“I don’t think Nat cares about more testing,” I note.

“You might not realize it, Kim, but a single fucking mistake would kill him there. If his body contained just the amount of mana you spend to make your orb float slightly into the air, the sand would kill him.”

“He wouldn’t fail,” I shake my head. I just can’t imagine it.

“But why no clothes?” Aaron asks.

“We couldn’t come up with a way to reliably expunge mana from external materials. It's easier if it’s your own body.”

“Is it just me, or does Nat have quite a nice ass?” Maya’s interrupts and her sentence makes a few people stare at her, and Tess giggles, breaking her serious mask.

“I can’t judge that as a man, but Lily might be able to answer,” Dennis, as always, doesn’t miss the opportunity. "She might send Izzy for the smartphone to take a few pics."

“Shhh, she is too busy staring,” Aaron adds.

“I’m not! I... just shut up, both of you!”

“It’s fine, Lily! I saw even Sophie and Tess take a peek.” Maya smiles and puts her arm around the petite girl's shoulders.

Maya can sometimes read the mood very well and even help to lighten the tension. I’m not sure if she does it intentionally or if it’s just part of her personality.

Everyone here is anxious. Even I can see that. Just a single mistake will mean Nat’s death. But at this point, it almost feels like it’s expected from him to behave that way. It also worries me slightly.

What would happen if Nat fails to live up to these high expectations? What would I do if the man I admire the most fails and breaks? 

I then watch as Nat reaches the two blue thylarin, each with four arms. They seem to be shocked by his apparent nakedness and by the fact he followed them and survived.

Nat moves in that short burst of immense speed, the white sand exploding under his feet, and the three of them get into melee combat.

***

POV Nathaniel

I expected it to be an easy fight, but they are stronger than I thought. The two of them work together nicely, something you wouldn’t be able to do without a lot of experience.

So why the hell are you so good at melee combat? You can teleport, mess with my anchors and have good control over mana, so don’t learn fighting melee like some brute. Two versus eight arms might be slightly unfair as well.

I dodge another punch and boost my body to the side with kinetic energy.

Currently, I can’t even absorb any as that requires mana for me to use. It's also a good thing I turned off my unique passive. With how much I’m getting punched, it would generate some mana and make the sand kill all three of us.

Even so, I don’t need any of this. I’m already getting used to the way they fight.

One of them is more into defending, mostly using his upper two arms to do so and the lower ones to grab. The second one likes to go all out on the attack, often combining the lower left and upper right arms to hit while making feints with the others.

I plan a bit ahead, and, exchanging it for a few wounds, I get them where I wanted and grab the arm of the thylarin who likes to attack. I move my other arm to hit him.

Before I realize it, the world blacks out for a moment, and I feel my head being thrown back. I lift my arms in front of me, but even so, I still get thrown to the ground.

“So naive, human. Did you think it would be that easy?” one of the thylarin smiles and stretches all four of his arms.

“Maybe he thought we didn’t notice his clumsy attempts,” the other one takes a step to the side.

Well, it seems like my pure melee combat isn’t where I would like it to be. Partially, it makes sense as I have just a few years of experience from Earth in comparison to these two, who are both most likely over 50 years old, maybe even 100.

Still, the way they treat me irks me a lot. Do they think this is all? Do they think I gave it all I have?

Staring at them, I reactivate my unique passive and then, while they watch, I lift my arm and close my hand into a fist. I send kinetic energy to make my hit stronger, and then I slam my fist against my chest - a single powerful strike.

The kinetic energy transforms into mana, and just a trickle of that enters my reservoir.

Even that is enough, and the sand immediately starts attacking me, even as I quickly as possible mold it into an orb and shoot it at the feet of the two thylarin. The white sand grinds down flesh around my ankles, my shin bones also start poking through, and one of my calves is nearly gone. A few tiny holes like tunnels are burrowed through my legs and chest from a solitary flying specks of sand.

Just that tiny amount of mana I held for a moment was enough to cause that.

I let thermal energy seep into my body from my vortex core, causing the wounds to start closing as I take a step toward where my opponents tried to run.

Both of the thylarin are groaning in pain - huge parts of legs gone, arms missing, pieces of their chests eaten away by the sand that reacted just to that little amount of mana. But they are alive. Both of them running as far and as quickly as possible before falling into the sand, unable to move further and just crawling away from me.

“C-crazy! You are fucking crazy!” one of them shouts, holding his bleeding neck, his crimson red blood seeping into the white sand.

“I hope you didn’t think it would be that easy,” I repeat what he said before and kick his head. I do the same to the second one even though he is already unconscious.

They are both too heavy, so I use kinetic energy a bit more and get rid of a few more limbs before grabbing them and boosting myself back onto Deathtrap.

Getting back on the deck, I throw them on the ground and then turn to my crown. On my way, I pick up my underwear and put it on, being careful of the wounds I have so as not to bleed on it.

My crown floats back on my head, and I check the amount of mana it used to stay here without bursting open or disappearing. It’s a bit more than expected, but I guess it makes sense. It is just not meant to function away from my body. Still, the amount of mana it contains is quite a bit.

As I take some of that mana and move it into my body, I almost feel like smiling. Welcome back, my precious.

Lily comes closer, and I notice her staring at my chest and belly. I look down, and I notice a few wounds there.

“Oh, don’t worry, it isn’t anything serious. Save your mana,” I tell her.

“W-what?” she quickly lifts her head, her big eyes staring at me and her bangs covering her forehead.

“The legs are fine too. I will heal them on my own. Just make sure these two don’t die; don’t restore their limbs for now.”

“Oh, uh, sure!” she quickly rushes towards the two thylarin, one of them already awakened and talking to Tess.

After putting on my pants and shirt, I head to Sophie. “How much mana do you have left?”

“Should be more than enough to get some information out of them. Just the guides are troublesome,” she answers simply.

“Got it. I will let you guys take care of the rest. I will check on our guides,” I say and, like some schmuck, use stairs instead of teleporting. I don’t even train anymore; plenty of my passives are turned off, the ones that require mana.

I leave just in time as a few more groups head up to the dock.

Back in the backup core room, I find the guide still there, just this time sitting in a different spot, and near him, the vyssari who wanted to gouge my eyes out.

“Any good news?” I ask the guide.

“Heryd here can help you with the core. He has some experience with…”

“I see. There is no need. Anything else?”

The guide looks between me and the shorty with scaly legs and then back at me, “I´m still unable to stop SDAT and…”

“What is SDAT?” I interrupt him.

“Are you… SDAT means Sand-Defensive Air Transport.”

“Got it, please continue.”

“I still have no idea where we are heading but I should find it soon. But there should be nothing in the Mana Desert so I don't know how much help it will be and why are we heading there. There is no sense in trying to run away even if we could change the direction; the storm will catch up anyway.”

“What if we bury ourselves into the sand?” the short vyssari turns away from the core and asks.

“That would either force us to keep the field running constantly to defend against it or to turn off the field. In such a case, if the sand got into the SDAT, we would be done. And we don’t have enough mana to keep up the field against that much sand.”

“Any rests here? Or stops?” the vyssari continues to ask.

“None, there is nothing here as far as we know. Not a single place without the sand.”

I listen to the rest of the conversation with just one ear and turn back to the mana pillar. Just in case, I check the inscriptions and preparations I made, and it seems like no one messed with them. Continuing to work on them, I'm able to connect to a few more functions; even though it feels half-baked, it’s better than nothing.

When the conversation between the guide and the vyssari drags on for too long, I interrupt them. “You,” I point at the guide, “shouldn’t you be controlling the ship?”

“It’s SDAT, not a ship. Leaving for a while is fine. The course is set, and Kallus takes care of the defenses. With how little mana we have, we don’t even have to focus on controlling how it’s used.”

“Good, go on the deck. Find a tall blonde, and she will tell you what to do. They might already have more information on what happened.”

I notice that he is hesitating, but he soon stands up and, without a word, heads towards the deck. As he said before, he was just a rookie working here and mostly following the orders of older guides.

While I’m working, I can feel Heryd’s eyes on me, the vyssari who was supposed to help me. He is one of the three passengers with a level that is at least higher than mine by 20. The same as the two thylarin I just brought back.

“You can fly; you could run away,” he says out of nowhere.

As I turn to him, I can see how carefully he observes me.

“Sure,” I just answer and return to my work, placing an anchor inside the core through which I power it from my crown.

There is no way I just put my mana inside and let anyone use it. No, I just send the mana inside the core when needed. While doing so, I also think of the question.

Could I really fly away if I wanted?

I think I could. Sure, some specks of sand could be even that high up, and if I had mana inside my body, I would get damaged, but I think I could push through that. The trip that took this rusty old thing days would take me hours if I used a lot of kinetic energy.

It’s so simple, but while considering my options for survival, it never once crossed my mind. I can think of two reasons why that might be.

The first one is that I’m so confident in surviving this that I didn’t even think of running away.

The second one is that I didn’t want to leave this silly group of mine. Angry Kittens, group 4, Biscuit and co., however it is currently called.

Just as I like to observe others, I now also watch myself and my feelings while asking a few questions. The most important one is: Would I be willing to risk my life for them, or would I walk away if I truly had to?

The swirl of emotions I feel after asking that question is extremely fascinating to observe.

***

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