The Last Dainv

Gale stood up and pulled Erin to the side away from where everyone else was. "Make it so they can't hear us."

Erin waved her hand once, and a vicious bubble surrounded them that looked to be something in between water and air. The field around them suddenly grew quiet as the pained groans of the team could no longer be heard.

"Why aren't you helping if the corruption is already confirmed?" Gale asked. "Last time there was some law mumbo jumbo thing that you said takes precedence if the corruption is confirmed."

"Section 2, Procedure 4 states: should dead worlds be encountered, it supersedes Section 1, Procedure 8 due to the minimum value of life being saved of the world not being met," Erin said. "Therefore, the world is dead and must be used as a training ground for the young with a set time limit. The current world we occupy meets the criteria. You've felt it yourself with your trace, have you not? There is no life in this world apart from the worms that have succumbed to the corruption."

Extending Presence Between further and further, Gale tried to locate any life around them. He stretched the tendrils as far as they could go, but he saw nothing, not even at the 50km mark. The only signatures he felt were the Awakened wormlings and the giant sand worm that lurked nearby.

Again, Erin was right. But that itself made him frustrated. It meant they had to keep trying and trying until they could finally beat this boss.

"Can you at least give us a hint on how to defeat that thing?" Gale asked.

"The possibility is there," Erin said. "You have an Early-Mystic. Use her wisely."

"That's not a hint. What about the monster? Its weaknesses? How to get past that sound attack that freezes us?"

"Does the young hunter wish to relent his expertise on the hunt?" Erin asked. "In that case, I shall provide a more substantial hint."

A thorn poked in Gale's side when Erin mentioned that. It was the first time she had pushed him to grow. Maybe he had grown comfortable because she was there, forgetting the fact that she truly was a teacher to him.

Gale's lips curved upwards. The hunt was clearly on. It's not like they were going to die anyway. To a hunter against a beast this strong and huge, it could be a chance to learn how to slay giants.

"No," he said. "I'm not relenting anything. I'm going to figure it out my own way."

"Acknowledged."

The silence bubble popped. Sound resumed as it normally would. Rachel complained about her leg while Clyde was on his 2nd twinkie already. Kyle looked like he didn't even want to eat.

Walking back to the group with Erin floating behind him, everyone had gathered in a loose circle while the disciples sat on their side. Some of them still crying their eyes out about what they had just experienced. There was a comment about how, if this continued, it might be worse than the Demon's Pit they all experienced as initiates.

"So," Rachel said, looking up at Gale. "What's the verdict? Is she going to help?"

"No."

"Of course not." Rachel leaned back against the rock behind her. "Stupid floating bluey."

"If we have 3 years," Lily said, "then we can probably rest for a couple of days. Let our limbs fully recover before we try again."

"I have expended additional energy in the mending process," Erin said. "Your bodies are already at 99% capacity. You need not wait for recovery this time."

Lily stretched her back and her limbs around. She jumped up a couple of feet into the air, then another just a metre above. Taking a deep breath, she exhaled slowly until her lungs emptied. "She's right. Although there's a slight reduction in my VO2 max that I can feel. Maybe 2 or 3 percent."

Kyle stared at her. "What the fuck does that even mean? And how do you feel that?"

Lily elbowed him in the ribs.

"Ow! I'm asking a legitimate question!"

"Lily's been getting feisty lately," Clyde said. "Probably her monthly thing."

"No shit," Kyle said.

"It'll be a monthly thing for you if you don't shut up about it," Lily said.

"You two still didn't scream, though," Rachel said. "How come?"

That's right. Even Gale was groaning, yet he heard nothing from the twins at all. And if he recalled correctly, Lily did mention some time that Clyde didn't even scream when he got caught in the tomb. The only thing that changed was their wincing expression when they felt pain.

"You guys really wanna know?" Kyle asked.

"Yeah, why not?" Lily asked. "If you're ok to share."

"Only if you buy me a box of chocopies when we're back home."

"Whatever," Lily said.

"Try getting punched by your mom everyday since you could remember being alive. Then, you get sold to assholes who experiment on you with large fucking needles," Kyle said.

"Every day," Clyde said.

The temperature in the room raised slightly. Rachel looked to her side to stare at the sprawled twins on the ground. "Seriously?"

"Don't make this any more cringe, fire toes," Clyde said.

"Asshole," Rachel said.

"Anyway," Kyle said. "What's the plan? Did anyone figure out anything from that absolute disaster of a first attempt? Because from where I was standing, we did fuck all."

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"The binding formation held for a few seconds," Xinyi said, in a lotus position with her eyes closed. "That's longer than I expected."

"A few seconds isn't enough," Clyde said.

"The sound attack is the problem," Lily said. "I can try to block it by counteracting the waves. 2nd try should be better."

"What doesn't make sense is that it only did that when we were aiming for its mouth..." Gale muttered.

"Gale, I'm gonna need you to do something," Kyle said.

"What is it?" Gale asked.

"Shooting up a sandworm's mouth is too easy of a weak point. Its skin is also thick as fuck. And that shit is smarter than it looks," Clyde said.

"So?" Rachel said.

"So, we need to test the theory that its weak point is the mouth because it shouldn't be. There might've been a stray that hit something else," Kyle said.

"But it only reacted when we barraged its mouth," Rachel said.

"Wait, I think I get what Kyle means," Gale said.

"What?" Rachel asked.

"It might've reacted because of something else. Your fireball and Clyde's explosive round all exploded before it actually hit the mouth since the sand was blocking it. It could've splashed into something else around the worm," Gale said. "Right now, we literally have no idea, but have to keep trying. I'll do my best to monitor where it's getting hurt."

Erin also said to use Xinyi wisely. She was leagues above any of them when it came to agility and moving around the battlefield. That would allow them to test the beast at all angles. Before, she was only one person, which made that impossible. But having infinite lives had its ups and downs.

***

Running across the sandworm's body, Gale felt the rush of air against his sand-covered face as he continued to cross its body towards the tail end of the beast. It was miles long, a living mountain moving through the sand dunes.

Explosions echoed somewhere near the mouth of the beast. Clyde's explosive bullets exploded against the sand shielded mouth. Rachel's fire lit up the vicinity whenever it detonated near the sandworm's body.

Their second attempt was better than the first, and it's been just about a little above an hour since the fight started.

The goal was clear this time, map out the entire beast's reaction. This attempt was obviously going to fail, so it was more so just information gathering.

Extending Presence Between outward, the tendrils stretched along its body, feeling the hard skin that was meters thick and the organs that pulsed with an enormous volume of green blood. Tendrils kept going further and further past the main section of the worm's body towards the buried tail.

At the very end where the tail was below the sand were holes sticking out of its tail like porcupine quills. Slowly,

Needles. Hundreds of them, sticking out of holes along the tail like a porcupine's quills. Slowly, they extended out from the holes until they angled themselves downwards and dove into the sand.

"Watch out for needles!" Gale shouted into the communication sigil.

"Where?!" Kyle's voice crackled through.

"In the sand! Just watch out!"

Rachel screamed through the communication sigil. From where he was, he saw the keratin needles flying vertically up into the sky somewhere near the mouth of the beast. Tendrils caught the vision of needles entering her thighs and stomach.

Presence Between suddenly felt a tremble in the sandworm's body. Something had made it tremble, but too many things were going on at once. Multiple explosions that is. Kyle shouting coordinates and blinking everywhere, and Lily continuously casting sigils everywhere.

The worm stopped momentarily as the disciples activated the array. That was when Xinyi struck.

Bloody crescents carved through the air, slamming into the sandworm's body from every angle she could reach as she flew just above where Gale continued to run. Yet nothing seemed to work. Each crescent that touched the skin sounded like metal hitting against a material that dulled its impact. There wasn't even a scratch anywhere on its body.

A low pitched wave pulsed outward from the sandworm's whole body.

Lily's air wave nullification sigil trembled and shattered into a hundred grains of light. It nullified the wave once, but another wave pulsed from the sandworm's body again.

Gale's muscles locked up. His legs stopped mid-stride as he tried to activate Phase defense. He couldn't.

Thousands of sharp sand blades launched from everywhere all at once from the sandworm's sand covered body.

The last thing Gale saw was his lower half separating from his upper half, both pieces falling in the same direction, down towards the sand.

A blue outline formed around him and the two halves of his body floated back to safety along with everyone else and the disciples.

***

On the sixth attempt, Gale stood just on top of the sandworm's mouth on its lips. Presence Between's tendrils wrapped around the whole sandworm's body, trying to uncover anything that would have caused the shudders that seemingly came out of nowhere.

They'd learned a few things from attempts 3, 4, and 5.

The mouth wasn't the weak point, yet it was also where the shudders would appear. On the fourth attempt, they tried to focus on one spot in the middle of its body, but nothing happened there. Not even a shudder. On the 5th attempt, they had continued their normal strategy of focusing on the mouth in the flesh parts. There were shudders, but 7 not enough to matter.

Gale knew that the shudders meant something. The mouth was the only place where the thick skin wasn't. It was also protecting its mouth very well by continuously putting up sand shields.

So then why haven't they figured it out yet? And this 6th attempt looked like it also wasn't going to be the one.

This time, they tested out the tail.

A bullet whistled through the air across the desert, trailing a shockwave in its wake. Before it could hit Gale, he timed the swing perfectly to deflect the bullet downwards towards the thing's tail.

Xinyi sent multiple bloody crescents at the tail. It was to stop the sand shields from forming around it, and it worked.

"Array, now!" Xinyi shouted.

60 disciples activated their formation simultaneously. Blood Qi veins erupted from the sand, wrapping around the sandworm's body in a net. The divine beast tried to thrash, but it was too tight; momentarily, it was controlled.

Clyde's bullet hit the tail.

It struck right where the needle holes were, right where the keratin spikes were loading up to fire. When it entered the hole, it exploded. All the needles suddenly retracted, stopping it from launching the needles into the sand.

The holes on the tail sealed up, the keratin spikes pulling back inside the beast's body like a turtle retreating into its shell.

"It worked!" Kyle shouted through the sigil.

8 sand tornadoes swirled upward from everywhere, rising faster and covering the sky in a blanket of sand. The tornadoes closed in on Gale and Xinyi, forming a cage of sharp sand that cut at anything.

It was then the signature of the beast pulsed once. The stunning wave was coming.

"Lily!" Gale shouted.

Multiple sigils appeared everywhere from above, below, between the tornadoes, surrounding each member of the team individually. Air wave nullification sigils wrapped around everyone's body.

The sandworm's signature pulsed once again as the first wave came.

"SHIT!" Rachel shouted through the communication sigil.

Gale looked up just in time to see Rachel falling down. A fireball had been released to the beast's open mouth, not aimed at the sandworm, but at the top of its lip where he was.

There was no time to dodge.

But before Phase defense could activate, the sand tremored. Ripples in the sand appeared, originating from the sandworm's body as continuous waves sent out into the sand that held the same stunning force as its wave. The stunning wave had changed from just a wave into a continuous earthquake.

For a split second, it stopped his Phase Defense from activating as the wave stunned him.

The fireball flew towards him, when it exploded just near him. The continuous waves stopped for exactly 2 seconds before it continued.

Gale found a tremor. The top of the mouth? It could be. Something at the top of the mouth. But that wasn't without cost. Rachel's fireball had exploded right below him on the beast's lips.

His body took the whole brunt of the explosion, launching him into the air. By the time he could do anything out of the stunlock, his arms and legs had separated from his torso from the sharp sand that flew through him.

The next thing he knew, he woke up on the floor, watching Erin sip her tea. The teeth were the key. It was definitely something about the teeth and not the mouth itself.

That was the answer. Not the tail nor its body.

"Young lamb. I see the answer has dawned in your eyes," Erin said. "How many further attempts shall you need to capitalize on this answer?"

"However many. We'll hunt this beast," Gale said.