Karrakas opened his mouth.

Then he closed it.

He looked at Lukas, then at the broken spikes scattered across the sand, then at the spot where the bone wall had stood, then back at Lukas.

He opened his mouth before closing it again.

Something had shifted behind his eyes. He still possessed the same confidence he carried as a guide and the calm professionalism that had been consistent since the moment they’d met him at the Le Fay pavilion, but there was something new now.

He now had a wariness. A recalibrated sense of exactly what kind of people he’d agreed to guide through this desert.

He decided, visibly, not to say whatever he’d been about to say.

A part of him was working through something else though. If Lukas could defeat a C-rank Spiked Turtle using nothing but his own skills, alone, in the open desert, then the journey back to the ringed city was going to be way less dangerous than the journey out had been.

Whatever the desert threw at them between here and the walls, it wasn’t going to be worse than what had just happened in the last half hour.

That was a comfort he could live with.

With that, he exhaled through his nose.

"We should move," he said. "The area will stay quiet for a few hours, but I’m not standing here waiting to find out what’ll come after us next."

"Lead the way," Lukas said.

Karrakas pulled out his compass, checking the position of the sun, and using both, oriented himself. He pointed ahead without a word and they set off.

Lukas did the math as they walked. He’d gotten two thousand Gacha Points from the Spiked Turtle quest and that brought his total up to three thousand.

While he could wait to get another thousand points and he’d have enough to pull a new wife, which would also grant him a new class, new skills, and whatever she brought with her from wherever she came from.

But right now, he was satisfied with his two wives. He had no reason to pull a new wife, and didn’t even have any preparations on how he’d sneak her into Salaria, which was heavily guarded and regulated when it comes to newcomers.

It was better to spend the points on a mystery box, which had been sitting in the back of his mind since before they’d left Salaria.

He had enough for it now and he needed to know whether it was worth building towards or worth ignoring.

He’d wait until they were back in the ringed city. Somewhere he could sit down properly and open it without sand in his eyes.

At that moment, a notification appeared before him.

Ding!

[Quest: Scorpion Farmer]

[Kill 30 D-rank Deathstalker Scorpions before you return to the ringed city.]

[Reward: +200 Gacha Points]

He read it and grinned.

Thirty scorpions for two hundred points. The desert had been handing him scorpions since the first day. This was the system giving him coins for something he was going to do anyway.

Things were definitely looking up. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

Karrakas set a hard pace and held it, pushing them through the day without pausing longer than necessary.

The desert around them stayed empty, the Spiked Turtle’s passage still clearing the area of anything that had enough sense to avoid the territory of a C-rank beast.

Hours passed without them meeting a single beast.

Lukas kept one eye on the horizon and one on his quest tracker, watching the kill count sit stubbornly at zero.

He couldn’t help but feel worried. What if the area stayed empty all the way back to the ringed city? What if the beasts didn’t return in time?

The sun began its descent.

They switched to night clothes before stopping for the night. They set up their tents and organized the watch schedule.

Karrakas took first watch. The night passed without incident, quieter than either of the two previous nights had been. Lukas took the final watch and sat in the dark, watching the beautiful sky above the desert.

Morning came.

They switched back to day clothes, ate breakfast, packed the tents, and moved.

Within the first hour, they found beasts.

A group of E-rank Razor Chilopodas erupted from the sand ahead, and Lukas stepped back, waving his three companions forward.

"You guys can take care of this," he said. "Just leave the scorpions for me."

They nodded and went to work.

The encounters became more frequent as the day went on. The beast population was filtering back into the area, cautiously at first, then with more confidence the further they walked from the Turtle’s path.

They encountered Chilopodas, then a pair of Basilisks that Karrakas and Akira handled easily, then the first Deathstalker Scorpion.

Lukas took care of that one himself.

Then he met another one. Then three at once.

The kill count climbed through the afternoon, the quest tracker ticking upwards. He fought without drawing things out.

Towards evening, the thirtieth scorpion fell.

Ding!

[Congratulations, you have cleared the quest!]

[Reward: +200 Gacha Points]

He stored the corpse and straightened up.

The sun had already dropped below the horizon by the time the ringed city appeared. Far in the distance, just visible at the edge of the darkening desert, the city’s lights had come on, the glow of streetlamps and windows rising above the wall like a lighthouse.

Lukas frowned when he saw it, wondering why the city hadn’t been attacked by powerful beasts if it was this bright every night.

The moment Karrakas spotted it, he turned to the group. "We have two choices before us. Either we push through the night to make it to the city or we camp and finish the journey in the morning. What should we do?"

Lukas looked at the distance between them and the lights. It would take several hours of walking at minimum, through the dark, and with the beast population continuing to rebuild around them.

"There’s no need to rush," he said. "Let’s stay here for tonight."

They found a flat stretch of sand, set up their tents, organized the watches, and slept.

Lukas woke the next morning, feeling well rested. He pushed himself up, stretched, and stepped out of the tent into the cool morning air.

He looked towards where the ringed city had been visible the night before.

A frown appeared on his face.

He scanned the horizon, then scanned it again.

There was nothing.

The city was gone.