Trafalgar stood in the middle of the mini desert with Maledicta in hand and obsidian armor wrapped close around his body, the black plates drinking in the light until he looked less like a student taking an exam and more like something the dunes themselves should have feared.

Around him, the terrain had already started changing. Low ridges shifted shape with every buried movement, shallow slopes caved inward, and the hard ribs of cracked earth that broke through the surface were swallowed little by little each time the thing below passed near them.

’It is slow when it rises, but large enough to force the whole field to move around it.’

That was the first thing worth remembering.

The second came a breath later, when the sand ahead of him tightened into a long advancing swell. It did not come in a straight line. The disturbance curved, widened, vanished for an instant, then surfaced again farther to the right. The worm was not mindless enough to rush headlong without adjustment. Even under the ground, it was already measuring him.

Trafalgar lowered his center of gravity slightly and waited.

The oncoming surge drew closer, its shape clearer now beneath the surface. A broad ridge raced through the dunes with unnerving speed, rolling under the earth like a hidden tide. Heat rose from the ground in twisting waves. Grains skittered against his greaves. The whole desert seemed to lean toward the point where the thing would emerge.

He kept waiting.

A lesser fighter would have moved early. Trafalgar did not. He let the distance close until the tremor beneath his boots became a violent shudder and the sand directly under him bulged upward.

Then the worm came for him.

Its head burst out of the desert in a towering eruption, dragging a wall of sand and dust behind it as its circular maw opened wide enough to swallow a horse whole. Rings of hooked teeth turned inward as if the creature were nothing but hunger wrapped in flesh and stone. It shot up with such force that the air itself seemed to split around it.

Trafalgar vanished into [Severance Step].

His movement bent in a clean curve, blurred for a heartbeat, and returned him to solid form behind the ascending bulk just as the worm reached the height of its attack. He reappeared in a low stance, boots sliding half a step through loose sand, Maledicta already cutting across the exposed side in a fast, testing line. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

[Arc Slash] spilled from the blade in a dark-blue wave and struck one of the plated rings along the worm’s body. The impact sheared off stone-colored growth and carved a visible mark across the flesh beneath, but the creature’s momentum hardly changed. It crashed back down into the dunes with enough weight to throw up a fresh storm around them, the surface shuddering from the landing.

Trafalgar clicked his tongue inside the helmet.

’So it can be cut, but not deep enough. Need a better angle.’

The worm vanished below the surface again before the dust had fully settled. Only the broad depression it left behind remained, collapsing inward as the sand rushed to fill it. A moment later, a new surge split across the desert farther away.

This time Trafalgar moved first.

[Crosswind Edge] flashed from Maledicta in a narrow compressed crescent that tore low over the dunes, shaving off the top of the advancing swell and blasting loose sand away from the line of approach. The attack did not harm the worm directly, but it gave him something more useful. A clearer read.

The buried movement sharpened in his mind. The thing gathered force in a long push, altered direction only in wide arcs, and committed fully once it decided on a strike. Under the surface it was faster than it had any right to be for something that massive, but every emergence came with the same cost. It needed a moment to rise. A moment to turn its hidden speed into vertical violence.

That was the opening.

The ground broke again, not beneath him this time, but slightly to his left. Trafalgar pivoted toward the eruption and saw the upper body of the worm wrench upward through the sand in a crooked lunge meant to catch him while he adjusted. The maw opened. Dust and old heat poured out with the stench of buried flesh.

Maledicta came down at once.

[Severing Fang] burst from the sword in a diagonal pressure slash so dense the air screamed around it. The cut struck across the side of the worm’s neck and ripped through one of the armored ridges with enough force to send broken fragments spinning away into the dunes. Dark fluid burst from the wound, thicker than blood, and the creature recoiled in mid-emergence before slamming back into the ground harder than before.

A good hit.

Not a decisive one.

The worm answered with rage.

The entire desert lurched. Not just the patch of sand around the wound, but a broad stretch of it, as though the creature had thrown its full bulk sideways under the surface. The dune beneath Trafalgar’s right foot caved in without warning. He shifted his weight in time, but the next surge came from behind him, fast enough that even he only sensed it at the last instant.

He spun and cut.

Maledicta met the lip of the emerging maw instead of the flesh behind it, and sparks burst where blade and hooked teeth collided. The force of the impact hurled Trafalgar backward across the sand. He landed in a low slide, one knee carving a trench through the dune as grains lashed against his armor.

The worm did not stay up.

It never stayed up long.

That was the real problem.

Trafalgar straightened and watched the fresh ridge racing below the surface, his mind already reorganizing the fight.

’As long as it keeps control from underneath, I am the one reacting.’

That conclusion settled cleanly.

The worm could choose distance, angle, and timing every time it buried itself. He could wound it when it came out, yes, but that only meant waiting for windows the creature itself created. Against something weaker that would have been enough. Against this, it meant surrendering initiative.

He disliked that immediately.

The next attack came in a wider sweep meant less to devour him than to break his footing. A buried mass drove under one dune and collapsed it into another, turning the terrain into a rolling trap. Trafalgar sprinted across the shifting ground, keeping his balance through sheer precision, and the worm burst up beside him in a slanted eruption that sent a rain of hot sand against his helm and shoulders.

He answered with steel.

One cut to the outer ring. Another lower, harder, aimed where flesh met plated ridges. Maledicta bit, withdrew, bit again. The second slash opened a cleaner line and drew another heavy spill of dark fluid, but the worm’s body twisted with brutal force before he could follow through. The impact of that movement alone forced him back a full step.

Then it buried itself again.

Trafalgar stood amid collapsing dunes and exhaled slowly.

No irritation showed on his face, but his thoughts had turned colder.

The creature was not elegant. Every attack was brute violence shaped by size, underground speed, and the simple fact that fifteen to twenty meters of armored body could afford to trade shallow wounds if it meant controlling the rhythm of the battle. The worm did not need refinement. It only needed one clean swallow.

Another tremor ran underfoot.

This one passed close.

Closer than the others.

Trafalgar did not attack. He watched the line moving beneath the desert, followed the way the surface lifted above its path, noted how the ridge tightened before the worm chose to rise, and saw at last the one thing he had been missing.

When it committed to an emergence, part of the upper body ran just beneath the surface for a breath longer than the rest.

Close enough for something smaller than a sword.

A low laugh escaped him.

"So that’s how you want to fight."

The buried surge came straight at him. Trafalgar remained where he was until the last possible moment, then shifted sideways just enough for the worm to burst up past him in another towering strike. Its maw tore through the space his body had occupied, sand exploding in a golden sheet around them.

This time he did not answer with a sword skill.

His left hand moved instead.

Widow’s Whisper slipped free in a sharp flash, the rare dagger snapping into his grip with its concealed blade mechanism ready. Trafalgar drove it forward with all his strength into the softer seam between one plated ring and the next, just as the worm’s upper body surged past him.

The blade sank in.

For one wild instant, the whole world became motion.

The worm crashed back down beneath the surface and Trafalgar went with it, boots losing purchase as the dagger held fast. Sand roared around him, the desert floor splitting open under the force of the creature’s descent. His body slammed low, dragged forward at terrifying speed while grains and stone burst against his armor like shrapnel.

He did not let go.

Good.

That was exactly what he wanted.