Nic poured energy through the Sandrider Blade, and the desert blurred away. The strength of his new aura translated into blistering speed, a platform of sandstone underfoot as a wave of grit and dust propelled him over the desert. He built speed up the banks of dunes and shot into breath-taking, long-arc leaps as he vaulted off the crests.

Ancient ruins and wandering beasts were nothing. His scarf wrapped protectively around his face to shield him from flying dust.

In the distance the silhouette of the sphinx was growing clearer. It was a structure of massive, weathered limestone, so totally eroded and shaped by the wind it seemed like a natural part of the earth.

As Nic approached, an eruption of white-blue energy burst across the side of the statue. Frost clung to the stone in the attacks wake, and as Nic pushed his Eight-Eyed Mantle to its limits, he saw dozens of large figures moving across the sphinx’s back. They were raining down attacks, lifting away chunks of stone and hurling them at a figure who danced across the sands, leaving the dunes frozen in her wake as she skated across roads of ice to evade.

Sula.

Nic increased his pace, watching from afar as she flung spears of ice up at the defenders. The constant back and forth had to be pushing the limits of her aura- Nic knew she was only F-Class despite her obvious strength and experience.

As for the defenders they were men of stone. They had already hurtled down their spears, and were now throwing broken pieces of the sphinx to crush her bones. Attacks hardly seemed to phase them. They lost legs and arms without flinching. Fading golden armor adorned their bodies.

Nic slid to a stop at the height of the sands, just before the shadowed valley between dunes that contained the sphinx.

He lifted his fist, and catapult stones formed of compressed sand rose from the earth. A downward swing of his hand and columns of sand erupted from beneath to launch them towards the enemy lines.

Three of the stones crashed against the sphinx’s side. Stone soldiers were thrown aside like ragdolls.

They turned.

Each of them were eight feet tall, and as the leader threw a stone it came hurtling through the air with massive speed. Nic shot away, sand spraying up from the impact, but more and more heavy missiles drove him into full retreat; there was no time to muster another attack that could actually hurt the stone men. His bow was almost useless in this kind of confrontation.

Skating across the sand, he crossed paths with Sula coming the other way. She nodded, her face set in a fiery mask of determination, a sphere of frost vapor orbited by blades of ice spinning in the palm of her one hand.

“Got a plan?” Nic called.

She flung the sphere and it shattered against the sphinx’s side, exploding into a garden of massive vines and flowers grown from purest ice. They wound around the stone soldiers’ bodies, squeezing hard enough to shatter legs and send them tumbling down.

“You’re looking at it!” She called back.

Nic nodded, reaching into his pack for a pyre-lob. They weren’t powerful enough to kill a stone creature outright- but they made a hell of a distraction.

He dropped it onto the sand, braced in the gap between volleys of stone missiles, and stomped his foot down. A spike of earth erupted to fling it towards the sphinx-

And as the fire burst outwards, a golden figure appeared above the soldiers. It was a phantasmal image of a broad-chested man with a lion’s head and his arms held outstretched. A scepter was clutched in one hand, a curved khopesh sword in the other. Fire filled the mane of his bestial head.

As he raised his scepter high, ribbons of flame swirled about the stone soldiers’ hands. They lifted themselves into the pose of a spearman about to throw and the fires condensed into long, gleaming spears of gold.

Nic’s eyes went wide and he lifted both hands, slamming together a stack of three walls made of sand and using the displacement of the earth to drop himself into a deep trench behind them.

Spear after spear exploded into golden flames as hit the walls, turning the first to glass and shattering it into pieces, then the next, then the next-

Until molten glass slag was pouring into Nic’s trench.

He dug his way through the earth and popped up behind Sula, shaking flecks of burning slag from his arm. “Time for a plan yet?”

She had been forced to take the defensive. The spear-volleys were faster, more accurate than the stones, and she was growing a forest of ice from the ground to shield herself as spear after spear whittled the trees down to water.

“You could say that. You’re E-Class now?” She was hissing through gritted teeth. Frost covered her outstretched arm in a white glove down to the elbow, her hair glittering with shards of ice as frost vaspor whipped it about in all directions.

“Yep yep.” Nic eyed the specter above the temple. It was rooted to one of the stone soldiers, bigger than the rest with a crown upon its shapeless head. If he broke that one-

The godly specter would probably fall.

“Then I’ll be the distraction, and you can have the fun.” She slammed her hands into the earth and the ice forest erupted in all directions, forming a wintery cloud around them. Nic didn’t need telling twice. He vanished into the earth and shot forward at top speeds, shifting the sand around him so he could wriggle along a river of flowing grains like a fish swimming with the stream.

He burst up, launching himself like one of the stones. The air whistled past as he dropped onto the top of the sphinx’s back, holding his hatchet in one hand and a long stream of flowing sand in the other. He wielded the sand like a bullfighter’s cape-

The first of the stone men conjured a blazing scimitar into its hand and lunged forward, sweeping a downwards stroke-

Nic flicked the cape under its clumsy, footless legs as it rushed at him. It was swept off balance as he yanked backwards, evading the blow and stepping to the side. The sand tumbled under its stump-leg and gave it no contact with the ground, no firm footing, nothing to hold onto as Nic leapt up-

Slammed both feet into its rock-solid torso-

And kicked off, rocketing away like a frog as the stone soldier went tumbling over the side to crash into pieces against the earth below. As he landed another soldier flung a spear at him, expanding into a burst of explosive flame, but Nic was already gone. He fed the momentum of the first leap into as second, and threw the cape underfoot to become a flowing rail of sand he slid along, curving up into the air.

The soldier was lifting back its hand, conjuring another swirl of flame to become a sphere.

Nic flipped a pyre-lob into its grasp and both weapons exploding as one. The impact tore away the soldiers’ arm and left it staggering.

His feet slammed into its neck and kicked off again, another leap, another clumsy body sent tumbling overboard to break into pieces as it smashed against the walls on its way down. He threw his sand cape into the eyes of another soldier as he vaulted onto their shoulders, wrapping his cape around its throat and using the fabric as a harness to tilt it off balance, feet planted on its back. He steered it into a long, twisting tumble, and leapt away as one leg swung out off the edge of the sphinx. His kick as he jumped off was the final push.

He shot through the feet of a fourth soldier. He ran up stairs formed of sand and kicked the top step into a soldier’s face before it could throw its spear.

With a final leap he was in front of the crowned leader, staring him down. The soldier conjured a whip of flame, flicking it at Nic, and Nic slid aside as the flame-lash ripped against the ground. He dropped back, braced, and pushed energy through the Internal-Sacrifice Cauldron Technique. A blazing pit of blood formed in his stomach, drinking his life and igniting it into power that made his skin burn and crack with flaming light.

He gripped his hatchet in both hands and burst forward, swinging down. Stone cracked as his hatchet swung down into its head, breaking it open like a melon, and exposing weathered black bones beneath. A skeleton had been entombed within.

His axe bit down to the chest, stone crumbling away to expose a jade scarab scuttling within the ribcage. He slammed his fist into the insect to crush it to a pulp between his fingers.

The stone soldier sagged, dropping to one knee. The flaming crown on its forehead flickered out.

The specter in the sky uttered a single word of its ancient tongue and flickered out, golden sparks of the light that made up its incorporeal body shooting down into the sphinx’s mouth and eyes.

Sula vaulted onto the top of the sphinx atop a massive vine of ice. It arced overhead and shattered, flinging sharpened blades downwards to strike the golems. The knives themselves did nothing to damage the soldiers outright, but they exploded out into frost, covering the enemy’s skin and seeping into the cracks in their weathered stone flesh.

Sula whipped her hand sideways and conjured a tendril of ice, smashing into one of the weakened soldiers. Its half-frozen body exploded.

“How-” Nic grunted as he took out the legs of one of the golems, smashing the frozen stone with the back of his axe. “-are you F-Class?”:

“System restrictions. Took away most of my cultivation when I came here, but-” Sula formed a new right hand made of frost and smashed her new fist into a soldiers’ head. “-there are other ways to be strong, without the System. I have the Concept of Ice and the Concept of Forests, and the System couldn’t take those if it wanted to.”

Together, they wiped the floor with the remaining soldiers. Without the spirit empowering them with weapons of fire, and with Sula’s ice to make their bodies brittle and weak, they couldn’t stand up to their opponents for more than a heartbeat. Nic wove around clumsy punches and tore them apart at the knees.

“So…”

In moments all twelve lay dead.

“Know anything about this Heretic the System has everyone hunting for? Because they just slaughtered an entire human camp with their pets.” Nic stuck his halberd into the ground and and clapped the dust off his hands. The feedback from the Internal-Sacrifice Technique was much less this time, as he’d only had to bring the technique up to half strength.

“Honestly?” Sula lifted an eyebrow. “That’s the first I”ve heard about that. I don’t know where the Heretic is, and I don’t care to find out. I’ve got my own vengeances to worry about.”

Nic nodded slowly. He didn’t expect she was lying about any of that.

But he didn’t think he was getting a full answer either.

“But it looks like we’re together on this one. I’ve pieced together that the nuclear fire is somewhere here. Something to do with a summoning spell?” She cast an curious glance towards Nic. Seeing what he’d give away.

Seeing as she was playing her cards close, so did Nic. “Yeah. The lore fragments scattered around led me here too. So the question is- how are we going to split the loot?”

“Fifty fifty- but I need what I came here for. If my share doesn’t measure up to the nuclear fire, I’ll pay the difference.”

“Sounds fair to me.”