Master Of None

2145  2145. Spatial Skill?

"Sand. It's a desert. I should have expected this." Gil hated the desert. He had only understood it more as he got closer to the elves, but the desert was like the opposite of a forest. He could hunt and easily track anything through a forest. But a desert? the tracks could disappear in to the sand. In to the winds. "It will be fine. What else is a mix of wind and earth going to make? It has to be sand because we saw sandstorms get created with the exact same methods." Remey wanted to smack some sense in to Gil. they had used sandstorms to help them deal with the false death runes and regenerating undead. "It can make a lot of things, dust storms too. But I think we are just dealing with sand." There was part of Su that wanted to go back too, the sand would sneak its way in to her armor. However, she became distracted as Onyx buried himself in the sand. It was comfortable to use the sand to clean hsi scales slightly. The grains of sand were ideal from making sure that all the spaces were thoroughly scrubbed up before he had Walker use water to rinse him off. Midnight also picked up on this small habit and used it too. She was waiting for the chance since she had become very used to having Walker's help polishing her scales. It was part of his job now. Not that he minded. "We should keep an eye out for any other dangers nearby. There was a lot of earth mana that [pushed us here. The immortal king is moving fast too. we can't just sit here." Without much hesitation, Walker began to look ahead. The sands were not as built up. This meant that the wind flattened the dunes often enough. Just part of the elemental planes moving. That was the major issue they faced though. The elemental planes shifting was unexplained to them right now. Walker had yet to gain a proper grasp of the massively dense manas around him yet. Therefore, he couldn't track the flow of how the planes moved and changed around one another. In turn, this put them at a disadvantage. It also put the immortal king at a disadvantage though. He had to attempt traveling through it while sensing the death mana that he wanted to chase. Not that it would be easy to get out of these massive elemental planes. Traveling outside was also something only one race did. Well, one known race did. "What are those, just the wind and the sand making small sand storms?" The sharpness of Gil's eyes never diminished. He had spotted what could have been dust kicked up, but when Walker used the alla round appraisal on them, he was surprised yet again. 'Sandstorm elemental

The perfect balance of earth and wind manas, these are elemental monsters that perfectly represent their affinities. They are living sand storms that create small tornados out of their bodies to move. They will gather wind and earth mana becoming larger. If they come against something that stops their rotation, they lose their mass. This makes their existence precarious since if they are stopped entirely, they dissipate and cease to exist. Naturally, they will develop again when a larger amounts of wind and earth mana clash. Often times this will happen when massive sandstorm elementals collide, causing smaller ones to spin off of them. They are not violent, and will avoid others if possible. However, if they collide, the sand within their wind tornadoes moves so fast that they can cause heavy damage to a body…'

He read out the appraisal to the others who were very interested in the fact that these little tornados of sand were actually monsters. They were called an elemental monster which meant that they were somewhat an elemental. But if they were a monster, it made more sense that they were not intelligent. But they were completely made of mana but for the sand and wind's physical aspects.

"So we can just avoid them. That's much better." Midnight huffed in agreement. It was better that they didn't fight as much and Remey knew well that it would slow them down. She wanted to put fist to skull so they could go back to Genesis or explore the fire elemental plane. To be fair, the entire party had the desire to crush the skull of the immortal king at this point. Nothing was getting better with the things he was doing. Just causing trouble everywhere went. "There are other monsters too. They are setting up blockages? Brother, can you check?" there was a sandstorm elemental that onyx could see getting stuck. The puff of dust that came with that caught everyone else's eyes too. 'Shimmer beetle n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

Very similar to the dung beetle or the mirror beetle, these shimmer beatles gave a stronger and purer earth affinity to them. They are actually a dual elemental monster but as they age, they lose the ability to fly and lose their wind affinity. They are known as a monster that goes through transformative stages and must migrate when they reach a certain age. Their larva will be able to use stronger wind energy with the earth silk that they create within their body by eating incredibly fine dusts. But when they gather too much earth mana, they forma shell and begin turning in to a shimmer beetle. The shells have small clear crystals from the silt within which causes the light to reflect off of them. Whether or not this gives them away to predators is not an issue. They are tough and harder to eat once they have a shell. Hence why predators hunt the larval form. As their shell toughness, the silk can not support their weight and the earth affinity takes ahold. They then speed their time trying to trap sandstorm elementals to absorb their earth and wind mana. Normally they fail and only absorb the earth mana until their shells are too heavy and they are forced to perish on the spot. The shells will then break down and nourish the earth where they…'

"So they just absorb earth mana until they die?" Now it was Su's turn to be surprised and a little shocked. A monster that literally died by gaining the manas that they had an affinity for as they aged. It was shocking that a monster could exist like that. "They are definitely not struggling though. They are thriving here where they can become their adult form but somehow still able to live as larva in the windier side of things. They are nourishing the land too." Gil could see the benefits of this monster. Able to allow the earth to gain nutrients from the fine dust that built up within the shimmer beetle larva. "They might make some obstacles for us, but right now I am more worried about the skeleton bones that are being buried by sand right there." more regular skeleton bones were in front of them. The wind had begun to cover them in sand. But Midnight was still able to smell the difference in them compared to thwart the sands smelled like. "I really hate that there are skeletons everywhere we go, still! But how is the immortal king getting more skeletons? There can't be so many dead bodies that he can raise skeletons as he pleases." Walker agreed with Rmey's annoyance. He was wondering this too. There were a decent few undead of different sizes that they had seen when the earth king made them that earth map. How was the immortal king getting the regular skeletons though? They weren't walking beside him. They weren't with the larger undead. "Maybe they are just inside another undead or they have a spatial skill too. The immortal king might have grasped space mana. If he was able to watch Genesis, then he definitely might have." "Gil, while I think your theory is good, I hate it." "Su, I hate it too." Gil wholeheartedly agreed. If the immortal king had even a weak spatial skill, then he could have a decent few skeletons with him that no one would be able to see. "So we will need to be even more careful as we move. Not just because there's some weird wind mixed skeleton. No, there's also the fact that there could be more that the immortal king is making." Walker almost growled in annoyance as he saw the skeleton that was extremely damaged but somehow still moving. He could sense the wind mana moving through the broken bones. It had succeeded in taking the wind mana in to it. Therefore, it wasn't breaking down any longer against the sharpness of the wind. And it was also coming toward them, meaning it had sensed them using the wind around it too. A dangerous pecedance. …

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