章 22: Trial 10 "Battle Royale" (3) - 21

"Just stay back and take care of the stragglers."

That was the last thing I said before I charged into the midst of the sandworms.

<Onee-sama's POV>

I watched helplessly as the guy wearing the weird mask charged into battle.

'Even though that guy has such high stats, he's still gonna die if he goes against that many sandworms without a weapon.'

But, I could only worry about him for a second as a sandworm neared me.

I leapt at it, brandishing my axe, hitting it right in the head.

"Clank!"

Instead of my axe penetrating its head, I was instead thrown to the side with a simple flicking motion.

Crashing into the side of a sand dune, I sputtered and spit sand mixed with some blood out of my mouth.

"Shit! This ain't gonna be easy."

I ran at it again, this time, aiming at another part of its body, but the result was still the same. My axe would just bounce off of the sandworm's skin, hardened by years of swimming through the course, rough sand.

"Fuck! What do I do?"

I tried running around and hitting the same spot over and over again when there were openings in the sandworm's movement, but still, no luck.

"I guess there's only one spot left to try."

The thing about the sandworm was that there were no openings anywhere on its skin as it had no eyes or ears, using only vibrations to hunt its prey. So, the only opening that was present on its body was naturally the mouth that split into 7 pieces like a flower, lined with sharp teeth, ready to swallow anything whole.

"Hoooooo... haaaaaaa." I took a deep breath, readying myself.

The next time that the sandworm pounced on my position, instead of dodging its head, I let it swallow me and then I stabbed my axe as hard as I could into the inner linings of its throat.

"Screeeeeeeeeeeech!"

I yanked my axe out and stabbed in it again.

"Puch!"

And again.

"Puch!"

And again.

"Puch!"

Over and over, I stabbed it again and again until finally, half dead from exhaustion, I collapsed, falling out of its open mouth, covered in its saliva.

Some amount of time passed, which I couldn't even estimate, my mind slipping back and forth between consciousness and unconsciousness until finally, I saw a man approaching from the corner of my eye.

"Hey! Are you okay?"

Weakly, I nodded.

It was then that I noticed that the person that I had been traveling with was drenched in the brown blood of the sandworms, with only his mask still clean, keeping its pure white color and dark black lines.

"C'mon, I'll help you up."

He supported me with his left arm, pulling me off the ground.

Leaning heavily on an arm and shoulder that felt faintly familiar, I buried myself into the familiar warmth, but, when I opened my eyes, all I could do was gape at the scene in front of me.

For miles and miles around, all I could see were the fallen corpses of sandworms, their blood making the sand's color a deeper shade of brown. In certain places, you could see puddles of blood that had been formed, and a little over a 100 meters away, a mountain made of sandworm corpses, stretching up to the sky, could be seen.

"D...Di... Did you do all of that?"

He nodded, and I could almost imagine the grim smile beneath his tearful, smiling mask.

I could now only stare at this man in wonder, a small hint of respect taking root deep in my mind.

"Let's go get ourselves cleaned up." He said.

We then started erratically trekking through the sand muddied with blood, continuing our journey once more.

<Shinobu's POV>

I was honestly absolutely tired from my fight with the 700+ sandworms, even with my extremely high stamina, and all I wanted to do was lay down and close my eyes, but I knew that that was unrealistic right now as we needed to clean ourselves and our clothes as soon as possible, or we could get an infection that we had no chance of curing due to the shop being locked to us players on the 10th floor.

We walked and walked, and finally, as the sun was about to set, we saw shades of green and blue in the distance.

"We're about to fucking finally get out of this shitty porta-potty of a desert!" I shouted, accidentally throwing my arms into the air which in turn, made my Onee-sama fall into my side, knocking the breath out of my body.

We steadied ourselves again, trudging forward, but we couldn't help but increase our pace, leaning on each other more as we stumbled towards the riverbank.

Not even caring that the other person was there, we hurriedly took off all our clothes and jumped into the river, causing the water to turn brown for a second before the water upstream swept the unclean water away.

Dunking my head under, I greedily took in huge gulps of water, gargling my mouth to get rid of all the sand and then drinking a lot of it.

I then ran my hands through my thick, sticky hair, washing the blood and sand out of the roots of the hair covering my scalp.

I finally resurfaced, splashing water in the air, the droplets sparkling like diamonds in the red light of the sunset.

Turning around, I watched as Onee-sama frolicked in the water, carefree, a huge smile on her face.

Seeing my Onee-sama's warm smile, I couldn't help but smile myself.

Finally noticing that she was indeed naked and that the chest area of her body was happily bouncing, I quickly turned around, a hint of embarrassment showing up under my mask.

I then went under again and washed my face under my mask, and then the mask itself, making sure that my Onee-sama was never able to see my face.

After I finished with my body, I turned to my clothes and started washing them too, once again dying the water briefly with a brownish tint.

It was only then that I put back on my wet clothes and laid down on the soft grass, letting the remainder of the sun's rays dry my wet clothes and body.

I closed my eyes and after a while, sensed my Onee-sama sitting down beside me, wringing out her hair.

It was only after making sure that everything was okay and that my Onee-sama was fine, that I allowed myself to drift out of the realm of reality, letting my weariness become the boat that ferried me away into the darkness.