Chapter 572: In The Sands [Bonus - ]

Chapter 572: In The Sands [Bonus Chapter]

PSSH!

From the deep moisture veins running beneath the cracked bedrock of the canyon, an immense torrent of pressurized deep-blue water violently erupted through the fissures.

The torrent obeyed the Prince’s will, coiling upward in an overlapping spiral that completely encased Alexander within a massive rotating fifteen-foot sphere of pressurized heavy water.

’This is it...’

The outer shell of the sphere spun at hundreds of miles per hour, creating a churning hydraulic barrier specifically designed to smother, suffocate, and disperse high-temperature elemental strikes.

’Just because I limited my core to the second stage doesn’t mean that I can’t cast proper spells...’

It was a masterclass in elemental defense, truly a textbook application of water supremacy meant to drown any incoming flame assault in an instant.

However...

It didn’t matter.

Seraphina did not alter her trajectory, instead she dove straight into the rotating wall of water.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

The collision generated an explosion of superheated steam that completely swallowed the ravine.

The three-thousand-degree silver-white flames coating Seraphina’s dagger and flesh met the heavy water, instantly flash-boiling thousands of gallons into a deafening screech.

’...Wha...?’

The water however did not extinguish her as her Primordial Spirit tore clean through the hydraulic pressure like an iron spike through wet paper.

She punched straight through the boiling core of the sphere with her silver hair trailing steam and her reverse-gripped hunting dagger flashing like a falling star.

’How... It’s my vault!’

Alexander’s eyes dilated in shock as she breached his inner sanctum.

He thrust his rapier forward with everything his body possessed, pouring his imperial blue mana into the steel to meet her blade head-on!

CLANG-BOOOOOOOOOOM!

The weapons collided and the physical impact sounded like two armored locomotives colliding at high velocity.

A concussive shockwave detonated from the point where the curved hunting dagger met the fluted steel of the rapier as the displaced pressure blew the remaining thousands of gallons of boiling water outward in a violent horizontal ring, shattering the surrounding basalt spires into falling boulders and sending an earthquake tearing through the foundations of the canyon.

Through the screaming curtain of white steam and flying sparks, their eyes locked.

Alexander’s teeth were bared in a furious straining grimace with the veins in his neck bulging as his knees groaned beneath the crushing downward leverage of her strike.

And Seraphina...

Seraphina simply smiled.

Her silver hair whipped wildly in the boiling tempest, her ruby eyes blazing with wild amusement as the silver-white fire along her blade began to aggressively eat through the aura of his rapier.

"Told you," she whispered with her voice cutting through the ringing steel. "Let’s see you defend against this."

...

[4:36]

The amber numerals of the overhead projection hung frozen against the vaulted sapphire barrier, suspended forty feet above the scorched sandstone floor of the Safe Zone.

Every pulse of the timer shaved away fractions of a second with cold, mechanical indifference, casting long pale shadows across the naked stone shelf.

"Fuu..."

Inside the perimeter, the heat was suffocating.

Unlike the lush, shaded depression three leagues to the northwest where natural mountain seepage fed date palms and cold pools, this place was situated upon a raw slab of wind-scoured quartz bedrock.

There were no trees and there were no moisture here either.

There was only the low static sound of the administrative barrier, separating fifty square yards of dead air from the blinding furnace-blast gales of Sector Forty-Four.

Outside that glowing perimeter, the desert rolled out in endless wind-rippled swells of yellow silica and shattered shale, completely stripped of life.

Jax Sterling-Cross sat hunched on a low outcrop near the northern threshold of the dome with his back wedged tight against the granite spine of the mesa.

His breathing came in uneven, shallow hitches that rattled with a wet wheeze against the roof of his mouth.

’I fucking hate this place...’

RIIIIP!

He caught the hem of his gray inner tunic between his teeth, yanking his head back with a sharp violent jerk that tore a long uneven ribbon of coarse linen free from the seam.

"Fuck."

His jaw throbbed from the clench and between his knees, he balanced a dented brass tin of field-grade coagulant salve, the pungent medicinal reek of mint and crushed bitter-root biting through the dry air.

His entire left forearm was a ruined blistering catastrophe.

The armored ballistic weave of his combat tunic had been dissolved into tacky, bubbling threads of melted polymer, bonded directly into the charred meat of his skin.

Where the fabric had peeled away, the flesh was weeping a cloudy alkaline fluid that dripped steadily onto the stone between his boots.

"Fucking butchers," Jax muttered, his voice cracking into a dry gravelly rasp.

He dug two calloused fingers into the tin, scooping out a heavy dollop of the pungent green paste and he didn’t hesitate.

He drove his fingers down across the exposed, weeping muscle fibers of his wrist.

TZZZZZZZZ!

A sharp violent sizzle rose from his skin as the alkaline salve met the lingering acidic toxins as a jolt of white-hot agony shot up the radial nerve of his arm, bypassing his spine and slamming directly into his teeth.

’Again and again...’

Jax clamped his jaw shut so hard the enamel ground together with an audible crunch with his temples bulging like blue twine beneath his damp hairline.

A muffled animal groan vibrated behind his ribs, but he forced his hand forward, smearing the thick grease from his knuckles up to his elbow joint.

Above his head, the timer flickered.

[04:12]

Four minutes and twelve seconds of artificial sanctuary before the magic circle disintegrated, dumping his battered frame straight back into the open dunes.

His thoughts drifted back to the narrow shadow-draped ravine two miles out where the disaster had unfolded.

He had been tracking an erratic mana signature, moving low along the floor of a dry gully, when the air itself had turned into a chemical weapon.

’Genevieve de Montmirail...’

The primary skirmisher from the Europa Directorate hadn’t even bothered to draw the heavy fluted rapier sheathed at her hip as she had simply stood atop the crag in that pristine high-collared coat of imperial teal with her emerald-green hair spilling across her shoulders like woven silk.

Even in the dead center of a high-stakes multi-continental succession tournament, she carried herself with the effortless poise of an aristocrat attending a private salon in the upper districts of Europa.

Jax let out a short self-deprecating grunt, spitting a loose thread of linen onto the shale.

’She’s quite a beauty.’

A man would have to be blind or dead not to recognize the striking beauty of the woman.

The pale, immaculate line of her jaw, the cool, mocking detachment in her gray eyes, the way her tailored uniform accentuated an athletic grace... It was the kind of presence that made an unrefined soldier freeze for half a heartbeat before he remembered where his hands were.

Then, with an elegant and almost bored flick of her lace-gloved index finger, she had exhaled a cloud of translucent emerald-tinted mist.

The airborne vapor had touched his field breastplate, and within two seconds, eight inches of hardened star-iron had liquefied into smoking corrosive sludge, eating straight through to his collarbone.

Jax gave the linen bandage a vicious final tug, knotting the ends with his teeth and his right thumb.

"Pretty face," he spat, rubbing the back of his hand across his dry mouth. "Rotten to the core... A venomous little snake from the scalp down."

He pushed himself upright, testing his weight against his left leg.

The knee joint held, though a dull throbbing ache pulsed through his hip as his eyes tracked through the translucent blue sheen of the barrier, scanning the rippling heat mirages that warped the yellow horizon.

His gaze fixed on a jagged, serrated ridge of black basalt rising half a mile to the east.

’Kira better be in position,’ Jax thought, his right hand dropping down to trace the cold knurled grips of the three star-iron cylinders resting in his harness. ’If that girl decides to go rogue out there, we’re dead meat... The Commonwealth didn’t burn through three years of maritime mineral tariffs just to watch us get butchered like sheep in the preliminary round.’

Kira Bennett was feral, half-mad, and possessed the social temperament of a rabid coastal dingo, but her authority over Spirit Beasts was the only reason their delegation hadn’t been wiped in the opening twenty minutes.

If she maintained her perimeter, anchored the lower quartz strata, and used her burrowing beasts to choke the underground approaches, they could turn this exposed flat into a slaughterhouse the moment the dome collapsed.

Jax leaned his shoulder against the granite shelf with a small raspy chuckle vibrating in his throat.

"Let them think I’m crippled," he whispered, his eyes narrowing into cold slits as his knuckles whitened. "Let Europa think they ran me into a corner like an injured mongrel. The moment that clock hits zero and the heavy hitters start tearing each other apart... I’ll show every pompous lord in that Assembly what Australis has been hiding in the southern vaults."

The amber digits flickered down.

[03:48.]

Six hundred yards to the southwest, the low thud of heavy paws against sun-baked clay reverberated through the floor of a sunken canyon.

The three Dune Wolves moved in an immaculately coordinated formation, their golden-furred flanks caked in dried red silt that masked their heat signatures against the rising thermal drafts.

Their wide padded paws struck the hard-packed clay without a sound with their bodies staying low to the ground as they skirted the base of a crumbling sandstone escarpment.

Aki rode the alpha, her thighs locked tight around the broad ribs of the beast.

Her fingers held the braided star-iron reins with a steady relaxed tension with her hands circulating mana through the friction knots.

With every bounding leap, the Star-Iron necklace resting against her throat tapped rhythmically against her collarbone, humming with the warm feeling of the compressed mana Silas had woven into the core-gems.

To her right, Leona rode with one hand resting on the pommel of her deep-sea trench-machete, her hazel eyes flicking across the high ridges with the seasoned paranoia of an old trench veteran.

To the left, Maya Da Silva kept her mount at an effortless lope, the void-ivory greaves protecting her shins clicking softly against the wolf’s leather harness.

Maya raised her right hand, extending two fingers toward the horizon.

The three beasts slowed instantly, dropping from an aggressive gallop into a creeping trot before coming to a halt behind the jagged lip of an elevated sandstone ridge.

Maya reached into her chest rig, unhooking a heavy brass-framed pair of long-range tactical binoculars.

She rested her elbows against the rough stone of the ridge, adjusting the knurled focal rings with quick precise movements of her thumbs.

The internal quartz prisms hummed softly, filtering out the blinding glare of the afternoon sun and overlaying a grid-like mana-reticle across the terrain.

The lenses locked onto the flat sandstone terrace eight hundred yards out.

"Target acquired," Maya muttered, her voice sounding low and even. "Blue dome is active... It’s sitting out on the open flats with zero natural defilade and completely exposed. If someone tries to run from that position, they’re eating fire from three directions."

"Who’s inside?" Leona asked, leaning her chest over her wolf’s neck with her hand tightening around the grip of her machete.

Maya adjusted the secondary lens, zooming in on the seated figure propped against the granite shelf.

"Jax Sterling-Cross," Maya said, her amber eyes narrowing behind the eyepieces. "The primary representative from the Commonwealth of Australis... He’s sitting on the rock, patching up his left arm that looks like it got hit by some chemical attack. His chest armor is completely gone, and he’s wrapping the limb in emergency field dressing."

Aki leaned forward, peering over the crest of the ridge. "He’s wounded? Did he run into an ambush on the way to the zone?"

"Could be," Maya replied, lowering the brass binoculars to examine the surrounding dunes with her naked eyes. "The intelligence reports on the Commonwealth were almost non-existent... Australis runs their elite programs under oceanic military secrecy laws. We know they breed Spirit Beasts in the red outback and rely on hybrid beast-merges, but specific combat data on Jax is virtually blank... The reports listed him as an adaptable mid-range warrior, but beyond that, we’re flying completely blind."

"A wounded dog in a corner is the one that takes your fingers," Leona muttered with her eyes scanning the shimmering heat haze. "He knows the timer is bleeding out so he wouldn’t be sitting out in the open like a target dummy unless he had someone watching his back from the sand."

Leona wasn’t wrong at all.