The beast that appeared was a hybrid of a scorpion and a lizard. It had the scaly body of a lizard, but also had six legs like that of a scorpion, all together with two pincers for arms and a tail with a stinger on the end.
The giant beast stared down at them with its reptilian eyes, seemingly searching for something.
The old man continued walking back while his daughter pulled on Alex.
From the way the two acted, it seemed that they were more scared of this beast than any other that they had fought with before.
Alex looked at the size of the beast, and while it was massive, it seemed nowhere near large enough to garner the level of fear the old man and his daughter had. There was something here that he was missing.
The fight started immediately as the two warriors brought out their spears and instantly moved to either side of the dune to surround the beast. The scorpion-lizard attacked with its tail, lashing out at the warrior on the left, Yul Orla.
Pid Bajan was to the right and he began attacking back as hard as he could.
The battle quickly devolved to a simple strategy where Yul Orla would keep the scorpion distracted while Pid Bajan would try and kill it.
However, things weren’t so simple at all. The scorpion, while lacking sapience, was still smart enough to know that it needed to kill the one attacking it before going for the other one.
As it turned around, the men quickly shouted at each other, letting them know that the scorpion was changing its target. At the same time, Yul Orla brought out a storage bag and tossed it toward Pid Bajan, who casually caught it and tied it to his sash.
The dynamic of the battle flipped at that moment with Pid Bajan now being the distraction while Yul Orla attacked, trying to kill the beast.
But, it wasn’t so easy. The beast seemed quite tough and wouldn’t die so easily. The scales around its body were particularly tough, making it difficult for the two to wound it so easily.
The battle continued for some time, during which the two kept tossing around the storage bag to each other as the scorpion changed its target.
Alex watched it with a decent amount of curiosity, wondering what they were doing. “Was that one of the storage bags with the beasts we killed earlier? Is the scorpion trying to eat them?”
“No, I have those storage bags with me,” the old man said.
“Then what’s in there?”
“Something the scorpion desperately wants to get rid of, to the point where it will kill itself in order to do so.”
Alex frowned. “What is in there?”
“Sunhearts.”
Alex turned toward Mabi who answered it. “Sunheart? So the beast is trying to go after a Sunheart to… get rid of it?”
“Uhh… more like it wants to kill the ones who hold a Sunheart,” the woman said.
“Why?”
“You’ll know soon.”
Alex sighed and kept watching.
While the Scorpion-Lizard had a rather tough hide to get through, the two managed to do so by attacking at the same spot over and over again. After attacking in one place enough times, the scale on that spot cracked, allowing the two to attack the scorpion on the flesh itself.
Orla was hit once by the scorpion’s attack. In an attempt to dodge its stinger, he took a hit to the shoulders with its tail, which nearly crumpled him onto the ground.
A patch of his skin was stripped away in that attack, but he managed to get back up and join the fight with a bleeding arm.
The fight had been one of the toughest Alex had seen the two warriors go through, but they came out successful in the end as they stabbed the scorpion through the portion where its scale had been stripped away, and finally, for the first time in any of their fighting, used a skill.
The spear glowed a bright blue and Orla blasted it directly into the inside of the beast, destroying it internally.
The scorpion fell flat onto the dune, rolling down the side. The two watched as it rolled off and slowly walked down to where it was. The old man and Mabi too went there, so Alex followed.
As Alex arrived, he saw the old man approach the two warriors, standing next to the giant beast. Once again, they had to go through the ritual. Only this time, the ritual was a little different.
“We must butcher it here, do we not?” the old man asked the two warriors.
“We must,” the warriors answered in unison, and they both brought out large metal cleavers and began chopping down at the scorpion.
Alex frowned upon seeing this. The ritual had changed for some reason now.
“Why are we butchering it instead of taking it away whole?” Alex asked. “Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do with dead beasts?”
Mabi nodded. “That is correct for most of the beasts but not this one,” she said.
“What’s different about this one?” Alex asked.
The woman didn’t answer, but instead gestured with her chin toward the corpse.
Alex curiously turned and watched as the two warriors butchered more of the scorpion, until they opened up the side of its chest and dug their hands inside.
Bajan reached as deep as he could, reaching around for something before pulling it out. Flesh and blood poured out of the opening as his arm came out in a fist. He shook away the grime and slowly opened his fist.
Alex didn’t see what he was holding at first, but as he got closer, a glimmer of yellow shined through the otherwise black and red mush in the man’s hand.
The old man reached out and picked the item out of Bajan’s palm, cleaning it, before turning toward Alex to show it to him.
“You wanted to know how one got it, didn’t you?” he asked. “Well, here it is.”
Alex watched with widened eyes as the old man showed him a Sunheart.