Alex paused for a long moment upon hearing Tala’s words. He thought back to two days ago when he had just finished consuming one of the 8 Sunhearts. He had placed all the Sunhearts and beast cores on the same table, so when he gathered them, he had placed them all in his storage bags as well.
He hadn’t checked on them after that, since he had no use for them for a while. He had been intending to use another Sunheart in a week or two.
“So, it’s my fault this happened,” Alex said slowly. “The Sun Wraith appeared because of me.”
He felt at his waist at that exact moment, feeling the place where he kept his storage bag. The Sun Wraith had burned through the storage bag and then burned his skin as well.
That was what had woken him up. Had he woken up a little earlier, maybe there wouldn’t have been an explosion.
“No, it is my fault. You knew nothing about Sunhearts, so the fault is on me for not explaining it to you,” Tala said. “I should have explained to you why we always butcher the beasts in the desert and take away the Sunheart immediately.”
“Oh! Is that why that ritual of yours exists?” he asked.
“Yes,” Tala said. “I should teach you all the important things now. Let’s see… Don’t interfere with a warrior’s business. Run if you see a figure of fair skin and dark hair. Alert the others if you see yellow light at night. Do not go deeper into the desert. Am I missing something, Gorang?”
“He should search a beast for Sunheart if he ends up killing one.”
“He knows that now,” Tala said. “Don’t you?”
Alex frowned. “What was that about a yellow light? I saw one on the last day when we were coming here.”
“Oh! You saw a Sun Wraith then. We are glad it did not come for us,” Tala said. “Although, it usually steers clear of others with Sunhearts, so we likely wouldn’t have been attacked.”
“Is this one the exception because it formed here?” Alex asked.
“That appears so,” Tala said.
Alex took in the information, thinking about the various things along the way. “What happens if a regular beast without a Sunheart were to eat one? You said nothing good comes out of that.”
“Did I say that? This is what I was talking about,” Tala said. “A regular beast doesn’t have a Sunheart, so it can’t absorb anything from the one it eats. As a result, the Sunheart ends up going down its body, until it gets close to where it’s beast core is.”
“The Yang energy in the Sunheart then ends up infecting the beast core, before it ends up becoming like that,” Tala said, pointing to the glowing sphere in Gorang’s palm. “At that point, the beast dies, and the Sun Wraith is born. And because it holds in itself the power of all that the Sunheart has managed to gather for so many years, it is very much stronger than a regular beast, perhaps by a hundred times easily.”
Alex nodded. He knew the beast was strong. Anything that could wound him was strong.
Tala narrowed his eyebrows at that moment, looking at Alex. “If this Sun Wraith was born here, then I don’t see how it could’ve been weak at all.”
Alex could hear the accusation in the man’s voice and nearly laughed out loud. “It was weak for me,” he said.
Gorang was too focused on himself to hear Tala and Alex at that moment. Suddenly, he looked at them. “How many Sunhearts did you say there were?” he asked.
Alex raised his eyebrows. “There should have been six more in my storage bag. They don’t combine together, do they?”
“No, each Sunheart infects a single beast core. It takes some time to do that, and is only fast if both the Sunheart and the beast core came from the same beast, which should have been the case right now.”
“But there are still 6 more Sun Wraiths ready to form, right?” Gorang asked with a voice growing with panic. “We need to find them quickly!”
So, the three of them immediately began searching for the remaining six beast cores that had been infected by the Sunheart, which they found a few minutes later, along with Alex’s other storage bags.
“This will take some time to turn into Sun Wraiths,” Tala said after looking through the 6 glowing beast cores. “I will have the warriors take these away and dispose of them properly. Meanwhile, there should be people fixing your house too, so you can come stay with me.”
“Actually,” Alex interrupted him. “Would it be alright if I took these to the desert by myself? I’m quite interested in how they form, and what they can do.”
“But, it’s dangerous,” Gorang said. “You can’t be around Sun Wraiths. Just because you defeated one doesn’t mean that you will have the same luck the next time as well.”
“It will be fine,” Alex said, taking away the glowing beast cores from them. “I will leave soon. I will return in a few days when all of these have fully given birth to Sun Wraiths.”
The two men tried to stop Alex, or at least get him to take some warriors with him for his own safety, but Alex refused. If a warrior was to get involved, there would be the issue of honor and duty. He didn’t want to get mixed up in that.
Especially when he wanted to do an interesting experiment.
From his brief clash with the Sun Wraiths, he knew that these beasts were quite hot and harmful. The harm that they did reminded Alex very much of his time in the sun, the way they burned his skin and charred it.
It was way too similar for him not to be curious. He needed to experiment with the Sun Wraiths a little more, but if things did turn out the way he hoped they would, then he might have just found the source through which he would make one of his Creations.
