Alex walked out onto the sand, his arms and legs still bleeding profusely. He had no Qi to heal himself, and his Blood Aura had long since been bled out of him after so many cuts.
He pulled out his iron sword, ready to put it to use once again. He had used it only once, so this would be the true test for it.
In the dark of the night, the beasts still seemed capable of noticing him. And for some reason, they were able to get to him faster than he would have expected them to.
The first beast to get to Alex was a large centipede that came down on him with its pincers. Alex leapt up to the centipede, scattering sand behind him as he instantly arrived next to the beast’s head.
He swung, striking what would be the beast’s neck.
To his surprise, the beast wasn’t cut at all.
His sword merely managed to dig a few inches deep while the majority of the force only bashed the beast to the side. It fell to the ground with a rather loud slam, but it didn’t die.
“How…”
Alex was surprised. Sure, he hadn’t put all his strength into the attack, but this was an attack that should have killed an Immortal. How had the beast survived with only a simple wound?
As the centipede tried to get back up, other beasts arrived at where Alex was. The two closest ones were a giant desert hawk, and a sort of chameleon with pronounced scales all around its body.
They both slammed down to where Alex was, using all their physical force to try and defeat him.
Their combined attack destroyed the dune, sending sand flying hundreds of meters into the sky, covering everything.
Alex sped through the cloud of sand, arriving next to the hawk first. He didn’t hold back this time, and despite all of his wounds, used his Sword Qi to attack.
Finally, his attack was lethal. The single attack cut through half of the giant bird’s body, killing it.
Alex was surprised that even giving it his all hadn’t been able to cut the beasts entirely.
‘They are much stronger than they should be,’ he thought. ‘I must be much deeper in the desert now.’
He had to be careful.
Alex fell through the sky once again, and this time the ground was much lower than earlier as all of the sand had been scattered from the area. It took him a while to finally land on a rather hard surface with sand raining down upon him by the tons.
Alex couldn’t see properly, but some sort of beast was right next to him. He saw its silhouette through the sand, coming for him.
Alex jumped directly toward it, attacking once again. His attack cut through the beast’s limbs and continued until it cut halfway through its body. As it fell, he finally saw that it was a mantis.
Alex walked out of the piling sand and saw all of the beasts that had arrived upon hearing the commotion. There were at least 50 that surrounded him, and perhaps even more that were underneath the sand or flying high in the sky that he couldn’t see just yet.
He didn’t fear them, but having to fight that many still brought on a negative mood in him.
Thankfully, it seemed not all of the beasts wanted to fight him. They had begun fighting among themselves, screeching and roaring as they tried to kill each other.
Only a few of them came after Alex, which he was more than happy to engage with.
Alex’s body moved through the night with only pure physical strength and Sword Qi as he killed the beasts that were around him. After every attack, he realized just how much stronger these beasts were than any other he had fought and knew that he could not hold back with any of them.
Each attack he dealt came with his all. He did not slack for a single swing.
And even then, some beasts required two or even three different attacks to fully die. Alex simply couldn’t fathom how these beasts had gotten this strong.
At first, Alex killed the beasts before moving on to the next, but at some point, he realized that he was wasting stuff. So he began gathering the corpses of each of the beasts he killed.
A single storage bag could only hold up to a few beast corpses, so he had to use all the storages he had to keep them. He didn’t even have the chance to check if any of them had Sunhearts.
It was unlikely in the night, but who could even know.
As Alex continued fighting, he realized that something was very wrong. No matter how much he fought, the number of beasts didn’t seem to lower at all. It was as if this place was infested with so many beasts that he couldn’t possibly run out of.
He fought for over an hour, giving everything he had in each fight, and yet the beasts continued coming.
Birds, reptiles, insects, mammals. They kept crawling out of the sand or coming down from the sky.
Alex knew he couldn’t keep this up. Even if this was a treasure hoard right here of all the Qi and Blood Aura he could want, he had to leave this place. Since he was using Sword Qi with each attack, he was slowly using up his Intent.
And he didn’t have that much to begin with. Sooner or later, he would become too tired to do anything. At that point, his fate would only be to be swallowed by one of these beasts.
He didn’t want to end up in the belly of another beast, waiting to be rescued by another teenager, for his body couldn’t possibly heal in time to regain consciousness without any Qi.
Alex distanced himself from the section where he was fighting, moving further and further away. Some beasts followed him and others emerged from the sand to fight him too, but they weren’t nearly as many.
After some time, he managed to kill the final beast that was after him, and once he took its corpse, he ran away from that place.