NOVEL NEXT 54 - The Southern Desert
Breakfast this morning is tense. Even Kat is affected, and doesn't talk anywhere near as much as she normally does. The only one unaffected is Trinity, who digs into her plate of sausage with as little decorum as usual. After eating, Jacob takes the lead for the group, and has us all run down the checklist he and Vanessa made and that I approved of things necessary for our survival.
Since we'll be going to the desert first, water is of utmost importance. In the north, it's a non-issue with so much snow around, but the south has only a single river, a few oases, and a larger lake near the edge. We'll need to get to one of these as soon as possible, but if any complications arise, we'll need to be able to survive for a few days on our own. In the worst case scenario, we can extract water from the local flora, but that's a less than ideal solution.
Aside from water, we need food. It's a bit less important, since now that we have oum cores, we can keep going for longer without it, and there will be plenty of wildlife to kill and eat, but it's vital that we have an emergency supply, just in case.
Clothes are the next most important. By choosing the two biomes with the most hostile weather, we have forced ourselves to need to dress for that weather, meaning that most of our packs are taken up by clothes. In fact, each of us is carrying two packs, to make sure that we have multiple outfits for each biome. Ideally, we won't need many, but given the rules of the Starter Quest, it's better to be prepared than not.
Aside from those essentials, it's mostly just miscellaneous things. Sleeping bags, matches, tents, a couple hammocks, and a lot of blades. Each of us has at least a half dozen knives on us, for various purposes. Most of them are for handling our kills and collecting the trophies, but I also made each of them put at least one on their hip and one on their boot for self defense. Kat went all out and I think she has close to twenty knives on her person, some more obvious than others.
Timmy doesn't bring his plant, thankfully. He still brings a plant, and a few pots so he can collect more, but he left his fancy plant with the mysterious Gloria person while he was gone. If not for the extreme climates at our destinations though, I'm sure he would have brought it.
With everyone's bags verified, we sit back down and wait for Ganyu to call us into the lecture room. Within the lecture room, rather than rows of seats or cushions and mats, the room has been altered to a third configuration, this one almost completely empty except for a large stone circle in the center. Ganyu instructs us all to stand on the circle, which gets a little cramped with all of us, and then a minute or so later, there's a surge of oum unlike anything I have ever felt before and a flash of blinding light, and when my vision clears, we're outside.
The first thing I notice once outside is that there are a lot fewer of us on the platform than there were. Less than a quarter of the Batch remains. The second thing I notice is that we are in the desert, and it is uncomfortably warm. I can see the city in the distance still, so we're probably not even that deep into the desert yet.
I think I vaguely remember Jacob mentioning something about registering our group for our starter region, so that explains both of these things, since only those of us who registered for the desert would be here.
The third thing I notice is that to the left and right, there are identical stone daises with other groups of people stretched for as far as I can see. There are two many to count, but if I had to guess, there are probably 2500 of them, since that's how many Batches there are from Earth. Every four stone circles, there is an Administrator hovering in the air. Hovering in the air, or even flying, is something that any 3 star can do, but not indefinitely, and likely not as stably or as casually as the Administrators can.
Above the Administrators are more Administrators, though with much more space between them. I can only see three of these ones, and none of them are that close to our circle. If I had to guess, these are the ones who are on Organa's level, in charge of a sector of dorms rather than a single Batch.
And above even those Administrators, a single man floats. At least, I think he's a man. He's so far away that it's hard to tell. Yet despite being so far away, I still find my eyes drawn to him, and it seems the others are the same way, all staring off into the distance expectantly. After a few seconds, the man begins to speak, his voice loud enough to be heard clearly from here, yet soft enough that it sounds like he's right next to me.
"Welcome, newcomers!" says the man's voice. "I am the Lord of this Floor, often better known as Lord Gray. This is likely the first and last time you will see me, but I am always watching you, and I'm excited to watch you even more right now. It's been a long time since I've done a Starter Quest for a new world, and they're always fun.
"Now, you should have all heard the rules, and if you didn't, tough luck. I am merely here to explain the final little details before we send you off, so listen closely, because these are important.
"The checkpoints where you are to turn in the trophies from your hunts are these very platforms you stand on. Yes, you do have to return to the same one you started on, but your rings are linked to them, so you can simply use the command 'Compass' and you will be directed to your platform. All you need to do to turn your trophies in is set them down on the platform. They will disappear, but don't worry. They will merely be sent to a secure storage facility where they will be preserved and accounted for, and you will be able to retrieve them later if you wish. If not, you will be awarded Tower Credits equal to the value of the trophies.
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"These platforms also function as the means to choose a new biome at the halfway point of the Quest. From noon on the seventh day until noon on the 8th, if you bring your entire team to the platform, you will be able to select a new biome and teleport there, just as you teleported here. This is not a requirement, but as a surprise bonus to encourage such behavior, bonus points will be awarded to all trophies not collected in the region you started in.
"Once the Starter Quest is over, you will be automatically transported back to your platforms. However, I would not recommend this because any trophies you have on your person will be lost in the process.
"And finally, your rings have also been updated with live-updating rankings for the Starter Quest, so you may see which groups are ahead of yours, as well as how each Batch stacks up.
"I believe that is all, so I wish you all the best of luck! You may begin!"
Immediately, about half the groups begin moving out into the desert. Most of the Batches seem about as disorganized as ours, with all the groups moving independently, but as I lead our group through the dry, dead grass, I notice that two of the Batches who are right next to each other seem to be moving in relative unison.
Hmmm. That's not good. I may have miscalculated.
I thought that this would be an easy win for our group, so I wasn't thinking too hard about it, but now that I see that, I realize that we may actually be in a rough spot. If any of the Batches are unified like that, they are unified under one or two people, and if the entire batch decides to give their spoils to those leaders, they could outdo us. I guess that means we'll have to push a bit harder.
"Move faster," I say, picking up the pace to a powerwalk.
Fortunately, the stamina training we've done seems to be paying off, if only by a little. It's not long before we leave most of the other groups in the dust behind, and the others are only sweating a little.
About an hour after we set out from the stone circle, we encounter our first prey. It's one of the weaker creatures of the desert, a supersized ground squirrel with power equivalent to approximately a Middle 1 star cultivator. June takes the lead, and it is dead within a minute. To avoid wasting too much time, I rip out its designated trophy, the two large front teeth, with my bare hands and we move on.
Another hour later, we've killed three more of them, and the only reason we've broken a sweat is because every step we take seems to increase the temperature. I've had to resort to transmuting my oum to have icy properties to stay cool. Without this ability, the others are faring much worse. Spirits are still high though, likely because of how our training has been paying off.
After the third hour passes, we take a short break under the meager shade of a large boulder and rehydrate. Our destination is an oasis that's probably just on the edge of the range that we can reach in a single day, so it's still a long way's off. The ground is still covered in dry grass, meaning we haven't even entered the desert proper yet.
It takes another hour and a half for the grass to fade and be replaced with hard, cracked earth. Here, the temperature seems to rise another few degrees, and the others start sweating more heavily. The oversized ground squirrels are replaced by oversized lizards as the most common type of animal, and though they are about as strong as the ground squirrels, their scales are harder, making them slightly trickier opponents. Still, they don't provide much trouble for our group, and they only take a couple minutes to dispatch them and harvest the spines on the tops of their heads.
We stop again shortly after entering this new section of the desert to rest up and eat some lunch. For the first time, Trinity emerges, and for the first time, the others get to witness her eating a human corpse. They seem a bit disturbed by this. Unfortunately, it's something they'll have to get used to.
We travel and hunt some more until the heat reaches its peak in the late afternoon, and right here is when we encounter our first bit of trouble, and while not exactly expected, it's still entirely predictable what its source is: Timmy.
One of the benefits that those with the Ki Resonance Physique–well, I should call it the Oum Resonance Physique now– is that those who have it are far more in tune with nature and natural oum. This means that their sense for disturbances in this natural oum is heightened. These disturbances can come in many forms, from battles in the distance, to powerful people disrupting the oum around them to protective formations.
Fortunately, it's not any of those things. Rather, Timmy has sensed a plant.
***
When the Floor Lord announced the beginning of the Starter Quest, rather than rushing off to the deeper regions, Yuri took his group and cut across the desert diagonally. His second-in-command Ivan had done a lot of scouting for the Starter Quest, and when they arrived in the desert, they were able to confirm one of their theories. Each Batch was placed in the desert roughly in the same order that their dorms were arrayed in the city. That meant that by knowing who their neighbors were, they could figure out exactly where those from Phoenix hall went.
Yuri had no intention of directly challenging the one who called herself the Phoenix. His competitive spirit was strong, but he was not so arrogant as to deny the evidence before his eyes. The spar with the Axian young master had proven that he was no match for her as he was currently. However, that didn't mean he had no way to defeat her. After all, the rules of this game had nothing to do with direct combat power. There were other ways to win besides being the strongest.
That didn't mean Yuri would do so silently though. He still wanted her to see him. He wanted her to see the one who defeated her. Maybe then, she would finally see him as someone worth competing with.
He was not alone in his competitive spirit. There were many other talented people who felt as though the pretender Ascendant was drawing too much attention. Some were even within Phoenix Hall itself. Some perhaps even closer. After all, someone had leaked her groups' plans for the Starter Quest. How else would Yuri's group have known that they would be in the southern desert?