“Nya, nyaaang?! What is this?!”
The cat beastkin called Mirash widened her eyes in astonishment as she looked at the camp where Shane and Dilaila were staying.
A luxurious camp in the middle of a barren desert?
Having never once seen space magic in her life, she blinked her large eyes repeatedly as she curiously peeked in and out of the camp.
“Th-This is amazing! It looks tiny from the outside, so why is it so big inside?!”
“It’s called subspace magic.”
“Subspace magic?! Magic, you say? This is the first time I’ve heard of such a thing!”
“Ah… I guess they didn’t have this kind of magic back then. It feels kind of strange.”
Mirash was amazed by how far human magic had advanced, while Dilaila felt oddly surreal about talking with someone whose sense of time was frozen centuries in the past.
“Wh-Where can you get something like this? Could you possibly sell one to us?! Our trade caravan would pay a good price for it!”
“Uh, well… I’m not the owner.”
As Dilaila’s gaze turned to Shane, so did Mirash’s.
“It’s not something that can be mass-produced.”
“O-Oh, I see. What a shame. If we had something like this, we could’ve swept up money like desert sand!”
As expected of a merchant. Mirash had instantly grasped its value.
While Mirash continued marveling at the camp with wide-eyed wonder, Dilaila approached Shane with a question.
“By the way, where exactly is this Argato Oasis?”
“It’s a city located past the gravel desert, in the sand desert. It’s governed by one of the seven tribes of the Nakar Desert.”
“Seven tribes?”
“Yes. In the Nakar Desert, seven tribes each rule over their respective territories. The Argato Oasis falls under the domain of the feline tribe.”
“I heard there’s a trade caravan too. It’s kind of similar to human society, isn’t it?”
Dilaila’s observation was natural.
Until now, most non-human races she had encountered lived in isolated communities. She had never seen different tribes actively interact like that.
“You can’t exactly see it that way. This land used to be inhabited by a unified race.”
“Unified?”
“That’s right. In the past, all the tribes were one.”
“Oh, so you were listening.”
“Cat ears are sharp, nya.”
“Ah… But what do you mean they used to be one race in the past?”
“Nya-nyang. Outsiders might not know this, but the Nakar Desert wasn’t always a desert like this… it used to be a lush, dense forest.”
“Whoa, really?”
“Of course! If you look carefully, you can still find ruins that hold traces of that time. Anyway, back then, many tribes followed a single god.”
“A god…?”
“A blue dragon. A being that stood at the top of all races, like a true dragon. We were a tribe that lived under the protection of that dragon.”
Dilaila, hearing a story she’d never known about the Nakar Desert, listened with an intrigued expression, and Mirash, seemingly enjoying her interest, continued in a cheerful tone.
“But because of our mistakes in the past, the dragon was unable to ascend. And so, it fell into corruption and we had to bear the consequences of that sin.”
“Consequences…?”
“Because of the dragon’s wrath, this place turned into a desert, and we were bound to remain here forever.”
“Wait, what? Like a curse?”
“Exactly. Even after death, we can’t leave this place. And if we do…”
“If you do…?”
At that, Shane turned his gaze toward the outside of the camp and opened his mouth.
“That’s what happens.”
“Ah…”
“Kyaaaaah!”
Outside the camp, several pairs of glowing red eyes lit up the darkness.
***
Spirits of the Desert.
That was what the tribes of the Nakar Desert called them.
“Undead…?”
As Dilaila muttered, the rag-covered figures outside staring at them….they were clearly undead.
With shriveled sand-dry skin like the desert itself and lifeless eyes, they radiated a deep hostility toward the living.
“Hyah! Be careful! If they catch you, you’ll be cursed!”
“A curse?”
“The moment they touch you, they drain your life force. Then you end up like them.”
“Ugh… that’s brutal.”
As soon as Dilaila finished speaking, the dozen or so spirits began to charge.
And despite being undead, their movements were shockingly fast. It was completely unlike the lumbering image one might expect.
“Haah!”
In response, Dilaila, just as she had learned at the academy, controlled the sand to strike at the heads of the undead.
Of the dozen or so enemies, the slower ones couldn’t evade her attacks in time and were skewered cleanly through the skull.
“Kyaaaaah─!”
Meanwhile, Mirash, her fur bristling fiercely, extended her long claws and lunged for the undead on the outer edges.
Though the undead weren’t particularly slow, Mirash’s beastlike agility let her dodge their attacks fluidly, striking upward from below with her claws.
As if sliced cleanly by a blade, flames erupted from the neatly severed area.
Like a dancer twirling in the moonlight, Mirash tore through the spirits with her long claws across the sands.
Shane observed the battle, lending support whenever the two seemed in danger by summoning his blades at the right moment.
Before long, the battle came to an end.
“Hmm… they don’t seem that strong…”
They were fast and threatening upon contact, sure….but they hadn’t been as dangerous as Mirash had warned.
Hearing Dilaila’s muttered thoughts, Mirash let out a bitter chuckle.
“Nya-nyang… That’s right. For now, they’re not too tough.”
“For now?”
“There’s a reason they’re called desert spirits. They look like they’re dead, but really, they’re just… resting. After a while, they’ll revive and come after the living again. The real problem is that their numbers grow each time.”
“Their numbers grow?”
“Exactly. If we just leave them like this, more will come the next day. Judging by the fact there were over a dozen already… someone clearly didn’t clean up properly before.”
So there was a proper way to finish them off.
While Dilaila was puzzling over that, Shane fetched a water pouch from the camp and poured it over the corpse of one of the spirits.
“Oh! Outsider….you knew about this?”
“If you don’t douse them in water, there’s no way to separate them.”
“Correct. You need enough water to soak them completely, even here in the heart of the desert. Not exactly easy.”
“Ah~ I see.”
Only then did Dilaila finally nod in understanding.
Certainly, as Mirash had said, using that much water on a horde of spirits in the middle of a desert wouldn’t be an easy task.
“There was once a time when tens of thousands of those spirits gathered all at once… because of that, an entire oasis nearly dried up. If it hadn’t rained back then… nyaah.”
She must have experienced it herself. Her expression carried traces of old fear and bitterness.
Such a massive gathering of spirits only meant that the locals had kept pushing the problem onto others without dealing with it properly.
“…Looks like this place has its own share of burdens.”
A cradle, but still a cradle of hardship.
Hearing of things unimaginable from the outside, Dilaila’s expression grew serious.
What would it even look like? Tens of thousands of undead roaming together?
“Nya-nyang! Anyway, I’m glad it ended well.”
Mirash stretched like a cat, yawning with a tired look on her face.
“Let’s get some rest. It’s getting late.”
“Okay! Thanks for being considerate.”
With that, Dilaila and Mirash returned to the camp. Shane who was staring silently at the fallen spirits scattered on the ground muttered to himself:
“Tens of thousands… Honestly, that would be better.”
***
“Wow…”
A few days later.
Dilaila let out a soft gasp, her mouth agape at the sight before her.
Rolling dunes stretched across the landscape, the sand unevenly mounded into small hills. The sun, for some reason, felt even hotter now.
And no matter which direction she looked, all she could see was a shimmering horizon distorted by the burning sunlight.
They had finally passed through the gravel desert and entered the sand desert.
“Sniff sniff.”
Beside her, Mirash sniffed the air with a wary expression, her guard still up.
“Mega Sandworms are relentless, but they won’t still be chasing us. They’ve probably found another target by now.”
“R-Right…? But you’re not even a local… how come you know so much about this place?”
Mirash’s tension eased a little at Shane’s words, and she tilted her head in curiosity.
“I know enough.”
Although he said that, to be honest, Shane knew more about the Nakar Desert than even the locals did.
Hadn’t he, in his past life, practically broken down and studied every inch of this desert in an effort to escape the insignificance of being a low-rank member of Nameless?
I didn’t expect it to become useful like this, though.
Still, if he acted like he knew too much, it would only raise suspicion. So, he listened through Dilaila as she got an explanation from Mirash about their current destination, the Argato Oasis.
“Nyaaang. Like that outsider mentioned before, this is a city run by the Myo Tribe, one of the seven tribes. We mostly developed the city through trade with other tribes. You could say we’re a neutral tribe.”
“Neutral… does that mean the other tribes don’t get along?”
Mirash nodded to the question of Dilaila who was now speaking more casually after spending the past few days together.
“Nyaan-Nyaa. That’s right, nyaa. The reason our Dragon fell into corruption was because the tribes suspected one another. They believed one of the twelve tribes was behind it.”
“Twelve…?”
“Five tribes couldn’t adapt to the desertification. They either went extinct or left the desert to escape. Of course, I’ll leave it to your imagination what happened to them in the end.”
Even if left to imagination, hadn’t she already seen with her own eyes what those malevolent spirits looked like?
Dilaila made a displeased expression.
“Anyway, after that, the remaining seven tribes began to suspect each other. They thought one tribe was responsible for the Dragon’s fall.”
“Wait, was there any evidence that led them to think that?”
“Nyaan-Nyaa. I heard there was at the time. I don’t know the details, Nyaan. But since then, things have stayed this way. Honestly, does the reason even matter? Unlike in the past, coexistence just isn’t possible in this desert anymore.”
“Yeah… I guess so.”
Even in human lands, which were far less harsh than the desert, hadn’t countless wars broken out throughout history?
With limited land and a growing population, even just a hundred years ago, the continent had been engulfed in the flames of war time and time again.
“But how come only your tribe managed to stay neutral?”
“It’s because our beginnings were different from the others, nyaa. Even before the Dragon fell, we focused mostly on trade and did business with many tribes. From the start, we were ‘supply officers’ after all.”
“Supply officers…? So basically, you had a lot of resources. Wouldn’t that make you a target for looting instead?”
“Nyahaha~ You’re right. Back then, our tribe was definitely in a dangerous position. In fact, we faced many attempts at looting, nya. But the chieftain at the time was incredibly wise.”
As she spoke, Mirash shook the water canteen Shane had given her, making it slosh.
“Our tribe wasn’t weaker than the others, but that didn’t mean we could handle all of them at once, nya. Naturally, the previous chieftain had to come up with another solution. And from that, a brilliant idea was born.”
“A brilliant idea?”
“The chieftain sent a message to the other tribes that said this, nya:”
[The canteen is filled with water. There is enough for everyone to drink, and as long as no one causes trouble, the canteen will be shared fairly and evenly among all. But, if anyone tries to cut the line, the water may spill and be lost to all.]
“That’s what he said, nya.”
“Uh… isn’t that basically just a threat to destroy the supplies if things go south?”
“Nyahahaha! That’s right. At the time, everyone was in complete chaos. No one trusted anyone. Distrust turned into fear, and fear soon became anger, leading everyone to hate one another.”
“And yet that kind of threat actually worked…?”
“On the flip side, it just shows how desperate everyone was, nya. If the remaining six tribes had all attacked one tribe, it would’ve led to an endless war. And once one tribe got the supplies, it was obvious the rest would turn on them to take it for themselves.”
“Hmm… So instead, they decided it’d be better to share things fairly?”
“Exactly. That’s how our tribe chose to take a neutral stance from the very beginning.”
“That’s pretty interesting…”
Who would’ve thought hearing about another race’s history could be so fascinating?
As Dilaila’s eyes lit up with curiosity, Mirash clicked her tongue with a hint of regret.
“But lately, the balance between the tribes has started to break down, nya.”
“Huh…? All of a sudden?”
“Yeah. Ever since they showed up, strange things started happening.”
They…?
Dilaila immediately had a good idea who that referred to.
“Nameless. Those ones who introduced themselves as the ones without names….they’ve appeared.”
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