Hot Sands

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Thinking about the people in this world, and how they survive among so many monsters, I realised that humanity didn't become extinct only because of Ki users. Any person who constantly fights monsters learns to use their internal energy to strengthen themselves to match the strength of the huge dangerous beasts, but when I went to villages that are located far enough away from the borders of the Empire, I met the most ordinary villages where the number of Ki users was minimal, usually they were hunters who harvested meat for the village, and given the size of the monsters, a couple of carcasses are enough to feed the entire village. But on the other hand, in the central part of the Empire, where large monsters are scarce, it would be many times harder to feed a village.

But still, it was quite strange to me to see people in these villages next to monsters having families, children, and yet these people don't have the strength to protect it all. Once, I came across a village that had been destroyed by a group of four-armed, eight-metre tall gorillas, and I had a hard time dealing with them. They beat me very well, crushing my bones, but I managed to slaughter twenty monkeys, the rest escaped when I killed a ten-metre grey-haired gorilla, who was apparently the leader of the pack.

After checking the village, I found no survivors, just crushed and torn corpses of almost all ages. It took me a long time to understand why these people were so relaxed, living in such a dangerous world, that they even had children, who now lay dead, mutilated bodies next to the same bodies of their parents?

I stayed in this ruined village for a while to forge a new weapon for myself, for in the fight with those apes, my bone cleaver had broken near the handle, and the metal sword I had recently bought had shattered into splinters. It was a poor blacksmith's shop, but it would do me just as well. I went through the houses of the village, and collected all the metal they had, plus what I could use on the road, which was mostly clothes, which I tore very often. I wasn't interested in food, as there were plenty of tasty monkey corpses outside... although they weren't particularly tasty, tigers were much tastier, especially the white ones, so far, they were the strongest monsters I'd tasted, so they were probably the tastiest.

It took me a week to make my sword, first I fused half of the iron I found with silver and copper. I turned the other half of the iron into high-carbon steel, hard but brittle. Having put together pieces of steel and pieces of iron with silver, he made a billet, which heated in a crucible, and began to forge it with a hammer on an anvil, trying to pour his Ki into the metal. When the billet from blows of the hammer thinned and stretched out, I folded it in half, and continued to forge it, repeating the procedure of folding, wishing to achieve the effect of multi-layered Damascus steel. While I was working, some monkeys attacked the village, and I decided to use their blood to temper the blade in it. When I dipped the hot blade into the blood, it stank, but some of the Kee from the monkeys' blood was transferred to the metal and I think it turned out pretty good. From rather mediocre materials I got a good wide sword, with a blade length of a metre and ten centimetres, together with the handle it was even bigger than me.

It weighed almost a hundred kilograms, I could swing it quite freely, but I got tired quite quickly. But how gorgeous this sword chopped monsters, just beautiful, monkeys died with a single blow. And when after a couple of days I began to get a huge armoured scorpions, the sword freely pierced their chitin.

I even started to enjoy killing monsters with good weapons, as if I was playing a computer game, and recently upgraded my sword, which easily destroys the monsters that I used to have to long pick my lame bone blade.

After getting my weapon, I began to move into the wilder lands where stronger and more tasty monsters dwell. Everything I wanted from the humans, I had learnt.

The empire I was in had celebrated its millennium thirteen years ago, and was now proudly known as the Thousand Year Empire. It had been rotten for so long, and was already cracking at the seams. Needless to say, in one village I visited, I was recruited into the rebels, and you could tell by my swarthy appearance that I wasn't an Imperial spy. The fact that I was small was offset by the fact that I had a huge sword behind my back, and the fact that I had brought the meat of a wild monster into the village. In the border villages, people like me were not surprised, and purely to get more information, I agreed to join the rebels for a week.

So, the Empire was founded by the First Emperor, who, in his old age, thought about preserving what he had created. Wishing to prolong the Empire's existence as long as possible, he ordered craftsmen and scientists from all corners of the Empire to create weapons that could protect the country even after the Emperor's death. According to legend, from the mystical ore orichalcum and parts of super-class monsters, forty-eight Teigu were created - forty-eight weapons of incredible strength that, due to the variety of the original material in the form of a variety of monsters, had a variety of powers. And as is clear, the Teigu did a good job of maintaining the integrity of the Empire, mostly using these weapons to brutalise anyone who wished to destroy the Empire. Most of the Teigu remained in the hands of the Empire, but some fell into the hands of revolutionaries and some were lost in various parts of the world.

To use a Teigu, the user must be very strong, most likely these Teigu use Ki to function, so this weapon, which gives its wielder immense power, can only be used by someone who already has immense power. The revolutionaries recruited people near the border, which is always full of dangerous monsters and therefore full of strong people to fight them, in order to find a new owner for the Teigu that fell into the hands of the rebels. It was rumoured to be a huge pair of scissors, capable of cutting through absolutely anything. I was curious to see such a weapon, but I didn't feel like submitting to the revolutionary army for such a pleasure. So, having learnt what I wanted, I went on my way... I was apparently considered a spy of the Empire, and they sent an assassin after me... and, damn, I was killed. I was killed by a girl who caught up with me and stabbed me in the heart with a poisoned dagger and slit my throat... apparently it was a clan assassin hired by the revolutionaries.

It would have been easy to regenerate such wounds, if it hadn't been for the poison that was smeared on the assassin's blades; the wounds healed in a day, but the poison made me feverish for a couple of days. It was lucky that none of the beasts touched me during that time, probably they had killed them all near the revolutionaries' camp... and it was also lucky that they didn't cut off my head to give it as a proof of the elimination of the target. These revolutionaries are dangerous fellows, and judging by their methods, they're not much better than the Empire.

- Well, at least they kept my sword, thank you. - I decided to keep heading west. I was a little offended that I was almost killed, and I would have liked to take revenge on them, but they were in their right, I really acted as a spy, and most importantly... I just can't get back at them, I'll just be killed again, and once was enough for me, the heart and cut throat to regenerate is a pleasure.

After time and tens of kilometres passed, the landscape became more and more arid, the monsters were more and more often huge insects, but the most amusing monster that I came across was a gorillo-scorpion, some strange mutant that combined the features of the four-armed gorillas found in the passed area, and the local scorpions. Instead of four arms, it had four claws, and some parts were covered with chitin, especially the lower back, from which a huge scorpion tail grew.

It's suspected that this gorilla had switched exclusively to a diet of scorpions, and that's what affected it. I guess the principle of 'I am what I eat' works very well. When I myself switched only to a diet of tigers, I began to acquire tiger characteristics, the same thing happened to the gorilla, only he continued to eat only scorpions, and eventually turned into a scorpion. It was funny... except that it was about as hard to kill as a gorilla and a scorpion at the same time, meaning that this mutant was twice as strong as its more normal relatives. Perhaps I could use a half-beast to survive, in that form I had increased strength and stamina, and my wounds would heal faster.

Scorpions, and other desert insects like giant locusts, didn't taste good, and especially not good to look at. Their green mucus instead of blood was a bit of an appetite killer, but I was used to eating raw organs and drinking blood to survive, so eventually I even started to enjoy crunching the chitin while eating locusts.

As practice showed, in order not to turn into a monster, one must eat different kinds of beasts, not just one, so that the beast ki in the body is mixed and becomes more like neutral ki.

Soon I moved into a full-fledged desert, the sand was uncomfortable to walk on as the heavy sword pressed me into the sand, but over time I began to use Ki. By infusing energy through my feet I strengthened the ground beneath my feet and was able to continue walking faster without getting bogged down in the sand. When I reached a small oasis of water, I tried to use the same method to walk on water... without the sword behind my back, I managed to walk on water for a few metres, and then I fell into the water.... and I tried to eat a huge crocodile, I had to urgently learn to run through the water for a sword to be able to fight off these alligators overgrown that began to crawl out to the shore in droves to bite me, but lately it is me who bites dangerous animals.

If to abstract from a great number of negative factors, especially from the fact that I was repeatedly tried to kill in this world, this world turned out to be very interesting, every day I perceived this world more and more as a game, which helped me to distract from sometimes quite serious injuries of my 'game character', that often lost limbs, but still soon restored them. After a couple of months of walking in the desert, I met a huge snake... or rather the skeleton of a huge snake, but if there is a skeleton, then there are probably live specimens. The skeleton of the snake was over two hundred metres long, and the diameter of the snake was about eight metres... this snake was even bigger than an underground train. Not only are there such snakes, but there are also those who killed this snake, judging from the bitten ribs of the skeleton, this someone is quite strong.

I hope that I won't meet either the first or the second one in the near future... but my luck was only for a month, and I came across not only a huge two hundred metre snake, which also had golden scales, but also its opponent, who was now actively trying to kill it.

The second monster was a rather large beast that looked like a black jackal with golden stripes on its fur. This monster was twenty metres long, but it was much stronger than the snake, and this black jackal was also able to breathe fire, which, together with its sharp claws and fangs, allowed it to tear apart the snake and roast it from the inside.

- I see now who's the daddy in this sandbox... clearly not me. - I watched from afar, first at the fight between the jackal and the snake, and then at how the jackal vividly eats the snake, especially laying on the golden scales, apparently it was concentrated a lot of Ki.

After the jackal, the remnants of the snake did not hesitate to snack and I even tried to taste its golden scales ... but only broke a few teeth with this attempt, the scales were very strong, even my sword did not take it, and therefore with someone who so easily torn this scales, I certainly better not meet.

- I'll have to get a lot stronger to get a taste of that doggie, and I'll have to make a better weapon to be able to cut it properly. - I commented, eating the remains of a huge snake. If you think about it, there is iron in the blood, a litre of human blood has a gram of pure iron, and in this snake blood should be at least a tonne, that is, several kilograms of iron can be extracted. At the same time, such iron should be just full of snake ki, and if you make a dagger from such iron, I think it will be ten times stronger and harder than ordinary steel. And this snake has metal in its scales, and if you process it to extract all the metal from the entire snake carcass, and then forge a weapon out of that metal, you should have a weapon like Teigu.

≪Congratulations, you've just invented artefacting. We used to be an artefactor, by the way, that's where our blacksmithing skills come from. Some knowledge about artefacting is stored in the system itself, I'm trying to get it back into my memory, but unpacking knowledge requires energy and attention, so if I'm not talking to you, know that your schizophrenia is doing something useful.≫

- Well, go on, go on.

This desert was really huge, it had been about eight months since I left my settlement, and I spent more than half of that time in the desert before I reached the place I wanted to go. It was the tomb of the Emperor of Putra, the whole of Putra looked like Egypt, and the tomb was nothing but pyramids, whence came some men who beat me up quickly, and dragged me inside the pyramid. I tried to fight back, but as it turned out, these swarthy guys living in the pyramid practise animalism, that is, they can take the form of a half-beast at will, which, together with the advantage in physique and number of opponents, allowed them to beat me up quickly, but noticing that my wounds were healing, they decided not to kill me, but to drag me into the tomb to find out who I was.

They called themselves 'Guardians of the Tomb' because they guarded the tomb of Emperor Putra, and lately the pyramids had been frequented by imperial marauders, so the Guardians did not treat their guests with ceremony and killed them, as they wanted to do with me. But they smelled in me the same abilities as the Guardians, that is, I was part beast, and could also learn to turn into a half-beast like them, and my dark skin made it clear that I was definitely not from the Empire.

The Guardians were led by Veneg, a descendant of Emperor Putra, whose tomb he guarded. The Emperor's main power, the reason he was able to create the Empire, was his ability to turn into Nubis, that powerful fire-breathing jackal monster. The same ability was passed on to his descendants, Veneg could also turn into Nubis, except he himself admitted that he was much weaker than the first Emperor of Putra.

The First Emperor of Putra had long eaten only the flesh and blood of Nubis, and had thus acquired the ability to transform into him. Now there are very few Nubis left in the desert, and Veneg himself is unlikely to be able to defeat him, as that beast is considered a special class monster, it is a rank weaker than super class monsters, but still very strong. But, even now, Veneg has some secret technique that helps him deal with enemies stronger than himself. He didn't show me this secret, of course, because he could have dealt with me without it.

I told Veneg about myself, where I was born, and how I got here. By my accelerated regeneration, Veneg realised that I was practising eating dangerous monsters, just as the Guardians do to become stronger. But they still bring the transformation to half, and then curb their beast, so that they can turn into it at any time.

However, not everyone manages to curb their beast, for example, Venegas' nephew. The guy is always in a semi-transformation into Nubis, he attacks almost anyone, so he is kept on the lowest level of the tomb.

Despite the fact that all the Guardians were strong warriors, able to transform into half-beasts, they were generally very peaceful, and used force only to protect their territory, which they considered to be the Emperor's tomb. Veneg asked me to join them, as my power was similar to their secret Guardian technique.

I thought so, and agreed, for the time being I could make the tomb my base, where I could set up a smithy and a material storehouse, and there I could even try to create my own Teigu... and most importantly, if I refused, I would be fed to Veneg's relative, who looked like a half-human half-nubis.

Maybe coming here wasn't the smartest thing I've ever done... but the rashness of my actions is due to the fact that I'm not afraid to die, even if I died here I wouldn't care much, but if there's a chance to continue living, I might as well take it.