Hard Carried by My Sword-Chapter 135

Sure, Karen’s true identity was the Keeper, the elite assassin, but every achievement she had stacked up on her way to becoming an A-rank adventurer was genuine.

Even Ryan, the Guildmaster of Area 13, had said it himself. Unless someone had “special circumstances” that let them skip ranks, anyone who rose from the bottom all the way to A-rank was a veteran who had survived every trial imaginable.

And compared to mercenaries, whose commissions mostly involved fighting other people, adventurers were the more seasoned lot. Among them, rogues specialized in scouting and exploration, giving them no equal among their peers.

The synergy of Karen’s dual professions only amplified that. The instincts honed as an assassin, combined with her experience as a rogue, produced results beyond imagination.

“Broadly, there are two types of deserts,” she explained without hiccup. “The borderlands of the Kingdom of Artium that we passed before—that was a rock desert. What we’re crossing now is a sand desert.”

If a rock desert was a surface of gravel and stone with a dusting of sand, then a sand desert was, quite literally, endless fine sand covering everything in sight. In terms of sheer difficulty of passage, rock deserts were harder. The terrain was so uneven that a single storm could bombard travellers with hundreds or thousands of stone projectiles.

“However,” Karen added, that wasn’t the whole story. “Rock deserts are just as hostile to monsters as they are to people. That means that as long as one can endure the rough terrain, they’re not all that dangerous.”

“So that means sand deserts are?”

She nodded once at Leon’s prompt, then held up three fingers.

“Yup. Completely different. There are three main dangers in a sand desert. First, the terrain constantly changes! The landscape shifts so easily that drawing a map is pointless. Aside from keeping your direction straight, remembering landmarks won’t do you much good.”

There was no need for a full storm. Even a stiff wind could shift a towering dune several paces. Waking up to find the horizon completely different from the night before was a daily activity. Relying on landmarks like one would in a forest or mountains meant they would be lost in half a day.

“The second danger is ground movement—things like quicksand or barchans.”

“Quicksand... you mean getting sucked down into the ground?” Elahan asked.

“Exactly. More precisely, it’s when the air under the surface escapes, leaving a vacuum that pulls things down. There are small patches that can’t swallow a whole person, but sometimes they spread hundreds of meters, swirling like a vortex. If you’re unlucky, you’ll be buried alive.”

And barchans—those crescent-shaped dunes scattered across deserts—were the result of wind shaping the sand into waves. Stay too long on or beyond one, and there was a risk of being crushed under hundreds of tons of cascading sand.

Ignorance meant death. Few places embodied that saying more than the desert.

“And the last one... well, you’ve probably guessed.”

She glanced at the two, raising her palm to signal a halt. Leon and Elahan stopped as instructed, sand parting like a ripple around their abrupt halt.

The scenery looked no different from when they started, apart from the fact that the walls of Area 12 had long since vanished, making all sides around them the dune. Their pace was incredible—they had already covered more ground than a camel could in half a day.

“In the sand desert, every monster has camouflage. Scorpions, snakes, even amorphous things like Sandmen.”

“You mean they’re hard to detect,” Leon said.

“Exactly. They’re invisible to the eye, and scent or sound won’t help either. But in return, they can sense the slightest vibration around them.”

Monsters of swamps, forests, or caves were tricky too, but not as stealthy or deadly as those of the desert. Because prey was scarce, desert monsters tended to be smaller—but they made up for it with venom. They hid in the sands, waiting to strike the instant their target left an opening.

They were assassins of nature itself.

“How do you deal with them?” asked Elahan. “You’re not saying we need to fly over them, are you?”

Karen’s eyes widened as she replied, “Oh? That’s actually a great idea.”

She hadn’t thought of it before boarding the airship, but in hindsight, it was the perfect way to cross a desert. The skies were clear all day, and no sandstorm reached as high as an airship. However, since adventurers couldn’t all travel by airship, there were other methods.

“Let me show you something.”

With that, Karen stepped ahead, took a deep breath, and focused her mind. Then, a razor edge of killing intent burst outward in all directions.

It wasn’t even aimed at a specific target, but the sheer pressure made the skin prickle, the stench of blood filling the air. The Aura of an assassin was enough to make even Elahan instinctively step back half a pace.

The wave of killing intent spread out in concentric circles for tens of meters. Monsters that had lain hidden burst out of the sand.

A two-meter scorpion named Sandstalker, a thick, snake-like monster called Poison Centipede, and other indistinguishable species came out writhing and thrashing as if in seizure. Only when a dagger struck each skull, strings trailing from their hilts back to Karen’s hands, did the frenzy subside.

Retrieving her blades, she turned to the others and said, “What do you think? Easy enough, right?”

“So we’re using our killing intent?” Leon asked.

“Yep. Most of the hiding monsters are hypersensitive. Send out killing intent like I did, and they panic, thinking they’ve been exposed.”

Leon closed his eyes, convinced. It was like swinging a blade of willpower. He couldn’t match Karen’s sharpness, but intimidating monsters should be within reach.

“Hup!”

With a sharp breath, Leon lashed the sands with his Aura, and several more monsters immediately sprang out.

“Ah, I think I get it.”

“Easy, right? And desert monsters aren’t that strong aside from stealth and poison. Even assassins—if they’re second-rate or worse—would fall for the same trick.”

Once exposed, their threat level dropped by half. For lesser adventurers, they’d still be a challenge, but Leon’s group was anything but ordinary.

Elahan, however, seemed to struggle. When the other two looked her way, she scratched her cheek with an awkward grin.

“Hehe... this is tricky.”

Karen gave her an incredulous look and asked, “Ella, you can’t control killing intent? With your power?”

“Well, I’ve never really tried to release it consciously.”

“From the way your weapon radiates it, I’d swear you overflowed with it...”

The thought of the Holy Iron Breaker made both their faces pale. Elahan, however, still couldn’t quite grasp it until Leon interjected.

“What if you imagine you’re not fighting monsters, but heretics? Like the Evil Order.”

“Heretics...?”

At that instant, Leon and Karen both leaped back nearly twenty meters from Elahan. Had they stayed, she might have swung her weapon. Both of them, retreating by reflex, broke out in a cold sweat, and for good reason.

A vortex of killing intent surged endlessly from Elahan’s body. It pressed down with a weight like gravity multiplied several times over.

The will of a Master rampaged unchecked, giving force to what should have been an intangible Aura. Wind grew stronger, dragging sand upward, and the once-still air convulsed until it birthed an untimely sandstorm.

“Elahan! Stop!” Leon shouted.

“Oops.”

Leon’s sharp voice jolted her from her trance, and she gasped as if waking from a dream. Only then did the wind subside, the swirling sand settling back to the ground. And it wasn’t just sand.

With a thump, a bald eagle flying overhead suddenly lost consciousness and plummeted into the dunes. Monsters caught in the radius suffered the same—hearts stopping outright or collapsing in seizures before they could even react.

Killing with intent. It was a technique on the threshold of Leon’s Psychokinesis, crushing life with sheer force of will.

“I-I’m sorry! I got too worked up! When you said those monsters were heretics, I took it too literally...”

“No, no. That’s my fault.”

“No, Hero Leon, you did nothing wrong! It was all me! The priests always scolded me since I was young, and that my emotions were too intense...”

Then she suddenly fell silent. Following her cue, the other two heightened all five senses at once.

Something was approaching. With nothing in sight all the way to the horizon, the only possible direction was—

“Underground! It’s coming from below!”

Leon shouted after detecting it with his Wave-Reverberation technique. A heartbeat later, something burst upward at the speed of a racing stallion, encircling them as it erupted from the ground.

It was a massive, revoltingly grotesque worm.

“A Sand Worm?!”

Its body stretched tens of meters, even up to a hundred, and it was infamous as the scourge of desert travelers, its threat ranking it at A.

Its hide was tough and rubbery, resistant to blades, and its magic resistance was strong against all but ice. From its enormous maw spewed streams of acid and sand, as devastating as a breath of fire—enough to cripple anyone caught head-on.

“There’s more than one...! At least five!” Leon exclaimed, unable to pin down every presence due to the disruption of the dunes on his Wave-Reverberation.

Elahan, flustered, stammered in panic, “O-oh no, is this my fault? Did I spread my killing intent too wide and attract them?!”

“Maybe, maybe not! Either way, we fight!”

“Y-yes! As you command, my Hero!”

Snapping to her senses, she summoned the Holy Iron Breaker and swept the colossal golden hammer in a horizontal arc.

The dust cloud threatening to engulf them scattered like chaff. The force was absurd.

Every time I see it, that weapon’s terrifying...

Leon let out a breath of relief. Thank the heavens she was an ally. He drew his sword.

Sand Worms, regardless of how tough their hide was, couldn’t withstand the Holy Sword’s edge—a blade burning with expert-level Aura. None of the three was in real danger against such beasts.

Karen was the first to charge the worm that had surfaced, shouting, “Alright, taste my new technique!”

The shadows around her deepened, then coalesced into a duplicate bearing her exact silhouette. It was a doppelgänger of pure Aura, solid and tangible. The Sand Worm opened its maw and swallowed the shadow clone whole.

“What?!” Leon faltered, but when he saw Karen’s sly grin, he realized it was deliberate.

And indeed it was. A shadow clone was just Aura given form. It could be controlled like a human body, or reshaped into anything else. For the worm, it was no different than gulping down a bomb.

“Jet-Black Dance, Shadow Control, First Form: Parasite in the Lion’s Belly.”

A secret technique, detonating Aura inside an enemy’s body, like a worm devouring its host from within. Two seconds later, the clone burrowed into the Sand Worm’s heart and exploded.

With a boom, a chunk of its tough body burst apart, spraying blood and entrails. Even a monster with monstrous vitality couldn’t survive that.

Leon was impressed, but his gaze soon shifted. The monster he had to face had only just surfaced; it would take a moment longer to reach him.

What about Elahan? He was curious what havoc her monstrous hammer would wreak, so he turned toward her. Or rather, he tried to.

“Huh?”

A massive shadow suddenly engulfed him, blotting out the burning sun. Strange, since the sky was clear with not a single cloud. Looking up instinctively, Leon saw it.

“What...?”

It was a Sand Worm, fifty meters long and weighing dozens of tons, floating in midair. It was an unreal sight.

Before he could even process it, the airborne worm burst like a water-filled balloon, showering gore and flesh like rain.

And naturally, standing directly beneath it, Leon was drenched head to toe. The stench was horrific, the texture worse.

Soaked in dark green fluid, Leon stared blankly at Elahan—the Saintess of the Holy Church who had batted a Sand Worm into the sky with a single blow.

On the verge of tears, she shook her head frantically, apologizing, “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I really didn’t mean it! I didn’t think it would fly that far just from one swing!”

“...”

“I’ll wash your clothes for you! E-even your underwear!” 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

Ignoring her flustered panic, Leon just gave a wry laugh. This was the mightiest weapon of the Holy Church.

For centuries, the Evil Order had marked her kind as the absolute threat number one, evacuating entire regions the moment their presence was known.

The Eighth Saintess, Elahan, the Holy Church’s greatest strategic weapon, had proven herself in a single strike.