So Dahlia did as Kari instructed, leaning out the circular wooden frame as she dry heaved, trying her best to hold her stomach.
It wasn’t easy, after all, sitting by the window seat of a tavern that just so happened to be ten metres above ground… and like a shoddy ship on a stormy sea.
Looking inwards, she was met with a brilliantly cosy sight: warm wooden walls and floorboards, little stools and round tables scattered throughout, and multi-coloured plush cushions and potted plants to break up the even earthly colours of the tavern. Multiple open doors behind the bartender’s counter led into Safi’s kitchen, the two bedrooms upstairs, and the single washroom in the back. Looking the windows, though, she was met with an endless desert—a sea of steaming, wavy golden sand—and it absolutely didn’t help that the giant cicada they were currently riding in was sprinting at thirty kilometres an hour like it was nobody’s business.
Suffice it to say, it was a bumpy ride. It’d been a bumpy ride the entire past week she’d been travelling across the desert. Stools and tables slid along the seams between the floorboards, rearranging themselves like levers following zigzaggy slits. The cushions were flying everywhere. The potted plants were, thankfully, bolted into the ground, but the firefly lanterns overhead were swinging and banging into each other and there was also an Arcana Hasharana laughing her ass off with a glass of juice in her hands—Safi was just humming as he prepared lunch behind the bartender’s counter, and Alice was comfortably seated across Dahlia’s window table, both of them completely used to the tavern shaking like a permanent earthquake.
“You’ll be fine,” Alice said, laughing as she threw a small cushion across the table to whack Dahlia in the face. “Emparatoria’s a good cicada. Uncle bought it, like, three years ago from the Tamera, and it hasn’t attacked anyone even once. It requires little to no sustenance, just a few hours of rest every night, it can burrow underground to go into dormancy whenever we need to settle down somewhere. If we want it to, it can even fall asleep and not move a muscle for upwards of an entire year!”
“Really… impressive,” she mumbled, flinging the cushion away as she slammed all four hands on the table in front of her, leaning forward and trying to stabilise herself. Alice did the same, humming cheerily, and their faces were so close to each other Dahlia thought about headbutting the girl. Just for fun. “Can’t you tell… ‘Emparatoria’... to walk a bit slower, then? Are we in a rush? To where?”
“To the exam! It’s in a month or so, and if you don’t show up in time, the proctors won’t let you join the first stage halfway through!”
Dahlia wasn’t thinking that far ahead, of course. She’d like to just survive the next ten minutes, but it didn’t seem like that was going to be easy, either—her dagger antennae perked as her gut told her to stick her head out the window, so that she did, getting a breath of sandy air while she squinted at the distant storm they were going to run into.
“... Alice.”
“Yeah?”
“There’s a sandstorm in front of us.”
“That’s normal. The Sharaji Desert is mostly calm on the inside, but there’s always a nasty sandstorm blowing somewhere along the borders of the desert,” Alice said, shrugging nonchalantly as she gulped down the rest of her juice. “Getting around the desert is easy. Getting or the desert is gonna be rocky. No way around it, though, so just don’t open your mouth.”
“You’re free to put on your seatbelt if you want,” Safi called out from behind the counter, pointing at a belt underneath her stool. “Just don’t open your mouth. Seriously. We both ate mouthfuls of sand when we rode into the desert two months ago, and let me tell you, sand is quite unkind on your palate. You’ll be tasting sand on everything you eat for the next three days.”
“Yep. But there’s just no way around it. Even if I make silk traps to board up the doors and windows, sand’s gonna find its way in.”
“Mhm. No way around it. It’s a violent but small storm, anyways. We’ll be in and out of it in three minutes.”
Dahlia scowled as the uncle and niece combo nodded proudly, completely indifferent to the fact that the sandstorm was churning and roaring and literally annihilating the entire horizon of sand just a few hundred metres in front of them. Even if Emparatoria could survive the storm and emerge through the other side unharmed, the fact that they weren’t even bothering to close the front door and board up the windows was making her really, anxious—they’d live alright, but then they’d have to spend the entire rest of the day shovelling hot and sticky sand out of the tavern.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
[Name: Dahlia Sina]
[Grade: C-Rank Giant-Class]
[Class: Assassin Bug]
[Swarmblood Art: Recollection]
[Aura: 711 (+170)]
[Points: 65]
[Strength: 3 (+3), Speed: 4 (+1), Toughness: 4 (+2), Dexterity: 3 (+1), Perception: 3 (+1)]
[// MUTATION TREE]
[T1 Mutation | Swarmguard Deity Lvl: 2
[T2 Mutations | Basic Chitin Lvl: 3Basic Antennae Lvl: 2
[T3 Mutations | Basic Claws | Stridulating Throat | Basic Setae] 150P
[// EQUIPPED SWARMSTEEL]
[Assassin Bug Claw Gauntlets (Grade: C-Rank)(Str: +2/3)(Dex: +1/2)(Aura: +110/300)]
[Adaptable Desert Locust Greaves (Grade: E-Rank)(Spd +1/1](Tou +2/2)(Aura: +30/60)]
[Adaptable Glasswing Butterfly Goggles (Grade: F-Rank)(Per: +1/1)(Aura: +10/10)]
[Firefly Bracers (Grade: C-Rank)(Str: +1/2)(Tou: +0/1)(Aura: +20/250)]
Dahlia clicked her tongue irritably as she rose from her stool, trying not to fall as she stumbled to the centre of the tavern like a drunk.
she thought, kneeling and placing all four palms flat on the floor as she did.
[Toughness: 4 (+1) → 5 (+1)]
[Aura: 711 (+170) → 775 (+170)]
[Points: 65 → 1]
Kari advised, nodding on her shoulder as she closed her eyes and inhaled coolly, trying to focus.
Then, she pried her eyelids wide open and exhaled—and her palms the tavern, making the tails of her cloak beat like wings the moment Emparatoria waded into the sandstorm.
“Swarmblood Art,” she whispered, “Scourgewind.”
The desert outside the tavern became a dark, blurry mess of wind and sand grains. Window shutters slammed closed and open, floorboards groaning and lanterns threatening to snap off their chains. Alice had the gall to grab another glass of juice from Safi the moment the storm hit, so the uncle and niece combo immediately screamed as clouds of sand smashed them off their feet, ragdolling them around the tavern.
For Dahlia’s part, though, her entire body was vibrating so fast it formed an ultra tiny ‘bubble’ around her, protecting her from the sand and any small shrapnel flying around the tavern.
Kari remarked as her teeth chittered, her skin and flesh feeling like they were going to slide off her bones for how violently she was vibrating in place.
she thought, gritting her teeth as she tried to hold on for another two and a half minutes.
A pause.
She wished the pause would last forever, but then Kari reappeared on the bridge on her nose to stare straight into her eyes.
One minute. Two minutes. Three minutes. For a few more moments, she wondered if they were ever going to pass through the storm or if Safi had just said three minutes to calm her down, but then the howling winds died as quickly they’d come to live—and she deactivated her Swarmblood Art, letting herself gasp for breath as furniture, sand, and Alice fell from the ceiling, Emparatoria resuming a leisurely walking pace across the desert.
While Alice groaned and Safi stood up behind the counter calmly, she clawed to her feet and looked around. Bluntly speaking, she couldn’t even see a tavern anymore. Everywhere was just sand. She see the window seat, though, so she trudged over and plopped herself down after swiping the mounds of sand off the furniture, sighing aloud.
While Emparatoria continued marching across the endless sea of gold outside, Alice eventually joined her on the other side of the table, sand in her hair and wings and slipping between the seams of her silk-woven face—face, of course. She’d yet to change to a different mask, and at this point, Dahlia didn’t even know if she wanted to see a different Alice anymore.
People would probably mistake them for twins, but… well.
That was a problem she’d just have to deal with once they reached the exam venue.
“You really use the Swarmblood Arts of the bugs you eat, huh?” Alice grinned, sputtering clouds of sand as she leaned on the table, plopping her chin in her hands. “I’m not gonna let you run from me until I figure out just what, exactly, an ‘assassin bug’ is. Once I figure out how to replicate your ‘weapons’ with my silk, I’ll let you leave, so show me all of your interesting abilities, okay?”
She coughed the clouds of sand back in Alice’s face, scowling mightily. “I’m not running away. Not… anymore.”
Alice’s grin grew even wider. “Good! I won’t let you, anyways! I’ll tie you up and stuff you in a barrel before I let you–”
“Where’s the Hasharana Entrance Exam venue, anyways?”
Kari and Alice pointed out the window at the exact same time, and her gaze followed their fingers.
She squinted the moment she noticed a faint silhouette on the far horizon.
From afar, it looked like a desert city built under a gargantuan ribcage.
“The City of Feasts!” Alice said cheerily. “We can be there by tomorrow morning, or we can be there by noon, so… Emparatoria! Go full speed!
And as the giant cicada screeched in response to its master’s command, Dahlia simply sighed again.
here with over four hundred members, where you can get notifications for chapter updates, check out my writing progress, and read daily facts about this insect-based world. My is here with up to eight advanced chapters for this story and Storm Strider and Thousand Tongue Mage, so it's twenty-four advanced chapters in total.
