Thirty-Four
 
Kon dropped into the shade with a gasp of relief, letting Diur slide off of his shoulder as he slammed into the ground. Diur gave a startled gasp but twisted to land slightly more gracefully than Kon had. Her legs wobbled for a moment before folding under her and depositing on the sand covered stone.
“We lost it,” Diur said, her eyes looking out and across the sand dune that Kon had just trekked over. The oversized snake had followed them lethargically, not seeming to care that they ran. It had taken ten minutes for Kon to regain control of his faculties as he battled the false fear. Once he had, the snake had begun to accelerate to cut the distance between them. They had found this outcropping of rock with a jagged overhang when the beast had been only meters behind them.
The moment the shifting sand had turned to stone the snake had turned and fled. Kon was too tired to really care about the snake running away. He lay there on the hot stone gasping. Diur got up after a minute and rummaged through the pack on his back before shoving the half full canteen of water at him.
“Drink it. Slowly.” Kon was too tired to argue with her to try to split the water. He took a mighty quaff, ignoring her warning. Hot water filled his mouth and slid down and he gasped in joy. Some of the water sloshed out of his mouth and down his throat and down his chest.
“Don’t! Waste!” Diur said, smacking his ribs with the back of her hand. Kon coughed and water spat out of his mouth and dribbled down his chin, furthering Diur’s scowl.
“No. Hitting.” Kon said, each word slow as he still struggled to catch his breath.
“We need to get ready to move. I don’t know what it was that drove that beast off, but I don’t want to be here when it comes back,” Diur said. The overhang offered them some shelter from the beating sun, but little for the heat.
“What is this?” Diur muttered to herself. She ran her hands over a piece of the stone at her feet as Kon slowly got up.
“Stone?” Kon said. He scraped his foot back and forth to reveal plain, smooth stone.
“It’s worked. This isn’t a natural formation,” Diur said slowly. She turned to look at the overhang they had been hiding under and Kon turned with her. Now that he looked at it, he could see that it was a little too perfect.
“Could be part of an old roof?” He didn’t voice his thoughts out loud. He wanted out of the rift, not to explore one.
“Look at the curve. This was a building, Kon!” Diur was excited enough it pushed all of the past few minutes to the wayside. Kon groaned and let his head hang. They were definitely going to explore.
“If this was a building, then why’s it out here in a desert?” Kon asked.
“I don’t know. But natural buildings should always be investigated in a rift. There’s often treasures inside of them or relics,” Diur said as she walked back and forth, brushing her feet in long sweeping strides to send the thin coating of sand flying away.
Kon finished off the canteen and put it back in the pack before grabbing the rifle and tucking it into his shoulder. He followed behind her, looking around for anything that seemed like it could be a clue to the area.
“I have no idea what it would even look like.” They explored across the entire flat stone surface under the overhang but couldn’t find anything. Diur ran around the base of the small area, but couldn’t find any more stone. It was all soft, sifting sand. Kon didn’t follow her as she ran around, just leaned against the back of the overhang and waited for her to tire herself out.
“I can’t see anything.” Diur told him with a scowl. She looked behind her out at the sea of shifting sand and her expression hardened. Her aura flared around her as she lifted her foot and stomped down. Stone blew inward and Diur disappeared as she fell. Kon stood there for a moment, staring at the space that Diur had just occupied.
“Come on,” Kon groaned as he walked cautiously over to where the hole was before leaning over and peering down. A gray-white lite softened the gloom enough that Kon could easily see Diur standing looking around. The drop wasn’t that far, hardly eight feet. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
“Anything down there?” Kon asked.
“Not that I can see. But there’s a doorway and it leads deeper inside. I think this stretches under the dunes,” Diur said.
She turned and peered up at him and cocked an eyebrow. Kon groaned and jumped down, landing hard and his ankle rolled a bit under the loose stone. He cursed and stretched his ankle in short circles as Diur looked unimpressed.
Kon examined the room and realized that the light was from the very walls themselves. They glowed softly, hardly enough to see. He ran a finger over the closest wall and it was cool to the touch, an electric charge running over his spine. They were imbued with energy. Cool air washed over his face from the doorway that Diur was staring at.
“At least it’s cool in here,” Kon grumbled. It was still hot but it was no longer borderline unbearable. It was actually pleasant if the air wasn’t so stale. Each breath filled his lungs with antiquity.
“Stay close. Rifts normally don’t have traps or things like that at this level, but it’s not unheard of.” The duo walked through the door and into a long hallway that stretched out into the distance. It was definitely running under the dunes.
There was no sound in the building except for their boots and muffled breathing. Kon swept the rifle back and forth, but there was nothing to see. Just a straight hall that ran further and further away.
“This isn’t creepy to you?” Kon finally asked. His exhaustion had caught up to him and the rifle was no longer sweeping back and forth, just held lightly as he walked. The weight of the pack was heavy enough that some distant part of him whispered to drop the supplies and leave it all behind. That would be monumentally stupid though.
“It is. But it’s better than being out there in the sun. I think this is a Peak F-Grade rift. We were in an E-Grade territory, but those snakes herded us to their rift.”
“That freaky snake was a peak F-Grade?” Kon asked.
“No. Upper probably. I couldn’t tell. I had just spent all my collected energy,” Diur said the last part as if to defend her performance. Kon just shrugged. He couldn’t tell at all.
“That won’t be the guardian then. The guardian wouldn’t leave the anchor behind,” Kon said. Diur just grunted. Since her blast of power, she was powering forward on pure willpower.
“What was that. The whole cut down the forest thing?” Kon asked after another minute of silence. They weren’t moving fast and his mind was already bored.
“A technique. I channeled the power I have cultivated and stored inside of my body and used it as an extension of my sword.”
“Ohhhh. I don’t get it,” Kon admitted.
“Cultivators draw in rift energy and filter it, condensing it and forming our own cores eventually. I haven’t done that. My body is infused with energy though. I pulled all of that energy out and used it in a technique. Techniques are way for cultivators to safely use rift energy.”
“Ohhhh. Yeah I get that,” Kon said. He nodded his head around for a moment, letting the silence press on them for less than thirty seconds before he broke again.
“Is that why you got so weak? You used up all your energy to throw a blast of power?”
“Yes. I shouldn’t have been able to use that technique at all. Normally it requires a core to power, but I was able to modify the technique and not kill myself. If you understood how impressive that was, you’d be thanking me for risking my life.”
“Thank you. I don’t need to know how impressive it was to say thank you. And if you say it’s impressive, I believe you. You’re good. Alice thinks so anyways.” Diur was quiet for a moment before nodding to herself.
“Knight Alice is a skilled fighter. There’s a brutality to her that I don’t think anyone in my clan, aside from the guardians, could have matched.”
“Guardians?”
“Cultivators are fighters in general. Guardians are only fighters. It’s what their entire focus is.”
“Cool. Were you planning on being a guardian?”
“No. Grandfather had plans with my parents about my place in the clan. Guardians are respected members, but at the end of the day, they’re blades and everyone is nervous around them to some degree. My parents thought I should stand at the top, an Elder first and then trying to ascend to Patriarch of the Clan.”
“That’s your clan's leader? The patriarch?”
“Yes and no. More like the day-to-day leader. The Ancestors are the true leaders of the clan, but they’re often incommunicado for long periods of time. After you pass through the D-Grade, it gets harder and harder to pierce the next realm. The Ancestors can spend years to gain just a small sliver of advancement.”
“That’s brutal.” Kon didn’t say anything about how Knights just needed to kill more rift monsters. And learn full runes.
“Look, a doorway,” Diur said, breaking away from their conversation. Kon leaned past her to look at said doorway and groaned when he realized it wasn’t a doorway but a stairwell leading down.