The soft breeze of the winds constantly blows as the group makes their way towards the remains of the Hamberck spaceship. They had been there once before, so they knew the path leading to the site well enough.
The walk to Rointger Outpost had taken them an hour, and it took them around 10 minutes to reach the remains using the hoverbike. Although it may seem that the distance is much shorter in comparison, walking to the remains would've taken another hour to reach. The hoverbikes were simply a decision made by Montri for convenience, seeing as he already had connections with Juno anyway.
Eventually, huge scraps of metal began to appear on the horizon, marking their arrival at the point of interest. The sun perfectly sits behind the remains and stays there even after they've reached the spaceship.
The sun has never moved at all, in fact, and has stayed exactly at that place for their entire lives. The planet stays in eternal dawn, and the concept of day and night is unfathomable for its inhabitants.
"It's kinda something I've always wondered, y'know. How is it like to know when to work and when to sleep just by looking at the sky?"
"It's definitely not as convenient as you think," Montri scoffs. "Who needs to look up when you can just pull out?" he states as he gestures taking out his phone.
"It's not just about the time y'know," Raya then refutes, waving his finger. "I can imagine all the different variations of already beautiful views of this place."
"Beautiful views of sand, sand, and sand..." He murmurs behind him.
After a while of circling around the colossal structure, they reach a suitable opening to enter through, that being one of the engines of the ship. Before they enter though, they take a moment to stop, knowing that the path forward will be dangerous.
"Alright, gang. Ready to get in? No backing around once we enter," Montri mocks.
Raya only laughs at this warning, taking it very lightly. "Oh please. We're experienced, and we've been here before anyway."
"I'm just making sure, just in case." Montri gives a quick laugh.
"Oh, that does remind me of something though," Akatsuki informs, making the two pause for a moment as he searches through his bag.
"Here you go." Two cans of soda were tossed at Montri and Raya. "Your favorites, as usual."
"Sweet!" Montri exclaims, before taking a sip of his soda. "These are the next best things to booze."
"Thanks for the treat!" Raya happily voices as he drinks the soda as well.
Kisakyu also joins in on their quick energy boost, chugging down on his own soda can. "Ilanta..." he thinks. "Disgustingly good."
After the quick break, they waste no time and head inside the gigantic spaceship, with the goal of extracting artifacts from the desert worms that live there.
The artifacts that are used to channel energy can come in many different forms. Some more complex artifacts used mainly for combat purposes can be found in the ruins of the previous civilization that used to live on the planet, while other purer sources of energy are naturally found in some plants and creatures.
The desert worms that frequently reside in the remains of the spaceship contain an exceptional amount of energy inside of the artifacts that are a part of their organs. Because of that, the place has become a risky but rewarding place to earn lots of money at once.
"Alright! The sand should get deeper ahead of us. You don't want to damage any of Juno's property, after all. The repair costs are ridiculous!"
As they near the aforementioned spot, they start to slow down their hoverbikes to a point of full stop. Getting off, they slowly walk through the now treacherous territory of the giant desert worms, fully preparing that at any moment, something might try to swallow them.
"The silence is really getting to me..." Kisakyu remarks. He walks through the sand exceptionally carefully, waiting for the moment the creatures sense their presence.
"We've been here multiple times, just treat it like a game! Some big creature may come at you, but it's not like you're not strong enough to pummel it," Montri instead reassures. Kisakyu tries to heed his advice and acts more laxed, looking at Raya who also reassures him with a smile.
"It's not like I'd ever be scared of games if it weren't for its ambience... Maybe I should've brought headphones to distract myself..."
Suddenly, the ground trembles beneath them. They all squeal in response, immediately tensing up. Feeling the ground shake increasingly, they realize their cue to take action.
"We're gonna fight!" Montri shouts. He signals the start of the fight as he pulls out his dual revolvers to shoot at the giant worm who just tried to swallow them beneath their very feet.
Dodging it, Kisakyu and Raya attack with their own powers. Raya starts by sending his dragon to tear a chunk of the creature's vulnerable part caused by Montri's earlier shots before Kisakyu fabricates a holographic long spike to skewer the worm through the wound to a wall.
It lay motionless, and only after a few seconds did they pronounce it probably dead.
"Awesome!" Montri celebrates. He approaches the worm and climbs on it, before dissecting a specific area to obtain the artifact they were looking for. "We got really lucky with that fatal blow."
"You waited a while before shooting it though. You were definitely waiting for its vital areas to emerge!" Raya closes up on the worm to inspect its wound, noting how Kisakyu's spike pierced exactly through one of its vital organs with the guidance of Montri and Zhaohuo.
"Just because I tried to get a good timing doesn't mean it purely depends on skill. Thanks for the compliment, though."
Raya simply scoffs with a smile, before heading back to their hoverbikes. Kisakyu thinks about their short dialogue, making sure to remember the exact location of the worms' vital spot.
"Where else are we going?" Kisakyu asks.
"It's not a 'where' question that'll lead us to the worms, it's a 'what we'll be doing'. We'll make as much ruckus as possible until we inevitably catch the worms' attention!"
"This sounds like a horrible idea... What if that encounter already gathered their attention?"
"That's a good point. We'll have it easier then!"
Although he doesn't quite agree, Kisakyu can't help but smile a little at his agreement with him and looks back at the direction of their hoverbikes, only to have that smile immediately fade into oblivion.
"...Where are our hoverbikes?"
The group suddenly felt a dreadful sense of bewilderment, but none took it harder than Montri. He rushes over to the location where the hoverbikes used to be, and frantically curses under his breath.
"Oh no no no no, I will not pay Juno those absurd—"
Suddenly, the ground beneath them shakes, and before they can even process it, a giant worm completely swallows them whole, they let out cries of help, but their gasps immediately silence as the worm closes its gaping mouth.
The inside of the worm is hard to see and paired with the sand that slowly suffocates them, they're basically separated from each other in the tiny labyrinth of an organ system.
Desperately, Kisakyu tries to create something to bust them out of the creature, but he constantly loses focus as the worm continues to wriggle uncontrollably. He almost gives up hope when he suddenly sees something in the corner of his eye, barely visible in the darkness.
"It's the hoverbikes!" he exclaims out loud.
With an idea, he crawls through the moist space and eventually reaches one of the hoverbikes. Reaching for the controls. Getting a grip on it, he then turns it on, causing the fans to start spinning fast.
From there, he puts his hand on top of the fans, and using his power, he creates tiny little vertices that connect as they get propelled by the fans and stick to the worm's body, each one causing a stinging pain like being pierced by millions of needles at once. The setup allows him to launch a constant attack without focusing much, eventually leading the worm to writhe in pain and launch all of them out of it.
"The hoverbikes!" Montri happily calls out.
The problem wasn't resolved yet though, as Kisakyu was left hanging on his hoverbike while the deactivated one fell to the sand alongside the rest of the group. Swiftly, he climbs on it so he can quickly help his friends.
At the bottom, the two immediately jump back up to handle the plethora of other worms that have surrounded them, they weave and dodge their charges until they reach the other hoverbike, hurriedly trying to turn it on.
"Montri, watch out!" Raya calls out beside him as he turns behind to see a worm charging straight at him.
With some time left, he reloads his revolver with a different type of bullet and aims at the worm. He fails to shoot it before he gets swallowed again, but the worm instantly dies after Montri's bullets—which turned out to be explosive—blow it up from the inside.
"That's gonna bill me for cleanup costs..."
He looks over to the hoverbike, already full of thoughts about what to do with the hoverbikes afterward. Raya calls him out to go back to trying to escape while he approaches the hoverbike to turn it on himself.
"Stop caring about those prices over your life! Let's go!"
"No no, you don't get it, she charges absurdly high for these things!" he yells in despair. Raya doesn't take it seriously but sighs in pity knowing that his attitude is probably what caused Juno to charge him so high.
Their conversation was cut short as three more juvenile worms appeared out of the sand, surrounding them and immediately charging at them.
Just as Raya was about to send his dragon out to handle them, Kisakyu flew beside the worms, standing up and turning around to grab two of them before pinning them to a nearby wall. The dragon then targets the last one, biting it in half and returning to Raya.
"The hoverbike's up! Let's go!" Raya signals. Getting on them, they head towards the direction Kisakyu charged through, which happened to be the way they came from.
Meanwhile, Kisakyu nearly falls off from his previous move but manages to safely return to a sitting position. Now, he has to maneuver through the tens of worms who all seek after him. With a short shriek, he braces for the racing course he'll have to complete.
He tilts left and right rapidly in order to avoid the worms who track him with little time to react. Frequently, he gets close to losing complete balance because of the sudden movements he's constantly forced to do, keeping him on edge. A sudden worm charging at him from the right even pushes him to perform a jump over the worm and land back on his hoverbike, not before launching a spike to discourage it from attacking again, of course.
He's frustrated that he still doesn't have the full capability to just create a large pizza cutter to slice it in half, but he focuses back on the escape knowing that he won't improve if he's dead.
All of a sudden, a worm manages to catch him, and rams him toward a wall as he lets out a yelp. Trying to get the worm not to close its mouth on him, he desperately keeps it open, reinforcing his hands and feet with his geometric constructs.
Before long, his friends come and save him, with Montri shooting another explosive bullet to ward off the worm. Kisakyu falls back on his hoverbike and tries to speed away from the area, but another worm charges at him, this time from in front of him. He creates a cube to push it away from him until Raya's dragon comes to take it away.
It was nearly impossible to escape by now though, as the worms relentlessly targeted Kisakyu every time he managed to take one down.
"Hgk— Kah! Does all this commotion have something to do with that first worm we killed!?"
"Well, something— Something must've made them really mad like this!" Raya shouts. He too was dealing with the worms that were attacking Montri and his hoverbike, and he could only send Zhauhuo to help Kisakyu so frequently.
"That first worm we killed was pretty big! Maybe it's their great-great-grandfather or some stupid member of their family tree!" Montri manages to blurt out his theory amidst the chaos he's also trying to handle.
One after the other, the worms make it harder to run away, and they make little progress in escaping the situation that they are in.
"Hk, I—" Kisakyu gasps as he accidentally slips and inadvertently sets the hoverbike to start moving at a fast speed.
He would've eventually fallen off of the hoverbike, but whilst being propelled forward, a worm charged right at him, flinging him high up to what remains of one of the spaceship's rooms, with the floor slanting downwards to the opening Kisakyu got launched through.
He lets out more grunts and wheezes before landing quite roughly. Laying right behind a wall, he uses it to get himself up to a sitting position before checking for any injuries.
"Akh... It hurts. That's a pretty deep cut... shit..."
He lightly presses on the parts he felt pain in, hoping that nothing was dislocated, while also looking at his injuries. Concluding that nothing was severely injured, he rushes back to the entrance to regroup with the rest.
"Gah!"
He falls backward in surprise, seeing a worm violently trying to reach out for him. It barely fits through the opening, and so it rashly tries to wriggle its way further. He frantically runs away from the worm and enters through the door in the wall. Only after a while of running did he stop to take a look around the environment he was in.
It was a corridor filled with many doors, with some open while others weren't. With nothing chasing him, he slowly looks through the signs beside the door, as well as the rooms inside of them.
"These rooms... Is this place a dormitory?"