Whispers in the Sandstorm
It was a landscape that could only be seen as having been ravaged by a sandstorm. There was no other way to explain the sight unfolding before their eyes.
Zahar and his team dismounted from their double-humped camels and entered the goblin village.
They saw goblin corpses half-buried in the sand.
The goblins' conditions were truly gruesome.
Their skin and muscles had been half-torn away as if gnawed by the sandstorm, and their entrails had spilled out, staining the sand a dark crimson.
The goblins' faces were hideously contorted, as if they had felt extreme terror and agony right up to the moment of death.
"What the hell happened here?"
Zahar placed a hand on one of the goblin corpses.
He could still feel a faint warmth.
"They haven't been dead for even an hour."
"This happened in just one hour? Then we should've seen the sandstorm too."
Felix wore an incredulous expression.
The occasional desert sandstorms destroyed everything in their path.
Only those who had experienced the terror of a sandstorm filling the entire horizon could truly understand it.
No matter how powerful an Awakener was, they couldn't guarantee survival if caught in a massive sandstorm.
It was a stark reminder of how insignificant humans were in the face of nature's immense disasters.
The problem was, if a sandstorm of that magnitude had hit, Zahar and his team couldn't have missed it.
No matter how much the massive sand dunes blocked their view, a storm capable of swallowing an entire goblin village whole would have been impossible to overlook.
"What the fuck is this?"
"What exactly happened here?"
The team members looked around with confused expressions.
There wasn't a single living goblin in sight.
With over a thousand goblins here, not one had survived.
It was a situation beyond their common sense.
Mandy knelt on one knee and examined a goblin corpse.
The goblin she was looking at wasn't an ordinary specimen.
"It's a hobgoblin."
Hobgoblins were stronger than dozens of regular goblins combined.
Some even possessed special skills.
E-rank or lower Awakeners stood no chance against them.
Yet such a powerful creature had met a miserable end.
Its flesh was completely stripped away, and even the exposed bones were smoothed as if sanded down.
No matter how she looked at it, the wounds didn't seem like those from a natural sandstorm.
And the lingering terror in the hobgoblin's wide-open eyes.
Mandy unconsciously furrowed her brow.
"A hobgoblin could've easily escaped a sandstorm. And it wouldn't have stayed for some sense of camaraderie with the village. I don't get it. What the hell happened here?"
She scratched her head irritably.
That was when it happened.
"Team leader! There's a survivor here."
Seido called out to Zahar in a panicked voice.
Mandy and the others rushed toward Seido.
Seido pointed at the ground and said to them,
"Looks like an underground prison."
"A prison?"
As Zahar looked down at the ground,
"Save us!"
"Get us out of here!"
Faint voices echoed from underground.
They were clearly human voices, not goblins.
Zahar shouted urgently.
"Dig up the sand, now!"
"Yes, sir!"
The team members frantically started digging without regard for order.
With the Awakeners combining their strength, they quickly cleared over a meter of sand. A stone ceiling of the prison came into view.
Darren smashed the prison ceiling with his fist.
Boom!
With a deafening explosion, the ceiling shattered, revealing the faces of the people bound inside.
Zahar recognized them.
"Rotton, Jack!"
Rotton was the leader of Team 2, and Jack was a team member.
Both were martial-type Awakeners with skills that couldn't be ignored.
They looked up at Zahar, their limbs bound.
Their faces were so badly beaten—black and blue, swollen beyond recognition—that they were barely identifiable.
Team 7 hurriedly pulled the two out and untied their bonds.
Zahar asked Rotton,
"What happened?"
"We got ambushed. The goblin bastards set a trap and waited for us."
"What about the rest of your team?"
"All dead. The goblins ate them."
"Damn."
"We almost got eaten too."
Rotton shuddered as if the mere thought was horrifying.
Jack's face was filled with terror as well.
The goblins had killed and devoured their comrades right in front of them.
The sight of a person being torn apart alive and vanishing into a goblin's maw had left an indelible trauma.
Even for Awakeners who lived close to death, witnessing a teammate being eaten alive was exceedingly rare.
Mandy asked Rotton,
"What about the sandstorm?"
"Huh?"
"How did the sandstorm happen?"
"No idea! It just suddenly blew in and engulfed the goblin village."
"Suddenly?"
"We were about to get eaten ourselves, so we were out of it. No time to look around. But when we came to, a massive sandstorm was swallowing the village."
"You didn't sense any warning signs?"
"Exactly!"
Mandy scowled deeply at Rotton's answer.
She wasn't interested in how Rotton had survived. Her concern was why the goblin village had ended up like this.
Then Rotton spoke cautiously.
"I might've been hallucinating, but I think I heard a human voice back then."
"What?"
"Faintly, from within the sandstorm... a human voice."
"A human voice? Are you sure?"
"Can't say for certain. I wasn't in my right mind at the time."
Rotton looked uncertain.
Zahar said,
"That's enough interrogation. He's not a prisoner."
"Got it."
"Take Rotton and Jack back to the shelter."
At Zahar's command, the team members escorted Rotton and Jack out of the goblin village.
Mandy lingered at the rear, looking back at the sand-buried goblin village.
They had rescued Rotton and Jack, but many questions remained unanswered.
"Maybe it's still too much for humans to push this far in..."
＊＊＊
The shelter built by the Pathfinder team was in a sandstone region.
They had constructed it in an area where sand had hardened into rock over long ages.
The shelter, made from a special material developed in Neo Seoul, measured fifty meters wide, fifty meters long, and five meters high.
Assembled from bulkheads transported by truck, it had no individual rooms.
As a temporary shelter, there was no need for complexity.
On one side inside the shelter, over a dozen massive trucks were parked.
Technicians were inspecting the sand-damaged trucks, while Awakeners bustled about on the other side.
That was when Team 7 entered the shelter.
Zahar shouted,
"Team 2 got hit. Take care of them quick."
"What?"
"Shit!"
The Awakeners rushed over.
Two healers attended to Rotton and Jack.
The leader of Team 1 asked Zahar,
"What happened? Why Team 2?"
"They said it was a goblin ambush."
"Ambushed by goblins?"
"It was a massive tribe, over a thousand strong. Even Team 1 would've had the same outcome."
"Really over a thousand goblins gathered there?"
"I saw it with my own eyes."
Team 1's leader's expression turned grave at Zahar's response.
"Insane. A thousand goblins..."
No goblin hordes this large existed near Neo Seoul.
Even low-grade monsters became a serious threat in such numbers, so they were culled preemptively.
Team 1's leader was an experienced Awakener, but he'd never seen a thousand-goblin horde.
"A goblin army that big. Unbelievable!"
Goblins were fundamentally the lowest-grade monsters.
They could be formidable in groups, but forming herds beyond a certain size was difficult.
They became prey for other monsters before they could.
Goblins sat at the very bottom of the monster ecosystem, constantly fleeing attacks from larger beasts.
Despite their prolific breeding, they struggled to form massive armies. Yet here was a village housing over a thousand.
It meant ideal breeding grounds for goblins.
Noticing Team 1's leader's concern, Zahar said,
"Fortunately, a sandstorm wiped out the goblin village."
"What?"
"Sounds ridiculous, but it's true. I saw it myself."
"If that's real, then we're lucky."
As Team 1's leader let out a belated sigh of relief,
Boom!
The shelter shook violently.
"What was that?"
"What's going on?"
Everyone inside the shelter exchanged startled glances.
Boom!
The shelter shook again, even harder.
Team 1's leader issued an urgent order.
"Find out what's happening."
"Yes, sir!"
Team 1 members dashed outside, only to return pale-faced moments later.
"B-big trouble. A cyclops is attacking outside."
"What? A cyclops?"
"Yes! It's hammering the shelter."
The faces of everyone inside the shelter changed.
Cyclopes, alongside ogres, were in the highest danger category.
Officially B-rank, but evaluated as more dangerous than A-rank monsters.
Over seven meters tall with overwhelming strength.
Immense magic resistance that deflected most spells.
Above all, they were bipedal and capable of thought.
That was the main reason cyclopes were rated higher risk than ogres, whose instincts overrode reason.
Roar!
Another massive impact rocked the shelter as the cyclops attacked.
The structure buckled severely, seams splitting. Then, a single massive eye appeared.
Undoubtedly a cyclops.
"Fuck!"
The shelter embodied Neo Seoul's technology.
It shrugged off attacks from most monsters without a scratch. Yet it was crumpling and tearing like paper.
The cyclops's attack power exceeded the shelter's defenses.
Any more hits, and it would collapse. They had to subdue the cyclops first.
As Team 1's leader was about to order an attack,
Bang!
Another explosion shook the shelter.
The opposite wall tore open, revealing two more cyclopes.
"Not just one?"
"No way!"
Despair spread across the faces inside the shelter.
One cyclops was already hard to handle. Three?
Team 1's leader and Zahar exchanged glances.
Team 1's leader commanded,
"Abandon the shelter. Teams, evacuate and return to Neo Seoul."
The Pathfinder teams bolted outside at his order.
Thud!
A massive club fell on one fleeing Awakener's head.
A cyclops attack.
The Awakener died instantly without a scream.
"Kuhuhu!"
The cyclops crunched the pulverized corpse like raw meat.
Not satisfied with one human, it attacked the others.
"Argh!"
"Gah!"
Screams echoed around the shelter.
The cyclopes, surrounding the shelter in a triangle, attacked the Awakeners, feasting at will.
Most Awakeners failed to break the encirclement and fell helplessly.
A massive cyclops blocked Team 7's path as they fled.
It was exceptionally huge.
Undoubtedly the leader of the cyclops pack.
They needed to distract it.
Zahar said to Anika,
"We need a sacrifice."
"Okay!"
Having worked together for so long, Anika instantly grasped his meaning.
Lightning flashed from Anika's hand, striking Mandy in the back.
Her Lightning Bolt spell.
Mandy collapsed without a scream.
Her body paralyzed, she couldn't move.
Anika spat on the back of Mandy's head and muttered,
"I've never liked you, bitch."
That was the last thing Mandy remembered.
Darkness soon enveloped her.
Thus, Mandy lost consciousness.