The Red Sand Plain.
An endless, flat expanse stretched from beneath his feet all the way to the horizon.
The gravelly ground was a dark, dusky red, as if it had been soaked in blood for countless years and then dried in the sun. Stepping on it produced a faint, crunching sound.
Sparse clumps of withered, yellow grass sprouted from the cracks in the gravel, shivering in the hot wind.
The most striking feature was the ruins of a city situated on the plain.
It was absolutely massive.
Stretching from beneath Ethan's feet to the edge of the horizon, everything within his line of sight consisted of collapsed buildings, shattered stone walls, and overturned wooden roofs.
These ruins were half-buried in the dark red sand, with only their upper halves exposed like the arms of drowning victims reaching out from the water.
The city walls, once dozens of meters high, were now reduced to a few crooked, broken sections with jagged, uneven edges.
Behind the walls lay what had once been streets and complexes of buildings.
Tall wooden buildings had been uprooted, their skeletal frames scattered across the ground. Planks and beams lay piled on top of one another, mostly buried by the sand.
The domes of stone fortresses had caved in, their walls collapsing inward, and the rubble had piled up into small mounds.
The entire city had been buried alive by sand churned up from deep underground by some immense power.
Sand had flooded every street, filled every plaza, and submerged the ground floors of every building.
Only a few of the tallest towers managed to peek out with their top stories, standing gray and dusty amidst the sea of sand.
A dull thud came from behind Ethan.
Roly lay half-collapsed on the gravel, her body slumped awkwardly.
“Here... I used to train here.”
Roly’s gaze swept across the ruins.
The open ground at the foot of the city wall was where she had held a longbow for the first time.
That veteran had smacked the back of her head with his rough palm, scolding her that her drawing posture looked like a lame lizard.
The three-story wooden building at the street corner had been the training camp's cafeteria.
Every evening after drills, thousands of young warriors would squeeze inside, scrambling for a sour soup brewed from sandthorn fruits, a specialty of the Red Sand Plain.
Now, the wreckage of that wooden building lay scattered across dozens of meters, and the large iron pot used to hold the soup was half-buried in the sand, covered in rust.
“I trained here,” Roly repeated, her voice growing even quieter.
She thought of that veteran, of the plump cafeteria cook who always ladled half a scoop more sour soup for her, and of the companions who had been scolded alongside her as “green recruits.”
They were all dead.
Or dying.
Ethan withdrew his gaze from the ruins.
“Tsk,” he clicked his tongue.
Roly's shoulders trembled.
Having followed Ethan for the past few days, she had learned to read the outsider's emotions from his tone, expressions, and gestures. The clicking sound had been very soft, but his tone carried a hint of regret.
What was this outsider regretting?
“What a pity,” Ethan said.
His gaze swept over the ruined buildings half-buried in the sand, over the gullies where the outlines of streets could still be faintly seen, and over the broken section of the distant city wall that still shimmered with a faint runic light.
“If only I could have been the one to slaughter everyone in a city this size. How wonderful that would have been.”
Roly froze.
She stared blankly at Ethan's back.
She had heard every single word clearly, but her brain felt as if it had ground to a sudden halt.
Let Ethan slaughter them?
How many people lived in this city?
When she was training in Ironwood City, she had heard the instructor say that Red Sand City on the Red Sand Plain was the largest settlement for the seven neighboring tribes.
There were fifty thousand permanent warriors alone, fifty Sentinels, and two Priests. Combined with the elderly, women, children, and refugees who had migrated from surrounding tribes, the total population exceeded 1.14 million.
One million one hundred and forty thousand people.
Yet this outsider was saying how wonderful it would have been if he had been allowed to kill them all.
What he regretted was that the lives of an entire city had not been taken by his own hands.
Roly’s lips trembled, and a faint wheeze escaped her throat, but she could not utter a single word.
Over the past few days, she had followed behind Ethan, watching him casually massacre the stragglers and collect her people's gear into his storage device.
She had thought Ethan killed those stragglers for merit, for his mission.
Once they were dead, that was it, and he would move on to another place to continue.
Only now did she realize that Ethan was not doing it for merit.
The merit was merely a byproduct.
What Ethan wanted was the slaughter itself.
The more, the better.
The more, the better!
The! More! The! Better!
“Are all outsiders such demons?”
Roly's voice squeezed out from the depths of her throat.
She kept her head lowered, her forehead pressed against the gravelly ground, her long, pointed ears flattened tightly against the sides of her head as her entire body trembled like a leaf.
Ethan did not answer Roly's question.
To answer such a foolish question would be the height of folly.
He turned around and walked toward the city.
He had only taken a couple of steps toward the city when he suddenly paused.
A faint fluctuation rippled up from beneath his feet.
Plant Affinity transmitted the sensory feedback from the root systems buried deep beneath the sand to him.
Those roots were still alive.
Though they had been crushed under the sand for an unknown length of time, and though they lacked sunlight and moisture, they were still alive.
They were transmitting a faint conscious ripple.
There were people.
There were people beneath the ruins.
Not stragglers—the numbers were wrong.
Stragglers would not huddle by the dozens deep underground without moving, breathing steadily with slow heartbeats.
Someone was hiding.
They were hiding in bunkers deep underground, having escaped the attacks of that Earth-attribute Wizard and the subsequent cleanup.
They had been hiding for who knew how long, thinking they were finally safe.
The corners of Ethan's mouth slowly curled upward.
He was happy.
A pure, heartfelt happiness.
He stood there, his shoulders trembling slightly, his fingers instinctively clenching and unclenching.
Emerald-green light flickered in his palms, and the surrounding air began to vibrate slightly.
Bound by vines behind him, Roly felt it.
She snapped her head up, her eyes reflecting Ethan's back.
Ethan's shoulders were shaking.
This outsider was laughing.
Roly's heart sank instantly.
Over the past few days, she had seen how Ethan looked when he killed stragglers.
Expressionless, with a casual wave of his hand, Flying Leaves and wood pillars would pour out.
Once they were dead, he would simply leave.
He wouldn't even bat an eye.
Just how many of her people would it take to make Ethan this happy?
It wasn't just a few stragglers, nor was it dozens of wounded soldiers—it was survivors hiding deep underground.
Roly opened her mouth, a faint sound squeezing out of her throat as if she wanted to say something, but she swallowed it back down.
Ethan spread the five fingers of his right hand.
Emerald-green light welled up from his palm, trickling down his fingertips and dripping onto the dark red gravel.
The light seeped into the ground.
Dozens of meters underground, the plant roots that had been buried beneath the sand for who knew how long began to move in unison.
They burrowed out of the sand, squeezed through rock crevices, and reached out from the gaps in the wooden planks of abandoned cellars.
The roots spread underground, weaving into a massive sensory network that fed everything deep beneath the earth back to Ethan standing upon the ruins.
He located the bunkers.
Dozens of bunkers, each harboring at least a thousand people.
There were caves carved into rock faces, walls reinforced with wooden planks and stones, stored dry rations, and water jars.
And there were the Amons huddled together.
The elderly, women, children, a few lightly wounded soldiers, and occasionally a warrior or two maintaining order.
Their eyes gleamed with a faint light in the darkness. Some whispered prayers, some coaxed children, and some checked their remaining weapons.
They were still alive.
Ethan turned around and looked at Roly.
Rate on N.U.
