My Servant System

The walk through the desert was only furthering my belief that it was a vastly useless biome that simply had no purpose or reason to exist, especially not a desert that was overflowing with Fire Mana and had pockets of liquid glass that released toxic vapors into the air.

Those pools of glass were hidden quite well too, making it even worse since there was no way to actually see if we were close to one until we were just a few feet away; yes they released those vapors, but they were colorless and diffused into the air quickly, meaning we could only rely on their scent and taste to know we were nearby one.

Besides those pools there was nothing else of note in the vast expanse of sand all around us, which included two warring armies that were apparently a piece of our trial and the key to completing it; it was just empty and lifeless, so we were stuck wandering around aimlessly as we searched for something, anything at all to go off of and figure out what we should do.

That miniature hill we were walking towards proved to just be a sand dune that sloped down into a small valley before beginning another rise a few dozen feet in front of us; that was all we were greeted with upon climbing up to the top, and seeing countless dunes spread out around us was definitely not helping my current, jaded belief.

Soon enough we had entered a seemingly hellish reality of just walking through this desert and avoiding those dangerous glass pools whenever we could, enduring the absurdly, despicably scorching days and the utterly frigid nights.

For two days we walked aimlessly, sticking to a straight path and hoping to stumble across anything at all, wasting time inside of this trial and being made to weather these terrible conditions for as long as we could.

The only blessing was that we were never dehydrated thanks to my Water Magic, but the lack of fresh food made everything a little harder since we had to eat unseasoned jerky to fill our stomachs, though being able to fill our stomachs was simply a blessing in this desert.

By the time we actually had found something in this desert we were seemingly wandering around for eternity, but the second we came across the first battlefield all of that wear and exhaustion left our bodies at the sight before us.

Now, instead of just sand dunes and orange gold grains of sand taking up everything we could see, the world was drenched in blood and covered in bodies, broken armor and weapons, easily amounting to tens of thousands - maybe even more - of soldiers that had fallen in this area alone, and there seemed to be no end to the carnage before us.

The sun had baked this area far more than any other we had come across, which only meant that the corpses had been fast tracked through decomposition as the heat became trapped beneath their armor, cooking them after their terrible death.

Putrid barely even described the stench that hit us like a truck after we laid eyes on the decimation before us, and the longer we looked the more queasy we felt; even for someone like me who could appreciate some despicable kills this was over the top and disgusting.

"This... These are the armies we were looking for, huh? Or what's left of them, anyways..."

Mom was the one who was dealing with it the best, but even she had her lip curled in disgust while also taking very short, controlled breaths so that she didn't have to deal with the stench; for Anput and I, this was beyond hellish since the putrescent odor tickled our sensitive noses even after they were covered up.
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The blood had thoroughly painted the sands red, and if they weren't drenched in these warriors vitae they were instead covered by broken and fractured pieces of metal, further heating up the battlefield as the sun's rays were reflected all around each of those pieces.

"If they are... what are we here for..?"

It was well past midday and now that we had found these warring armies we should have made some progress in this trial, and yet it simply felt like we had advanced from the start to a completely new trial altogether.

"Should we..?"

Leone just waved a hand down at the sea of corpses, and after a moment - and after I pushed down the queasiness as best I could - I nodded and began to slowly descend towards the hell we had found for ourselves.

Following behind me, the others entered this battlefield with the same amount of care and reluctance as I did, and soon we were standing over some of the bodies that had been thrown at one another for whatever reason; there didn't really seem to be any uniformity amongst the differing sides when it came to any physical features of the people themselves, but they did definitely display their allegiances proudly.

One of the sides had cloth beneath their armor that was dyed a dark, sinister red that only got darker as it absorbed their blood, with the metal armor they donned having clear engravings that made no sense to me; it definitely was a language though, so this was some sort of script work that never seemed to be identical on any of their corpses.

The other side had robes over their metal armor, and those robes were split down the middle with two separate colors; a rich, vibrant orange and a more muted light brown that looked like sand, while the armor itself was made from overlapping scales.

Their weapons were also rather different, with the two colored side utilizing more fluid and varied blade shapes that seemed to be more focused on accentuating a stylistic fighting style while the single color side having more rigid and bulky weapons that had a single purpose.

A purpose that had been clearly put to perfect use since no one we walked around was alive, and the longer we investigated this battlefield the more harrowing it became, especially after we lost sight of the untouched desert that we had come from.

All around us were bodies and weapons, and there seemed to be no end to the massacre that had transpired here, at least not one that we could find... and with the stench only getting worse the longer we were here, we were all drowning in nausea that didn't seem like it was ever going to fade away.

But that wasn't something that a little adrenaline couldn't get rid of, especially when the sun began to fall and the shadows got longer; the feeling over the battlefield shifted, something palpable in the air pricking at our skin and causing us to be on guard right away.