Chapter Fifty-Two: The Land of Yellow Sands

Harvey glanced over the list of tasks, immediately skipping any involving pursuit or assassination. Although he could chase targets across star systems, he currently lacked the necessary devices to connect to the bounty intelligence network; accepting such jobs would leave him blind. Finding a fugitive in the vast universe was like searching for a needle in a haystack. As for escort missions, unless one happened to pique his interest, he wouldn’t even consider them.

Naturally, then, his attention turned to disaster elimination tasks. These had clear target locations, and once the threat was dealt with, he could simply collect his payment and leave—by far the simplest option. Besides, if the disaster turned out to be a living creature, he could slay and absorb it, making full use of its remains.

There were more monster-hunting and disaster-clearing missions than Harvey had expected, but it made sense—after all, not every planet was as safe as Blue Star. After browsing, he selected a mission involving a desert creature that frequently caused destruction on the planet Mogli.

The task description stated that this monster burrowed underground and stirred up sandstorms, inflicting great harm on the people of Mogli. The mission had been posted for eleven years and seventy-four days, with a bounty of five million. It had been accepted 687 times. With so many attempts and no success, it was clear that hunters either perished or gave up.

Harvey, however, was unfazed. Upon accepting the task, a transparent display appeared before him, charting an interstellar route to a location thirty light-years from Xandar. The reward, it indicated, could be claimed directly from King Orb Mogli of the planet Mogli upon completion.

Lacey had meant to offer a word of caution, but seeing this man—calling himself Kassadin—take on the mission, she realized her drinks would go unpaid. She didn’t bother to persuade him further, only muttered a blessing: “Good luck, Mr. Kassadin.”

“Farewell, Miss Lacey,” Harvey replied with a slight nod, and departed.

“Lacey, looks like your efforts were wasted this time,” someone remarked.

“Don’t remind me. I’m in a foul mood,” she retorted.

“I bet that guy won’t survive the mission—he’ll probably die out there,” another chimed in.

“No one’s stupid enough to take that bet with you. Why don’t I bet he dies, and you bet he comes back alive?”

“That five-million reward is tempting, but you have to live to claim it.”

“Must be a rookie—never seen real danger, thinks he’s got what it takes.”

“I left my right leg and my fighter in that desert,” another hunter interjected. “Facing a monster like that is like facing a natural disaster. If you make it out alive, you should count your blessings.”

In the bounty hunting trade, the longer one worked, the harder it was to keep the original parts of their body—many had prosthetics. Still, used to living lavishly and dancing with death, there was no way they could return to a peaceful, ordinary life. If you had the skill, you might as well use it to the last moment, even if most met grim ends—at least they lived their lives to the fullest.

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After leaving the bounty bar, Harvey stepped forward and, in an instant, departed Xandar, appearing amidst the stars. Following the direction and distance outlined by the mission, he began his search. Thirty light-years would have required others to pilot fighters and hunt for wormholes, but to Harvey, no distance was more than a single stride.

Surveying the stars, he swiftly spotted a tawny planet nearby. A third of its surface was desert. With another step, a void-black portal appeared beneath his feet and he vanished.

The next second, Harvey stood amidst golden sands. The planet’s gravity was twice that of Blue Star, and the temperature was like a scalding cauldron. He could see the air shimmering with heat. Under such gravity, anyone without protective gear would quickly perish from dehydration and heat, leaving nothing but bleached bones behind. If a pilot’s fighter was destroyed here, only the most capable could hope to walk out of this wasteland alive.

Harvey strode across the desert, his gaze penetrating the sands below. Three hundred meters beneath the surface, a multitude of armored creatures thrived—a veritable paradise for monsters. The deeper he looked, the larger these creatures became. The greatest among them was twenty meters wide and over fifty meters long; tail included, it stretched a full hundred meters.

The desert monster he sought lay two thousand meters down. This scorpion, empress of the sands, was surrounded by others, each over ten meters long, burrowing ceaselessly in search of prey. They would drag their kills back to the depths, feeding them to the behemoth below.

According to the mission’s intel, the monster could summon sandstorms. No wonder so many had tried and failed to complete the task—the beast was hidden deep beneath the desert, nearly impossible to reach.

Capable of conjuring sandstorms and launching deadly strikes under their cover, the monster was a nightmare to confront. If threatened, it would simply stir up a storm and vanish beneath the sands. What was a burning hell to most was, for this creature, the ultimate shield. Even a fleet would struggle to threaten it, let alone a lone fighter. Unless the entire desert was obliterated, killing it would be nigh impossible.

And yet the reward was only five million. Clearly, the planet’s king and inhabitants had no real grasp of the monster’s true power. Still, this was Harvey’s first mission, not a targeted contract—no need to haggle for more. What mattered most was accomplishing the task cleanly and establishing a strong beginning.

As Harvey shifted through space to hover directly above the beast, it sensed his presence. Eyes snapped open beneath the sands. Years of hunting had given the creature a keen instinct for danger. The crushing weight of the shifting sands posed no obstacle; instead, it glided upward as if swimming.

As it moved, the sands for a kilometer around began to flow, forming a massive quicksand vortex intent on dragging Harvey down. He simply rose into the air, violet energy gathering around him and transforming into countless sharp spikes, all aimed at the depths below.

A barrage of void lances shot forth, their piercing violet energy slicing a thousand meters into the desert. Explosions rocked the sands for ten thousand meters in every direction, creating a gigantic pit into which torrents of sand poured.

A colossal shadow emerged from the depths, unleashing a sky-shaking wail. The sands rose in a howling storm, darkening the sky and painting the world in swirling gold.

Harvey, clad in a mantle of violet energy like a suit of armor, stood impervious to the storm—no sand could come within a meter of him. Gazing at the wounded beast, he transformed his right hand into a violet scythe and, with a single motion, unleashed sixteen slashing arcs.

The monster’s cry was cut short. Its enormous body fell apart in neat slabs, drenching the yellow sands in a river of violet blood.