The next morning, they got some food quick, Sera's new eating habits not slowing her down at all despite the new volume she consumed. They tidied up and got ready to head out, making sure the room was secure behind them. Beth led them out of the CRA Hall and through the city, a rough and rugged place constructed from a mana-reinforced concrete and a gray, high mana-density stone. The place was rather dreary, even in the light of the two suns in the sky, but it was a frontier city on a frontier world, and utility was still more important than beauty.

  "Somebody could stand to invent some paint," Beth muttered as they moved to the edge of the city.

  "Priorities," Sera answered with a shrug.

  "Yeah, bad ones," Beth muttered back, leading them to the city's northern gate.

  "Identification," a bored-looking man at level three hundred demanded.

  The three all immediately showed their CRA Silver Emblems and, after only a quick glance, the man gave them a lazy wave, allowing them to pass through the person-sized gate. That person-sized gate was still ten feet tall to account for all manner of different people that may come through, Beth thinking of her instructor in his armor for one. She took a moment to survey the area in front of the gates, seeing a large open area with tramped down grass and a stone-paved road leading into the distance.

  "Alright, let's go," Beth said after getting her bearings, leading the other two away from the walls.

  "Go…where?" Sera asked as she followed along.

  "Just to get a bit away from the city," Beth replied, leading them out into the grassy area around the city and towards some trees.

  "Okay," Sera replied, still obviously confused.

  After a couple minutes and getting behind some trees, Beth stopped and looked around. Satisfied, she said, "This should be good. Stand back a bit."

  Sera looked at her with raised eyebrows but let Blood drag her a bit of a way back before Beth made the cube appear from her necklace. With a mental command, she caused the cube to unfold into their airship, having it lower the ramp when it was fully assembled. She turned in time to see Sera's look of surprise, though it wasn't the kind of shock she had maybe hoped for it. She supposed a rich princess of a gigantic clan that had the equivalent of quadrillions of dollars of materials and, more importantly, ships, wouldn't be quite as impressed with their little airship.

  "I see what you meant about not having seen everything," Sera commented as they entered the bottom hallway.

  "It's not amazing, but it's a lot better than walking, that's for sure," Beth said with a nod.

  "It's pretty crazy for, again, just a pair of girls from an undeveloped world," Sera said. "This is a high-class airship, especially considering I don't recognize it. Where'd you get it?"

  "Seven Lights Trading Firm auction," Beth replied.

  "You got into a Seven Lights auction?" Sera asked as they entered the bridge.

  "More than one," Beth said, taking out her badge and tossing it to Sera.

  "Now I'm impressed," Sera said, flipping the badge over to look at both sides before tossing it back. "They don't just give those out to anyone for anything."

  "Well, we brought in a handful of mithril worth of stuff at once, at least from the initial estimate, and it wound up selling for quite a lot at an auction," Beth explained. "We got an Emerald Badge out of the deal, and we've made pretty good use of it so far."

  "That's another thing that could really help with finding Rebirth materials," Sera said. Snapping her fingers, she then said as she sat at the tactical console, "Would be a great place to offload devil essences, too. We could make so much with that; a firm like them would have a bottomless appetite for resources like that."

  "Already took advantage of that once," Beth replied from the captain's chair. Blood was already in the pilot's seat and had them lifting off and sweeping through a wide curve to head down to the desert as Beth continued, "We sold a batch of extra devil essences in an auction. Wound up getting a couple orichalcum for just the devil essences. That's one of the things I still had so much money from."

  "Bidding war on that, I can totally understand it," Sera replied with a nod.

  Beth nodded as she leaned back in the captain's chair and brought up her research again. She continued looking through the information on the general operating principles of mana while Blood piloted them to the desert and Sera familiarized herself with the systems. It was a little under an hour later when Beth was brought up from her reading by Sera pulling something up onto the main screen on the bridge.

  "I think we found them," she said, some disgust in her voice.

  On the screen was a massive worm the length and width of a bus, though it was only about half the height of said bus. It was heavily armored, with thick armor plates on its back and sides that had very thin seams in between, meaning they'd be a nightmare to try to strike. The beast was very much like a worm in its overall appearance and movements, an armored worm, but unlike many other worms, it had a gaping maw full of thick, serrated teeth. It clearly made good use of them, Beth sure there was some kind of magic at work, as the thing grabbed basically anything it came across and tried to gulp it down, even rocks and clumps of dirt. It had to have something in its gullet breaking that stuff down or something, but just as Beth was having that thought, they watched as the worm reared up and back a bit and puked out a condensed stream of sand and rock that blasted everything in front of it.

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  "This is going to fucking suck, isn't it?" Blood growled out.

  "Yeah, this is not going to be a fun few days," Beth said.

  "Days?" Blood whined.

  "Or weeks," Beth said.

  "Damn," Blood grumbled.

  "Might as well get started," Sera said, shutting down the tactical station and standing.

  "Hover us over it and let Sera and I hit it," Beth told Blood.

  "Better you than me," Blood commented, moving them some distance above the sand slitherer, somewhere out of its range of senses without being too far away.

  Beth and Sera walked down to the cargo hold, equipping their armor and weapons as they did. Beth opened the ramp at the back of the room as Blood had the ship hover in place. As the ramp levered open, a hot, dry wind blew in carrying a sort of astringent and sour smell, likely wafting up from the bus-sized worm below them. Hovering a few hundred feet in the air, the wind was quite a bit more than at ground level, but Beth and Sera were both extremely strong and rather heavy, the hot air swirling around the cargo hold barely ruffling their hair.

  "You first?" Beth asked, glancing at the dragon in her full armor.

  "Sure," Sera said with a shrug, striding across the hold and to the ramp. She didn't slow down at all, walking right off the end of the ramp and plummeting through the air.

  Beth followed behind her, stopping at the base of the ramp as Sera stepped off, watching her girlfriend plummet through the air, totally unbothered as she shot towards the unsuspecting worm. She led with her spear, slamming into the worm and using a skill at the same time, piercing its back, though the thrust was shallower than she had wanted. The worm bucked and twisted, but Sera's movement skill allowed her to easily maintain her balance, yanking her spear out and leaping off the beast's back with grace. The worm turned and tried to chomp on her, the tall girl dodging with ease, slashing with her spear, slamming the haft into the side of the worm's head with enough force to crack the armor and send the beast reeling.

  As the giant worm tried to recover, Beth completed her own drop, charging her right arm with Crush as she fell, slamming into the worm with a noise like thunder, followed by a grinding, squelching sound and a loud squeal. Giant worms shouldn't be able to make a noise like that, or any noise, for that matter. It was intensely gross, only added to by the worm blood and guts that Beth was now covered in. The good news was that her attack had been effective, extremely so, as she had shattered the heavy armor plate she had targeted and destroyed a large segment of flesh underneath.

  The worm bucked again, screaming, trying to throw Beth off, but only got a spear down its throat for its troubles. Beth gripped onto a mostly intact armor plate with her left hand and charged her right arm for a brief second before punching into the open wound, pulping the interior of the worm with gooey, squelching, bubbling noises. The worm writhed under her, not able to move far as Sera stabbed its throat again, Beth winding up for a third swing, smashing the worm's internals into pulp with her next strike. The worm flopped a bit, but Beth knew it was dead from the kill notification, the movements just from residual nerve firings.

  Blood set the ship down next to them on a flat area that had some rocky ground that could easily take the ship’s weight. She left the ship after it was powered down, joining them in inspecting the beast, wrinkling her sensitive nose as she watched Beth pry one of the intact armor plates off to get a closer look at it. The worm didn't smell any better dead, that was for sure, and Blood moved a bit to be upwind of it before scanning the area around them for any other dangers.

  "I think…I want something in this," Sera said to Beth.

  "What does that mean?" Beth asked, hefting the armor plate in her hand.

  "Endless Consumption will point out things that are…beneficial for me," Sera explained with a sigh. "I want to eat parts of the worm. Well, let me back up, I don't want to eat this gross worm, but my skill wants me to eat parts of it."

  "Do you know what parts?" Beth asked, looking over the worm.

  "Uh, I think the heart…and maybe the liver?" Sera said, unsure.

  "Well, let's get to it," Beth said with a sigh herself.

  "Just let me," Blood growled from the other side of the worm, hopping up on it. "I'll make it quick and won't damage the organs."

  Blood's claws grew before thrumming with energy, but she was very careful with that power, cutting into the area around where Beth had destroyed the first plate and pulled off the second. She cut the corpse open quite easily and deftly, opening the massive body up before cutting out the organs. She threw parts of the digestive tract away before securing the liver, which was enormous, and then worked to get the heart. The beast reminded Beth a little of a shark, which were basically huge digestive tracts with fins, including massive livers, and these worms seemed rather similar. She watched as Sera took hold of the liver and started eating, her jaw opening wide as she practically inhaled the multi-hundred-pound organ. It was less than thirty seconds and the organ was gone, far faster than Blood, who took another minute to cut the heart out, which also disappeared into Sera’s stomach extremely rapidly.

  Sera belched, including a little fire this time, saying, "Sorry about that, but it helps the skills."

  "It doesn't bother me," Beth said with a shrug. "But you're not kissing me with worm guts in your teeth and sand on your lips. You need to clean off before any smooches."

  "I think I'll be doing more eating soon," Sera commented as the ground vibrated, pointing towards where more worms were approaching.

  "Guess they smelled the mess," Beth said, making sure her gauntlets were tight.

  "I'll lead," Sera said as Beth walked over and made the ship fold up. "I still can't believe you have a compactable."

  "We were just lucky," Beth said with a shrug.

  "More than luck, I think," Sera muttered as she walked toward where at least half a dozen worms were approaching.

  The beasts didn't care for each other, even more than most that they had fought so far in their relatively short careers. The sand slitherers smashed into each other, producing great cracking reports as their armored bodies clashed. They would also bite and tear at each other, the damage largely minimized thanks to the heavy armor plating, but sometimes one would catch another in the softer underbelly and blood would flow. Beth was surprised they could stay focused on the partially destroyed corpse considering how much they went after each other, but their in-fighting slowed them down surprisingly little.

  Sera met them on the field first, her spear multiplying as she lashed out, dozens of spear images halting the worms in their tracks. Sera didn't have the kind of strength to drive them back, certainly not when she was hitting an entire group at once, but she had enough power to stop their clamorous charge. When she had stopped the advance and had their attention good and focused on her, Beth leapt into the enemies, hitting them with massive, brutal punches and kicks that cracked armor and pulverized flesh. Blood followed last, taking advantage of openings and injuries to rip the worms apart, shredding them into pieces. The three worked quickly and efficiently, killing the pack in just over a minute.

  Beth registered all the corpses when they were done by scanning them with Sera’s Emblem while Blood cut out more organs, Sera's skill giving her a practically bottomless stomach that always demanded more food. It also meant that after just a minute or two, Sera was back in top condition, having not spent much stamina for such a fight and her skill easily topping up her health and mana. Blood basically carved out specific organs and tossed them to Sera, the dragon girl catching them and making them disappear down her gullet far faster than Blood had the next ready.

  After registering the kills, Beth scanned the horizon for any more worms, not seeing or feeling anything approaching them at the moment. The desert was an absolutely massive area and the sand slitherers fought amongst themselves, so it was already about all she could expect for one little area to have seven or eight of them. She didn't want to constantly be taking the airship out and putting it away, and while they could have it hover overhead and drop down after a fight, she figured it was just going to be easier for them to move on foot for a while. She waited for Sera to finish devouring a thousand-plus pounds of organ meat and belching fire and smoke everywhere before getting them moving, allowing Blood to fall into her role as scout.

  They spent days scouring the desert like that, popping the ship out a couple times to take advantage of the bathrooms and the mess hall before getting a handful of hours sleep, all three piled in the enormous bed in the captain's cabin off the bridge. She had thought when they took the mission that it wouldn't be that bad, but they had to cover a lot of area and killing a thousand sand slitherers across that area turned out to be quite a lot. It wasn't until ten days later that they were flying back to the city, having finally completed the first of the missions. They wanted to rest a day in their suite before they made their way to the mountains to tackle the second job.