Episode 21: Awakening of the Marauder

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The camel bells rang out in the deathly silent desert like a death knell.

Jones chewed on a dry blade of grass, his boot crushing a fragment of bone—judging by its shape, it was the phalange of a sand-ghoul beast, still stained with a trace of dried, dark red gore. The supply caravan he was escorting wound through the dunes like a long serpent. The canvas bags carried by the ten camels held human sacrifices meant for the temple’s ritual; even through the thick fabric, one could hear their faint whimpering.

"Damn this hellish weather," the lean, tall soldier beside him spat into the sand. "It’s hot enough to fry an egg. If those sacrifices stay cooped up any longer, they’ll start to rot."

Jones didn't respond, merely squinting into the distance. The air on the horizon shimmered and twisted, like melting syrup. That was the edge of the Bone Core energy field; the sand grains emitted a faint blue glow, and even the camels refused to approach, snorting and shying away.

"How much longer to the temple?" Jones asked suddenly, his voice raspy as sandpaper on wood. His hand unconsciously stroked the scorpion totem at his waist. The object was unnervingly hot today, as if he were carrying a branding iron.

"Almost there. We’ll be there once we pass the Black Wind Pass ahead," the lean man replied, pulling out a canteen and offering it. "Want a sip? This is the last half-canteen of oasis water."

Jones took the canteen. Just as he twisted the cap, his wrist spasmed violently. The canteen clattered to the ground, and the clear water soaked into the sand, absorbed instantly, leaving only a faint damp mark. More eerily, he saw the wet patch rapidly deform, slowly gathering into a twisted human face, its mouth opening and closing as if trying to speak.

"What the hell are you staring at?" the tall man cursed, bending down to retrieve the canteen. His fingers had barely touched the handle when he let out a sharp cry of agony.

Jones’s bayonet was out of its sheath before he realized it. With a cold flash of steel, he slit the man’s throat. Blood sprayed onto the canvas, blooming like an ugly flower. The tall man’s eyes bulged wide, and the bloody foam spilling from his mouth was mixed with a half-choked sentence: "You... you're insane..."

"Insane?" Jones grinned, revealing a chipped yellow tooth. "I’ve never been clearer—from today on, you’ll all call me the 'Desert Wolf'."

He suddenly lunged at the nearest camel, driving his bayonet deep into its hump. Amidst the beast’s screams, he grabbed a canvas bag and slashed the rope knot. A young woman from the X Tribe tumbled out, trembling in terror, her nails digging deep into the sand.

"In 1897, I robbed caravans in this very desert." Jones’s eyes suddenly turned murky, as if filmed over with yellow sand. He grabbed the girl by her hair and pressed her face into the sand. "Back then, the women of your X Tribe had to kneel and lick my boots when they saw me—"

The three soldiers nearby finally reacted, raising their guns and shouting, "Jones, you’re out of your mind! Let her go!"

Jones whipped his head around, his pupils radiating the ghostly blue characteristic of sand crystals, like two tiny drops of solidified venom. He tore the scorpion totem from his neck, slammed it into the ground, and began stabbing it frantically. "To hell with this sand scorpion! I am the king of the desert!"

He ripped open the canvas bags one by one. The sacrifices inside screamed in terror, but he tossed them onto the sand like chicks. He scavenged a blood-stained piece of hide from the supplies and began carving into it with his bayonet. His movements were alarmingly fast, sand grains splashing with every motion to form a bizarre vortex around the hide.

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"See it clearly!" Jones held up the hide, on which crooked characters were etched: *The Sand Scorpion shall rule the oasis, the raiders shall live forever!* He burst into wild laughter, his voice laced with a gravelly tone that was not his own. "The brothers I led back in the day raided the Turks' gold and burned the missionaries' churches. The rules in this wretched desert have always been mine to set!"

An older soldier backed away slowly, his finger hovering over the trigger. "You’ve been affected by the Bone Core energy! Calm down, Lord Williams will—"

"Williams?" Jones cut off his laughter, his eyes cold as ice. "That piece of trash with the mechanical arm? He deserves to be called Lord by me?" He lunged forward, driving his bayonet between the soldier's ribs and twisting it before yanking it out. "In 1902, I slaughtered a guy just as arrogant as him at Black Wind Pass. His corpse is still rotting in the sand."

The two remaining soldiers were terrified out of their wits and turned to run, only to be struck in the back by the bayonet Jones threw, pinning them to the sand where their bodies were slowly buried by the windblown dunes.

Jones stood amidst the corpses, the writing on the hide glowing red in the sunlight. He picked up the crushed scorpion totem, trampled it again, and tore a piece of canvas from a camel's back to wrap around himself like a cloak, looking every bit the desert raider of a century ago.

"Tie these sacrifices up." He kicked the X Tribe girl on the ground, the ghostly blue in his eyes deepening. "Tonight, we go back to our old trade—we're going to the temple to steal something truly valuable."

—

On the screens in the temple’s surveillance room, the footage of Jones’s rampage played on a loop.

Williams’s mechanical knuckles turned white. When the screen showed Jones crushing the scorpion totem, his pupils contracted sharply. The military surgeon nearby nervously handed over a report. "Chief, energy monitoring shows that when Jones’s convoy passed through the energy zone, the Bone Core fluctuations hit an abnormal peak, lasting for exactly seven seconds."

He pointed to a close-up on the bottom right of the screen. "Look here. His pupils turned completely sand-crystal-colored during those seven seconds, exactly matching the symptoms of a 'Sand-Blood Warrior' berserker state, but..."

"But he didn't explode and die like those other pieces of trash." Williams took the report, the red light of his mechanical eye scanning the paper. "While absorbing energy, he is also performing a memory displacement—he believes he is a 19th-century raider."

This discovery brought a strange smile to his lips. Previous Sand-Blood Warriors could only copy simple attack patterns, but Jones was inheriting complex memory fragments and even forming a new identity. This proved that the totem displacement effect of the Bone Core was even more powerful than anticipated.

"Interesting." Williams stroked his stubble, and his mechanical arm suddenly ejected a thin alloy tube, aiming it at Jones on the screen. "This idiot thinks he’s awakened? He is nothing more than a memory vessel selected by the Bone Core."

The surgeon hesitated. "Should we deal with him now? He killed four of our own, and he..."

"Deal with him?" Williams sneered, turning off the surveillance feed. "It would be a waste to dispose of such a perfect test subject." He grabbed the walkie-talkie, his voice cold as ice. "Get the sand-crystal cage ready and bring Jones back alive. Remember, don’t hurt him. I want to see with my own eyes what this beast becomes through totem displacement."

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A hesitant reply came over the walkie-talkie: "But Chief, he’s gone completely mad, and he still has the human sacrifices..."

"Then let him have the sacrifices." Williams’s voice remained devoid of emotion. "Let him make as much of a scene as he wants. I want to see if a 19th-century raider can withstand the purification of the sand-crystal cage."

He set down the walkie-talkie and walked to the glass vat. The Bone Core inside pulsed violently; within the blue liquid flowing through the vessels on its surface, countless blurred figures appeared—ancient warriors in leather armor, colonial soldiers carrying rifles, and modern raiders like Jones—all wearing vicious expressions as they slammed against the glass.

"Soon... it will be soon..." Williams pressed his mechanical arm against the glass. Sand-crystal armor spread from his wrist, resonating eerily with the blue light of the Bone Core. "Once you memory fragments fill the vessel, I will be able to fully command the power of all eras. By then..."

Before he could finish, the glass vat gave a sudden "click" and a tiny crack appeared. The blue light of the Bone Core seeped through the fissure, gathering on the floor into a small sand scorpion, its tail pointing directly toward the surveillance room—where the screen displayed Jones leading the sacrifices toward the Black Wind Pass, his cloak snapping in the wind like a blood-stained flag.

At the other end of the Black Wind Pass, the sand-crystal cage was already prepared. It was a three-meter-square metal cage covered in barbs, each tip embedded with a tiny sand crystal, glowing faintly in sync with the fluctuations of the Bone Core energy as if waiting for the prey to arrive.

On the floor in the center of the cage, a complex totem was carved—a new "Memory Stripping Array" designed by Williams, said to be capable of forcibly extracting displaced memory fragments and converting them into pure energy for the Bone Core to absorb.

Jones’s laughter echoed from afar, drawing closer, mixed with the cries of the sacrifices and the shrill screams of the camels.

Williams watched the surveillance footage, the smile on his lips deepening. He knew that Jones’s awakening was only the beginning. Soon, more "raiders," "warriors," and "colonizers" would crawl out from the memories of the Bone Core, becoming the blades with which he would rule the desert.

And those stripped memory fragments would become the purest nourishment for the Bone Core, allowing it to unleash power sufficient to consume everything during the sacrificial ritual.

The bars of the sand-crystal cage began to heat up, the crystals on the barbs shining like stars. In the air, the shouts of countless eras could be heard faintly, intertwining like a prelude to destruction.

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