BXBX NOVEL Chapter 120: Food and Shelter.
"You only speak this way to a god because you know we are powerless-"
"If you know you're so powerless then shut the fuck up and don't complain about it." She glared at him, her eyes were puffy and her hair had stuck to her face from excessive crying.
"I have never seen a god act so selflessly for the well-being of any one, why did Ikaris do that?" Gadriel asked, wiping the sweat from her forehead and standing next to Dina.
"... She's a hero, needlessly sacrificing our lives for what we believe is right is what we do." Dina retorted, shading her eyes from the sun and looking across the desert of shimmering heat before them.
"She was serious about being hero?"
"Of course." Dina turned and raised her chin, lowering her choker and showing them the small shield crest on her neck which they had also seen on Ikaris.
"She usually knows what to do, I've always just been support to her decisions..." She sighed and looked across the desert again. "Let's at least start walking, there's no point in staying here."
"What about food and shelter, and what of our safety there are beasts out here in these deserts are you sentencing us to death by devouring?" The same pessimist god spoke up again causing murmuring amongst the multitude.
"It hasn't even been a few hours and you're already being a pain in the ass, if it was solely my option I would have taken her instead and abandoned every last one of you, my best friend is sacrificing her freedom to give you a chance at yours, if you don't learn to shut up I'll glue your lips and make you crawl on the hot red sand, got it?" She threatened him calmly, and he went mum at her calculated and intent expression.
"How did someone as powerful as her-"
"I understand that you're curious, I get it, I promise I'll answer everything you ask but first answer me, the monsters you mentioned in this desert, are they edible?" Dina asked, and the gods all collectively murmured again. "Come on."
"Yes, but they are far too dangerous for us to hunt, if we confront those things we will die." Gabriell answered, but Dina had already heard what she wanted to hear.
"That's good enough, now... I am a mage, water is one of the first elements I learnt how to create and manipulate, I am able to conjure large amounts without issue, the same goes for fire and wind, this solves half of your problems, as for shelter, a makeshift cave should be good enough, if we end up stuck in the desert I can keep you all warm, and those beasts will do well enough for sustenance."
"Will your mana not run out?" Another goddess asked through the crowd.
"Haven't you been listening?" Dina turned and started walking in the opposite direction. "Even if I can't I'll find a way, just like Ikaris I'm a hero, after all." the-place-MVLeMpYr
"I can only do as she has told and not think about anything else, otherwise I'll leave you all to die out here and run right back to her."
And so, their aimless journey into the deep desert began, forming a singular line behind Dina the deities tred carefully, doing their best not to succumb to the scorching heat whilst also keeping their eyes and ears alert for any disturbance in the environment which could mean the emergence of the desert creatures, but after the evening turned to night without incident they began doubting the existence of such monsters at all.
"We made a lot of distance today." Dina stared in the direction of the city they had left seeing only faint lights in an otherwise black night contrasted by the now orange sand below the horizon. "Everyone, please gather." She raised her hands and conjured an orb of water before her.
"Drink only what you need, if you have too much after a whole day in the heat it's gonna ruin your appetite or even make you faintish."
"We have seen no creatures out here, water can only spare us for so long, at least as slaves we were fed-" that same pessimist god spoke again, and upon speaking Dina hissed and pinched her forehead.
"Who is that?"
"I have no idea, he was so terrified when he first came that he never gave a name, and nobody asked afterwards, we do not know who he is nor where he comes from." Gadriel responded after drinking her fill and moving for the others to do the same, the water was not the best in terms of taste, but it was pure and clean, she had no such complaints.
"Okay, nobody move." Dina released the casting after the last person had quenched their thirst, spreading her hands and casting "earthen wall" beneath them horizontally, creating a platform that raised them all off the sand by about a metre before casting it three more times diagonally, catering a pyramid shaped cave in a matter of seconds and then taking a breath.
"This is amazing, any god of creation would be impressed by how resourceful you are!" Gabriell laughed as she saw small flowers grow out of the cracks in the ground.
"Funnily enough, I was never acknowledged by the god of creation, I was instead acknowledged by the goddess of chaos." Dina stepped off the platform and walked several dozen metres away while signaling them to stay put, and then once she felt she was at a safe distance, she raised her hand and conjured a mana-spear and aimed it to the ground.
The gods all watched with baited breaths as the mage shot the spear down into the sand and then the sand beneath her shook for several seconds before going still. "Nothing happened-"
Dina took off into the air like a jet just a mere second before a giant worm burst from the ground beneath her, landing on the sand and screeching as its tail swayed the worm wailed from its sole eye being pierced, it had no nose, but just by seeing the hundreds of feet it had it was easy to tell that it was fast, nobody would have been able to outrun it.
Of course, none of that mattered, a mere second after it had stopped flailing in an attempt to find it's aggressor its body was assaulted by a barrage of mana blades that easily dissected and chopped it up into bits and pieces, to which Dina quickly landed and grabbed one large chunk the size of a car, raising it off the ground without struggle and throwing it over her shoulder while the sand around the corpse began vibrating again before three more worms emerged.
They had no interest in the small portion that had been hefted away though when there was such a large amount of untouched meat which they could dine on.
"How is your mana?" Gadriel asked as soon as Dina was before her again, and the mage closed her eyes and stared at her core internally.
"Usually it would be easy to tell, but with my separation from the system I can't be sure, after using a weakened pulsar though it should be somewhere between 80 to 75% by the looks of it" she looked at them, and the gods all seemed more disturbed than amazed by this revelation.
"Don't worry, our mana passively replenishes itself through mana reproduction sort of like photosynthesis with our bodies being the vessel."
"That was not your strongest?" One asked
"Pulsar grows with my strength, the first time I used it I was able to tear a hole in the atmosphere, and since then I have become three times as strong; if I had used the full power of pulsar then we would never have escaped, instead it would have levelled half the city and caused all the demon-gods in the area to come running." Dina created a hollow platform and summoned a knife as fire appeared beneath it.
"The best we can afford right now is roast or fried meat using these secreted oils, obviously I can't conjure up spices -I'm not a genie."
"A what?"
"... Nevermind." Dina made a thin slice through the worm's exo-shell placing it on the platform as a makeshift pot, and then patting the shell again. "This shell is actually pretty tough, it's probably heat resistant too, I could use some hear resistant armour."
"Or at least a hat."