While using the creature as their ride, the girls immediately noticed the big chance in their travel speed.

A distance that would have taken them an hour to cover by foot, was done in ten minutes or so, thanks to the creature.

Walking on sand wasn’t as easy as to do it in a firm ground, their legs constantly started to sink on the sand with each step, which greatly reduced their mobility, but the creature has clearly adapted to that.

Its white shell had earth attribute properties and seemed to manipulate the sand, compacting it and then sliding on it.

“If the trial was to cross the desert by ourselves, then wouldn’t this be cheating?”, asked Vivian.

The prohibition in flying made it clear, that the Emerald Whirlwind or whatever was controlling this place, wanted them to go through the desert

“I don’t think so, this creature was supposed to attack us, so it shouldn’t be against the rules if it “decides” to help us instead, while nearly impossible the chance still existed”, said Aster as he shrugged.

“I’m pretty sure whoever set this scenario didn’t expect a wild spirit beast to be friendly with anyone, but I guess that’s to be expected since only Heavenly realm spirit beasts are completely rational though”, added Mylene.

“Sister Mylene is right, this big guy is only obeying big brother, as if it was meant to be that way, what you think big brother will you keep it?”, asked Kana.

Aster saw her big eyes sparkling, it was obvious she was treating this creature as some kind of pet.

“I guess it can be useful while we are in this secret realm, but I don’t know if it can be taken out of this place”.

Originally Aster was going to chase away the creature after it took them to the river, but he realized it was worth studying why it was obeying him.

‘Spirit beasts below the Heavenly realms only obey the “alpha” of their species, and that often requires a few fights to settle the chain of authority, so it was weird to see this creature presenting itself to me… unless it’s related to dragons, if so then everything makes sense, I will ask Mylene later’, he thought.

By doing so, he could understand more of his evolution route and also spend some time with Mylene, two birds one stone.

Leaving that little episode aside, they soon reached the river Aster saw from afar, it was pretty small of about only four meters wide and three meters deep, surprisingly the water was pretty clean and not mixed with sand.

Aster looked on the direction of the water of the river, but didn’t see anything in the long term.

“Can you swim, without diving?”, if others were to see Aster speaking with a wild spirit beast, they would think he is crazy, but the creature actually “answered” by nodding with its head.

“Do it then, use the current to take us to a place where you can see others like me”.

The creature thought about Aster’s order for a moment, before it entered the river, surprisingly its shelled exterior floated by nature so for Aster and the girls it was like riding on a boat.

“Big brother how a are you gong to name it, how about “Espi”, it means “white” in the old language of Prasil, which mom taught me”.

“Hisss”, the creature seemed to like it and if it was going to be accompanying on the long run, then it was going to be bothersome to keep calling it “creature”.

“Sure, Espi it is”.

“Hisss!”, the creature apparently understood it was allowed to hang around Aster more, and it let out some happy sounds as it accelerated by surfing on the water.

…

The hours passed and the sun increased its radiation, apparently the day in this realm lasted longer as Aster could tell by the position of the “sun” that there were still at least five more of hours of sunlight and in a regular day, it should be around 6:00 PM by now.

The other thing he noticed was that the damn river might be not too deep, but it was really long, they have passed a few different zones of the desert by now and the river kept going.

Currently some desert vegetation like cactuses and thorn bushes have started to appear, also there was less sound and more solid ground, so it’s not like they haven’t done any progress.

“Mm?”, Aster suddenly frowned, he moved his hand at an insanely high speed and then grabbed an arrow that was aimed at Vivian.

“Come out, I can tell where all of you are hiding anyway”, Aster closed his fist and broke the arrow in half.

He then pointed at some specific parts of the landscape that surrounded them like some of the rock formations and the cactuses here and then he used Rigel’s flames, to encircle them, avoiding the ones that shot that arrow from escape, unless they were stupid enough to jump into Rigel’s flames.𝞸𝓋𝑙xt.𝓬𝚘𝕞

“Go there Espi”, said Aster as he pointed towards the encircled area, the creature obeyed and got out of the water before it slowly approached the area signaled by Aster.

“Who the hell are you guys?”.

Aster looked at the ones that shot an arrow to Vivian, up close, they had brown tanned skins and were using desert clothes and mouth masks.

Strangely, these people instead of answering Aster, actually tried to attack Vivian one more time, using whatever they could find, including rocks.

“Hiss”, Espi could tell its master was being ignored, so it let out some threatening sounds before the floor below the captives changed into sand that engulfed them all the way to their necks.

“I’ll ask one more time, who are you and why did you attack us?”.

This time one of the captives looked at Daimon before saying, something in a broken common language of the Dragon Legacy Heavenly Quadrant.

“… controlling the guardian of the desert, we Uremy don’t obey the white witch!”.

Aster raised an eyebrow at the word “outsider”, that meant these guys have lived here for quite some time, at least enough to consider themselves natives.

“Wasn’t this a secret realm, how come there are people living here”, mumbled Aster, he already inspected the sky, and unlike back at Kana’s galaxy, he couldn’t go past the sky, or it would be more accurate to say there was nothing else outside.

Aster tapped Espi’s head indicating it to let them down for a moment, which it did to the captive’s surprise.

“This guy came looking for me not the other way around, also we just arrived so whoever you think we are, that’s not the case”.

The captives saw Espi willingly obeying Aster and their eyes illuminated.

“Visitant from another star!”.

“Another star!”.

“#$arhsg#$”.

The captives started repeating the phrase “another star” before they talked to each other in a strange language, that had some of the common language taught at the Dragon Legacy Heavenly Quadrant mixed in.

The captives then bowed towards Vivian, and somewhat apologized.

“No white witch… Uremy takes you to the shaman, shaman knows how to communicate”.

Aster tried to see through the captives, and the result he got was that they were saying the truth, so he tested the waters.

“How far is it from here?”.

The captives discussed between each other is that strange language once again, before saying.

“Rest of the sunlight travel, with help of guardian of the desert”.

Aster nodded, but he turned to see Mylene and asked.

“Can you map our surroundings within two thousand kilometers?”.

Mylene nodded in response.

“Yeas, hold on a second”, Aster calculated that with the sunlight that was left, that’s the distance Espi could cover at the same pace they were moving earlier.

After a couple of seconds Mylene frowned, even her divine sense was being interfered, restricting its range, but she still managed to cover the distance, only to realize there was nothing.

“There is nothing but desert, no oasis of any signs of a settlement within that range”.

Aster thought about it for a second, earlier he only noticed the captives after they shot the arrow to Vivian, for the first time, his spirit sense failed to discover someone, that being said he now had an idea about why.

“These guys have a bond with the desert, while we are here, we can’t discover them first, until they do the first move, so no matter how much we look, we won’t find a settlement”, concluded Aster.

“That doesn’t explain why are there people living in the secret realm though… uncle Julian didn’t mention anything about these people”, added Vivian.

She was intrigued about why the captives were so keen on attacking her earlier, until they discovered she wasn’t from this secret realm.

“The easiest way to discover what’s going on, is going with these guys, don’t lower your guard and keep yourselves close at every moment, in case we need to run for it”.

“Mm”, the girls agreed with Aster, there was no point in running around like headless serpent, instead of that talking with the “shaman” the captives mentioned sounded like a better idea.

“Espi, keep an eye on them, if they try something kill them without hesitation”, said Daimon.

Espi nodded and then it grabbed the captives which were only four people with its tail, then without letting go, it returned to the river as it was easier to move using it as the road.

“Direction?”, asked Daimon to the captive that spoke with them.

“Follow river, till large dry cascade”.

Following the captive’s indications, Espi advanced through the river with two groups of people riding on its body.