Tatehan did not expect the journey to be a pleasant one. In fact, that thought hadn't crossed his mind at all. Since it was only him riding through this vast and desolate landscape alone, he had actually expected very little in terms of enjoyment.

With Riven, he'd had company, someone to talk with when they rode for too long and the journey started to get monotonous.

Now he was alone with his thoughts, and this would have been an incredibly boring ride if not for the fact that riding itself came with a certain kind of joy.

He accelerated forward, letting the wind hit his face, genuinely enjoying the sensation of speed.

The velocity he was traveling at now was much faster than before, so fast that he was basically zooming across the wasteland. A speed far more intense than when he'd been riding with Riven.

A speed that literally made the dust rider feel like a blur streaking across the Martian surface.

Tatehan pushed the throttle to maximum, and at this point, if he were to hit even a moderately large stone by mistake, he'd be thrown from the vehicle, potentially fatally injuring himself.

Normally, he should have taken the precaution of summoning his full armor, but he didn't. The armor would prevent him from feeling the full force of the wind rushing past, so he rode without it, taking in the raw experience.

He did eventually summon his helmet, though. At the speed he was traveling, it was becoming increasingly difficult to see what lay ahead of him. Everything became blurred and distorted in his vision because of how fast he was moving.

Particles from the air were beginning to strike his eyes painfully, so it was only sensible that he summon the helmet for protection.

An hour later, the dust rider gradually slowed and stopped itself automatically. Tatehan realized that it had been just over an hour since he'd left Waython Hollow, and the shadow goblin core he'd inserted back in the city was now completely exhausted of energy.

Dismounting from the dust rider, Tatehan summoned another core from his inventory and opened the power compartment, carefully inserting the fresh core into place.

Then he paused and looked around at his surroundings.

The place where he stood was filled with... nothing of particular interest, actually. Just scattered pebbles and large boulders spread across the barren landscape.

Though this area was particularly strange—eerie, even. It had the atmosphere of a graveyard, silent and still in an unsettling way.

With a casual shrug, Tatehan thought: 'Who knows? Might actually be one.'

He was starting to wonder which direction to head from here when he suddenly remembered that he still had the map overlay in his vision, discreetly hidden in the corner of his field of view.

He focused his attention in that direction and saw it, then willed it to expand and cover his entire vision so that all he could see was the map display.

He felt surprisingly relaxed in this region, instead of being constantly worried that some monster would suddenly emerge from the shadows and attack him.

But frankly, that complacency could be dangerous. The wastelands were never truly empty. It was certain that specific areas served as territories for monsters, and this desolate place could very well be one of them. He needed to proceed with absolute caution from this point forward.

As a precaution, he summoned his full armor and allowed his complete focus to settle on the map.

He saw that he had actually made quite impressive progress. Back when he'd been riding with Riven at what had seemed like an insane speed, he hadn't covered nearly this much distance in the same amount of time. But now, riding alone and pushing the dust rider to its absolute limits, he was moving at a speed beyond insane.

He was moving at an absolutely reckless velocity, the sort that was just beyond what anyone would consider normal or safe.

Looking at the map more carefully, he confirmed that he'd covered significantly more distance than he had during that earlier journey with Riven. That was genuinely impressive.

He nodded to himself, satisfied with the progress.

He checked the remaining distance from his current position to the spaceship and saw that he still had a considerable amount of ground to cover. The journey wasn't even halfway complete yet.

Willing the map back to its small designated spot in the corner of his vision, Tatehan decided it was time to climb back onto the dust rider and zoom out of this eerie place.

To his mild surprise, nothing had attacked him while he'd been completely immersed in studying the map.

'Seems this place really is deserted of monsters after all,' Tatehan thought with some relief as he raised his leg to mount the dust rider.

But as he attempted to lift his leg fully, he found he couldn't move it.

His brow furrowed in confusion and surprise.

What was happening? Had the armor somehow gotten too heavy? That didn't make sense, the armor's weight was distributed across his entire body through some kind of advanced mechanism.

Looking forward, he could see nothing unusual. But when he looked down at his leg, what he saw made him stare in shock.

"Them," actually. Multiple creatures.

Attached to his leg were small, vicious-looking creatures that resembled some horrifying fusion of piranhas and four-legged mammals. They were about the size of large rats but far more muscular and compact. Their bodies were covered in rough, scaled hide that looked almost armored. But their most striking and terrifying feature was their mouths—filled with massive, sharp teeth that looked like they were made of iron or some similar metallic substance.

These enormous teeth were completely disproportionate to their body size, jutting from their jaws at various angles. And right now, all of these creatures were clamped onto the boot portion of his armor, biting down with incredible force.

Tatehan stared at the creatures in alarm.

What the hell were these things?

These weren't really monsters in the traditional sense, they seemed more like predatory animals of some sort.

And now nine of them were latched onto the foot region of his armor simultaneously, their jaws locked in place. If he weren't wearing his armor, they surely would have ripped his feet clean off by now. The armor was doing its job remarkably effectively.

Apart from providing the kinetic absorption ability, the armor came with an incredibly hardened surface that was successfully resisting most physical attacks.

Tatehan examined the creatures' large, sharp, and unnaturally heavy-looking teeth and wondered whether the teeth simply weren't sharp enough to penetrate, or if the armor was just that exceptionally well-made.

The notification that flashed across his retina immediately after that thought made him reconsider.

[Teeth are beginning to cause structural damage to armor]

[70 percent of force absorbed]

[30 percent of force impacted through armor]

More words materialized across his field of vision:

[Creature Identified: Iron-Jaw Scavengers]

[Threat Level: Moderate]

[Difficulty Assessment: Pretty easy if proper counter-tactics are employed; extremely difficult if approached without knowledge of their abilities]

[Primary Weapon: Metallic teeth capable of penetrating most standard armor materials]

[Weakness: Vulnerable to blunt force trauma; disoriented by sudden energy discharges]

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