For several days, I questioned the local miners and even visited the forge, hoping to find some answers about that strange incident with the lightning.
Every time, I described the event with awe: the air split by electrical discharges, small bolts dancing between particles, casting reflections off the crystal dust.
Unfortunately, nobody could tell me anything.
People rarely noticed such occurrences, and explaining how they happened was beyond them.
For the hard-nosed earthbenders and stubborn crystal benders, this information was simply unnecessary.
They were far less interested in things that sandbenders dreamed about.
Sandbenders had their own behavioral principles and character traits, rooted in change and adaptation.
We weren’t as free as airbenders.
We were still grounded like badgermoles, but we had to adapt to survive in the conditions we found ourselves in.
For instance, I found it much easier to work in the cave than most people.
And it wasn’t just my two years of experience.
I was simply used to finding my own approach to everything.
A person with nothing had to hustle to live.
If they wanted decent conditions, they had to hustle ten times harder.
That’s why, reading my fellow countryman’s work, I felt right at home.
The scientist studying sandstorms was probably a sandbender himself.
The way he conveyed information made that clear.
Even Afka, whom I read the book aloud to, couldn’t understand how I could tell.
But the author was undeniably a genius.
He’d spent most of his life inside sandstorms, observing sand.
He’d seen lightning appear seemingly from nowhere countless times.
It always happened below the clouds, and only under one condition: the sand had to be spinning in a dense cloud with its own chaotic winds, which I’d felt firsthand.
If the wind brought many grains close together, forcing them to rub against each other, strong static electricity built up.
Like rubbing fur together, only on vastly different speeds and scales.
The force discharged outward, illuminating sandstorms with long streaks of lightning.
This wasn’t a technique firebenders could replicate directly from their bodies.
They didn’t need friction.
But I wasn’t complaining.
It sounded like something that could enhance simple sand, and I was always happy about that.
But when I started practicing in my own room, rubbing sand grains together, I realized creating my own lightning would be incredibly difficult.
If I needed lightning to attack, immobilize, or maybe stun fish, I couldn’t do it without training in sand acceleration.
Even a tornado wasn’t enough.
I needed to press the grains closer together, create a closed sphere the size of a fist where the charge could build up.
At least that’s what the author’s example suggested.
And that was still tens of thousands of hours of practice.
Or I could do it the easy way.
The Kyoshi style.
The Earth Avatar was a person with outrageously developed Earth bending.
Her problem was that weak techniques that didn’t require, say, destroying a continent, gave her trouble.
Throwing a small stone, or even controlling a grain of sand a real problem.
For precision and using minimal power, she used fans and her personally developed style.
I’d already planned to study her legacy anyway.
The funny thing was why I needed it.
If I learned even greater precision and could use small volumes of sand, I’d become exponentially stronger.
I wouldn’t need to lift mountains or hurl boulders.
I’d gain power with what little I had.
Of course, that was all in the future.
Returning to the camp and approaching the job board, I read through the week’s assignments.
“Oh, they found another quartz deposit above us.” I cracked my knuckles, ready to see yet another training choice from Anubis.
He’d started providing them as soon as I learned to control quartz, making me apply it properly like the old legends from the books, mimicking the techniques of General Cheng and Terracotta that I’d told that departed guy about.
The most famous crystal users completely abandoned earth magic in favor of the stronger material.
General Cheng literally encased himself in armor, becoming a Crystal Knight capable of crushing any defense with his body.
Lord Terracotta could simultaneously control countless crystals, fighting with them like remote-controlled swords.
When Anubis wasn’t making me practice with crystals or sand, he made me suffer in my huge room equipped for physical training.
For some reason, the dog wanted me to get taller.
I wanted to copy and adapt these techniques for myself, to become an abrasive bender.
The choice presented was far stranger.
“Choose:”
1: Create a new image (The Sandbender’s persona has become more dangerous.
A bounty has been placed on you.
You can nip problems in the bud by creating the image of a pure, unshakable “Crystal Knight”).
2: Subjugate the UNLUCK (The image you created has been tarnished.
You aren’t recognized as the Sandbender.
You have a chance to reclaim your fame.
You’ll become much more renowned).
3: Break the mold (You’ve learned to choose less honorable options.
History knows many terrifying figures.
You can try to completely copy a historical bender’s image.
Make people believe you’re the resurrected General Cheng or Monster Terracotta).
I blinked in complete confusion.
Anubis seemed strange today, as if he was offering me a summary of my time here.
That’s what I thought until I heard a crack.
Right above my head, the ceiling started spider-webbing with cracks, making me squint.
“They’re mining a new shaft up there.” People in the camp recognized the familiar sound and froze.
They looked up.
Miners, smiths, soldiers—everyone stopped.
Pupils dilated.
We saw the ceiling crumbling.
“Why…
we took every precaution against collapses.”
“I reinforced the supports myself.
Inspected the floor.”
“Impossible.”
Shivers ran down the hard men who rarely saw daylight.
Was Anubis hinting at something?
Rocks started falling.
With a loud crack, a boulder the size of ten meters broke loose, plummeting toward our entire camp.
The problem was that most of it was crystal.
We couldn’t just push it away together or split it apart.
For some reason, I forgot about Anubis’s choice.
I just acted on autopilot, like I would in any other situation.
Breaking my rings and letting the jennamite grow along my arms, I used some of it to create abrasive sand.
I hurled long sand tentacles upward, briefly glimpsed a lightning discharge in the sand, and pulled myself up.
Thud.
I slammed my foot into the massive stone, releasing as much chi as I could.
My increased physical strength allowed me to put more power into the strike.
Quickly accelerated sand particles appeared in my hands.
I transferred both the impulse and surrounded the stone with a sandstorm, knocking the boulder off course.
It crashed outside the camp, causing strong tremors that accelerated the ceiling collapse.
New jennamite, whose growth I could accelerate, was turned into sand again.
A column of sand knocked down sharp crystals that could damage buildings and equipment.
My tentacles grabbed walls, maneuvering freely between giant stones.
I had no doubt the collapse had happened right above me.
“Right when I returned to camp.
That damn curse causes problems for me too.”I gritted my teeth, knowing this wasn’t the first time.
Staring at the cracks in the collapse point, I knew this couldn’t have happened in a day.
The locals weren’t stupid enough to allow such a critical failure.
Not wanting it to hurt anyone else, I drove my long tentacles into the stones and started spinning like a tornado.
The long whips sharpened into incredible blades, bending at any angle.
The settling dust began to swirl rapidly from my tricks.
I myself was becoming the cause of that beautiful electrical effect.
“No…” Pinning myself to the wall, I realized too many large stones had fallen.
I couldn’t stop this.
“Hmm, serious business.” At that moment, a voice came from the elevator next to where I was hanging.
Feeling that the elevator shaft wasn’t safe, I quickly turned to the descending people and froze.
“Heh!”
I saw an old man covered in moss, with what looked like a black eye.
Hair stuck out in all directions from his partially bald head.
A slightly crazy look darted from me to the stones.
Then, with a few minimal hand gestures, he pushed all the stones away one by one.
Then, simply raising his hands to the ceiling, he clenched his palms.
The cracks healed instantly.
The stone became so dense it changed color.
Getting off the elevator, he walked into our camp as if nothing had happened.
“I came to see the jennamite room you prepared for me.” He answered the stunned silence completely casually.
The monster had solved the problem without even trying.
Recognizing him was easy, even though I’d never seen him before.
King Bumi, ruler of all Omashu.
The most brilliant earthbender alive.
“Oh, this is bad.”
At that moment, his “crazy” gaze fixed on a few people.
He seemed to have an eagle eye, noticing wounds specifically, pieces of growing crystal in different parts of their bodies.
Everyone’s attention slowly focused on them.
We all saw the crystal fusing with their flesh.
“Ah!
Aaa!” Panic erupted immediately.
An open wound with jennamite in it.
It would have been fine if removed immediately, but even the injured didn’t notice they’d gotten scratched.
Now they were crystallizing.
They collapsed, convulsing.
The King stood still.
Obviously, no one could do anything.
Swoosh.
I pushed myself off the wall and landed near the injured men.
My body was surrounded by several razor-sharp tentacles.
In seconds, I sliced off their clothes.
I’d learned to cut with such precision on the insects, not damaging anything extra.
With my new blades, I saw no problem.
Staying calm, I glanced at Bumi and the people around him.
“Alcohol.”
My sand did the work itself.
Slowly splitting the quartz and pulling the fragments out.
The most important thing was not letting the crystal grow into the veins.
In the caves, people worked with their fists, sometimes damaging their hands.
That wasn’t as bad as wounds on the neck or spine.
With a few precise incisions, I removed the crystals and exhaled.
In the end, no one died from my UNLUCK.
The medics who arrived were surprised by the work and took the men to their ward.
When I stood up, I realized everyone’s eyes were on me.
“…”
Right.
Anubis had offered me a choice.
I hadn’t even thought about it.
The people examining me could only see a tall, built man.
Scars too.
They hadn’t disappeared since the insect caves.
They were just covered by clothes before.
Now I wore much less.
I looked exactly like that false image of the Sandbender that ordinary people had built in their heads.
Maybe it wasn’t so false after all.
“…I think I know you.” King Bumi began.