Watching the krayt dragon rampage, Amir grabbed hold of the trembling Bantha nearby.
At this point, the krayt dragon had broken free of its restraints. Faced with the swarm of insects provoking it, it began attacking indiscriminately.
It had not fled, because nothing on the field could threaten it anymore.
Amir raised his blaster and fired. The bolts came so fast they nearly formed a single red line, driving straight toward the krayt dragon's small eye.
The searing shot struck its eyeball directly. Though a layer of tough membrane protected it, the hit still caused it intense pain.
With a pained roar, the krayt dragon turned its gaze toward Amir.
In that stare, Amir felt its fury.
The next second, its enormous body burst up out of the sand. With its jaws wide open, the krayt dragon lunged at Amir with unstoppable force.
"Amir?!" Millisyn shouted anxiously from the distance.
Not just her. Fear flashed in the eyes of everyone around them.
Chaihoun stood much closer to Amir. Staring at the krayt dragon surging toward him, he shouted and unleashed the full fury of his blaster in defiance—but the shots could not pierce the dragon's hide. They only enraged it further.
Yet Chaihoun refused to stop.
He could not stop, because this might be the last moment of his life.
He was doing the very thing he had pursued all his life. Saying he could die without regret had never been a joke.
When the krayt dragon reached him, he was smiling.
He closed his eyes. A tremendous force struck around him, and the world spun wildly.
But the worse sensation he had expected never came.
Like a blind man, he groped around in confusion, and his hand plunged into the burning sand.
Stunned, Chaihoun opened his eyes and realized he was not inside the krayt dragon's stomach.
He was still outside.
That force he had felt had not come from the krayt dragon's jaws.
Then what had it been?
Still in confusion, Chaihoun hurriedly looked toward where Amir had been standing.
The krayt dragon had gone straight for him!
The plan had already completely fallen apart. Chaihoun did not want that young man to die here.
But all he could see now was the sand cloud rising into the air. Nothing else remained visible.
The Bantha packed with explosives was gone.
Amir was gone.
The krayt dragon was gone.
It was as though the entire hunt had been nothing but a dream.
"Amir!!!" the old man shouted, his voice echoing through the silent valley.
Behind them, Millisyn's eyes went wide, and she grabbed Obi-Wan, shaking him frantically.
Even Obi-Wan could not be sure. All he had seen was Amir leaping up and grabbing onto the krayt dragon's head—after that, everything vanished.
"Amir got eaten!" Millisyn shouted at Obi-Wan in panic.
"No. I don't think he was eaten. It's just…"
"Amir grabbed onto the horn and went under the sand with it," 32 said. His cybernetic eye had seen it more clearly than anyone else.
"Then where is he?!" Millisyn still could not believe it.
The Tusken Raiders all seemed shaken by what they had just witnessed. Their hands trembled, and they gripped their weapons tighter.
That outsider—the one who had asked for their help—had fired and drawn the krayt dragon away, saving several of the strongest men in their tribe.
And because of that, he himself had been swallowed alive.
The Tusken Raiders fell silent.
At that moment, Amir had no idea what the people outside were thinking.
"That was reckless!"
At the final instant before the bite closed, he had vaulted onto the beast's head and locked both hands around one of its huge horns.
The Bantha packed with explosives had already been swallowed.
Originally, he had intended to leap clear of the krayt dragon's body and detonate the charges from a distance.
But the violent shaking had made it impossible for him to keep his footing. Before he could jump free, the dragon had already dived underground!
By the time Amir realized what was happening, walls of sand were crashing in from both sides!
By then they were already nearly ten meters below the surface. There was no way out!
In an instant, a massive weight of sand crushed down around his body and buried him completely.
But he still could not let go.
If he became trapped and unable to move, he would eventually end up inside the krayt dragon's mouth after all.
The only thing he could do was cling even tighter to the horn, continue descending with the beast, and wait until it surfaced again.
At the same time, the only thing he could manage was to call on the Force around his head, using everything he had to carve out a bit of space around his nose and mouth so he could breathe, while pressing his entire body as tightly as possible against the dragon's horn to reduce the damage.
But even that could not prevent all of it.
His clothes were the first to fail under the crushing pressure and friction, torn to shreds in the sand.
Then came his skin.
Suppressing the pain tearing through his body, Amir forced himself to concentrate. He began constructing a Force defense around himself. But deep underground, on the back of a thrashing greater krayt dragon, that became incredibly difficult. His focus kept breaking apart.
It took many attempts before he finally succeeded.
Only then did he truly escape immediate death.
But the krayt dragon had clearly realized something was clinging to its head, and it showed no intention of going back up. It kept charging wildly through the sand.
Amir did not dare detonate the explosives directly.
Given the power of those charges, he did not dare gamble on whether he would be caught in the blast.
Even if the explosion did not injure him too badly, being buried alive in the sand after the krayt dragon died would hardly be a good outcome either.
This dragon was unbelievably stubborn.
Couldn't it just die and let everyone move on?
As Amir gripped its horn, he remembered one of the abilities he had mastered.
Through the Force, he could transmit certain thoughts to living creatures he was in contact with.
Now, he could do even more.
Through his study of Jedi mind techniques, Amir had already learned to build more detailed illusions. He could push sensations, imagined scenes, and other impressions directly into the mind of a creature.
The Force began to ripple, and Amir showed the stubborn beast a vision.
The explosives carried inside the Bantha it had swallowed suddenly detonated in a violent blast.
Heat. Concussion. Expansion.
Everything rampaged through its belly without restraint.
Its stomach, organs, flesh, even its armored hide—all of it was obliterated by the explosion as though made of paper.
Pain and despair flooded its not-especially-bright mind.
Under Amir's pressure, it completely believed the vision.
The beast sent him an emotion: fear.
Amir pressed the advantage and continued tearing down its mental defenses.
The enraged giant gradually calmed. Under Amir's guidance, it began swimming upward through the sand.
It had yielded.
Under Amir's threats and inducements, it gave up the fight and wanted only to survive.
Back in the valley, everyone was still holding their breath and staring around in tense silence.
Then the sand in the center began to tremble. Starting from one point, a circular depression spread outward.
Two seconds later, a colossal shadow burst up through the sand, its head thrust high toward the blazing sky.
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🌌 STAR WARS: RELICS OF THE PAST
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