Karrakas opened his mouth.
Then he closed it.
He looked at Lukas, then at the broken spikes scattered across the sand, then at the spot where the bone wall had stood, then back at Lukas.
He opened his mouth before closing it again.
Something had shifted behind his eyes. He still possessed the same confidence he carried as a guide and the calm professionalism that had been consistent since the moment they'd met him at the Le Fay pavilion, but there was something new now.
He now had a wariness. A recalibrated sense of exactly what kind of people he'd agreed to guide through this desert.
He decided, visibly, not to say whatever he'd been about to say.
A part of him was working through something else though. If Lukas could defeat a C-rank Spiked Turtle using nothing but his own skills, alone, in the open desert, then the journey back to the ringed city was going to be way less dangerous than the journey out had been.
