In the end, Rowan made a shadowclone every other hour to carry Jayden since he kept sinking knee-deep into the sand which each step he took. Luckily, they managed to reach the stairs going to the seventh floor without any mishaps.
Another shadowclone turned into a puff of smoke before sending the memories of suffering back to Rowan so that he could experience it too. Luckily, he only experienced it for a few seconds before the memories sank back into his mind.
Looking at the seventh floor in front of him, Rowan couldn't help but sigh as the sand stretched for miles. He created another shadowclone to carry Jayden before they continued their dungeon quest. He avoided every hill that was visible to him just in case a demon beast was sleeping there.
With the amount of water that they collected from the pool on the sixth floor, they had no problem reaching the stairs leading to the eight floor. As they approached the eight floor, a stinger came out of nowhere and nearly stabbed Jayden.
Fortunately, the clone shifted it's body weight and got stabbed instead. Rowan got to experience that too. The body that the tail belonged to appeared and it put all the demon beasts that Rowan had fought before to shame when it comes to sheer size.
The stinger pointed at Jayden and Rowan immediately created a shadowclone to carry Jayden away before hitting it with an air palm so that it could focus on him. Rowan drew the Kusanagi Sword and got into his battle stance.
Rowan searched for the desert scorpion demon beast's eyes but he couldn't find anything. He now wished that he was taking more note in his Biology classes but there was nothing he could do now except find a way to beat this thing.
He decided to go for a straightforward attack and rushed at the scorpion. He jumped into the air with the sword high above his head. The tail of the scorpion moved towards him at breakneck speed but he managed to avoid it by twisting his body in the air.
Rowan placed his feet on the scorpion's tail and launched himself at the scorpion's main body. Unfortunately, he underestimated the speed of the scorpion's tail as it retracted and shot out again towards him
He had no way of evading it this time so he placed the Kusanagi Sword horizontally in front of him to intercept the poison needle at the end of the scorpion's tail. It smashed into the sword causing Rowan to shoot into the distance.
If only he could cast a genjutsu on the scorpion but it was useless if it doesn't have visible eyes. He needed to keep the tail busy till he could deal actual damage to the scorpion. He could sense the clone getting pretty far and got the Kusanagi Sword ready.
"Crescent Moon Slash!" Rowan screamed and sent a crescent moon projectile at the scorpion's shell. The scorpion was left with a deep gash on it's tail since it intercepted the projectile. Rowan didn't want to drag the fight out too long, so he got the sword ready.
"Half Moon Slash!" Rowan screamed and managed to cut the tail of the scorpion clean off. With the tail out of the way, he attached three paper bombs to the Kusanagi Sword before throwing it at the shell of the scorpion.
The scorpion tried pinching Rowan with it's claws but it wasn't fast enough for that. The Kusanagi Sword managed to breech the shell of the scorpion before the paper bombs exploded, creating a huge hole in the shell of the scorpion.
Rowan placed his hands together and created four shadowclones. Three clones were in charge of distracting the scorpion and the other clone stood next to Rowan. Rowan held his hand out to the clone and a small swirling ball of chakra appeared on his hand.
Rowan disappeared and reappeared at the hole that the Kusanagi Sword and the paper bombs created. "Rasengan!" he screamed as he smashed the Rasengan into the hole and into the scorpion's innards. The scorpion stood still for three seconds before crashing down on the ground.
Rowan's curiosity was awoken as he tried to find the eyes of the scorpion. He finally managed to find them where the pinchers was but they were really tiny. Rowan cut through the shell of the scorpion to get the crystal inside.
His eyes began shining as he looked at the yellowish glow on the crystal. It was still orange but a yellowish orange. He sent a message to his clone to bring Jayden back as he went towards the stairs. The baby dragons couldn't care less about where he was going.
They shot towards the corpse of the scorpion and began eating away. It took quite a while for the clone to get back but at least the gluttonous baby dragons were finished eating by the time they got back. They then descent to the eight floor.
Upon entering the eight floor, Rowan and Jayden were greeted with a giant sandstorm. Looking at the size of the sandstorm, they decided to wait it out but it didn't weaken at all after waiting for three years. Rowan decided to send in a shadowclone first.
The clone managed to get a good distance into the sandstorm before a rock or something smashed into it before it turned into a puff of smoke. Rowan got to relive the experience but he realised that the storm wasn't as bad as they thought.
The wind wasn't blowing so hard. The biggest problem would be the random things that the storm would throw at them. Rowan looked over at Jayden and asked a question he never knew he would ask in the desert.
"Hey Jayden, you don't happen to have a spare suit of armour do you?" the question brought a smile to Jayden's face as she brought some pink armour out of her space bag. Rowan's face darkened immediately.