I think I messed up. I was in the middle of the desert and physically exhausted. Why? Well, I located a structure deep under the sand and was trying to dig it out. But sand is heavy as fuck so here I am extremely exhausted in the middle of nowhere.

The heat isn't the issue, I can also create water when I need to, it’s just that I can't go home or to a city to relax because I’m too exhausted. And there were some giant lizards that tried to snack on me. Somehow the snakes were ok with me, some even seemed to help me out. I laid on my back on the sand. It felt like the sun was mocking me.

The problem is, if I fall asleep, I will die due to dehydration. My heat resistance doesn't protect me from dehydration. Deserts suck. I took a Phoenix flower out of my dimensional pocket, ignited it inhaled the fiery pollen. All my stamina got restored. Normally just the pollen is enough but this is just a short temporary effect, the full effect is breathing the pollen when they're ignited. Of course, this is only possible if you have heat resistance. If I remember correctly what Greg once told me is that human clans that specialized in fire magic almost brought this plant to extinction because they could do exactly what I just did and continue fighting while others would be incapacitated due to exhaustion. And using fire on them keeps the flowers useful for longer.

I returned the flower to my dimensional pocket and continued digging. I've started to hate digging. I had made a huge pit of sand but sand kept falling into the pit and not making this process very efficient. If I didn't hate earth-related magic and leyline I certainly do now. Is there a way I can cheat this? I have dug holes before without earth magic before.

I jumped out of the hole and started lightning [Dragon]. I sent it up and then made it crash into the hole I dug. A heat flash and the [Dragon] disappeared. It was a blue lightning dragon but… it didn't do anything! It just created some funny-looking rocks. I need to blast a hole with something stronger. I need to boost this [Dragon] or find something stronger. I wonder if I could use my [Tail Dynamo] with leyline energy. I started it up and it created threads of leyline energy that got spun into a spool of electrocharged energy.

This… this is way more efficient with leyline than magic, what the hell... My tails were glowing purple and shifted to red. Well, isn't this easy… with magic, the best I could realistically do was purple. Any higher and I would be hurling my stomach contents. Since lightning leyline energy relies on fast movements this is perfect. I kept my tails spinning and dropped a red [lightning pillar] into the hole. This was way more effective; I didn't get to my destination yet but nothing 2 or 3 more [Lightning Pillars] won't fix I also felt tingly. The only problem is that anyone with eyes can see this from kilometres away but it's either that or earth leyline and I know what I prefer!

I had made quite a deep hole; I might have damaged the ancient structure down below. It wasn't fully made out of the ancient technology that normally makes it so tough which was quite weird.

I jumped in and landed in a strange room. Well, it was not strange it was upside down. This is useless. Can’t these ancients do anything normal? Although, everything is slanted, did this structure sink and flip? The dungeon in the jungle was also on an angle. I heard the sound of giant sandworms closeby and heaps of sand fell from the hole.

Hey, assholes! Zip it! Do you want to bury me alive?! They kept going at it. I probably attracted them by blasting holes through the sand. I might be on a time limit because they probably will continue doing sandworm stuff. There was sand everywhere! I even got sand in my underwear. Earth really isn't my element.

I looked around but nothing made sense because everything that was loose was now scattered on the ceiling. Why is everything a pain in the ass? I saw some ancient Kaledonian which was surprising. Nothing interesting though. I found so many useless items here. Was this some kind of residence? If that's the case I won't find convenient big writing on the walls. Or who knows maybe that was the cool thing to do back then.

I wanted to move to the next room but the door was up there. Why did they need floors so high? I could bust down this wall but I'm not sure that's smart. I looked up and more sand was falling down the hole. I heated up my hands and feet and climbed up by melting the stone. I climbed to the door and opened it and did not like what I found.

A tidal wave of sand flowed out and knocked me down. I had to dig myself out of a pile of sand and I had to spit out some sand too. I was getting tired of all this sand. There must be something I could do. There is no way a mythical beast needs to deal with all this sand, right? The problem is that I need this place intact… I used sand Dragonvein to get all the sand out of the room I wanted to enter.

I was moving sand for 10 minutes… 20 minutes…30 minutes. I stomped and the whole place shook and a lot of sand fell through the hole. I tried hard to not lose it.

Calm down Agnis, It’s just sand. I rested and was contemplating what was worth more, information about this ancient language or my sanity and decided that I was never sane to begin with so I could try for a bit longer. I got up to continue digging out the next room when a large amount of sand fell from the hole.

What the? And then a giant sandworm fell down.

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A sandworm, I swear, I’m not in the mood, if he wants to get vaporized, he can go and harass another 9t! The sandworm continued doing sandworm things and eating sand. I forgot that these things are blind and react to mana or sound and I’m not giving off mana and I’m just quietly fuming. I wonder if I can abuse this jerk.

He doesn't seem like he eats enough sand to make it worthwhile though… It just looks like he's snacking on the sand here. I should try and locate a scroll or a book to learn [Transmute] because this sand is bullshit. If I could turn this all into water it would've been a piece of cake. Cee Horze flashed into my mind. I wonder what he's up to and where he is. I could've really used his help here. Do I just give up?

This room which was originally quite empty was now half full with sand. Maybe I should be a pessimist and say it's half empty. I looked below me. The room below me didn't have much sand but the sand that was in this room would fall down there. Unless…

I used sand leyline to create a tube of sand that had its base on the floor. I wet it by shifting to use water leyline and wet it and then baked this budget clay with fire. This tube stuck out from all the sand. I jumped into the tube and melted a hole in the floor.

I reached the relatively sandless new room. Still upside down. There was a lot of stuff on the ground, ehh ceiling. Most of them were books. Half of them were ancient Kaledonian and the other half were in the mystery language I've been trying to learn.

As far as I can tell from the ancient Kaledonian, which I’m going to call Hourai for simplicity, whoever lived here was probably a scholar and was trying to learn this language. How convenient. Well, being buried under meters of sand in the desert isn't really convenient but I can use this. I collected everything I could find and chucked them into my dimensional pocket. It opened again and kicked out all the sand that was on those items.

I’m wondering though… would I ever need sand in the future… I make it a habit to store a lot of stuff. I still have an enormous volume of river water stored. Maybe I should store sand… I don’t want to but maybe some creature can't take it when I throw sand in his stomach.

I took a mental note of this place. Normally I would explore this place more but I’ve had it. I went back through the tube and the sandworm was still snacking.

I stole all its food and stored the sand in my dimensional pocket. It seemed confused and started munching on a wall.

Wait! Don’t! The wall collapsed and the sand above us was starting to fall down at a rapid rate.

You greedy worm! The sandworm reacted but it was too late. I fired up [Tail Dynamo] and vaporized it with a red [Lightning pillar]. I formed a red lightning [Dragon] that carried me up to the surface. Just in time before all the sand collapsed into the underground residency.

I almost got assassinated by a sandworm. I don't think Isi would forgive me if I kicked the bucket like that. I sat down on the sand and rested. There was more sand in my underwear… Is this how Greg thinks about water?

Some sandworms were messing around close by so I moved away and I walked into a sandpit.

Oh, a dragon antlion pit. Because I was so light, I didn't trigger the trap.

That's some oversight buddy, might want to adjust your trap to also catch lighter prey. The dragon antlion looked at me confused as I walked out of its trap. And then I was wondering, why am I walking? I teleported back to my hideout, took off my clothes, and threw them into the basin after which I dove in. I had to get all this sand off me!

There was sand in my ears. The worst thing was that there was sand in my tails. It took me 4 hours to get every grain of sand out of my tails.

Day 239 was the day to finally learn this new language. I went into what I call ‘Library Mode’ I put my eyes and tails to work and read multiple books at once and flipping through the pages rapidly. This is 9t exclusive because you need Elgards eyes to read all this superfast and store it and you need a lot of tails to flip through all these books.

It only took me 2 hours to read through all these books, notes, and other stuff. I then put my tails to work to process all this information so I could learn the language.

Learning stuff as a tailed beast is kind of cheating but that's just the nature of our tails. Greg uses it a lot too and Raishin doesn't use it enough. Now I just have to wait till my tails are done. I decided to rest and visit Vinny the next day.

Tomorrow would mark the halfway point of my first training year. I was wondering what I wanted to do for the rest of this year, I might have to go with the idea of finding spots that are close to the underground, sky or celestial leyline currents, and master the element there, earth however… I’m totally going to skip that one. I don’t need it. I still have the feeling that there is sand somewhere.

I went to Vinny’s place on day 240 and told him that I would be leaving. I told him about my run-in with Vica’s curse and that stupid buried house and all the sand.

“And here I was telling you to be careful and you almost get yourself killed twice…”

Well, that guy needs to learn that not everyone can be saved and that actions have consequences! And that place with the sand just sucked… Anyways what have you been up to?

“Well, uhh, you see… I got a girlfriend.” Wow, congrats! When is the wedding?

“Hey come on that’s going to be in at least 4 or 5 years!” zzz, I’ll be dead by then.

“Spirit foxes are also immortal!” Nobody has time to wait that long!

“You’re just impatient! How about you find a girlfriend? Might make you less reckless!” Don’t need one, I’ll just be fine, say hi for me to her, I need to prepare to go. I don't know where yet but I need to get my hideout in order. Oh, and by the way pick a random element.

“Earth.” A random element that’s not earth.

“... how about fire.” Alright! I will find a place to train fire first! Thanks Vinny! I don’t know when I will see you again but in case this is the last time, you’re a good friend and a great dragon!

“Don't say it like that… Just call me when you need me, I’ll do my best to help out!” I’ll try but people tell me I have a bad memory! Cya!

“Oh god…” I went back to my hideout and packed my stuff. I looked out over the basin and at the waterfalls. I had called this place my home for half a year. Now I would be going from place to place to master all the basic elements, besides earth of course. Who needs more sand?