Chapter 37

Scorching Savanna

Ethan, Tara, Ronald, and Elijah stood about twenty feet from the surging vortex that had evolved over the last ten days. Rather than it being just a spinning swirl that distorted space around it, it was a bulging, vertical tunnel with expanding accretion-like disks projecting from its top mouth. It danced between bright, twilight colours at its brightest and obsidian black at its darkest. Due to the excess of the energy it was releasing, it whipped up winds that were so strong an ordinary person wouldn’t even be able to approach it.

“Yap, this is how we die,” Ronald mumbled, getting the chills. Though their ‘training’ had supposedly gone well, bearing witness to something so otherworldly had shaken whatever little confidence he’d managed to accrue.

"Small things, small things," Ethan shrugged. He expected as much–such was the evolution of the Tunnels with the potential to become Fields. The worst of the kind, the legendary 'Eldritch Depths', had a Tunnel whose entrance alone spanned nearly fifteen miles in height, while the vertical length of the Tunnel broke past the Earth’s orbit and into outer space. It was… quite a sight, to say the least. "Alright, everyone. Let's see the fuck this is about."

Ethan had taken Layla to the small cave and away from the lodge just in case, and told both her and Tian that they shouldn't move at all for as long as they have food. He'd given them enough to last a week or so, and though it would likely take less than that, it was better to be on the safe side. Luckily, Field-potential Tunnels all had the 1:1 time scale with Earth as the entire goal of the Tunnel was to minimise the differences between the two places for the ease of invasion, which was also why Ethan elected to enter as he knew there wasn't even a chance of him being there for a day while decades pass on Earth.

He was the first to step forward, winds lashing out against him and causing his clothes to flutter. It was a familiar sensation–he'd entered hundreds of Tunnels in his life, but only four with a Field-potential. Why? Because they were exceedingly rare and exceedingly difficult. Virtually the only saving grace was that they usually dropped much better items and awarded unique titles.

The journey through the vortex itself, however, was quite smooth unlike with the ordinary Tunnels. Again, due to the nature of the Tunnel working to equalise conditions between the two worlds, there wasn't as much whiplash in adjusting to separate 'spacetime'. Though Tara seemed to have braced herself for the horrors of it, as she walked out on the other side, she felt ever so slightly embarrassed. It was… ordinary. As though they simply went through a thin layer of water without getting wet.

The world around them, however, had changed completely–from a forest coated in the sheen of twilight purple due to the Tunnel to an expansive and scalding savanna. The first thing all four noticed was the temperature–it was well, well over a hundred degrees. Likely approaching the unlivable 130. The air itself was beyond distorted due to the heat, and save for dry, cracking ground, only some strange-seeming patches of grass and occasional cacti were visible. In fairness, their field of view was extremely limited, perhaps some three-four miles in all directions before it was too distorted to make out any details.

“Jesus…” Tara mumbled, already wiping sweat from her forehead. Luckily, they’d brought a lot of water inside their inventories as, from the looks of it, they would need every last drop of it.

Just then, a series of windows popped up for all of them, notifications listing out quite a few details in regards to the place itself as well as their ‘quests’ in relation to it.

[Welcome to 'Scorching Savanna', a world exhaling its last breath. The Savanna was home to several hundred thriving species who enjoyed the daily massage of the homeworld star, but due to the accelerating changes and the world's decay, the temperatures grew too hot for most of the species who lived here, causing them to go extinct.]

[Though there are still dozens of species living in the Savanna, only 3 inhabit its surface: Scorching Lions, namesakes of the Savanna, Soalstrider Antelopes, and Pyracondas.]

[Fulfil one of the conditions below for clearing the ‘Scorching Savanna’:

–Kill at least 80% of all surface-dwelling monsters (0/350) and defeat the Final Boss

–Hunt down the last remaining Mirage Manta and extract its source to summon a portal back to your homeworld (Note: Completing this task will yield no rewards, and all rewards earned in the meantime will be removed)

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–At least 1 member of the party is alive after 30 days (you are automatically removed from the Tunnel, but the Tunnel will not be destroyed; instead, its nature will be reset to an ordinary one)

–Kill all 100% of the surface-dwelling monsters (0/350), defeat the Final Boss, as well as ‘?????’ for maximum rewards–]

[The temperature will continue increasing for the duration of your stay by approximately 2-4% per day]

[Good luck, Travellers]

Ethan breathed a sigh of relief while the other three appeared aghast. It was understandable–Tara’s tale of the other Tunnel they’d closed spoke of less than fifty regular monsters and yet there were over three hundred of them here, in addition to the boss. For Ethan, however, 350 was the symphony of joy. Not to mention, all of the monsters they would be hunting sounded like they were the so-called ‘Apex Earthbeasts’, which was merely the nickname given to monsters whose counterparts could be found on Earth, just without all the fantasy ‘fluff’.

“Alright,” his voice alerted them, dragging them out of their thoughts. “First order of business: making a camp.”

“... where?” Tara frowned, glancing around. “There’s literally no shade in sight.”

“Really?” Ethan smiled faintly, pointing down with his hand.

“... underground?” the trio exclaimed softly.

"It's gonna be a bitch to dig since the ground is probably harder than a rock," Ethan said. "But even with the protections of an Awakened, this heat would become too much. We're gonna have to establish a mainstay camp and then start exploring in a circular fashion."

“So, where do we dig? Here?” Ronald asked.

"Nah," Ethan said. "We're gonna look for dried-up waterholes or riverbeds since the ground's gonna be softer. Start with any of the patches of grass that you see or the cacti, and expand the perimeter around it looking for depressions in the ground, smoother rocks and pebbles that stick out from the rest, or in the case of riverbeds, a snaking shape with banks on either side. Look for soil differences, too: ground should be sandier and finer within them over without. There might be mud or clay, and though it will be dry and cracked, it's a good indicator that water used to be there. You three go south, I'll go north. Walk about five hundred yards and no further and start moving inwardly toward here, rounding around toward the patches of grass and cacti."

“... and you just happen to know this because?” Tara looked at him oddly, as did the other two.

“I was an outdoorsman in my youth?” Ethan cracked a smile at the disbelieving three before setting off northward. On his way to the five hundred yards marker, he’d already spotted at least three potential candidates. Though the grass was patchy, there was enough of it within their visible diameter that Ethan suspected there was either an underground source of water nearby, or that the environmental changes were quite recent which would allow the plants that can survive off of a single drop of water for months to survive with the limited and dwindling supplies.

They converged back at their starting point around half an hour later; Ethan found two waterholes while the trio found a riverbed some three hundred yards southwest. It was quite shallow, barely thirty inches, and some twenty feet long, but it was good enough. A quick inspection of the soil confirmed that, though not exactly soft, it wasn’t as rock-hard as the rest of the savanna.

“So, we dig here?” Ronald asked.

“We dig here,” Ethan nodded. Though they only had one actual shovel, Ethan could dig with the Crimson Blade, while Elijah would use his own spells to help crack through some of the tougher parts and speed up the process. Somebody would also need to move the dirt to the side, and that somebody was Tara as she and Ronald played rock-paper-scissors over who would be the digger. "We'll dig at an angle," Ethan said. "First, dig about two feet deep straight, and then start digging at an approximately forty-five-degree angle. Since we've been warned that the temperatures will keep rising, we're gonna have to go fairly deep–probably close to thirty feet at a minimum–to get a decent level of cooling.

“It’s not gonna be easy as it’s not just a matter of digging out a massive hole. Elijah, you’re the one who’s stored logs in the Inventory, right?”

“Yeah,” the boy nodded.

“Alright,” Ethan followed suit. “We’ll do as follows: set up the temporary tent for some basic shielding and use the daylight to chop logs into beams as well as we can that we’ll use to support the shaft. Once a resemblance of night falls, we’ll start digging. Use beams to build a supporting structure every ten feet or so, and build two chambers at the depth instead of one. We’re gonna aim for a domed ceiling and leave a single pillar of earth itself at the centre of each chamber to act as a support. They’re not gonna be large–just enough to fit two people. Elijah and Tara will go into one, and Ronald and I into another. We’re only ever going to be there during the hottest periods of time–think from like 11 to 4-5 on Earth–for some rest and sleep, while we’ll spend the remainder hunting and exploring.

“We’ll go step by step, so there’s no need to rush. We can still handle these temperatures for now if we just drink a bit more water. Better that than the entire thing collapsing down on us and suffocating us. As long as everyone’s got no questions, let’s start setting up a tent.”

“And you also know this because you were an avid outdoorsman?” it was Ronald, this time, who cracked the question, causing Ethan to look at him oddly.

"No, I know this because in-between violent masturbatory sessions as a lonely teenager I used to watch documentaries about miners digging holes in Mother Earth and fucking her raw."

"..." The three stared at him in silence for a long while as he took out the tent from the Inventory and started pitching it. It would be a long stay, they felt, even if not in time, then at least in mind.