The day had just started and that cube was already screaming in my ear. I ended up sleeping too much and didn't realize it was morning.

"How long are you going to sleep?"

I got up with a sleepy face and undid the little shelter of sand around me.

The landscape had completely changed, new dunes appeared and the sand looked brighter, but now I could see the horizon better, revealing some mountains in the background. I put my things away and kept moving on but that cube kept orbiting my body making noises and giving some glowing pulses.

When I asked what was going on, the cube initially didn't answer me, but after a few seconds, it seemed to be watching the horizon... even though it didn't have eyes.

"Energy anomalies... This desert is crowded with this kind of anomaly."

At first, I thought that such energetic anomalies must be interference from the abyss to the side, but during my reasoning, I was cut off with other information.

"Soil samples from this location indicate a rising mana"

This could be the justification for why the sand was shiny.

"Are you going to stay put?"

That thing was very rude, I was waiting for him to do his soil analysis...

After a few hours walking, I began to notice that the number of creatures in the desert was very low even by the standards of that place, and the amount of mana in the atmosphere was quite high.

The day seemed to be getting darker as time passed, thunderclouds began to hover over my head. It's hard to rain in a desert, maybe that was a bad day to wander around.

I tried to speed up the pace to get away from the possible rain that was about to fall but the cube started to alert me to the weather conditions.

"A storm is coming"

Oh don't tell me... it looks like I'm dumb...

"It's a pretty big energy anomaly, I think you should take cover"

A sandstorm, is quite common in deserts, taking this into account I decided to go ahead and ignore the warnings.

As I walked the conditions got worse, until the moment I felt the need to take shelter, the sky was already dark covered with a black cloud, and several mana particles hit my face like a razor.

"Are you going to take shelter now?"

Okay, I'll take shelter then... I gathered the sand around and hardened it to create a sand dome around me.

The storm got worse, I could hear the noise of the wind and several particles of sand hitting the dome, it was as if at any moment everything could be blown away by the wind.

Unexpectedly, it wasn't the wind that took me, but the body of a stone lizard that hit the dome and shattered all my shelter. I was exposed to that monstrous storm, it felt like an apocalypse happening before my eyes.

Previously the dust hitting me cut my skin like a razor, but now after the storm got worse it felt like there were glowing particles hitting my body, I was literally starting to burn in flames. A sandstorm seemed to have turned into a firestorm, there were several creatures flying around caught in the blazing winds.

To protect me I channeled mana into my skin and coated my entire body with energy so I gained considerable resistance to damage, but even so, I needed to protect myself from the bodies of the creatures that were being hurled at me.

Looking around there was only sand, the horizon was hidden behind a dense reddish haze of sand. The cube had stuck to my chest like it was using me as a support so it wouldn't be carried away, but I was about to be ripped off the ground.

The sand under my feet started to thin out, so I decided to dig a hole and harden the sand around it so that I was on the ground. The sand hardening process is very simple, you only need to use your mana to press the sand grains against each other until they are so close that they take on the characteristic of a solid.

I practically buried myself under the sand, I imagined that now nothing could pull me out of the ground, I was surrounded by massive sandstone walls.

...

I ended up falling asleep while waiting for the storm to pass and I woke up with that cube screaming in my ear once more.

"The storm ended an hour ago, how long are you going to sleep?"

I woke up complaining but he was right, I couldn't sleep in the middle of the desert.

The first thing I asked when I woke up was how long the storm lasted.

"Five o'clock"

I slept for six hours so it must have been late afternoon. When trying to break up the shelter I was interrupted once more with a curious warning.

"You don't want to completely dismantle the shelter... at least not in the situation you find yourself in"

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

I opened the roof of the shelter and looked out... the landscape had changed drastically, I was about 10 meters high, the sand beneath me had also turned to sandstone due to compression. Several dunes had disappeared and many others had formed, the sky was completely blue without any clouds, and the sand was clear and pure but what caught my attention the most was the hundreds of bodies of desert creatures that were scattered in the sand.

With the help of the buoyancy of the cube I descended and went against one of the bodies partially buried in the sand, it was a stone lizard. Stone lizards have hard and thick scales like real rocks, but they weren't actually made of stone in fact those scales were his own skin which had a strong mana coating that provided a very high resistance.

I ripped the scales off and kept them in the infinite bag they could be used for something in the future. Since I was facing several interesting materials I decided to get some “samples” of the creatures there.

A red rock crusher is a creature with sharp teeth and hard like metal, lizard natural predators, its teeth have some interesting properties when reacting with mana, I took some "samples".

With a smile on my face, I picked up parts of the body of various creatures thrown and buried in the sand, dead because of the storm.

"You smile like a maniac while doing this"

A maniac? what is it? Okay, leaving that aside I continued my collection for a while, there were so many creatures there that I could spend a whole day picking up their remains, but the night would come soon, and besides, I was warned that something big was coming.

"We'd better get out of here... there's a very dangerous entity coming here"

I decided to follow the cube's suggestion and leave that place, continue my journey, try to get as far away as possible, and set up a shelter for the night.

...

I was already a considerable distance away from that place but when I looked back I saw one of the most magnificent magical creatures in the world, a king of the desert. A desert king is a creature of apotheotic class, creatures with this classification have the important job of maintaining the stability of the energy flow in the environment in which they inhabit.

It was a magnificent creature resembling a huge brownish trunkless elephant. He was probably there to consume the remnants of that crazy storm, which reminded me of a rather sad curiosity. The desert kings suffered a lot of losses after the catastrophe, so their numbers dwindled a lot so I soon related that strange event to that fact. Without apotheotic creatures an environment starts to lose stability and gradually becomes energetic chaos, much like or maybe worse than that incandescent sandstorm.

I stood there for a few seconds, delighted with what I was witnessing, the creature seemed to be eating the excess mana from the environment, I could feel the atmospheric pressure gradually decreasing from a distance.

At one point the creature seemed to be looking at me, I was a little afraid it would come after me so I decided to leave soon, it was safer not to take any chances even though I was far away.

I walked through the desert until dark, it was getting pretty cold and I was sleepy, I decided to stop to set up my shelter and feed, I must have been far away from that king.

I ate the flesh of that stone lizard, it had a very reddish color with a very smooth texture and was extremely soft, that was the best thing I had ever eaten in my life... well I hadn't tried many things anyway so it was normal I'm happy eating this kind of stuff.

The next day was very tedious nothing happened and I just walked non-stop through the desert, my stamina was pretty high since I had techniques that helped in this kind of thing. The only thing I noticed that day was that again the landscape had changed, at first I thought I might be lost or walking in circles but as I advanced the mountains on the horizon got closer.

...

Another day, once again the landscape changed, it was very strange these sudden changes, if it wasn't for the abyss beside me I would definitely get lost, but luckily this day was not complete boredom as I arrived on a road.

I climbed a dune and behind it, I managed to see a stranger leading to a huge city, finally after I know how many years I'm going to see other people, how I was looking forward to meeting everyone, sharing my knowledge and discovering new foods... the best part so far was being eaten.

"Ah... the heat that comes from the movement, I think I've read something like that in a book, what was that book really about?"