Arthur blinked in incredulity once. Then again once more when he confirmed that the transparent holographic blue tablet was still stubbornly floating in front of his face, seemingly emerging from his clenched fist.

As if he hadn't had enough doubts on whether or not he was still sane, now he had floating screens appearing out of nowhere to make him question his sanity further. Oh, he had a completely not plausible and escapist explanation for what his eyes were seeing, but even as the blue slate closed down and retracted in the gem it had come from, he refused to give in and convince himself that status screens were now a thing.

This refusal obviously lasted no more than three seconds as he gingerly opened up the screen by tapping on the gem with his left index finger and he took stock of what was written on it.

Skills - [3/12 Slots Filled]

Rank

Level

Category

Desperate Dodge

Common

2

Active Skill

Sun Tolerance

Common

3

Resistance

Hide in Plain Sight

Uncommon

5

Ability

… he really had no idea what to make of it all. He obviously hadn’t been granted any cheat skills by the gods, nor did he have any kind of spark of magic that he could see or sense. Furthermore, while the three skills he had were obviously going to be essential to his survival, the levels were quite underwhelming.

Sure, he had just gotten them, and he could understand why and when they had been formed and had levelled up, but shouldn't he have gained more powerful Skills or more levels from facing off against stronger opponents?

On the other hand, since he had limited Slots, did he really want to waste on these-

His musings and concerns were cut short as the earth started to tremble and the wind picked up once again, just slightly less strong than when he had first arrived in the desert.

Arthur closed off the screen in a hurry and abandoned all whiny thoughts about his gains of the day as he started looking around excitedly in hopes of seeing another of the patches of moving grass.

He wasn't so lucky. From the horizon, in what he thought could only be the exact opposite direction which the grass had run towards, a wall formed by particles of sand was quickly rising from the ground, followed by a horde of creatures madly running away from it.

Arthur quickly gathered his things and hurried off, trying to put as much distance between himself and the crazed stampede of monsters. From the quick glance he had gotten, things were going south very fast, with creatures of wildly different kind and sizes running over each other and something even jumping on others for a quick bite.

There had to be hundreds of monsters, all running towards his general direction. He had recognized a couple each of the Mantis and Ivory Scorpions from his first and last encounter with life on this crazy place, but there were other species, often with greater numbers and forming in packs to defend themselves from the other creatures running alongside them.

Among the horde was a sickly yellow spider the size of a tank, its carapace covered completely in others of what he supposed were its children, ranging from being as big as a scooter to so small it was impossible to make them out from where he had seen them.

A dozen meters to the side slithered a giant snake as big as three cars one in front of the other, its main head surrounded in a crown composed of dozen other heads snapping at each other and any creature which came near, of which there weren’t many, so he had to assume the snake was either poisonous or venomous. Or both.

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Even further away, falling behind all the others because of their size, was what he could only describe as a tribe of dozens of tiny humanoid creatures. All of them were naked, except for a rag of leather covering their pelvis, their skin the colour of rust, four eyes and a mostly squared torso that almost put them out of the 'humanoid' definition.

Honestly, you get the idea: Arthur was scared shitless and already on the run, so while he hadn’t stopped to look at all the details, he had seen enough to decide that he wanted nothing to do with it.

Unfortunately for Arthur, he never really had a chance to begin with. After running for minutes, even trying to dodge the whole thing by moving sideways rather than directly ahead of it, the horde caught up to him, and he realized why too late.

Before taking off, he had thought the wall of sand was just a couple hundred meters wide and had reasoned that he could run around it just in time to not get noticed by the creatures running away from it.

But now, as it came nearer, he realized he had underestimated its size, which was more in the kilometres rather than what he had thought before. As such, he could neither outrun it nor circle around it, because he was out of time and the horde was already upon him.

Now, rather than have time to plan how to escape death, he only had enough to decide by which manner of beast he would die. In a last desperate ditch attempt, he checked his skills, but he had only gained a single level in Sun Tolerance, so that was useless.

He stopped the silly jog he had started after the despair settled in, looked back at the zerg which almost looked as if it was following him rather than just heading in his direction, and settled for an opponent.

As the hornless yak creature rushed towards him, baring its very sharp teeth at him, its ashen mane flattened against its body because of the speed at which it was going, Arthur lifted the bundle of Mantis extremities and held it aloft, waiting for the bulky creature to reach him.

It was bigger than a normal yak, as he'd come to expect from this place, but thankfully not to the same scale as the creatures he'd seen before, just around the same size as a grey elephant. Take whatever size you're thinking and one-up it, trust me.

The Buff Yak – Arthur noticed the second, and then third row of sharp teeth, and decided to change its name to better express his feelings – … the Nightmayak reached him in the span of a few seconds, and as the beast started to chomp down on Arthur's stretched arm, he let go of the vertically positioned bundle and put every spark of will, every feeling he could muster into using the [Desperate Dodge] skill, clenching every muscle he could think to clench on the spot.

He had no idea whether the skill worked or if he was just that good at dodging, but he managed to take his arm out of reach of the Nightmayak’s mouth and found himself at the side of the creature.

Arthur realized he only had a few instants to make a decision. Either let this opportunity go past him and continue fighting through a horde of nightmarish creatures, or jump at the opportunity and hitch a ride. He didn’t hesitate, since he had no time to do so, and plunged his makeshift blade in the side of the still charging beast before using the newly created handle to raise himself on top of the Nightmayak.

Now, even though the whole thing would be described by Arthur in the future as a ‘smooth move’, we all know that was not the case. There was a lot of swearing, burning muscles and aching wounds involved in the whole process, and as soon as Arthur was on top of the creature, both hands clamping down of long tufts of fur to keep himself from falling off, he collapsed on the spot, although he stayed mostly conscious for fear of losing his grip.

After a couple minutes of very uncomfortable bareback riding, as the exhaustion from the second adrenaline rush easing off of the day receded, Arthur pulled himself up and started contemplating what the hell he was going to do about the whole situation while looking around for any possible solution.

He found nothing that could help him escape his predicament, so he distracted himself momentarily by looking at his blue list of skills. Unfortunately, it was a very short distraction, since he had only gained two levels in [Desperate Dodge] and a level for each of his other two skills.

Closing the screen with a sigh, he looked at his surroundings and suddenly noticed that the Nightmayak had started veering off the path they had continued to follow since the start of the whole incident.

Looking back, he was relieved to see that they had actually managed to lose the bulk of the monster stampede and the wall of sand that had been following them, and was almost tempted to rejoice before he remembered whose back he was currently riding. He had no idea whether the beast had forgotten about him or if it was just too tired to shrug him off as it had tried a couple of times at the start of their ride, but he wasn’t too keen on finding out if it would remember him when he made enough of a ruckus.

Arthur turned back once again, squinting to try and see farther in the distance, where the slower creatures were getting nearer and nearer to the sand wall, which apart from slithering forward deceptively quickly, didn't seem to be reacting – his eyes widened as a dozen spears made of sand departed from the wall and speared through as many creatures, their corpses lying in the sand before being engulfed by the ever-encroaching Wall of Death.

Swallowing a glob of saliva, sand and Mantis meat in fear, Arthur suddenly understood the visceral fear that seemed to move the whole herd of powerful-looking monsters; there was just no winning against such a creature. He decided to turn forward rather than unnerve himself even further by looking at the carnage.

It was at that moment that the Nightmayak he was riding decided it was time to take a nap, and crashed itself through a dune in a grand splash of sand. Arthur sat there like an idiot for a good minute, before deciding that maybe now was the perfect time to get out of dodge as fast as he could.

He jumped off the furry creature and was quite surprised to find his impromptu spear still lodged in its side. He had been sure it had dislodged after he had used it as a foothold to reach the very high up back of the animal, but he had been wrong, luckily for him.

After a few good pulls to take back what was probably rightfully his, he stopped for a second and looked at himself, wondering if he was stupid or just feeling suicidal. He had just taken a very sharp, very stuck sort of weapon-like object out of an animal that, were they to be back on Earth, would have probably been an apex predator wherever it wanted to live, and he had done it as if he was just grabbing a coin from between the cushions of a sofa.

Not even two hours had passed, and he had almost died half a dozen times. Was he dissociating? Arthur shrugged, for he honestly wasn’t sure, and it’s not like he had time for all of this, so he just decided to go with it and get as far away as possible from the yak which had both too much mass and too many teeth for him to be able to deal with right now.