Mike awoke feeling more refreshed than he had in days–in fact, the last time he had slept that good had been before Brent had come to warn the valley of Bart’s impending attack. He was pleased to see that Hands of Healing had been completely effective, erasing the cuts and blisters that covered his body, and even going so far as to turn his sunburned skin into the coppery bronze that was the color of his arms and neck.
Well there goes my farmer’s tan that was years in the making. Hopefully Ethan Huberfield didn’t know what he was talking about when he wrote that song. He thought to himself, before realizing that he was very unlikely to attract any woman so long as he was classified as a monster.
It was still fairly early in the evening, and far too hot to leave his shelter. With little else to do, he sat still and tried to meditate, despite the heat and the way that his sweat ticked the underside of his arms as it trickled down his body. It took longer than usual for him to find peace, but eventually he did, and with it, he became acutely aware of the airflow moving through the tent through the four holes he had made on each side of the shelter's pyramid-like roof. The majority of the air entered in through the North-facing hole and sank down towards the floor. He felt how it displaced the air around him which was being heated by his body, causing it to rise and exit through the other holes.
After noticing this first stream, he allowed his focus to expand. Reaching from the main air stream were long fingers of air, which seemed to probe throughout the room as they too displaced heated air. Eventually, he noticed how the air in the corners of the room often became trapped in small eddies, creating both hot and cold pockets which could shift completely in an instant. He didn’t gain any new knowledge from the meditation, but he did learn to sense the air around him like never before.
He concluded his meditation sooner than he would have liked and prepared to leave his shelter though the sun was still in the sky. Something told him that the wurm would come searching tonight, and he wanted to make sure he was as far away as possible when it did.
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The next few days seemed to fly by as Mike got deeper into his rhythm. By night, he surfed through the desert on his Quicksilver sled–more cautious of running into monsters than he had in the past, but thoroughly enjoying each ride he took. The scenery never changed, save for an exceptionally large sand dune that he could see from the tops of all the other dunes. Where most dunes were bordering on the height of small mountains, this one would dwarf even the Rocky Mountains he had found himself around in Montana. His current trajectory had him passing near to it, but not so near as to
He would break each morning an hour before the sun rose so that he had plenty of time to build his shelter, a process which took a little bit more time each day as he continually incorporated new ideas. The second day he had built a bigger bunker, tall enough that he could practice the kata in. The mostly enclosed space continued to assist him in feeling the air, and he made his way further into the kata than ever before–until he almost fainted from the heat. Which is why, on the third day he had added in a small fan near the top of the shelter, which was powered by a gear and some pedals on his feet. The contraption had truly tested his capacity to manipulate the Quicksilver, and it ended up failing after only a few minutes of him running it, resulting in yet another day of nearly unbearable heat. Even still, he pushed through an hour of training in the kata, although it was a distracted practice as his mind was working on how he could improve the fan for the next day.
As the sun set on the fourth day, a day where his fan had once again failed, he opened up his spatial storage bag and checked inventory. Even knowing what he would find, he found his situation depressing. He only had a few more days worth of water and food, and so far, he had been able to find a way to remedy that. The only potential food source he had seen was the wurmlet’s body–even putting aside the baby’s mother that almost killed him, he had tried wurm before and found it wasn’t to his liking.
Without any other options, he decided that he would have to make a slight detour on his course to see if the large sand dune would offer him a better vantage point–hopefully, it would allow him to see some kind of water source or barring that, at least any hints as to what would lead him to water.
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He left as early as he could that night, the last of the sun’s rays beating down upon him and the skin of his feet nearly blistering due to the still hot sand. He would have to make good time if he wanted to reach the dune that night and climb it before morning–any vantage it provided would only be useful in the light of day.
With a goal in mind, made more urgent by his dwindling stores, he pushed himself hard, clearing dunes more rapidly than ever before. Despite this, and in accordance with male stereotypes, he had underestimated the distance he would need to travel. And so it was that with only a few minutes remaining before the sun started rising, he found himself nearing the top of the last dune between himself and his destination.
The same explosive sound he had heard the first night he had arrived in the elite zone shook the twilight air behind him, causing him to nearly stumble. Judging distances from noises was made more difficult by the unending obstacles in every direction, but he reckoned the sound was still several sand dunes behind him. Rather than give him confidence, the distance seemed small, and he decided it would be best if he vacated the area as fast as possible. If the wurm was coming for him, his only hope was to make the chase last until sunrise.
Activating Footsteps of the Wind, he raced up the last few feet of the dune, and with the skill still active, launched himself forward. He hadn’t used this combination of skills since he had been in the Quicksilver Dungeon, and his stats had increased dramatically since then. The sand, whose stinging bite he had acclimatized to over the previous nights, eroded his face with a primal vigor, causing small cuts to appear across his skin and forcing him to close his eyes. Only a few seconds later, Footsteps of the Wind went on cooldown, dropping his Dexterity to near zero and removing all of the control he usually exuded while Stomach Surfing. Eyes pressed tightly shut and hands gripping the sled with all of the strength he could muster, it was all he could do to not fall off the sled.
An eternal minute later, when he had somehow managed to thwart death and reach the bottom of the dune in one piece, he heard the noise again, this time closer than before. Still unable to open his eyes, he was forced to sled blindly while he waited for his speed to decrease along the flat terrain, all the while hoping that some monster hadn’t appeared directly in front of him. After another 30 seconds, he was able to squint and blurrily see the sand dune in front of him, thankfully, no monsters barred his path as best as he could see.
Only moments later, his sled had reached the bottom of the monolithic dune, and began coasting up its side. The glowing line where the sun kissed its face felt both blessedly close and impossibly far as the sled came to a complete stop and Mike began running as fast as he could, ignoring both the pain in his over-exerted limbs and the periodic booming sound which continued to get closer with each iteration.
He was just reaching the peak when he heard the noise behind him again, and he knew without looking that the creature was within a few hundred yards. Without any warnings coming from Damage Premonition, he could only assume the attack wasn’t coming quite yet, and he scrambled up the last few feet before turning around.
Unused to picking one greater sand wurm out from another, he had to use Analyze to confirm that it was indeed Ishgoba, the same wurm that had haunted his sweat filled dreams over the last few days, who was now only 100 yards behind him. The creature had stopped only five feet in front of the sun’s demarcation of the peak, its head pointed directly towards Mike’s position.
For several seconds, the two only stared at each other as the sunlight shifted ever closer to the wurm’s position. Then, right before the sunlight hit it, the creature snaked its head down and disappeared with barely a ripple into the sand dune’s depths.
“I guess I’m building my shelter above ground today.” Mike said aloud after a few more seconds of staring at where the monster had just been and trying to comprehend how something so massive could disappear so rapidly and completely.
With that stoic remark, he pivoted and walked the last few feet to the peak with a resoluteness honed from years of facing dangers unknown. The serious demeanor was broken as he took in the view for the first time. In the early morning hours, the vista provided by his elevation was unmatched. Directly in front of him and along the front side of each dune were shadowy sections that the sun had yet to reach, adding depth to the otherwise golden landscape. For several moments, he allowed himself to simply take it all in, allowing himself to find a measure of peace, before the sun began to make his back uncomfortably hot and he was forced to focus on the task at hand.
His eyes tracked the outlines of the dunes, looking for the most likely location of an oasis. For nearly ten minutes he looked, but without any success–the only thing in front of him was more sand dunes.
But then he caught a blur in the corner of his eye, which resolved into a bird cresting a dune no more than 3 miles away. It was a big bird, since he could see it from this distance, likely big enough to eat him in one bite, but nonetheless a small smile lit his face. Rule number 2 of desert survival was to follow the birds, as they followed the water.