The sun was starting to rise. Its rays reflecting off the water in the big puddle, that Lich found, made it look like the treasure he treated it as.

Without any hesitation, he took off the robe, under which was only his long dense hair, and jumped into the water.

It was 50 cm deep at most, and the water was clean enough to drink, because of the many hours it spent under the scorching sun.

Lich quickly washed himself and jumped out to clean his robe.

He put it in to soak, and started looking for the soap bar he kept in his backpack.

It took a while to rummage through all the drugs, bandages, tools, maps, and provisions, but at the bottom of the bag, he found it. A 0.2l cube with a single cut corner.

It was quite big, and was supposed to serve him at least until he got to Finland. Now, Lich was questioning if there would be any left when he got to Cairo.

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But it was not relevant now, so he cut out another small part and started to wash his clothes.

A smell of industrial chemicals permeated in the air, and Lich enjoyed that smell a lot more than the one of rotten blood.

It took him around half an hour to make sure that not even a particle of blood remained on his robe, and then put it on.

The sun was fully up, but he still planned to make it back to the main road before going to sleep.

But, as he was walking leisurely, loud stomping sounds started to spread throughout the sky. When Lich heard them, he slowly sat on the ground and tried to slow down his breathing, but his heart betrayed his stress.

There was only one creature, active both at night and day, that would be so loud. Its name was Sand Stomper, and was the most feared entity across South Africa.

It could stomp a person with one leg, while the other was destroying a house and cracking the foundation.

It was the only species (other than humanity itself) that could threaten his life, and which he was afraid of.

They hunted by listening for sounds like footsteps, so Lich's tactic of having a special diet didn't help.

And that was the reason he would have to sleep on the sand that night, especially since the mutated elephant could stand in the same place for up to 18 hours!