Very slowly, Lich stood up.

He was exhausted beyond belief after being unable to fall asleep for hours, and the big elephant was to blame.

The king of the undead was clearly no match for the king of the desert. If they had met, Lich would not walk out unscathed, if at all.

And killing it? Simply impossible unless one had an elephant gun.

But the road was clear, so he could walk once again. And there was a lot of walking he had to do.

About 70 km remained, and from the next day, the destructive wind could come any moment. Luckily, he would know about 5 hours before the winds hit him, because they slowly make their way from south to north, ravaging everything in their way.

He thought about the many mistakes made during this venture and got embarrassed. Getting distracted, being emotional, and other such things caused him to have a setback of about a day.

It wasn't anything unfixable, since he could just walk more than normal to solve the problem. So, he did that.

The whole night was enough to sort out all of his shortcomings, and tried to learn from them, while thinking about a song he heard 3 years before heading out. Music was something he held dearly in his heart, just behind his weapon.

Of course, he treasured all of his possessions, like the robe or a syringe with a performance enhancing drug called blood boiler (or boiler for short). It saved his life many years ago, and still had a few doses left.

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So, he started singing. A song after another, he made his way through the night, until the sun rose. When it was high enough, and brightness covered the land, Lich turned around, and looked in horror, at the tidal wave of sand.

"Wait, there's still at least a day!"

But he was wrong, because there wasn't a day until it hit him. Unless he moved fast, he had 4 hours, and with 34 km still separating him from the mountains, he quickly made the choice to pick up the pace.

Many thoughts were running through his head. Will he live? Was he getting less perceptive? Should he use another shot?

Using the drug would indeed work, and the side effects would not be severe, but scarcity was a big problem. The last time a big amount of boiler was seen in the same place, was during the tank ship looting, which was the giant "meet-up" of like-minded people.

They were like-minded in wanting to steal as much pre-end of the war materials from a giant military cargo ship, which carried the only (known) super-tank on earth, and got swept ashore by the waves. Sadly, the computers were fried, and the engines weren't installed, so everyone just looted the pure materials. That was how Lich got his weapon, and the robe was created from 2 uniforms. In that place, he also found a syringe of boiler.

That caused him to contemplate. Should he risk it? Buying another one would be very expensive. It could make him at least twice faster, so there would be no way the winds would catch up.

He thought extensively, until what seemed like an earthquake started. It could be only one thing: a herd of Sand Stompers.

As soon as Lich knew they were close, he took out a metal rod with a retractable needle on one end and a circle with 3 out of 10 lightbulbs turned off. The family helped him make up his mind quite a lot.

He quickly stabbed himself in the neck, and went blind for a few seconds. A feeling of nonexistence took over his mind, just to vanish when he could see again.

The world became colorful. Lich could not hear anything, smell anything, or feel anything, but his vision was especially sharp, and he felt pure power in his muscles.

Everything was unimportant. He just had to run. And after 2 hours, he got there, before losing conciseness.