Lethal Itinerary II

I woke up with something hairy touching my head. I opened my right eye to check what was going on, finding a gigantic, black mutation of a spider and scorpion.

It was dusk and the sky was transforming into a dark purple color. A starry night was slowly being unveiled above me, and the cold winds were being replaced by humid, boiling temperatures. These conditions must have prompted this thing to come out of its den and start hunting.

As soon as I tried to move, I noticed a problem.

My entire body was buried in sand…

Naturally, as a wild animal, this creature reacted to my awakened struggling twitches, immediately labeling me a threat.

It quickly thrusted its menacing, venomous stinger right at my face.

As my eyes widened and realization settled in, my boiling blood circulated through my body, giving me the push I needed to finally wake up from my reckless slumber.

What happened next occurred in a matter of milliseconds.

As I quickly found out, I could still feel and move my fingers, but I was out of luck to do any more than that.

If this thing hit me, I would most likely not die from poison. My head would simply be split in half…

The sense of urgency I was experiencing to come up with any sort of countermeasure could not be put into words.

The stinger was already within a single step away from my eye.

Nothing came to mind.

Except brute force.

I rotated my wrist at an unhealthy angle and pointed my finger upwards underneath all the sand.

“…divide.”

A huge cloud of dust emerged from my location and sand flew up high into the air.

The wounded beast, having lost one of its weapons, decided to use its fangs to finish me instead. Before the cloud of dust and sand dispersed, it charged in for a second attack at point blank range.

But it was too late.

My previous spell freed me completely, and I could use my entire body to defend myself now.

I raised my painfully sore arm, then sliced the air in front of me, separating the creature into two equal parts.

Although I could have died, my luck was off the charts today – I didn’t need to search this desert for food… it came to me…

I gluttonously rushed to summon a fire and started cooking the unappetizing monster.

As disgusting as this hairy meal was, I could continue living…

After getting some power back, I sloppily spawned some water and drank as much as I could. I was having a true feast today and I wasn’t going to hold back.

But my body had other plans…

The rapid intake of food and water after such a long time without them caused me to throw up everything I ate and drank…

God damn it…

Should’ve gone a little bit at a time…

By next day, I was almost back to my tiptop shape, and I had a good supply of ‘spidorpion’ meat.

To prevent it from spoiling, I decided to cook it all at once over a low fire, hence drying it and preserving it for at least another month.

The intelligent thing to do if I say so myself.

I continued walking on through the desert. My only remaining concern was the sleeping methods I was employing. My schedule was all over the place in this idiotic biome, and the means I was using to rest were full of flaws.

Yesterday I used the sand pit, but before that I was relying on fire magic to keep myself warm.

If I was to resort to sand burials, every single time, I would eventually pay the price for being so careless – with my life, that is. For the fire element, as proficient as I was with it, it was too hard to maintain warmth all night, so that was out of the question too.

I realized that I needed something that wouldn’t put such big strains on my body – something completely opposite of my first two approaches.

I had no other choice…

I decided to overcome my weakness and master my second-worst element – earth.

Deeming it essential to my survival, I began practicing it every day.

Every hour.

Every minute.

During walking, I would do small, low-energy-consumption casting; during breaks I would increase the magnitude to ‘medium’; and at night I would test myself by summoning the real deal – an entire shelter.

Over weeks, my progress was very noticeable.

Truly, survival was the greatest motivation one could ask for…

The size of the shelter was gradually increasing, and the walls were becoming sturdier. Aside from this success, repetition and practice did wonders for my endurance and stamina.

Proud of myself, but not done yet, with great effort, I tiredly began enhancing my water element in an equivalent way. I wanted to become uniform in every element, not be dependent on a single one.

When I was tired with magic, I practiced my rex. I couldn’t tell the difference no matter how many times I practiced.

I could think of a couple reasons, but I hoped it was due to the desert’s identical look no matter which direction you look in.

Regardless, for the first time in a while, I had nothing to worry about, AND I was making good pace for Ors Juna.

…

It was my countless, same, average day in this biome.

I walked endlessly, seeing the same view for miles, taking breaks, then continuing onwards.

That’s why I was extremely skeptical.

I didn’t believe it at first. I thought I might have been dreaming.

Directly in front of me, some 15 miles away, hidden among the hills of a seemingly limitless desert, rested a massive, ancient city.

Gleaming in the moonlight, it looked well-preserved for something so forgotten and abandoned.

From what I could tell with my mediocre eyesight, it had successfully persisted throughout multiple decades – maybe centuries – despite constantly battling harsh conditions in such an unfavorable location.

As I squinted and focused my vision from a point of elevation, I saw a dried-out canal where I assume a river once used to flow through. But just like the rest of this desert, there was no water.

No greenery.

No people.

It was a depressingly desolate space.

I decided to visit the town before the sun rose, and maybe even sleep in there during the day.

While approaching the mudbrick buildings from afar, I noticed some kind of monument towards the center of the city and decided to make that my destination.

I knew it was old, but walking through this place made me realize it was from an entirely different era altogether.

Eerie silence spread through the town, and it was making me increasingly more uncomfortable. Like a haunted city, the only sounds that could be heard were the wind’s whistling movements, with its sounds either dissipating after crashing against the walls, or being amplified through small holes and windows.

Just in case, I used rex to confirm that I was the only one here and that I wouldn’t be ambushed out of the blue, eventually making my way towards the landmark I saw earlier.

You could never be too careful in a foreign place…

There stood a tall, old runestone, inscribed in Acolatum’s national language. Although I could understand most of it, it seemed like I was dealing with an old dialect, so some things remained a mystery.

The text on the battered stone explained the history of this location and what had happened to it.

…Eincora… blessed land of agriculture… holy capital of Validae…

What…?

I reread the first line to make sure I didn’t make a mistake, and sure enough, there was none. This land was, supposedly, once the capital of our continent.

Blessed land of agriculture though?

Looking around, I had my doubts on the factuality of this stone and its information because of the desert, but I went back to reading.

…mobilization of armies… war…

…decade-long suffering… famine… plague…

Apparently, there were a lot of tragedies going on during their time...

Were all of these written tragedies caused by the war?

There was another text on the other side of the stone.

…glory be to our savior…

…here lies Nox… world’s second…

…second…

“…second what?”

…mage…

He was a mage, but I couldn’t read his full title.

…enduring oppression and segregation…

…protecting his homeland… died a hero…

The text cut off abruptly from that point onwards, but I grasped the picture.

“…looks like you guys had it rough as well…” I muttered under my nose, leaving the plaza.

…

“Forgive the intrusion…” I said as I walked into an empty building.

I decided to spend the day sleeping in the city to conserve my energy and walk further than usual tonight, instead.

It was a peaceful sleep. Throughout, I felt as if I was warmly welcomed into the town by the spirits that inhabited it. That they protected me during my rest and even wanted me to stay longer.

I couldn’t wrap my head around it.

Even though I couldn’t sense them with rex, I felt them there, kindly watching over me.

A couple of hours passed by in a flash.

It was night again and I had to bid the city farewell.

Somehow, I felt nostalgic about this town. It evoked a sense of belonging similar to Saples, which I could strongly resonate with.

I observed it one last time and disappeared behind mountains of sand.

…

Crossing the desert was uneventful no matter how far I went. It always looked like I was moving in the same place all the time. For all I knew, I could be standing still and having equal progress. The only indicator of that being false was the ancient city which disappeared behind me, hours ago.

I continued blindly walking in the direction of Ors Juna. I was already sick of eating the same, tasteless, hairy spidorpion meat over and over again. For better or worse, my supply of it was finally running out.

The challenge would be finding something edible after that.

I was walking and alternating between practicing rex and earth magic. I could now summon an entire boulder without any side effects; it was effortless. As for rex, I still couldn’t really grasp the scale of my improvement.

After another 10 minutes, I found another noteworthy discovery on par with the ancient city.

I couldn’t believe I would reunite with it all the way out here.

It was a Gateway to Tartarus, glowing in its alluring clear blue color as always.

As a precaution, I didn’t go near it for at least a hundred steps. I knew better than anyone to keep my distance.

I glanced over at it to see if this one looked any different from the one I saw with grandpa, but I couldn’t find any distinctions.

I continued walking putting it behind me, like I did with the ancient city.

In another 5 minutes, my jaw dropped to the floor.

There was another one.

Grandpa said there are 7 on our continent…

Two of them within a 5-minute interval…?

Surely not…

There was a newspaper article I once read in Aireven about it.

They were starting to appear all over the world…

Did I just find a new one?

Well, no use thinking about it anyway.

I can’t do anything about it…

I’d report it like a ‘Good Samaritan’ if I didn’t have billions of yul on my head.

…

For the first time in a while, the desert got more capricious and abusive than usual.

Currently I was caught in a piercing-cold sandstorm during the day. It felt like being punctured by hundreds of needles all over your body.

The catch?

I couldn’t use my earth element to make a shelter because its density would pull it to the bottom of all the quicksand that was currently surrounding me.

I would horrifyingly die by suffocation and self-burial.

That’s why I decided to go with an improvised shield constructed with my wind element, which was currently doing a mediocre job at stopping countless lacerations being inflicted on me, but at least I was alive…

By the end of the storm, all my clothes were even more tattered than usual, and I had a lot of cuts all over my body.

Some of them were worse than I thought…

It seems there was other debris in the storm, not just sand.

Once night came, I decided to experiment a little and bathe in my small, artificial hot spring.

I built the bath, added some water to it, and heated it up with my fire element.

It took a lot of energy for something that only lasted a small amount of time, but it was worth it.

It felt like it alleviated most of the pain from my injuries as well as all the stress I built up over these consecutive months of loneliness.

After all, there weren’t even any assassins coming after me anymore. They probably decided to leave me alone after I entered this ridiculous biome.

I enjoyed my rest while it lasted and upon sunrise, went to sleep.

…

The next day, I never thought the moment would come, but here it was.

The desert was ending.

At last, I was back to greenery.

I could just stop and triumph over my achievement, but I wasn’t done yet. I wanted to walk as far away as possible from the neighboring biome.

Who was to know – maybe the anomalous climate spreads to these areas too.

I didn’t want any part of that for longer than necessary.

That’s why I ventured onwards.

For the first time in months, I saw fruit hanging from a tree. It looked foreign, so I didn’t know if it was poisonous or not.

But I was so hungry, I didn’t care…

At least that’s what I wanted to say, but grandpa taught me how to check for poison.

I remembered his instructions and attempted to replicate the process.

Add a little, gentle fire to the fruits skin…

If it­ s—

Disappointment dawned on my face as I watched the skin of the fruit shrink together.

Poison…

As I was despairing over my potential prospect at food, a wild animal approached me from behind. I noticed that I could sense it with my rex even though I wasn’t using it. There was definitely progress, after all.

It’s probably after the fruit…

I threw away the poisonous product over my back.

But it seems the animal had different priorities – jumping out of the bushes, it knocked me down onto my face.

My gear and possessions flying all over the place, I had found my next supplier of food for the month.

It was a good chance regardless, as I didn’t know the language they spoke in Ors Juna anyways.

As I cooked my meal, I was in awe.

This was no spidorpion meat. Tender and juicy, I never knew anything could taste so good.

I was very grateful and made sure not to waste anything, taking the remaining food with me.

Filling my stomach and resupplying my resources, I left the forest.

…

In a couple hours, a small, quiet village came into view.

It was enough to make me tear up.

My countless days of travel paid off…

The first settlement I would encounter in months, was upon me.

I was finally here, in Ors Juna.