Chapter 449 - 449 - Sand Land, Minefield!

"Holy shit!"

Standing at the edge of the passage leading down, Leon looked out at the dull yellow sea of sand stretching to the horizon and forgot to breathe.

A wave of heat rolled over him with a low roar, kicking up sand across the whole sky.

The grains scraped his cheeks like a dull blade dragging over skin.

Hot, hot, hot. Beyond hot, still hot. Leon couldn't find another word for what he was feeling.

Everyone raised a hand to shield their foreheads and squinted out at the endless dunes.

Layer on layer of sand waves rose and rolled into the distance, and all the way to the limit of sight it was still that same glaring yellow. The heat warped the air, and the distant landscape melted and ran in the wavering mirages, impossible to tell real from false.

"So this is... the Sand Land?"

Irisviel stared in disbelief at the magnificent scene in front of her, utterly lost in it.

Persephone pulled the mask on her face up a little and said:

"No wonder the records stressed that you have to come here equipped with the Undine Cloth. In an environment like this, forget fighting, just standing still would drain your stamina with the heat. Without enough water stored up and resistance gear made for it, this part of the labyrinth would be impossible to move through."

"Equipment, huh? True enough."

This was the second time he'd felt so clearly what the right piece of gear means to an adventurer. The last time had been when the Obsidian Light Armor saved his life from a War Shadow's claws.

...

The group stood on the dune, nearly holding their breath as they looked at this awe-inspiring "miracle" the Dungeon had made. The shock this endless desert gave them was no less than the first sight of the Great Fall.

It wasn't until Jeanne's voice rang out that they snapped back.

"Everyone, stay alert! Learn from the mistake. We cannot let what happened on Floor 28 happen twice."

"Yes!"

Fully armed, they formed a tight formation and moved carefully along the spine of the dunes through the rolling heat.

Ten minutes, twenty minutes, half an hour slipped by.

Their figures were slowly swallowed by the blowing sand, and on the rolling dunes only a line of footprints remained, already being smoothed away by the wind.

"Stop!"

Jeanne raised a hand for everyone to halt. Then she crouched, brushed the yellow sand at her feet aside with her gauntlet, and her brows drew together.

Rose, shield in hand, glanced sideways at her.

"What is it?"

Jeanne shook her head, her voice low.

"Something's off."

At the rear of the group, Leon and Persephone exchanged a look and moved to cover Iri and the other Lv.1 and Lv.2 members.

"Iri, Margaret, Laurier, Aura," Leon said quietly, "don't bother watching your surroundings. Put all your attention on the ground under your feet."

"Huh? Yes..."

The heat blew without pause, rustling and snapping the hoods and cloaks of Undine Cloth they all wore.

Jeanne drew a deep breath, and her pale purple eyes turned razor sharp.

"Keep moving!"

...

Another ten minutes passed.

The heat carried the sand along, whipping the cloaks about.

The fitted combat clothes under their armor had already been soaked through with sweat in that short hour.

Taut nerves, scorching air and dead-still surroundings wove into an invisible weight that sat heavy on everyone.

Laurier gripped her shortbow, an arrow never leaving the string.

Her small face was tight, her eyes darting around suspiciously. Nearly an hour of that strange quiet was eating away at her composure bit by bit, and an irritation she couldn't hold down spread out from inside her.

"Aura... have you noticed? Something seems off, doesn't it?"

Aura's face was just as tense. Behind the black mask, she bit down lightly on her lower lip, forcing herself to stay calm.

"Mm. It's too quiet. No... it's more like it's silent. That doesn't fit how the Dungeon works at all."

That was it, silence.

No life, no breath of anything living. A silence like death.

Leon wasn't paying attention to the murmuring behind him. His nerves were stretched to their limit, and years of accumulated adventuring experience and his instinct for danger were screaming at him without a pause.

Danger, right there.

And in the instant the heat and blowing sand had ground the lower-leveled members into a daze, exhausted in mind and spirit, their guard slipping just slightly, a black glint flashed and vanished, shooting without a sound at Margaret and Irisviel, the two weakest in the group.

"Ice clone!"

Leon had been guarding against exactly this. Using his cast-on-thought technique, he summoned an ice clone the instant he thought it, and at the last possible moment it stood in front of the two of them like a shield.

The "ice wall (meat shield)" the clone had become was blown apart in one hit, the clone shattering.

Leon's second move was already following on its heels.

"Frost Nova!"

"Ice Lance, double tap!"

The two black shapes that had just poked their heads up out of the sand were locked in ice before they could react.

The monsters of the desert have high resistance to heat, but as for cold resistance, sorry.

As the freeze took hold, the linked effect of frost magic triggered, and the instant-cast Ice Lances burst out with terrifying destructive force, the impacts landing with a hum and a pair of heavy cracks.

In a blink the monsters were reduced to a spray of ice fragments filling the air.

Jeanne and Rose, only now whipping around: "..."

Iri, Margaret, Laurier and Aura, stunned by the string of moves: "..."

Persephone, heart pounding, pushing her glasses up: "..."

Kureha, silently sliding her half-drawn longsword back into its sheath: "..."

Laurier shrieked a beat too late.

"Look out, ambush!!!!!!"

Leon just looked at her.

After that blast of noise, Laurier noticed everyone looking at her strangely, and only then realized the danger was already over.

Her face went red and she started to stammer.

"Wh, what was that thing! It, it startled me..."

Leon rubbed his chin, dropped into a casual crouch, poked at the bruised, frost-blotched remains with his staff a few times, pulled the Adventurer's Handbook out of his cloak, and flipped noisily through it. Before long his finger stopped on a page.

"Sandstorm Venom Scorpion. First appears on Floor 28, the Sand Land. An ambush-type creature, specializes in surprise attacks with the venomous stinger on its tail."

[Read 50+ chapters ahead on Patreon: patreon.com/NiaXD]