Advent of the Three Calamities - Chapter 856: Land of Fire [3]

Chapter 856: Land of Fire [3]

The moment realization dawned on me, it felt as though a terrifying pressure closed in from every direction, plunging me into a smothering depth that made it hard to breathe.

I felt suffocated.

Even when I used [Lament of Lies] to hide my body, I didn’t feel safe.

That sun…

That gaze.

It continued to linger in the sky, looking down in my direction as if it had detected something. Holding my chest, I took deep, harsh breaths, forcing my mind to remain calm while the others hurriedly tried their best to hide their presence.

The gaze continued to hover.

It swept my area and the area around us.

…It kept looking as I held my breath.

Did it see me? Did it spot me? It shouldn’t spot me. But what if…?

Sweat poured from the side of my face as I tried my best not to make a sound or move. I just stood completely still, waiting for the gaze to sweep away.

And soon—

It did.

The sun’s attention fell elsewhere, and the suffocating pressure that I had felt faded.

But even as the gaze left, I remained alert.

I was still unsure of whether it had spotted me or not.

“W-what the hell was that?”

An’as’s face was abnormally pale as he looked towards the sky. The others were no different, finally taking note of the abnormality of the second sun in the sky.

“Is that… a monster?”

“It’s not.”

I shook my head while looking away from An’as and back towards the second sun that hovered in the sky. If there had been any doubts before, there were none any longer. That wasn’t a monster.

That eye belonged to someone.

Someone that I knew all too well.

’Dawn.’

Or to be more precise, Atlas.

He was here.

Looking.

Searching.

’Perhaps, he’s long been aware of the fact that I was going to come here. In that case, things have become a lot more troublesome.’

But despite this, I had to continue.

The current me couldn’t deal with Atlas; that much was true. In every possible sense, rescuing Noel was going to be an incredibly difficult task, and I understood that. I knew all of the risks.

That’s why I decided to do it.

Because I felt like I could do it.

“Let’s go.”

Taking out a cloth, I covered my face. At the same time, I suppressed my mana to an acceptable level while also changing my clothes. The others did the same, understanding my intentions.

“Do you think this will be enough?”

“No.”

I shook my head while replying to Leon.

“That’s why I’ll keep using my skill to keep us hidden. However, once we find more suitable clothing or get a better understanding of this place, we can try to blend in better.”

The good thing was that this place was massive.

While the ’eye’ had hovered in our direction before, I was certain that unless we did something out of the norm, it wouldn’t notice us. There was simply too much land for it to cover to focus on all the little things that were happening.

“…I don’t know how the conditions of this place are, but keep your guard up. This is the Mirror Dimension after all. There’s nothing about this place that is friendly.”

Taking a step forward and feeling my feet sink into the sand, I looked ahead as a sea of dunes stretched before my eyes, rising and falling in long, rolling shapes that seemed almost frozen in motion.

Their wind-bent peaks curved like waves caught mid-crest, overlapping until they blurred into the distance. Above them, the gray sky hung low, one of the pale white suns half-hidden behind the numerous dunes as its dull light washed the landscape in muted tones.

The wind skimmed across the sand, carving delicate ripples along the slopes of each dune so that faint, wave-like patterns shimmered across their surfaces.

As treacherous as the Mirror Dimension was, a hidden beauty still lay within it.

One just had to look hard enough to find it.

*

At first, the journey wasn’t hard.

The heat was strong, but we could still manage. This much felt manageable.

But the more we walked, the more we started to realize that things weren’t as simple as this.

It first started with a faint hissing sound.

The sound carried through the wind as though someone was whispering in our ears, but the more we continued, the more we realized that it was something else entirely, as our vision started to turn darkish yellow.

“Ugh…! I’m starting to lose my vision.”

“My skin is starting to sting. Just what the hell is this?”

“It’s a sandstorm.”

Leon muttered, placing his hand over his face as he looked ahead. However, he soon realized that there was no point as he struggled to see more than a few meters ahead.

I was no different.

Hisss—!

The hiss of the wind grew sharper, rising from a whisper to a constant, rasping roar that swept across the dunes.

“Ukh…!”

Sand lifted into the air in thin veils, stinging against my skin as the gusts cut through the open desert.

My vision began to blur, the horizon wavering as grains of sand drifted across my eyes.

On the other hand, the distant suns, once bright and clear, faded into little more than pale white smudges, trembling like ghostly dots against the dark yellow sky.

With every passing moment, the wind grew more piercing, howling across the dunes and bending their ridges and making it harder and harder for us to move.

I thought would be all, but—

Rumble! Rumble—!

“Careful!”

“…There’s one coming from below!”

The sand beneath us suddenly shuddered, the smooth surface collapsing inward as if the desert itself were inhaling. A deep ripple tore through the dune, grains cascading downward as the ground split apart.

From the opening, a massive maw burst upward, scattering sand in a violent spray.

The sharp edges of numerous teeth flashed within the darkness of its mouth as it lunged straight toward us, the force of its emergence sending waves through the surrounding dunes.

Unable to detect it with [Mana Sense], I was caught completely off-guard, but still managed to keep my bearings as Leon took out his sword, his eyes turned pitch-black, and several stars faded from his eyes.

Swoooosh!

His movements were fast.

With one swift movement, he managed to cut the monster in half.

But—

Swoooosh! Swooosh!

Things were far from over.

The moment he cut down one, several others appeared as the sand beneath us continued to collapse, nearly making us lose our balance.

Cra Crack—!

Evelyn’s hair swayed as bolts of lightning flickered across her eyes, and without wasting a moment, several magic circles formed around her, shooting down at the monsters appearing from every direction.

BANG!

The impact was devastating, sending several of the monsters scattering away as I finally managed to get a good look at them.

’Sandworms?’

Their frames were enormous, easily four or five times our size, their thick bodies coiling through the sand as though they were moving in water.

Swooosh—!

Segments of armored hide rippled as they moved, each motion sending fresh cascades of sand sliding down their sides.

One of them surged upward, and its maw opened wide.

“Careful!”

Instead of a single mouth, it split into four separate sections that peeled back from the center, unfolding slowly and disturbingly, almost like a flower blooming in fast motion. Each petal-like section revealed rows of jagged teeth lining the inner edges, glistening as grains of sand poured from between them.

They charged at us relentlessly, barely giving us any time to breathe.

It wasn’t that they were strong, but there were many of them, and they charged at us from every direction.

Swooosh!

As the sand beneath me collapsed and one of them shot toward me from below, I glanced around before a magic circle formed in my grasp. Several chains shot out from the circle, gathering around my hand before shifting into a shield made of chains.

CLANK—!

Sparks flew as the sandworm’s teeth met with my makeshift shield.

But I wasn’t done.

The moment the shield blocked its attack, several chains shot out from the shield, shooting down the sandworm’s mouth and entering its body.

The sandworm flailed the moment it happened, letting out a sharp hiss as the chains continued to drive down. Its struggle didn’t last long, however, as its body began to shrink, almost as if all the water were being sucked out of it.

Thump!

By the time its body fell, it looked completely different from when it first appeared, its body now extremely tiny.

I looked at the spell in my hand, feeling a little satisfied as the shield tore apart and several chains moved around my body. This wasn’t the limit to the improved skill, [Condemnation of Alakantria].

There was still much more it could do.

’There’s no better way than to test this here.’

And that was exactly what I did.

As more sandworms began to appear from beneath the ground, I fought back with my new skills, reshaping the chains in all sorts of different ways and getting adjusted to the new skills.

Thump! Thump!

One after another, the sandworms began to get taken down by me and the others.

Taking them down one after another, I soon lost track of how many of them I managed to take down, but it had to be in the several dozen. The others were also faring just as well, getting rid of the sandworms without much difficulty.

Even An’as was faring quite well.

But…

I soon began to realize something.

Swooosh!

’It’s not stopping.’

Pulling back, I looked beneath me as the sand split apart and several more worms appeared. They charged at us relentlessly, spraying sand in all directions, as I had no choice but to step up my game and start using my other skills.

Thump!

I started to kill at an even faster rate.

Thump! Thump!

But even that wasn’t enough.

The more I killed, the more there seemed to be. It was almost as if it were an endless cycle.

“J-just… how many are there…!?”

“It’s not stopping!!”

The others also appeared to have taken note of the situation. The monsters weren’t strong, but they felt endless.

’Fuck, what in the world is this?’

Sliding down the steep face of a dune, I raised an arm to shield my face as the wind drove sand against my skin in sharp, stinging bursts.

Grains scratched and prickled across my cheeks and forehead, forcing my eyes half shut as I struggled to keep my balance on the shifting slope.

“Ukh.”

Through the haze, I barely managed to turn my head toward where the others had been. The air was dense with that strange, dark yellow tint, the blowing sand turning the sky into a blurred canvas where the two distant suns felt like pale white lamps that provided some semblance of light.

But it was in the midst of that hazy observation that I noticed it.

An enormous shadow.

Its body faded in and out of my vision as curtains of sand swept past, revealing it for only a moment at a time before swallowing it again. Each brief glimpse showed something tremendously large shifting beneath the haze, its outline swelling within my vision as the hiss in the air grew stronger.

My chest tightened.

Then—

It moved, an enormous fist shooting in the direction of the others, the pressure terrifying enough to make my chest feel heavy.

“Shit!”

Destroyer Rank!