Chương 36: Chapter 35. At Least I Kept My Glasses

They say drowning is peaceful at the end. A gentle surrender as your lungs fill with water, your mind drifting away into darkness. That was untrue. There's nothing peaceful about the way your body betrays you, fighting against itself in blind panic. The way your chest spasms, desperate to draw breath where there is none. The way water seeps into your ears, muffling everything until all you hear is your own thundering heartbeat and that horrible, hollow rushing sound.

The pressure crushed him from all sides, icy water forcing its way down his throat, his nose, into his lungs. His wrist throbbed where Helios had gripped it - probably broken, the bastard. The pain felt distant now, inconsequential against the burning in his chest. Strange, how clear his thoughts were. Wasn't he supposed to be unconscious? The broken crystal's magic had torn them apart, scattered them through... wherever this was. Ocean? Lake? Did it matter? Ah? There it was. That peace they spoke of.

As his consciousness began to slip away, the panic subsided, replaced by an almost gentle lethargy. For a moment, just a very little moment, it didn't feel so bad after all. Maybe they were right, after all. The darkness beckoned, promising rest. Release. Just let go... What am I even thinking... [Indomitable Will] A pulse. Deep in his core. Blue light rippled through his veins. Again. And again. His mana transformed, crackling with desperate electricity. Every cell screaming to live.

There was so much he hadn't done. So many words unsaid. So many promises unkept. Not like this. Not so soon. The pulses came faster now. Each one stronger than the last, pure survival instinct converting his remaining mana into raw electric life force. His heart stuttered. Then burned. Neurons fired like lightning storms in his brain, adrenaline flooding every pathway. Muscles seized. Lungs spasmed. Wake UP. His body remembered what it meant to be alive.

What it meant to breathe, to fight, to burn against the dying of the light. Another pulse. Stronger. Brighter. Fury incarnate. WAKE. UP. [Using Iron Lungs] [Fluid Control (100% capacity)] His eyes snapped open, a scream tearing from his throat and echoing strangely through the water. Clarity was forced back into his mind, even as his body revolted against the impossible situation. He could think. He could move. He could fight. A faint glow pulsed somewhere above - or was it below?

Direction had lost all meaning in this watery void. But it was light, and light meant hope. Surface or salvation, it didn't matter. Anything was better than drowning in this endless dark. Something moved in the darkness behind him. The water rippled with its passage. [PUSH] The spell launched him through the water, his body cutting through the pressure like an arrow. The light grew brighter, closer. His lungs burned despite Iron Lungs' effect - the skill could only do so much.

Spots danced at the edges of his vision. The thing followed, faster now. He could feel the currents of its pursuit, the water churning in its wake. Just a little further... The water exploded around Adom as he burst through the surface, launching into open air. His body convulsed violently mid-flight, stomach heaving as water erupted from his mouth and nose. The sky spun sickeningly overhead, stars blurring into streaks of light.

That first desperate gasp turned into wracking coughs that tore at his raw throat, each spasm sending needles of pain through his chest. His lungs felt like they'd been scrubbed with glass. The electrical aftermath of his mana conversion left his muscles twitching and burning, nervous system still crackling with residual energy. The broken wrist screamed back to life as the adrenaline began to ebb. Too much - it was all too much.

His stomach lurched again, expelling more water as he fought to stay conscious through the sensory overload. The stars kept spinning. Or was he the one spinning? Direction seemed like a distant concept as his brain struggled to reorient itself after the near-death experience. Then heard it through water filled ears. The sound of water below, something massive following his trajectory. Adom managed to twist mid-air, liquid streaming from his clothes. His heart almost stopped again. A fish.

No - calling it just a fish would be like calling a dragon a lizard. Scales like polished obsidian gleamed in the moonless sky, each one larger than his palm. Its maw gaped wide enough to swallow a horse whole, rows of teeth glinting like daggers. [Force Wave] [Significant use of Mana reserve in one spell: -158] The spell burst from his hands, the concussive blast catching the creature's snout. The impact thundered across the water's surface, sending Adom rocketing higher as the beast recoiled.

[Identify] Great Carp Level: 75 (in water) / 35 (out of water)" hack -rp?!" The sound ripped from his abused throat, half-word half-gag, before the reality of his situation hit him - he was still airborne, and gravity wasn't known for its mercy. [Levitate] The spell sputtered and flickered, his mana control shaky from the trauma. A hoarse, broken scream tore from his throat as his stomach lurched at the height.

The carp crashed back into the dark water below, but Adom could barely focus on it - his vision swimming as he fought to maintain the spell through trembling limbs and violent coughing fits. He veered wildly through the air, overcorrecting each tilt and spin, his fear of heights making every second an eternity. The shore seemed to drift and sway before his eyes. His concentration slipped, the spell faltering - dropping him several feet before he desperately caught himself again, bringing up another wave of nausea.

When he finally reached the shore, his landing was anything but graceful. The spell gave out entirely a few feet up, sending him tumbling and rolling across the ground. He ended up sprawled on his side, retching water, his broken wrist cradled against his chest and every muscle screaming in protest. After several attempts, he managed to push himself to his hands and knees, immediately regretting it as the world tilted sideways.

Water dripped from his hair and clothes, joining the puddle forming beneath him as he fought for each breath. Adom retched again, bringing up the remains of this morning's breakfast - bits of half-dissolved pancake and bacon that now tasted like ash on his tongue. Something felt... wrong. Different. The air tasted strange - too thick, too still. Where was he? Where were the others? His head jerked up, survival instincts screaming despite his exhausted body.

The movement sent the world spinning again, but what he saw through his blurred vision made his blood run cold. The sky... that wasn't the night sky. No moon. No clouds. Just an endless expanse of deep, dark purple stretching overhead, dotted with stars that seemed too bright, too close. Stars that didn't move quite right. His breathing quickened as he forced himself to look around, fighting against the tremors that still wracked his body.

The shore he'd collapsed on was black sand, coarse and glittering with strange minerals. Behind him, dense vegetation loomed - trees too dark to be natural, their leaves seeming to absorb what little light reached them. And the expanse of liquid before him... He squinted, trying to gauge its boundaries through his hazy vision. The far shore, if there was one, remained hidden in darkness, but the curved coastline suggested a lake rather than a sea or ocean. The water was wrong though. Too dark, too still.

Like liquid obsidian stretching into infinity, broken only by the ripples from his emergence. No waves. No wind. The surface tension seemed different somehow - he could see where water drops had fallen from his clothes, the way they sat atop the surface a moment too long before merging, as if the liquid were something thicker than water.

"No..." The word scraped past his raw throat as the pieces clicked together. The sky. The air. The wrong water.

"No, no, no..." Out of all the places the broken crystal could have sent him - other continents, other kingdoms, the void between stars - he'd landed here. In a place that appeared in every cautionary tale told to novice delvers.

"I'm in a dungeon." His fingers dug into the soil, knuckles white. The realization hit him like a physical blow, stealing what little breath he'd managed to recover. Adom staggered to his feet, trembling fingers running through his soaked hair. His breath came in short, sharp bursts as he paced along the shoreline, leaving wet footprints in the dark soil.

"A dungeon... I'm in a dungeon..." No. He forced himself to stop. Deep breaths. His first impulse was to unleash every vulgar curse he knew about Helios, Gale, the children, and Marco. The urge sat bitter on his tongue. But seventy-nine years had taught him dignity, if nothing else. He wouldn't stoop to gutter language just because they'd forced his hand. The shoreline stretched into darkness in both directions, the water's surface now deceptively calm. He took in his surroundings, organizing his thoughts.

Most dungeons were archived, and could be recognized following their attributes. A dark lake, a purple sky, a carp in the water... Okay. Good news first: As Adom read it once, The Dark Lake was part of the Mornreach Depths, one of the many dungeons in Lumaria. At least he hadn't been thrown halfway across the world - or worse. The bad news made his stomach churn. Mornreach was a Rank B dungeon.

To escape, he'd need to either kill the dungeon's anchor being - what adventurers called the 'Boss' - or wait for the next opening. Class B dungeons operated on strict cycles: open for one week every six months, allowing adventurers to enter and attempt to clear them.

The only alternatives were killing the boss, which would momentarily open the dungeon for resource gathering, or forcing the portal - a desperate move that could trigger a dungeon break, inverting the portal and letting everything inside pour out into the world. The next opening could be months away. His time for the cure would expire in one. Adom's face flushed red. His hands clenched into fists.

"YOU THRICE-DAMNED BLOOD-SUCKING PIECE OF SHIT!" The words echoed across the water.

"YOU MANGE-RIDDEN EXCUSE FOR A VAMPIRE! YOU ABSOLUTE WASTE OF IMMORTALITY!" What followed would have made veteran sailors blush, mercenaries take notes, and demons cover their ears. He mixed languages, invented new combinations of profanity, and questioned Helios's parentage back several generations. When he ran out of known curses, he created new ones. After his outburst, Adom forced himself to breathe deeply, steadying his racing heart.

His hands were shaking - from cold, exhaustion, or fear, he couldn't tell anymore. So much for dignity and not stooping to gutter language. Then again, he supposed nearly being eaten by a giant fish earned him some leeway with his principles.

"Deal with the situation," he muttered.

"Deal with what's in front of you." Adom gingerly examined his left wrist, hissing as his fingers probed the swollen flesh. The skin had already darkened to an ugly purple, and even the slightest movement sent daggers of pain shooting up his arm. The way the joint sat slightly askew told him everything he needed to know. [Status] Health: 127/450 Mana Pool: 423/700 Active Effects: Minor Hypothermia, Broken Bone (Left Wrist)"Huh."

Most of what he knew about dungeons came from his own experience with the World Dungeon, books and his parents' stories. They'd met as adventurers when they were much younger - his father a wannabe swordsman, his mother a healer apprentice. Made for some interesting dinner conversations growing up, their different perspectives on the same events. Between their firsthand accounts and his own studies and experiences, he probably knew more about dungeon mechanics than most non adventurers.

Time to put that knowledge to use. First rule of solo dungeon survival: secure shelter. But to find shelter, he needed to orient himself. The dark water stretched out before him, its surface now deceptively peaceful. The bioluminescent growths above cast just enough light to see by, their blue-green glow reflecting off the black pebbles at his feet. His sodden clothes clung to his skin, each gust of wind sending fresh shivers through his body.

"North," he muttered through chattering teeth.

"The exit portal is always north, and the safe zones cluster around it." But which way was north? He closed his eyes, thinking it through. Dungeons had their own logic, their own patterns. The most dangerous areas were always furthest from the exit. The lake - with its level 75 monster - had to be deep in hostile territory. He opened his eyes, scanning the shoreline. To his left, the bioluminescent growths seemed slightly brighter, the ground slightly more elevated.

To his right, the darkness grew deeper, the water seeming to stretch endlessly into shadow. The safe zones would be on higher ground, better lit, more hospitable to human life. Left it was. Adom cradled his broken wrist against his chest and began walking, each step carrying him further from the lake's edge. Something suddenly crunched beneath his foot, accompanied by a soft green glow that caught his eye. Adom stopped, frowning. In this place, anything glowing was either a threat or... He bent down, wincing.

There, partially buried in the dark sand, was Bob's four-leaf clover. As he picked it up, one of its leaves detached, floating down to join the black granules below.

"Three leaves now," he muttered, turning the clover between his fingers.

"Just my luck." Stolen novel; please report. But was it bad luck? The odds hit him then - the broken crystal could have scattered them anywhere. The void of space. The core of a star. Dimensions where reality itself broke down. Or worse he could have been torn apart at the atomic level during transport. Hell, he could have landed in one of those SSS-class dungeons - the kind where even breathing wrong could kill you. The ones where reality warped and twisted until your own thoughts turned against you.

Places that had driven even veteran adventurers mad.

"A B-rank dungeon. Just a B-rank dungeon." He let out a shaky laugh.

"Maybe I am lucky after all." Wait. He'd definitely stored this in his inventory after Bob gave it to him. He never kept important items in his pockets. So why was it here? Had the transportation magic affected his inventory somehow? Adom carefully placed the clover back in storage, watching to make sure it registered properly. For the first time in his life, he found himself actually hoping the thing worked. A sound cut through his thoughts - metal grinding against stone, somewhere ahead in the darkness.

Adom gasped. That particular screech of metal... He knew that sound. Knew it as well as his own voice.

"No way..." He broke into a run, ignoring his protesting muscles and the way his wet boots squelched with each step. The sound had come from just beyond that rise... There, in a small impact crater that had carved through the dark soil, lay his golem. Adom's breath caught in his throat. Its left arm was completely gone. The chest plate had caved in, exposing the transportation crystal and talisman in its core. But as he approached, those familiar blue eyes flickered to life.

His hand instinctively went to his own arm, fingers finding the matching talisman still there. Still intact. The connection hummed between them, weak but present. In this alien place, seeing something so familiar, so constant...

"Look what they've done to you..." He knelt beside the golem, hand hovering over its damaged plating. Its remaining hand still clutched the crystal that had started this whole mess. And suddenly, he noticed something else gleaming beside the golem – the flamebrand sword, its metal catching what little light there was despite being half-buried in the dark soil. He carefully retrieved it, the familiar weight somewhat comforting in his hand as he examined it for damage before he sighed, opening his inventory.

The golem's eyes dimmed as it disappeared with the sword into storage - he'd need to find shelter before attempting repairs. Maybe he could salvage something useful from the damaged parts. At least the core systems seemed intact, even if the chassis was a mess. Seeing the golem brought back painful memories. The Wyvern heart... it had been right there, perfectly preserved. The Water of Jouvence, just waiting to be collected. He'd been so close. So damn close.

[Status: Time Remaining] 1 month, 11 days, 21 hours, 45 minutes The numbers seemed to burn into his vision. Not even six weeks. The crushing weight of it all pressed down on him - trapped in a dungeon, broken wrist, depleted mana, damaged golem, no supplies, no allies... No. He caught himself, forcing the spiral of thoughts to stop. Every experienced delver knew that mindset was critical in dungeons. They responded to emotions, fed on despair. You needed something to hold onto. A goal. A drive.

Any small victory to keep you going. The silence pressed in around him as he searched for a silver lining, anything to... His fingers absently adjusted his glasses, and a dry chuckle escaped his throat.

"At least," he muttered to the empty air, "I kept my glasses." After a moment, he remembered the whistle Bob had given him. Adom rummaged through his inventory and pulled it out, turning the simple object over in his hand. Worth a try, he supposed. He brought it to his lips and blew. As expected, no sound emerged – at least none that he could hear. Adom waited, looking around expectantly, counting off seconds in his head. Nothing happened.

"Figured as much," he muttered, placing the whistle back in his inventory with a sigh. Adom pushed himself back to his feet, wincing as his wet clothes shifted. Each step felt heavier than the last, exhaustion settling deep in his bones. The adrenaline from nearly drowning had worn off, leaving him acutely aware of every ache and pain. He trudged upward, following the slight incline. His boots sank into the dark sand with each step, making the climb more taxing than it should have been.

The air remained oddly cold against his wet clothes, sending periodic shivers down his spine. As he crested the rise, he stopped. Blinked. Looked back at the lake. Then forward again.

"What in the..." Where there should have been perhaps woodland, or at least a continuation of the shore, an endless expanse of obsidian dunes stretched out before him. A desert. A cold desert, right next to a dark lake. The transition between the two was jarring, like someone had taken two different landscapes and stitched them together without caring about natural geography. Adom forced himself to look away from the lake, fighting down an unsettling urge to go back to its waters.

His throat felt parched, despite - or perhaps because of - the amount he'd swallowed while drowning. The black surface seemed to beckon, promising relief. He knew better. The archives in Arkhos held horrifying accounts of what happened to those who drank from the Dark Lake. It wasn't toxic - that would have been merciful. Instead, it triggered something in human minds, an overwhelming compulsion that grew with each sip.

Like a drug that corrupted every survival instinct, bending even the strongest willpower against itself. The official records were clinical, detailing symptoms and timeframes. But the personal journals... those haunted him now. Adventurers writing their own death sentences in increasingly desperate scrawls. Begging companions to tie them up, to knock them unconscious, anything to stop them from returning to the water. In the end, they always broke free. Always returned.

Always drank until their stomachs ruptured, crying even as they lifted handful after handful to their lips. Two hours. That's all it took from first voluntary sip to death. Adom swallowed hard, his throat clicking. The water he'd ingested while drowning hadn't quite reached the threshold for full addiction - if it had, he'd already be running back to the shore. But the pull he felt, the way his eyes kept drifting back to those dark waters... he was close. Very close. A distant rumbling made him freeze mid-step.

The obsidian sand trembled beneath his feet, tiny grains dancing across his boots. The desert wasn't any safer than the lake - the dunes were known to be home to massive worms that could swallow a house whole. At least the physics made sense here. Gravity worked normally, water flowed downhill, fire burned. Not like other dungeons where you might find yourself walking on ceilings or breathing water. Small mercies. A cold wind whipped across the dunes, carrying stinging grains of black sand.

Adom pulled his wet collar higher, trying to shield his face. He couldn't stay out here - not with those worms below and that purple sky above. Especially not with Helios potentially watching from the shadows. The vampire would be looking for revenge after having his face burned, and an open desert made for poor cover. To his right, a cluster of rock formations rose from the sand like broken teeth. Dark openings gaped between the stones - caverns, maybe deep enough to offer shelter.

His father's words came back to him: "Caves were always our first choice. Your uncle Jasper and I learned early on - the big threats need big spaces. Most predators in dungeons are the same - they're built too large to navigate narrow passages." It made sense. His father and Damus' father had survived three days in a cavern during their first dungeon dive, back when they were younger. The real dangers in caves were usually much smaller - easier to handle than the monstrosities that roamed open spaces.

And if you chose right, picked a cave with a single entrance, you only had to watch one direction. Adom adjusted his course, keeping his footsteps as light as possible on the shifting sand. The rumbling came again, closer this time. He quickened his pace, broken wrist throbbing with each jarring step. Adom approached the nearest cavern opening cautiously, pressing his back against the rough stone beside it.

A small orb of light formed at his fingertips as he wove the basic illumination spell, sending it floating into the darkness ahead. The pale glow bounced off wet walls, revealing a tunnel that curved deeper into the rock. No immediate movement. No sounds. He waited, counting his breaths - thirty seconds, then sixty. Nothing emerged to investigate the light. He picked up a handful of loose rocks and threw them in, one by one. Each clatter echoed through the passage, fading into silence. No skittering. No hissing.

No territorial growls. It wasn't a foolproof method, but it had saved his father's life more than once. The cavern system stretched further than his light stone revealed, branching passages disappearing into darkness. Connected caves meant multiple escape routes, but also multiple entry points for threats. He'd have to stay near the entrance, where he could see anything approaching from either the desert or the deeper tunnels.

"Ow..." he winced from his wrist. He had no potion in his inventory. No painkiller. He'd have to try and ease the pain himself. Settling against the wall just inside the mouth of the cave, Adom crossed his legs and closed his eyes, focusing on his breath. In, out. In, out. Each cycle deeper than the last, his mind settling into familiar patterns. On the seventh breath, [Meditation] activated, and the world shifted. It was like someone had pulled back a veil he hadn't known was there.

The ambient mana, previously a vague presence at the edge of his senses, suddenly became crystal clear. It swirled through the air in invisible currents, far denser than anything he'd experienced outside. The sheer concentration of magical energy was staggering. Where a normal environment might offer a gentle stream of mana to work with, this was like standing in a river. Every breath drew in more power than he could gather in an hour of meditation outside.

Out of all the types of adventurers out there, mages thrived in dungeons the most because their greatest limitation - the relative scarcity of ambient mana - simply didn't exist here. It was like giving a master painter an endless supply of colors, or handing a swordsman a perfectly balanced blade. [Mana Pool: 425/700] Each breath pulled the energy inward, filling his depleted reserves with shocking speed. The warmth spread from his core to his limbs, dulling the sharp edges of pain in his broken wrist.

[Mana Poo l: 445/700] How many times had he read about this in his hospital bed? Countless stories of adventurers drawing power from dungeon depths, facing down impossible odds with enhanced abilities. The books made it sound thrilling, romantic even. [Mana Pool: 508/700] They never mentioned how your clothes could still be heavy with water that tried to kill you. How every shadow might hide something waiting to end your life.

How the taste of fear could linger in your throat while your hands refused to stop shaking. [Mana Pool: 605/700]... Okay. Maybe they did. A lot, actually. Maybe that was what even made reading it so appealing, the sense of danger, the monsters, the landscapes. But to be honest, stories about dungeons were only fun when you weren't the one bleeding in them. [Mana Pool: 700/700] Thirty-six minutes. Adom blinked, almost not believing how quickly his mana pool had filled.

The throbbing in his wrist brought him back to reality - a sharp reminder of the next challenge. He cradled his broken wrist in his lap, studying the swollen flesh. No adventuring party worth their salt went without a healer. And for good reason - healing magic was the most demanding of all magical disciplines in term of mana emission. It required an intimate understanding of the body's intricate design, where every nerve, vessel, and bone played its part.

A healer didn't just pour magic into wounds - they had to guide the body back to its natural rhythm, restore its fundamental patterns. That's why healing mages spent two extra years in study compared to their peers, learning the countless ways a body could break and how to mend each one. A faint smile crossed his lips as he remembered his childhood declaration that he'd become a healer just like his mother. Back then, healing meant watching her close his scraped knees with a gentle touch and a warm green glow.

She'd made it look so easy - but those were surface wounds, simple redirections of the body's natural healing. This was different. Bone healing required intimate knowledge of skeletal structure, an understanding of how fragments needed to align, how to stimulate the exact type of cell growth required. The sheer mana cost was staggering - even a medium flesh wound consumed around 500 M. His current maximum was 700, and bone healing... Adom prodded the injury gently, mapping the break while grunting at the pain.

The bone had snapped clean through, displaced but not shattered. Small mercy, that. Still, realigning and mending it would drain him completely, possibly multiple times. At least the dungeon's abundant mana meant he could recover quickly between attempts. Outside, this would be nearly impossible without potions or a trained healer. Here, it was merely daunting. Adom shifted his position, bracing his back more firmly against the cave wall.

Time to see if all those hours watching his mother work, all those anatomy books he'd studied when trying to find a cure for his own illness, would pay off. The alternative was trying to survive this place one-handed. First things first - stabilization. He retrieved the damaged golem, eyeing its forearm plating. With his good hand and careful application of magic, he shaped a piece of the metal into a crude brace.

"Sorry about this," he muttered to the golem as he put it back into the inventory.

"We'll get you proper armor and repairs later." Once the splint was secured, he faced the harder part. Healing magic wasn't something to dabble in lightly. Mages who tried to mend simple breaks, only to find their bones sprouting malformed growths months later, the body's building blocks replicating wildly after being given the wrong magical signals. The body was intricate, complex - forcing it to change without proper understanding was begging for disaster.

But he knew enough basics to at least support the natural healing process. Just a little. Nothing ambitious. The first attempt drained his mana almost immediately, with barely any noticeable effect. He waited, watching the purple-tinged darkness above while his mana slowly replenished. The second try yielded similarly disappointing results - just a slight warmth around the break. Hours passed this way. No monster in sight. Try, drain, wait, repeat.

Each attempt brought minimal progress - a slight reduction in swelling here, a small easing of pain there. The work was tedious, demanding absolute concentration. One wrong push of magic could send the healing awry, encouraging the flesh to knit in ways it shouldn't. By the fifth attempt, his head was pounding from maintaining such precise control over such small amounts of magic.

It would have been easier, in some ways, to simply blast the injury with raw power - but that was exactly the kind of thinking that led to malformed healing. The sixth try finally showed real progress - the sharp, grinding pain dulled to a persistent ache. Not healed, not even close, but... manageable. The bone was still broken, would need proper medical attention eventually, but at least now it wouldn't leave him completely vulnerable. [Mana Poo l: 100/700] He flexed his wrist carefully within the makeshift brace.

The movement was restricted, weak, but no longer sent spikes of agony up his arm. It would have to do.

"Temporary," he reminded himself firmly.

"Just enough to keep going. Don't get ambitious." He'd kept his mana at around 100 all the time in case a monster would attack. No wonder healers were so rare and valuable. Adom was in the middle of a session when a scream pierced his meditation - not human, more like a bleating cry. His eyes snapped open as something burst from behind a dune: a six-legged creature with fur like burnished copper, running full-tilt. Blood already stained its flanks.

Something took it through the skull before Adom could process more detail. The point erupted from the creature's eye socket in a spray of gray matter and viscera, momentum carrying the corpse forward until it tumbled, twitching, barely thirty meters from his position. Then emerged from the same dune five figures. Scaled skin stretched over lean muscle, but their torsos rose almost humanoid, arms ending in curved, dark claws. Their tails whipped behind them as they converged on their prey.

The first one reached the kill and tore into it with serrated teeth. Steam rose from the fresh corpse as they ripped through muscle and organ, fighting each other for choice pieces. One yanked out a length of intestine, spattering the sand with half-digested matter. Another cracked open ribs like twigs to reach the heart.

[Identify] [Desert Stalker (Variant: Sand Rapids)] [Level 22 Hunter-Class Monster] [Pack Predator - Enhanced Speed and Pack Tactics] The one with the head in its jaws - the alpha, Adom presumed, by its larger size - paused mid-bite. Its eyes, vertical pupils in amber irises, fixed directly on Adom's position. That clawed arm rose, pointing straight at him. The others stopped eating, heads snapping up, muzzles dripping gore. They screeched.

"Shit." The cave entrance beckoned behind him, but instinct screamed against it. He'd be trapped, and they were faster than him. His mana sat at barely 304 - not enough for prolonged combat when the weakest monster was at level 22 and the alpha at 29. Long range combat was his best bet. [Wind Spear] was weaved first, followed immediately by twin [Fireballs]. The spells launched in rapid succession, the wind spell catching the nearest two predators before they could fully react.

It punched through scaled hide like paper, nearly bisecting one and taking the other's arm off at the shoulder. [You have slain a Desert Stalker!] The fireballs detonated among the remaining three, but they'd already scattered. The first caught a Stalker mid-leap, detonating in its chest. The explosion turned its torso into a rain of charred meat. The second fireball caught another in the spine, the blast practically vaporizing its lower half. [You have slain two Desert Stalkers!] The survivors didn't hesitate.

They pounced on their fallen packmates with the same savage hunger. Claws ripped through still-smoking flesh. The alpha tore out a half-cooked organ, swallowing it whole, its eyes never leaving Adom's position.

"What th-" [Flowing Perception] flared to life as his instincts screamed. [Boxing Mastery] activated a heartbeat later as he threw himself sideways. A spear - his mind registered it was bone, serrated and cruel - missed his head by inches and took out a chunk of cave wall the size of a small car, stone exploding outward in deadly shrapnel. Adom's breath caught as the creatures simply... vanished. Their scales shifted color and texture until they melted into the landscape.

The last one's outline wavered like heat haze before disappearing completely.

"Camouflage." He assessed his options rapidly. The dunes were their territory - he'd be dead in seconds. Out there, they could surround him from any angle, their scaled bodies perfectly concealed in the sand. He'd already spotted more movement behind other dunes - probably worms. The lake... He squinted at the distant shimmer. Too exposed. The path there was open ground, and he'd seen more rippling movements in that direction. They were herding him, he realized.

Any attempt to reach the water would leave him completely vulnerable during a long run across open terrain. These things seemed to be built for speed and raw power. Even one would tear him apart in close combat. The cave suddenly, painfully became his only option - at least there he could control the engagement space, force them into a bottleneck where their numbers meant less. A flame spell sparked to life in his good hand as he ducked into the darkness.

His wrist had improved but each impact still sent jolts of pain up his arm as he ran. The firelight cast wild shadows that made every corner look like it held death. Six passages gaped before him like hungry mouths.

"Damn it!" Pure instinct made him choose the left middle tunnel. He sprinted forward, throwing frequent glances over his shoulder, trying to track any movement in the dancing shadows. The screeches hit his ears - they'd entered the cave.

"Already?" His mind raced. They'd been at least thirty meters behind him. To close that distance so quickly... His foot met empty air mid-thought. The world tilted sickeningly. Something caught him - not ground, not stone. It clung to his clothes, his skin, resisting every attempt to pull free. The more he struggled, the more entangled he became. A sickly-sweet smell filled his nostrils, making his head swim. Claws clicked on stone.

One of the Stalkers burst into his flame light, leaping - only to become caught in the same invisible trap. It thrashed mere feet from him, jaws snapping. Its breath hit Adom like a wave of rotting meat, each exhalation carrying the stench of old death. Rows of serrated teeth gleamed wetly, designed to grip and tear. The creature's head shot forward, mouth gaping wide enough to show the ridged palette.

"Shut..." Adom focused everything into his index finger, condensing the flame spell into a single burning point.

"Your mouth!" The monster's screech became a wet gurgle as the spell punched through the roof of its mouth like a bullet. Its head exploded in a spray of bone and brain matter, spattering Adom with gore that in the cool cave air. [You have slain a Desert Stalker!] The blood was not warm. It was almost cold, even. Adom's stomach heaved at the carnage, at the blood running down his face. A different kind of movement caught his eye - the alpha, emerging into the light. It was massive.

Adom fought against the sticky substance holding him.

"What is this stuff?!" The sweet smell grew stronger, almost narcotic. The alpha stalked closer, tail lashing. Then it froze. Its head snapped up, pupils contracting to slits. A screech - different this time, almost fearful - and it turned and bolted back into the darkness. Adom hung there, blood-soaked and confused, as something massive shifted in the shadows above. Whatever could terrify a creature like that... His heart hammered against his ribs as he forced himself to look up.

The movement was almost delicate - eight legs, each longer than Adom was tall, stepped into the cave's natural glow with impossible silence. White chitin gleamed like polished bone, decorated with intricate black patterns that seemed to shift and flow in the light. Its body hung above him, easily large enough to swallow a grown man whole, and at least five Adom-sized men. Eight eyes, deep crimson and utterly alien, fixed upon him with predatory focus.

They glowed with their own inner light, like burning coals in the darkness. [Greater Cavern Weaver - Albino Variant] [Level 69 Apex Predator]"Ah, fuc-"