Wolf

Half a day later, on the forty-seventh floor

I glance back at the arena again as I slowly float back to the bleachers before turning to the outer pillars of the arena and walking towards them whilst glancing at the corner of my interface.

My Info:

Level: 522

EXP: 1046/52200

System Points: 216.20

Viewing Room Profits: 7043

This might be a good time to check out what’s inside of the sand sea. There must be something worth finding in it, considering that there are enormous monsters going around it. Not to mention those strange ralcans.

And whatever else might be in the sand seas.

Anyways, the monsters shouldn’t be able to sneak up on me with my life sense skill. Not even the large ones.

After sending one last glance back towards the arena and noting the strange half-scorpion, half-humanoid creature and the elite jackyl entering the pit, I turn back towards the sand sea.

Time to see what’s down there.

I jump down the two dozen or so meters to the sand sea below, and as soon as my feet touch the sand, they dig in almost entirely up to my knees.

Well, that’s annoying.

I push myself back up out of the sand whilst focusing on my life senses. Surprisingly, I don’t find anything within the thirty or so meter range of the skill.

Then again, considering the size of most of the monsters that I’ve seen out here, it makes sense that there wouldn’t be many of them.

Almost as soon as the thought crosses my mind, something very large enters the range of my life sense skill.

I raise both of my gauntlets before turning towards what ever it is, only to find the sand around me beginning to tremble and flow slowly towards the arena behind me. When I turn around again to look at the arena, I find it completely gone with no traces of it remaining outside of a rapidly filling valley of sand.

“What the hell?” I mutter before shaking my head and turning back towards the life source. Almost as soon as I do so, the sand located about a dozen meters in front of me begins to tremble even harder as the rest of the sand around me continues to slowly fill up the valley in which the arena was previously situated at.

I focus on the life source as the trembling gets worse, only for an enormous scorpion the size of a two story house to suddenly break out of the sand, causing the sand to scatter in every direction around it. At the same time, a loud hissing sound comes from the large creature.

_-| Unnamed – Queen Scorpion – Level 600 |-_

My mouth drops open slightly at the creature’s level before I close it again and squint at the creature whilst raising an arm to block the sand from spraying into my mouth or eyes. The queen scorpion is black and purple in color, with three massive tails tipped with stingers dripping some sort of viscous red liquid. It has eight legs, all completely covered in a thick, black exoskeleton of chitin, with two of them ending in large, clawed pincers.

Without wasting a single second, I immediately turn around with my hands pointed towards the sand in front of me before using a skill I had bought from the Expanded System Store recently just for traversing the sands.

Frozen path.

As soon as I activate the skill, a large wave of ice to shoots out in front of me, freezing the ground for several meters in a straight line.

Time to skedaddle.

I quickly step onto the ice whilst making ice skates on the bottom of my sabatons. Meanwhile, the sand around me continues to tremble, fortunately putting the large scorpion off balance as the sand fills the large valley where the mysteriously missing arena previously was.

Once again ignoring the arena’s disappearance, I immediately begin to skate across the ice after the skates finish forming on my sabatons, continuously using frozen path every time I reach the end of the path.

When I turn my head to look behind me, I find the scorpion being pulled towards the large valley by the now-more-vigorously-moving sand.

Okay, so maybe the arena vanishing worked out in my favor after all.

I turn my head again to face where I’m heading before frowning as another life source enters the range of my skill. One that is even larger than the damn scorpion.

Before I can even turn my head to look in the direction of the creature, a massive head breaks out of the sand, tusks first, followed by the body of an archthron. Surprisingly, however, the creature completely ignores me to instead move straight past me towards the large scorpion that I had left behind.

I pause in place for a moment as I watch the over-one-hundred-meter-long creature glide across the sand without any trouble before stabbing its enormous tusks straight into the queen scorpion’s side, only managing to make it hiss really loudly as it flies out of the valley of sand. The scorpion then stabs all three of its tails into the ground to regain its footing on the sands.

Interestingly enough, the sand seems to calm down a bit after the archthron’s arrival as if its massive body were balancing it out a little bit.

The only question now is whether the archthron attacked it to free it from the sand, or if it-

My thoughts are interrupted as the queen scorpion suddenly launches all three of its tails, stingers first, straight towards the enormous archthron’s head. However, before any of them can reach it, the archthron swings its massive head and knocks them aside with its tusks, the stingers failing to penetrate whatever material its tusks are made of.

I guess this means that the monsters infesting the sand seas are able to attack each other. Although, considering the arenas, I guess it makes sense.

Right as I am about to turn back around to continue making my way through the sands, a shiny glint brings my attention towards the enormous archthron’s back. When I squint my eyes to focus on it, ignoring the battle currently underway, I find what look like shiny patches of minerals and flaked off scales coating its back.

“Well, that’s interesting…” I mutter before shaking my head and starting off away from the fighting.

I can check out an archthron’s back later, when it isn’t in the middle of fighting an enormous scorpion. The creature didn’t even seem to take note of my presence earlier after all, so it might be possible for me to climb onto it without it noticing.

But not in a battle like this where it’s swinging itself around a lot.

And especially when I have no idea where the closest arena is located.

I probably should have worried more about the type of sand used on this floor’s arenas… when I saw that it was an ‘unstable sand that causes spatial disturbances in the surrounding areas’ I didn’t expect it to suddenly teleport away or disappear out of nowhere.

After all, it’s a stadium spanning the size of an entire football stadium! Not to mention that it hasn’t done something like this in any of the previous arenas that I’ve fought in on this floor.

I glance back at the two fighting monsters again before shaking my head and activating my frozen path skill again. However, before I can make it even three meters, a shocking message appears on the side of my interface.

System Notification

You have received a message from player: Aidan Hunter

“Wolf, I’m sorry.

Lexi has died.”

Almost immediately after reading the message, I stop moving entirely. My fists clench at my sides as a bit of the ice element that was built up inside of my body begins to release on its own.

However, before anything else can happen, I reign it all in, taking a deep breath and exhaling it again several seconds later.

I close my eyes as I begin to feel my self shifting to my hunter form. At the same time, the battle far behind me continues to play out with loud screeches and roars echoing throughout the nearly endless sands.

It isn’t until nearly an entire minute later that I open my eyes again and begin to compose a message in response.