He urged at least half of his mana and plunged it into the massive desert beneath him, but to his dismay, it did not act as he wished, rather, the desert didn't respond at all and instead attracted his energy further, sucking it in. He was rapidly being drained and before long, eighty percent of his energy was consumed before it stopped draining him, but he could not disconnect his hands from the ground.

"What's wrong with this place!?" he complained as he tried to shirk his hands off the ground.

Even though he had spent all that energy to try and manipulate the sand beneath, he had not succeeded and instead, got trapped to the ground.

The silver viper, on the other hand, heard his challenge and stopped assaulting the young lady and turned it's massive head to look at him instead. It's red and yellow eyes glaring at Ventus, and he froze in his spot.

"Such pressure!" he groaned.

The silver viper that looked like an armored monster emitted a viciously oppressive aura that put a huge load of pressure on Ventus's consciousness that made him barely able to move at all. Taking the full brunt of the mental attack Ventus noticed that its scales were not perfectly smooth and round like a normal snake would be, instead, they slightly pointed as if they had small spikes on them.

"HIIIISSSSSS...."

The viper hissed loudly and let go of the young girl, instead choosing to attack him. His body could not move as he wished, his response time was massively reduced.

"Sh*t!" he cursed loudly.

He urged his limbs to move but they only trembled in response and obeyed him agonizingly slow. The massive body of the silver viper crossed the distance between them in a single jump and was about to hit Ventus. The girl screamed in fear and his her eyes as she did not want to look at his death.

Time seemed to slow down to a halt and Ventus exhaled loudly.

"So this is my death huh?" he sighed in his mind, "Stupid master sending me to save the girl, and now when I die saving her butt, she doesn't even look at me straight!"

That was when he finally felt a connection to the ground. Instead of the usual solid and dense clusters of earth he could mold, shape and control at his will using little to no effort, now he felt instead, hundreds of millions of perfectly round beads of sand connecting to his threads. This discovery revealed to him the problem.

Controlling dense clusters of earth was far easier as he just had to influence a single piece of earth and will it to move, at max he would control a dozen or so pieces at a time. But now, he was having a hard time using the terra control technique as what he had to control now was far smaller in size, but had its numbers multiplied far beyond he had ever controlled before. It was impossible for him to control this amount the same way he controlled rocks and made complex and fluid use of the earth, at most, he was only going to be able to give simple commands since his mana had been used to such a dangerously low level and had been spread so thin between the sand beads.

"Well, it's now or never, I refuse to die like this!" he shouted in his heart, "CONDENSE!"

He willed his threads to contract and forcibly pull the beads together to try and make a solid structure he could safely step on and control. In less time than it took to blink he felt something take shape beneath him, he couldn't care less what it was and was happy enough to know that it was under his full control. His thoughts stormed with the theme of survival as a priority.

"DODGE!!!!" He roared in his mind.

The structure tilted slightly to the left as it moved slid on the smooth golden sand. The viper's attack had arrived, It's gaping maw wanting to swallow him whole. The time finally moved in normal speed once more as he successfully evaded certain death by a hair's breadth.

Even though he escaped death, he was still wounded. He escaped the viper's maw but could not fully dodge its spiked scales and that resulted in his right arm receiving a big cut slightly under his shoulder that luckily was not deep enough to hit an artery. Blood flowed along his wounded limb and fell onto the golden sand below, fusing with it and leaving behind black spots on the otherwise spotless desert.

He stood up on the structure and had time to see that he had constructed a golden sand board, he stood on it with only his to feet as he held his wounded right arm with his left hand to try and stop the bleeding. Fortunately, adrenaline was rushing through his body and as such did not allow him to feel any pain, but, he had his head clear enough now to know that he was still in danger of blood loss, and so, he circulated his little mana left to try and stimulate his natural healing factor to kick in faster to at least close off the bleeding.

He willed the board to slide forward in the direction of the young lady using the opportunity that the massive snake had given him when it was recoiling itself and preparing to attack again.

"Luna Ziegler right!? Quickly hop in and hold on to me!" he shouted.

He was fastly almost approaching and his shout woke her from her petrified state of fear. When the girl heard his voice he looked at the direction he was coming from and saw that he was sliding on a golden board, was alive and, despite the wound on his arm, was relatively well. She struggled to stand straight and as soon as he passed nearby she jumped on his board and held on to his waist.

The board was barely two meters in length, so she had to stick her body to his to avoid falling, her delicate small hands tightly holding his waist to the point of becoming pure white with the effort. Ventus felt slightly strange as a red shade crept on to his face, he had never had any sort of interaction with any girls his age before, or any girls at all for that matter besides his own sister, so such a proximity made him feel weird as he did not know how to react. He did, however, kept his face looking forwards as he tried to avoid letting her see he was embarrassed about this. He quickly refocused himself by changing his attention to the more pressing matters at hand.

"Can you tell me exactly what are we facing?" he inquired nervously.

The young girl frowned a bit and spoke, her voice slightly trembling as she still had not fully recovered psychologically from the previous attack.

"F-F-From what I learned from my father," She replied, "That should be a Silver Sand Poison Dragon."

"Wait.." He said concerned, "Did you say the word "poison" and the word "dragon" ?"

"Yes...why?" she inquired.

"Oh f*ck me!" he cursed in his mind.