The Sahara Dungeon

Eliot

The dungeon entrance was literally a dark hole in the ground. There were hundreds of these unmarked pit traps scattered all over the forest and they changed places every twelve hours. Every mix up, a chosen few from the Yore Fortress Adventurer’s Guild scout out the area and safely canvass the entrances to prevent wanderers from falling to their untimely demise and to facilitate a reliable path into the dungeon.

Eliot would have loved to go into the Sahara Dungeon blind, but he begrudgingly decided to play it safe due to the lack of his magic, and in the end he was happy with the decision because it ended up feeding his craving for excitement.

The only way out of the dungeon was to obtain a port crystal. It has a small chance to drop from every single mob. Not only that, there were vendors at the edge of Yore Fortress that sold drop chance charts. It cataloged every item, told which mobs dropped it, and how often. Apparently the dungeon was consistent with their drops and the only time the chart needed to be updated is when the dungeon added new drops or mobs.

In no time at all, Eliot was at the head of the line. He peered down at the depression the size of a large bucket, disappointment coloring his features. He had hoped to step off the ledge like he was jumping from a building, but the hole too skinny, he would have to actually hop into it.

So hop he did, and his smile returned in seconds. As his body slid into the ground, he felt like something grabbed hold of him and yanked him down. Before he knew it, he was five meters above a new ground and he winced from the sudden appearance of a bright light source. Then it all came crashing down when he was smacked into the sand by gravity.

He rolled and sprang back up to his feet, coming dangerously close to flopping on his face from the residue force. When his heels sunk back into the sand, he let out a breath of pure heat and took in his surroundings. Sun, sky, sand, and sparse plant life. That was all, for kilometers around him. And yet he let out a giddy hum and had to stop himself from shaking.

“Sand dunes!” he squealed as he fell to his knees and ran his hands through said sand. He celebrated like a kid seeing snow for the first time, namely rolling around, scattering it everywhere, burying himself in it, and building a sand man.

Why was he freaking out over sand dunes? Simple, they don’t exist in the outside world. The Human and Feral continents have practically identical environments with mountains, plains, and forests. In fact, he had recently learned that there was an unproven hypothesis that the Feral and Human continents used to be one land mass, but some powerful individual a long time ago separated them for some reason.

That means that deserts, and by extension, sand dunes don’t exist. But what made Eliot so interested is that they had to have existed at one point, a very long time ago. He found mention of something called a desert in several archaic tombs, and all the context clues he’s gathered to try and piece together what it is perfectly describe the environment of the Sahara Dungeon. Something happened to make them all disappear. Of that he was certain, but he couldn’t find anything more than whispers in books so old that they were falling apart.

However, there was a reason he was interested in sand dunes specifically: sand. Everyone on modern day earth knows what sand is and has most probably come in contact with it; that isn’t true for the humans of Eliot’s time.

The Crucible Empire’s founder, Eridius Marxs, pushed two ideals that have since dwindled, knowledge and equality. He said that every sentient was equal and would be so before the eyes of the throne, and he also said that everyone should be educated. There were other attributes to the Crucible Empire’s original boom, including a set code of rules that everyone, even nobles, have to follow and freedom of religion, but free education and equality were the main pillars of attraction. Because of Eridius Marxs’ ideals, even hundreds of thousands of years later most people were literate, nobles did have some advantages but not the ability to completely flaunt the law, the population is comprised of more races than just humans, and demihumans aren’t hunted down and viciously murdered.

Unfortunately, the Crucible Empire has been in a decline. There is no free education, demihumans are still discriminated against, nobles have stooped to illegal forms of pleasure and accruement of funds, and most people don’t know what sand is because they never actually come in contact with it.

Now, Eliot was absolutely overjoyed that he was one of the very few that had interacted with sand. It was only after he finished celebrating that he realized just how hot is was. He had been in the dungeon for less than fifteen minutes and he already felt a layer of wet shroud his entire body. He could feel the sun beat down on his back, his lips were cracked, and the air stung. Not to mention the wind. It was a dry heat that buffeted him every few minutes, threw sand in his face, and came with a deafening and ear grating hum.

“Alright, maybe this isn't that great,” he mumbled to himself as he planted his feet. He squinted and tried his best to block out the sun with his left hand as he surveyed the area. There was nothing that stood out, so he just started walking. And, thanks to his celebration, there was sand in his shoes and clothes, sticking to his damp skin. Eliot had never been more displeased that he couldn’t use cleanse.

He forged on nonetheless and found himself wishing he was dead only a few hours into his journey. For some ungodly reason he couldn’t bring himself to breath through his nose anymore, he was a mouth breather now. Which paired painfully with his clay lips that hurt whenever he moved them. On top of that, he wished beyond reason that he either cut his hair or worn some kind of shade. His head felt like he was balancing a heat stone wrapped in sweaty cloth and more and more sweat found its way into his eyes. But, even stacked against everything else, the sound was the worst part. Without wind, it was deafeningly silent except for his shallow breathing. With wind, the sand boomed. Eliot thought he would get used to the sound, but he obviously failed at that, and he felt like it was getting worse. Every boom made him recoil worse than the last. He tried not to fixate on how he was going to sleep in this godforsaken abyss.

He felt a small prick on the side of his neck and groaned in protest. He had been praying for something, anything, to break the monotonous torture, but when something did happen he found himself dreading any extra movement.

Eliot mustered his sudden absolute hatred for the minor annoyance and used it as fuel to slap the side of his neck. His hand came away sticky with the gooey corpse of a wasp. He whipped his hand around in a halfhearted attempt to get it off his hand, and when it wouldn’t come off, he fell to his knees and screamed. He let out all of his rage on the poor sand in front of him, blasting it apart with his smashes and smacks. When he was done, he let out a dreadful mix between a laugh and whimper as he lowered his face to the sand. He wearily eyed the ground directly ahead of him, the urge to gently touch his forehead against it bubbling into a full out headbang as he fought against the reasoning telling him that sand would be stuck to his face for gods know how long before he could wash it off.

He balled his fists, thankfully corpse free, and his entire body shook in misery fueled anger, then the wind came. It took him by surprise, it always did, and elicited a painful cry of anguish as he jumped in his skin and covered his ears. He curled up on his side, his face resting on the sand and invalidating his internal struggle. He stayed that way, trying to contract into a ball small enough for the outside world to disregard his existence, and his mind drifted back to his lessons with Master Camble.

He forced out all the lingering air in his lungs. In for four, hold for six, out for eight. When he got proper control, he changed to equal abdomen breathing. In for five, out for five with his belly expanding and his chest remaining still. Then, he changed to breath focus. He rolled onto his back, momentarily squinting from the increased light making it past his eyelids, rested his hand on his heart and stomach and breathed slowly. He focused on the word ‘calm’ in his mind and one by one relaxed his muscles, falling into a deep meditation. Finally, he switched to dragon breathing, lifting himself to his knees, crossing his ankles, and sitting back with his hands on his knees. He breathed in through his nose and exhaled with an audible ‘ha!’ like a dragon breathing fire. Exactly like Master Camble had taught him.

When he opened his eyes, he felt weirdly powerful. His body was bursting with energy, it always did after he meditated, but the feeling he felt was more of an authority over his emotions and surroundings. He felt like he was an emperor that had just woken up from a deep slumber and returned to rule over his empire, casting a benevolent and serene gaze. He balled his fists and that calm was soon replaced with anger. Suddenly he wished Master Camble was by side, scolding him about how weak his resolve was. He couldn’t believe he was so weak that he almost failed at the first sight of difficulty.

There is no point in getting angry now, he thought as he lifted himself to his feet. He set a steady gaze on the path ahead of him, no end in sight, and started walking again.

Master Camble’s words rang inside of Eliot’s head, “Humans are survivors. They face adversity, adapt, grow, and overcome!” Eliot didn’t agree with most of his philosophical views, especially his more philanthropic ones, but some were starting to speak to him. He didn’t let his mind wander any further, for something like this it was better to fall into a trance and let your ego hang over your body.

Eliot could only march ahead for a relatively short amount of time before the sun set and chill descended on the desert. His arms were crossed and he was rubbing himself to fight the encroaching shiver. He stopped to sleep for the night when his breath transformed into a misty plume.

Eliot didn’t want to light a fire, he realized earlier in his adventure that fire was the worst possible self heating method. You were either too far away or too close and no matter how long you sat beside it half of your body was still freezing. He lit one anyway because he didn’t want to freeze to death during the night, he couldn’t die with himself if he went out in such a boring and preventable way. So, he covered himself in a second layer of clothing and layed down next to the fire, staring up at the sparkling night sky. I wonder what those really are, he thought as he drifted to sleep, too tired to care about any singing sand dunes.

He woke up sticky. At first he thought he had just sweat so much the previous day that it hadn’t all dried yet, but when he shifted his arm, his sweat felt gooier than it usually was. It took him all of three seconds to realize that the goo wasn’t secreted by him rather than the giant serpent whose mouth the lower half of his body somehow found itself trapped in, nestled between its massive fangs. Its mouth enclosed his body at a crawl, trying not to disturb the sleeping prey.

In spite of his situation, Eliot had to fight bemused laughter. Being swallowed by a snake was a little less boring than hypothermia; unfortunately for the snake, it didn’t meet Eliot’s standards. He matched the snake’s pace while shifting his body to rest on his right side. It would be more accurate to say the snake swallowed the lower two thirds of his body seeing that his arms were more or less in its mouth, only his chest and above were actually outside. He drew his left arm back until his elbow touched against the fang behind him and used form seven. His arm shot forward like an arrow and he struck the fang with the heel of his palm. It snapped near its base with a satisfying crack and the snake drew its head up with a hiss. Eliot took advantage of its recoil and shoved himself outside of its jaws, flopping against the sand below in a sholshing shell of saliva.

Form seven was possibly Eliot’s favorite form because it was the most satisfying to use. At first, he thought it was form one but with some small differences and couldn’t understand why it was a form at all. When he asked Master Camble about it he said that its purpose wasn’t a brute force attack like form one but a bone breaker that was meant to hinder your opponent or as a killing blow to a vital area. Eliot wasn't aware, but it utilized simple board breaking physics, where its sudden burst in velocity magnifies its force because force times time equals mass times the difference in velocity over time, not to mention the smaller surface area that transfers the force makes it more of a structural threat.

As Eliot tried his best to keep his footing in the slop, he let out a bemused chuckle. He had expected the fang to be torn from the gum altogether, but now he realized that it snapped because a snake’s fangs are hollow, not like regular teeth and therefore the path of least resistance would be for the fang to snap instead of being uprooted. But he tried not to enjoy himself too much, no matter how fun it was to be faced with a very angry and very big snake that was thoroughly pissed off and intent on devouring him.

The snake was larger than the crescent dunes surrounding them and its head blocked out the new sun as it lorded over Eliot, hissing in uncensored rage. Eliot was only spurred on by its determination, forming a simple plan in his head as he jogged around it in a circle. When it lashed out, he casually jumped and grabbed hold of its puffy venom gland on the right side of its head. The snake writhed and flopped about, but Eliot held firm, giggling like he was having the time of his life.

He lost track of how much time he spent playing with the snake, all he knew was by the time he put it out of its misery the sun was high in the sky and malevolently roasting him with ultraviolet radiation.

“Ahh, that was fun,” he sighed before turning to the pile of loot that the snake had turned into and saying, “I am honored to be your death.” It was a peculiar tradition he first started after having a particularly fun time hunting a greyhound. He didn’t expect it to take as long as it did and he had to portal to one of Master Camble’s lessons directly after. He had time to cast cleanse, but his clothes still had traces of his activity. Master Camble asked him why he hunted animals and he answered that it was to polish his skills and learn more about them. Master Camble proceeded to ask what he did with their bodies. Eliot fell silent for a few seconds before eventually saying that he didn’t do anything with them. Master Camble launched into a rant about the sanctity of life and honoring those you have felled, even if they were only animals. Eliot didn’t care for how supposedly precious life was, but he did agree that dying was somewhat sacred and he did have a lot of fun hunting, so it was only proper that he honor them. What he said exactly changed a few times until he settled on ‘I am honored to be your death’. For some reason, that sounded better than the alternatives.

After taking a short bow, Eliot cleaned up his campsite and recovered his bag before stooping over the small trinkets with the drop chance chart. He flipped to the page of the aptly named ‘Big Sand Snake” and compared the three items he was lucky, or rather unlucky to get.

In total, the snake dropped a singular left boot that was too big to fit him anyway, three silver, a small metal cleaver in good condition, and a key made of bones. He didn’t go through any of the chart before this to prevent spoilers about the mobs and drops, and while he was dissatisfied with his other drops he was happy to see that the Skeleton Key only had a five percent drop chance, the rarest item the sand snake could have dropped. After flipping to the item encyclopedia at the back, his interest rose along with his brow. The Skeleton Key was also dropped from a variety of mobs, but the drop chance ranged from five to point five percent. The description said that it opened something, obviously, and probably something valuable but no one has discovered what to use it on yet.

Deciding he got good loot after all, Eliot put the Skeleton Key and cleaver away, the key in his soul and the cleaver in his bag, before restarting his trek along with desert.

He was deeply relieved to see the quantity of sand lower until it reached a thin spill over the dirt floor. He took a moment to lift his weary head and survey his surroundings, finding that he was in an ecotone between the sand dunes and savanna. Behind him were linear dunes that took the appearance of a tidal wave frozen in time as it crashed and in front of him was a boundless dirt plain with a misty haze that prevented him from seeing more than two hundred meters(around six fifty feet) out.

He scrambled to make it into savanna proper before dropping to his knees on the soft but boiling dirt. Despite appearing destitute, the dirt breathed a long forgotten form of life with the smallest, thinnest patches of green. He would have preferred a land of death, but the sand dunes were completely inhospitable, never the host of a prevailing life or death, simply devoid. Faced with empty, he would much rather run into the open arms of life.

Feeling reborn as the last of this land’s life forms, he got to his feet and began his journey anew. He saw giraffes for the first time the second day in, but he didn’t even try to kill them. One broken leg and they would be done for, there was no honor in that. Beside the occasional tree or friendly tower of giraffes, there was nothing to stumble across on the border of the savanna region, and yet he wasn’t bored. Au contraire, he was constantly in deep thought over one thing or the other. Eliot didn’t find it weird, in fact he had read that some geniuses preferred to walk as they pondered the secrets of the universe and figured he must have turned into one. He ruminated, hypothesized over spells, cemented his True Martial Art, and looked back on social interactions he could have handled better. He had never felt more aware, and that feeling suffused into his being. Instead of having the impermanence of an epiphany, it was now a part of him, he would never subject himself to his previous ignorance.

He continued with nothing but the company of his thoughts for three days before the savanna suddenly sprang vegetation. The ground was greener, the shrubs turned human sized, and some of them even shed their wheat color for a far more sensible dark green. Along with this development, he felt something sinister settle on his shoulders. He was very intimate with that feeling, those were the eyes of a predator marking him as prey. He didn’t crouch low to the ground, hide in the grass, or behind shrubs, that would only prove the predator’s assessment correct. He stood tall and marched in a straight line, lifting his knees high to make all sorts of ruckus.

It came as a blotch of spotted whitish orange, too fast for him to see anything more before it pounced on him. They rolled from the impact and Eliot put his arm up the second before the mob sunk its teeth into his neck. He let out a puff of hot air and winced from its jaws tightening like a wrench over his left forearm. Even with everything happening in close succession, his mind was clear and he thought back to the basics Master Camble had taught him.

Above all, you need to protect yourself, it does no good killing your opponent if you die as well. In consequence, if you do find yourself in a compromised position, the best defense is to pressure your opponent.

Eliot took the previous second to recall and the next second to properly examine the mob he was facing. It was quadrupedel, with a skinny tail, covered in black spots, sporting claws and fangs. It was a large cat of some kind. When he put it all together, he smirked at the irony. Just before he entered the dungeon, he looked down on a very similar large cat for being practically harmless.

He timed his attack to take place when the mob was on top. First, he drew his right arm as back as he without leaving himself open to its claws and struck its neck. Then, he strained his muscles to follow further with the movement, creating a small space between him and the mob. Finally, he tucked his legs in front of him and shoved the mob into the air with a reverse jump. Knowing he couldn’t react to its top speed, Eliot used the force of his reverse jump to position himself perpendicular to the ground and used his arms to flip himself the rest of the way. Unfortunately, the pain in his left arm made him freeze up halfway through and he landed more on his knees than his feet. It was enough.

The mob completed its parabolic flight pattern and thumped against the ground with a whimper. It wasn’t as nimble as to always land on its feet like others of its species, but it twisted its body the second it hit the ground in some instinctive way that ended with all four of its paws supporting itself. It was all in vain, however. Eliot was hurtling towards it, not faster than it could register but faster than it could dodge. He had his right arm drawn back in preparation and let it fly the moment he got within range. The mob’s front left leg folded right, a direction it wasn’t supposed to fold, and Eliot slammed into it the following second. They both tumbled, Eliot more than the mob and ended up rolling past it.

He stabilized himself as fast as he was able, but there was no need. The mob was already growling its death throes. Its leg completely snapped at the joint, even if Eliot didn’t kill it would now, it would die from starvation. That didn’t mean it didn’t struggle, though. As he approached it, the mob’s crys grew more distressed and it tried with all of its being to get away. Eliot didn’t see a reason to prolong its fear, so he positioned himself beside its head and snapped its neck.

“I am honored to be your death,” he whispered in between slightly labored breathing and during a bow. They say a low heart rate during the act of murder shows your capacity for inflicting pain. Before, even when he killed the snake, his heart was racing and he felt alive. Now he felt the same, could feel the adrenaline, but his heart only beat a little harder than usual due to his physical exertion. He took a second as his head lifted from the bow to consider what changed.

His first thought was of Ellulia, when she had him feel her heartbeat. She did it to show him that it was steady and quiet. He didn’t read into it in the moment, he just subconsciously labeled it as a good thing and forgot about it. And now that he was thinking about, he found that he had close to no idea what it meant. Did it mean that she wasn’t nervous around me anymore? Did it mean that she loved me even more? Did it mean that the type of love she felt was different? Or did she do it just to calm me down? In his limited perspective every one was as plausible as the next, he could list them forever and never feel good about an answer. He would have to hear it from Ellulia herself. What if she doesn’t know what it means? After all, Eliot had no idea why it happened to him, so what’s to say Ellulia wasn’t the same?

After some time, he decided that it wasn’t something he should obsess over, and inventoried the drops. He got a spell scroll with the spell Cat’s Grace and Pounce and a small mana crystal. Comparing those to the drop chance chart, they were average drops for the cheetah, and it had a chance to drop extremely expensive gear like a sword with a Sever rune. Anything worth hunting for had less than a ten percent chance, though.

He stashed the spell scroll and mana crystals in his bag before turning his attention to his arm. Blood freely flowed from fifteen puncture wounds in a half circle, also it hurt. Eliot contemplated his relationship with pain as he cleaned and addressed the wound. He cleaned it with water and a relatively clean shirt, then he produced a jar half filled with stone grey ants the size of your finger’s largest filangi. He opened the lid and picked one up by the body, then he suspended it above one of the holes in his arms. He impatiently coaxed the ant until it bit, effectively holding the wound closed, before squeezing, twisting, and pulling away fluidly. He flicked its decapitated corpse away and made sure its head was secure. Eliot repeated the process fourteen more times and wrapped his wound, ant heads still attached, with ripped strips of his clothing. He whispered praise to the ants as he safely deposited them back in his bag.

With that done, he started walking again and, three hours before dusk, he came across a watering hole. He was gleeful, to say the least, with all the new faces. He paged through the drop chance chart that doubled for a monster expository and confirmed that the majority of loot dropping mobs were present. The only outliers were the mobs that were habitat locked, like the sand snake, mini bosses, and the big bad boss itself.

In the end, Eliot set up a temporary camp within stalking distance of the watering hole and spent the next week isolating and killing one of every mob. He started at the bottom of the danger rankings, working his way up until he was faced with a nemesis. Before then, he swept through the ranks, easily defeating everything in his path to conquering the dungeon. Then, it was the hippo’s turn.

Eliot didn’t think much of the mob and treated it like he would any other. He had a circumspect voice in his head that told warned him to be wary because he was nearing the most dangerous challenges the dungeon had to offer, with the boss monster being a half step Demigod, which he guessed was why Master Camble sent him to this one instead of the closer Arbatus Dungeon.

He blatantly ignored that voice, like he usually did, and scrutinized the local bloat of hippos until one an appropriate distance to be ambushed. He moved with measured muteness as he lowered himself into the muddy water. The Eliot from a month ago would have shuttered at the thought of being submerged in filth, but the newborn savage in him took pleasure in wading through the dirt. The inhumane control of his gross motor functions ensured he was silent, and would have made him invisible if his hair wasn’t the least seen color in nature.

What felt like hours later, he drew close to the hippo’s massive flank. It was much more deserving of the word ginormous when observed from up close. He unwound his crouch until the mirk only cupped his waist and attacked. His hand balled as his arm drew back, his shoulder tensed, his body twisted, and he took a deep breath before rushing forward.

His fist dug into the fat and he heard a dull CRACK! It came from his arm, twins with a debilitating and breath staggering wash of pain. Meanwhile, all his attack did was ripple the blasted thing’s hide, it was completely unaffected.

Eliot hovered a shaking hand over his arm and tried to stir his paralyzed diaphragm as he fumbled backwards. The hippo turned lazily, slapping Eliot with a large slosh of water that did him in. He twisted like his life depended on it to veer to his right side and had the sense of mind to take a deep breath before his head went under. A primal panic overtook him, making him flail and flop until he found footing. It was hard to tell whether him or a solitude gasp made it to the surface until that graceful flow to his lungs was interrupted with a spontaneous groan, reminding him that he still had a broken arm.

The hippo had finally turned its mass to face him, a few meters away now, and Eliot mustered his diminutive in comparison stature. Looking it dead in the eyes, he had to hold in a chuckle: the thing was nothing more than a cobb of fat carried on four stumps. As if hearing the ridicule in Eliot’s mental voice, the hippo grew enraged. It displaced waves as it strode directly before him, its gums withdrew to reveal truly massive canines flanked by the best grinders ever conceived, its mouth split wide enough to swallow him whole, and it roared.

The guttural rumble smacked his ears as the by-product carbon dioxide alone formed an impregnable wall of force that sent him reeling. His brain only informed him of the globes of saliva and grimace inducing smell half a second later. That was when fight or flight kicked in; he literally fell over himself flopping onto dry land before doing a mix of roll and shamble to get away. The hippo hardly bothered with him after succeeding on its intimidation.

Eliot stopped and listened to his own panting for a few seconds before breaking out in an out to ear grin. His pants turned to puffs of incredulousness and his body shook from the unadulterated excitement working its way down in tingles.

“That thing was so cool!” he gushed. “It could have eaten me whole and I wouldn’t have been able to do anything, I probably would have let it!”

And so, ever since hippos as a collective were his nemesis.