Although Red said he had no intentions of fighting Reinhart, he was still on the lookout for the man. He focused on his crimson sense and examined the tracks the man had left behind.

Thankfully for Red, Reinhart wasn’t waiting in ambush for him. He reached the end of the corridor without accidents and found an open door leading back into the desert.

With one last careful search, he stepped outside.

Nothing seemed different about the desolate land. Except, when the boy looked around, he saw the mountain was much closer than before. It looked no farther than a few kilometers from him, but Red wouldn’t let himself be deceived by his eyes in this place again.

Except, upon closer examination, he noticed the lack of something in his surroundings.

‘The tornadoes disappeared.’

Although the storm still raged above, there were no signs of the twisters in his vicinity. Red felt lost for a second.

His gaze wandered back to the mountain, though.

‘Does that mean I can walk towards it now?’

Red wasn’t sure. However, now it seemed this was truly the only option left to him.

He took one last look at the building behind him before setting forward.

…

Red tried to search for signs of Reinhart, but even though the tornadoes were gone, the winds in the plain were still strong, and they wiped any signs of the man. What confused the boy, though, was that even though Reinhart had quite a few minutes of advantage over him, it should still have been possible to spot his figure from afar in the desert's terrain. No such thing happened, though.

It was as if the man had disappeared.

Yet, to Red’s surprise, he was able to make progress to reach the mountain over the next ten minutes. It was nowhere near as fast as it should have been, considering how much time had passed and his perceived distance to the peak, and yet the mountain got closer to him ever so slightly.

At this distance, Red could notice some of its details. The mountain was composed of a dark, rocky surface, and its triangular shape seemed perfectly symmetrical, reaching into the sky. The boy had seen no mountains before, but even he could tell that the peak didn’t look natural. What interested him, though, was how the storm behaved around the mountain.

A perfect circle of clear sky formed around the apex of the mountain, and the tumultuous clouds and lightning never trespassed this invisible line, even as they roiled around the rest of the desert. Of course, although Red said he saw clear sky, what he saw was a simple absence of the storm.

There was no sun, blue sky, or stars beyond the clouds, only pitch black darkness that not even his improved vision was able to pierce through. It was nothingness. Red felt as if he was staring into the abyss - what lay beyond the edge of this strange world he had been teleported to - and it filled him with a sense of unexplainable dread.

He averted his gaze. The boy decided it was best to focus on the path ahead.

And it was good that he did.

Something seemed to be moving at the feet of the mountain. Red squinted, trying to discern what he was seeing. It was an indescribable mass, too small for the boy to make out from this far. It made him hesitate, though, and Red stopped walked, contemplating what it was he had seen.

However, whatever it was soon made itself evident on its own.

The stirring mass grew in his vision little by little until it seemed to occupy the very horizon ahead of him. It was then that Red recognized it.

It was a dust storm. And it was heading right for him.

The boy frowned, wondering what he was supposed to do. It didn’t take him long to admit defeat, though.

‘What a joke… There’s nothing you can do against something that big.’

Red could only hope the sandstorm didn’t kill him on impact. He still did his preparations, though.

He covered his face with some of his spare clothes, covering all his orifices and keeping only a slit open for his eyes - as good as they would do him in there. The boy also made sure all his equipment was tied to his body and that none of it would fly off when the strong wind struck.

Then there was nothing left but to brace himself.

The dust storm continued to grow in his vision, seemingly conjuring more dust out of nowhere to increase in size. Soon enough, it was reaching the stormy sky above. It became a monster of untold proportions, swallowing everything on its path and reaching beyond where Red’s eyes could see.

Out of all natural disasters Red had seen today, this certainly took first place when it came to sheer size - and yet, here he was, walking right towards it and possibly towards his own death. At this point, though, he felt somewhat numb.

When someone risked their life so often in such a short period of time, the fear was bound to lose its effects on them.

‘Maybe that was the point all along…’

The dust-storm continued to grow until it swallowed the boy.

…

The first thing Red felt were the strong winds hitting against him. Every step forward felt two times as hard as normal, and with his diminutive size as a kid, the gale’s effects were even worse.

Then there was the worst part - the dust. Red felt countless particles pepper his body constantly and with no respite. His uniform, although somewhat ruined, still absorbed most of the impact, but the sand still hurt him to some degree, much more as it seemed to slip past the cloth he wrapped around his head and irritate his sensory organs.

Red couldn’t rely on any of his senses in this situation. He couldn’t see anything, hear anything, or smell anything. His crimson sense was also useless to navigate with no life forms around him, so all the boy had to rely was on his body and trained sense of direction as he kept heading forward under the unceasing barrage of the storm.

It didn’t take long for the difficulty of the situation to start wearing on him.

His steps were slow. His breathing was labored. His body was aching.

Red didn’t know how much time had passed, nor how much progress he had made. All he could see around him was dust, and even his hands seemed to blur out in the storm. Still, the boy weathered through it, remaining steadfast even as his body started to give out under the strain.

This wasn’t even among the hardest things he had to go through today. There was no way he would allow himself to falter here.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the storm started to abate. The winds slowed down, and the dust stopped peppering his body.

‘Am I through?’

Only now did Red deign to fully open his eyes. To his surprise, though, his vision was still blocked. This time, however, it wasn’t due to the dust storm, but because of a thick grey mist that surrounded him.

‘What is this?’

Red waved his hand through the fog. It parted with his movement, but soon more mist slipped in to occupy the empty space. The boy frowned, feeling the damp air around him.

‘It’s just water.’

Red had learned to expect the worst in this place, but it didn’t seem like there were any tricks in this fog this time around. Still, although he wasn’t in danger of suffocating, he couldn’t see more than five meters around him.

The boy frowned, observing the ground under his feet. It was still the cracked desert floor, so he was still exposed to the elements. What was curious to him, however, was the fact he couldn’t hear the thunder from the storm any longer.

Red pushed these doubts to the back of his head and focused on the task at hand.

‘Am I still in the right direction?’

He had tried to keep his path steady in the storm, but there was no way he could guarantee he hadn’t deviated. Red tried to use the compass to check, hoping its normal functions could still help him locate himself.

However, the arrow was spinning around every which direction, never staying in one position for more than a moment. Red frowned.

‘Useless thing.’

He pocketed the compass and looked around. Since there was nothing he could use to navigate, he decided to just trust his instincts and keep heading in what he thought was the direction of the mountain.

Yet, Red soon found out this place was just as desolate and endless as the rest of the desert. Even after half an hour passed, the boy had yet to see any changes in his environment.

Then, there was also the silence.

There was no ambient noise of wind and thunder in this place, and an eerie silence settled around Red. He could only hear the sound of his own footsteps.

This directionless search lasted for almost an entire hour, before the boy felt something.

‘A fluctuation!’

His joy at finally having found something soon died out, though. It was a monster’s fluctuation, and it wasn’t a weak one either. It was stronger than the fluctuation of any Lesser Ring Realm beast Red had ever seen, but still much weaker than the lightning serpent.

‘Is this a monster in the Greater Ring Realm?’

Red didn’t know for sure, but what he knew was that there was no chance he would survive an encounter with it. He still held some slight hope against a Lesser Ring Realm Monster with his remaining talisman, but against something even stronger than that? There was no chance.

The boy only hoped this wasn’t another one of the trial’s tricks where he needed to head towards the monster that would probably kill him to advance. This was something he would find out in time, though.

Red circled around the creature, avoiding it entirely. Thankfully for him, the monster wasn’t moving according to its fluctuation, and neither did it seem to notice him within one hundred meters. Even as he was passing by, the boy didn’t hear or see anything to indicate the presence of the creature.

‘If it wasn’t for my crimson sense, I might have walked straight into it.’

Soon enough, Red had walked away from the creature. Whatever had been waiting for him, the boy wasn’t too keen on finding out.

To his dismay, though, only five minutes later, he sensed another fluctuation entering his detection range. It was just as strong as the first one, but this one seemed to be moving rather fast. Red heard nothing, but he could feel the ground tremble under his foot even from a hundred meters away.

Without hesitation, the boy turned around and ran in the opposite direction. It was then, however, that he felt another fluctuation appear out of nowhere. This one was heading straight at him with incredible speed.

Red panicked and dove to the side.

A moment later, he saw a gigantic hoof step where he had just been at. The boy looked up, spotting the shadowy figure of a four-legged monster.

The creature, however, ran past him without even noticing his presence, or making much noise for a beast of that size, for that matter.

Red sighed in relief once he felt the monster’s fluctuation disappear. A few seconds later, however, he felt even more fluctuations enter within his crimson sense detection range.

There were ten of them, all on the Lesser Ring Realm, running from the direction that other monster had appeared from.

Red heard a low roar accompany their arrival.

Without hesitation, the boy turned around and fled.