Jack and the others stood speechless, struggling to process what they'd just seen.

  The general’s slash had carved through the entire dune, leaving an enormous gouge, clean and deep, as if a giant blade had split the hill in two with surgical precision. The sand along the cut had vitrified, forming jagged glass that shimmered under the sun. For a moment, it seemed to defy gravity, holding back the weight of the dune above it.

  A brittle cracking followed, faint at first—then loud enough to echo.

  The glass split, and the dune collapsed in on itself, sand rushing down to fill the gash like a slow avalanche.

  Still, no one spoke. The general walked calmly back to Jack’s side, silent as ever.

  “Thank you for the stew. It was delicious,” he said, putting the pot down and returning to his horse.

  "What... was that?" Jack finally said to his teammates.

  "I don’t know," Amari replied, "but I’m just gonna clip 15 seconds of that and post it. The channel’s gonna explode again."

  “Dude, he just one-shotted, like, a hundred players! Most of them were level 50 or close!” Horace added.

  The aftermath was messy. Much of the loot had already been swallowed by the shuffling sands. Still, Jack rushed to grab what he could. They were all random pieces of level 50 equipment. It was 20 levels over what they could use, but it might fetch a good price in the market.

  He came over to his father with all the loot. “Here.”

  “I don’t have any more space, Jack,” José said.

  “Argh… Just dump your whole inventory here. Let’s figure out what is worth more. We’ll just have to leave the rest behind.”

  They’d been slaying so many monsters that even his father’s inventory had hit the limit.

  As Jack tried to sort out the loot, his team kept drooling over the general’s slash.

  "Did you see that number? Six digits. I'm serious. Six!"

  “What an insane level of strength. I feel like nothing can touch us with him around."

  “Oh, yeah," Amari chimed in. "We are definitely making it to our destination."

  Their tone was joking, but the mood had shifted. The unrelenting heat and the constant attacks had left them on edge, but after seeing the general finally move, they could relax. So what if there were raiders and beasts?

  With General Hannibal in their party, the desert didn’t seem so endless anymore.

  *

  Nearly twenty minutes had passed since the caravan’s last attack.

  Jack was fighting the temptation to say something smug and jinx their luck. Given how unforgiving the desert had been so far, he half-expected the next threat to jump them at any moment.

  The wind had even gone quiet, as if the desert itself were holding its breath.

  Then something caught his eye—a smear of green that didn’t belong.

  He reached for one of the last items he’d unlocked as a tinkerer: a brass-and-leather spyglass. It was no longer than his forearm. It had a single dial for focus adjustment, nothing more. Still, it was good enough.

  He raised it to his eye and trained it on the smear.

  Palm trees came into view, clustered around a shimmering pool. Beyond them, stone walls jutted from the sand, half-shrouded in a dense, churning cloud of dust. Within the haze, there were flashes of activated skills. They briefly illuminated players swarming the walls with ladders and siege towers. From above, defenders hurled rocks, grenades, and arrows to drive them back.

  “So?” José asked.

  “A fortress,” Jack said. “Built next to an oasis.”

  “That’d explain the quiet,” Horace added.

  “Why?” José asked.

  “During regional events like that, monster spawns shut down,” Horace explained.

  Jack glanced back at Amari, who watched the distant oasis with a faint, knowing smile—as if he didn’t need a spyglass to see what was happening in the oasis.

  By moving through the desert during siege events, they avoided mobs and the big guilds, who were too busy to hassle a trade caravan.

  “Yet another reason Amari picked this moment to cross,” Jack said, genuinely impressed. “He really does think of everything, doesn’t he?”

  “That he does,” Horace agreed. “Despite how it might look, this crossing’s been smooth. If we keep this pace, we’ll make it in good time. We’re almost to the Dune Hills.”

  Jack nodded, but his gaze lingered on the distant fortress and the roiling dust that surrounded it.

  Would guilds come after their village like they were after fortresses? And if they did, would they be able to defend it?

  *

  They passed two more oases, both under siege. Smoke rose from one, curling into the sky as if the fortress had been set on fire. At the other, Jack saw that the walls had been breached, though he couldn’t tell what that meant for the defenders.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Then the terrain began to shift.

  The dunes grew taller, steeper. What had once been rolling mounds now loomed like golden mountains. The valleys between them narrowed, forcing the caravan to climb. Loose sand made the trek grueling. They had to walk in zigzags, always at an angle, since climbing straight up meant risking a tumble back down. The towering dunes hid parts of the terrain in stretches of darkness, making it impossible to see far ahead.

  At last, they crested a massive dune and came to a halt.

  “The Dune Hills!” Amari exclaimed, grinning. “We’ve made it!”

  Their future home stretched before them—a vast sea of sand rising and falling into the distance. Far beyond, a faint dark line shimmered on the horizon—too solid to be cloud, too distant to make out clearly.

  Jack squinted.

  “What is that?” José asked, coming up beside him.

  “I don’t know,” Jack replied.

  “It’s a wadi,” Horace said from the side. “A canyon that shelters a narrow water stream.”

  Jack raised his spyglass, tracking the cliffs that formed the wadi. Even with the lens, he could make little of it. It was much farther than he’d first assumed, the heat-warped air making it seem to pulse at the edge of vision. But he caught a blip—its angles too clean to be natural. A fortress, perched atop the rock.

  “So that’s where the biggest guilds of the Sand Sea are.”

  “Yes, but don’t worry,” Horace said. “It looks close, but it’d take us several hours to reach it. And there are other fortresses across the wadi—they’ve got their hands full up there. No reason for them to come looking for trouble down here.”

  Jack smirked. “And if they did…” He glanced toward the general, who rode quietly nearby, unreadable as ever. A part of Jack almost hoped someone would try. It’d be a show worth watching.

  Captain Apollos approached, his mount trudging up alongside Horace’s ground sloth.

  “We’ve reached the Dune Hills, sir.”

  “Excellent work, Captain. Our destination’s toward the center—three clicks that way,” Horace said, pointing.

  “Very well. Let’s move.”

  They had barely begun their descent when the sand shifted.

  One moment, the lead horses were marching steady; the next, they were sinking, pulled down by something beneath the dunes.

  “Quicksand!” someone shouted.

  The lead horses thrashed, trying to break free—but the ground kept collapsing beneath them, soft sand dragging beasts and riders down in a slow, merciless pull.

  “This is no quicksand!” Rob shouted from the rear. “It’s a sand worm!”

  Jack’s stomach dropped.

  A sand worm. The same kind that had torn Rob apart during their last scouting run.

  A deep, resonant ripple pulsed through the ground. The dunes around them shifted like waves, collapsing inward. Then—suddenly—all the sand fell away, cascading into the earth.

  In its place, a flat stone surface rose up beneath their feet.

  Jack stumbled, blinking against the rush of dust. The ground had stopped moving—but everything still felt like it was tilting.

  There was a sudden jerk, and then silence.

  Before Jack could make sense of anything, he heard the soldiers.

  “Thank you, sir!”

  “Thank you!”

  Their voices pulled his gaze. The soldiers were looking toward the center of the collapse—toward General Hannibal, who had planted his halberd in the ground. Cracks radiated out from the point of impact.

  When had he moved? Jack hadn’t seen a thing.

  The general slowly wrenched the weapon free. Only when the general wiped the blade clean on his robe did Jack truly see it.

  They weren’t standing on stone.

  He saw it now: concentric ring-like segments, the faint gleam of a carapace beneath the dust. The massive shape curled beneath them like a coiled serpent.

  They were standing on top of the sand worm.

  Jack swallowed hard.

  It was enormous—easily the size of a building, its coiled body vanishing into the sand.

  And General Hannibal had just one-shot it.

  “Jack! What are you waiting for?!” Horace shouted. “Harvest the thing! This is a level 70 wild boss!”

  “W-what? Are you serious?”

  Horace nodded, wide-eyed.

  Jack scrambled down from Snowy and pressed his hand against the worm’s surface.

  A bright light flared across the creature’s body, glowing through the patterns in its hide.

  Then—without warning—the floor beneath them gave way. They dropped several meters, landing in a heap on warm sand.

  Jack groaned, brushing grit from his eyes. His interface flared to life, pinging with a cascade of glowing notifications that scrolled faster than he could read.

  You’ve gained 50,000 XP in Butchering.

  You’ve harvested the following:

  13 gold 56 s

  7x [Sand Worm Teeth]

  1x [Sand Worm Venom Gland]

  63x [Sand Sea Gem]

  [Sand Strength]

  [Disintegrating Stomp]

  Jack blinked, still dizzy, but what really stunned him was the loot.

  Because his inventory was full, the drop had materialized where the worm’s carcass had been. His teammates were already gathered around it.

  Jack stared. The sheer number of Sand Sea Gems was staggering. He’d only collected twenty-four the entire trip, and now there were nearly three times that from a single beast.

  Then there were the teeth—needle-like and as long as swords. Jet black, hard as steel. Treasures for any bone carver.

  Marie had already snagged the venom gland. It looked like a swollen purple water balloon, slick with veins and sloshing thickly as she turned it. The stench was enough to make Jack recoil. She dumped a stack of empty bomb shells to make space in her inventory. As the team’s poisoner, she was the best one to make use of it—and Jack was more than happy to let her.

  “Jack, have you read the details of the skill books?” Amari asked, stepping over the worm’s massive curve to join him. “Check them out. Real doozies!”

  Jack accepted the two tomes from Amari.

  The first was heavy, bound in tan hide reinforced with brass corners, and stamped with a sunburst emblem.

  Sand Strength (Epic)

  Heat is energy, and energy is strength. The minerals of the desert are the crystallization of such energy, and you can absorb their properties through your skin.

  Skill Effects:

  Passive: Grants +20 Constitution and +200 Health.

  Active: Doubles the bonus and recovers 1% HP per second for 2 minutes. In the desert, the bonus triples and also recovers stamina.

  Jack’s eyebrows rose. The skill was incredible. And there was no doubt who it was meant for.

  The other tome was thinner and more worn, with a cracked spine and grains of sand caught in its pages.

  Disintegrating Stomp (Rare)

  Desert creatures can sense the fault lines in soil. You’ve learned to do the same—and to strike them.

  Effect:

  Active: Collapse terrain.

  No damage. No attack. More like... advanced digging? Jack blinked at the description, puzzled.

  “You’ve read it, yeah?” Amari asked.

  “Yes. I did.”

  “Good. So! Quite a windfall. Who wants Sand Strength?”

  Everyone’s eyes turned to Horace. He raised his hand, confident. “No one else? Really?”

  Jack grinned. That skill was made for a frontliner—and who better than their tank?

  “I won’t be shy about it then,” Horace said, swiping the book from Amari and learning the skill on the spot.

  “What about this one?” Amari asked, holding up the second tome.

  Jack tapped his foot for a few moments, weighing possibilities, then raised his hand.

  “Uh? Jack?” Amari asked. “You want it?”

  Jack nodded. “I can think of some applications for it.”

  No one objected. It was a rare moment of uncontested loot sorting, and everyone felt charged with excitement from the day’s windfall.

  “Sires?” Captain Apollos called from a few meters down the slope.

  “Coming!” Horace said. “Let’s go, fellas, or the soldiers are leaving us behind.”

  Everyone rushed to catch up.

  “Hey, Snowy!” Jack called.

  Grrr?

  “Stomp those feet, girl. Hard as you can. I’ll give you sweets once we make it there.”

  That was all the incentive she needed. Snowy marched ahead with thudding enthusiasm, shaking the dune with every heavy step.

  Jack took out his ocarina, and begun playing Angry Void, to make their march as loud and alluring as possible.

  If there were any other sand worms—or bosses or elites—out there listening for vibrations, he hoped they heard Snowy’s stomps and his ocarina loud and clear. And if any of them showed up, he knew exactly who would take them down, and exactly who would harvest the loot.

  And part of him, just a small part, was starting to wish this journey never ended.