How To Survive A Calamity

As i stepped through the swirling gate, my vision and senses did a back flip and tumbled. The world around me almost seemed to twist and bend in a nauseating experience.

By the end of it, i was met by a scorching dry wind that bit the skin off my face.

"What the...?"

"Argh, it's so dry!"

I turned to my side and caught sight of Chelsea and Trise rolling out their tongue, with Don pulling at his collar.

At the same time, i realised my body felt much more heavier than usual, almost as if an invisible weight was pressing down on me.

'This is...'

[The gravity.] Meta promptly said.

'Huh? Gravity? What are you talking about...?'

[Look closely.] She said.

[This is no longer the world you know.]

Realising the implications of Meta's sullen words, i felt a tinge of anxiety brew inside of me and looked up.

"The sky..."

It was blood red.

There was a dark red sky that carpet the whole world, spread as far as the eyes could see. A dark crimson hue drowned the world in strange, ominous and unfamiliar shadows.

Right at the very center of the sky high up above, there was a massive raging sun of crimson fire emanating a prickling heat that bit our skin like a thousand heated needles. Your journey continues on empire

The air was stale and dry but felt sharp like blades, each breath we breathed of it almost scourched our wind pipes and throats.

The expanse of a wide dessert spread before us, dried grains of sands flooding our feet against the maroon ground.

"It's a dessert."

"We're inside...." Deandra said grimly, summoning the holographic manual of the bracelet, "The dungeon, that's where we are."

The horizon stretched out before us like an eternal wound, the crimson earth meeting the sickle shaped sky at a razor's edge. The air reeked almost intoxicatingly with the smell of rust iron and blood, heavy with the sent of ancient violence and war.

From the desert ground, that was like the land was soaked in blood, sharp jagged pieces of twisted rock formation jutted out from the earth like splintered bones scattering all around us to our sides and beyond.

They formed a sparse forest of them, their edges deepening in a red burgundy hue like the fading light of the crimson world.

The dry stale wind raced past them, whispering mournful sighs and sharp bites through their outcroppings, and sweeping the dark red grains over our feet. And in the sky, the red sun burned hotter than a furnace.

Just then, i heard a mental chime from the system, and Meta charmingly said in my head.

A blue screen suddenly popped out of nowhere before my eyes.

•[Ding! Welcome to «Terra Sanguis — The Blood Earth», banished land of the «Doom of Drought»]

My eyes quickly skimmed through.

Banished land of the...

What...?

I stared at the sudden system notification screen that appeared before my eyes.

'Terra Sanguis...' was that the name of this place?

Did Meta — the system know the name of the Dungeon?

Just then...

"The Blood Earth...!"

The one who surprisingly said this was Don.

I turned.

"What did you just say?"

Don's expression was pale and grim under the scorching red sky of the inverse realm. He wiped a layer of sweat off his forehead and said.

"I've heard a little about this place. A land of eternal drought — Where even the lands and skies bleed under the wailing sun where the wind mourns of praises — a land of dessication. I read about it once before in an encyclopedia of known discovered Dungeons just before the Exercise. But to think we'd actually coincidentally end up in it..."

Don's words trailed off slightly.

But then he grinned.

It was a dark, forced and sinister one, one without a single trace of actual amusement.

"I'm not sure if we're lucky or not."

In the end The Blood Earth was supposed to be a Category four Dungeon on the scale supposedly within the limits of our abilities. Don spoke of the dungeon as probably one of the absolute worse place to be, but wouldn't the Academy have taken into consideration of various factors that ensured this exercise was doable by the first years.

'Surely, it can't be that as bad as Don is making it out to be, right?'

[...]

...can it?

'Hey, Meta, say something...!'

I glanced at the pale sweaty face of the young man...

[...]

'Fuck.'

"No, this might be good for us. Having information about our environment, however little, is necessary for a slight advantage." Deandra stepped up with her red hair fluttering freely in the biting wind, and her eyes were sharpened like blades of terrifying focus and determination.

"Don, just like in the formation, from now on you're with me. We'll need you to share every single thing you read in passing about this place... about Blood Earth."

Don looked at his hands which were covered in white gloves patterned with strange and mysterious formations and runes and responded.

"Very well, but i don't know much. It was one of the many discussed dungeons in the diary i had only skimmed through."

Deandra still nodded.

"That's good enough."

"Well then the first thing you need to know is one of the things we need to be most wary abou—!"

-Boom!!

Before Don could finish his words, the world trembled in a sudden quake that came out of nowhere. A powerful tremor rocked through the ground, causing the desert sands to explode and erupt like geysers all around us underneath our feet suddenly, disorienting our balance.

"Argh! Why so suddenly..." A small shock ran through our bodies.

We were nearly swept up by the tremor and thrown off our feet. It was particularly hard to maintain confident balance when it came to standing on sand dunes

"Don, what's happening?!" Deandra urgently called out.

And at the same time...

"It's coming!"

[Danger sense] raged at the back of my head.

"What is?"

I channeled Ether into the pathways of my feet and muscles in my leg

And in the next moment that followed...

"The Desert king!"

The ground erupted in an explosion as something massive ascended right from the earth underneath our feet.