How To Survive A Calamity

The desert of the Blood Earth was cruel; right from the get go, we were immediately beseeched with its horrors and abominations.

"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.

A massive and humongous figure rose from the depths of the dark crimson soil and into the bleeding sky. It was a creature of truly immense proportions covered in a descending water fall of sharp grains of sand that poured down from its rising body.

"What the fuck is that?!" I hurriedly channeled my Ether through my limbs and retreated further away from the colossal creature.

At the same time, i heard Don's annoying and irritable voice respond back at me from next to me.

The bastard was also turning tails and running.

"I already told you, that's the King of the desert!"

"What is that?! The what now?!" Chelsea too appeared suddenly out of nowhere, gripping her spear with a horrified expression.

Don groaned.

"Simply put, it's the worse possible turn out we could face here in the dungeon. And to think we'd run right into it right off the bat like this...! What luck we must have..."

I don't know why strangely i felt meek from hearing that.

In any case...

"Where's Deandra and the other annoying girl?" I said.

"Hey, what do you mean 'other annoying girl?!'" Chelsea immediately snapped back.

"And my name is Trise, you low life! Remember it well, bastard!"

The ranting figure of Trise flying through the air above us came into view. Contrary to the worry i had for her, she seemed perfectly hale and healthy, enough so even her mouth hadn't stopped leaking.

Trise's body twisted agilely in mid air touched down next to us softly, a wave of sand dunes pushed towards us like the rising tides of an ocean from ahead.

Soon the massive figure of the monster was revealed.

It was a towering abomination of grotesque proportions. A humongous worm the size of a sky scraper from earth.

It was covered in thick looking sharp scales and had a cone like head like the spearhead of an arrow or a blade tip.

I gazed grimly at the massive figure.

...

===

•[Ding! Skill «Appraisal» Level 3 has been activated!]

•[Name: Sand Dragon ]

»Title: King of the Blood Earth/ Terra Sanguis

»Type: Monster

»Affinity: Earth

===

•[Stats]

»Level: 43

»Rank: C

»Strength: 57

»Speed: 46

»Agility: 33

»Defense: 58

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•[Atrributes]

»???

•[Status: Mad, Hungry...]

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»Description: A long and distant descendant of a fragment of a lost dragon specie, the «Sand Worm» now rules the barren sands underneath the bleeding sky of the discarded fragment land of the domain of the «Doom of Drought» as it's one sole and only king, awaiting the resurrection and return of it's one true lord and master...

»Note: The King of the Desert may be considered a legendary creature due to its origins. It possesses immense defensive skills and a nearly impenetrable scale of almost invaluable proportion.

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----[End of Status]----

===

...

"That's the King of the Desert?"

Appraisal said a lot.

'Doom of Drought? What is that?'

The system notification from earlier, too, mentioned something like that.

"This isn't the time to freeze, we need to get out of here quickly." While i was lost in thought, Deandra had somehow arrived and swiftly gave an order.

"Don, what do we know about this thing?"

Aside from me, and only with the help of Appraisal, Don was the only one among us who knew about the King of the Desert. Deandra's judgement in asking him first for reference wasn't entirely baseless following that logic.

Don glared with beads of sweat rolling down his face as the giant Sand Dragon loomed over us.

Its massive figure cast a deep shadow.

Even after seeing the stats of that thing, instinctively i knew.

That's not something we could beat.

'Not yet.'

In the end, Appraisal did show me what it's stats and descrisption were, which meant there was still a small chance and a possibility.

Probably.

Meanwhile, Don said.

"Well...The sand dragon is blind and only perceives the World through vibrations in its surroundings. It has an earth attribute that bolsters it's defense, and its scales have considerable Mana resistance."

'... Appraisal didn't say any of that.'

[...]

Fuck you, Meta.

At times like this, i was glad we had Don. I would have usually had to figure at least that much on my own after trial and error.

[This isn't the inheritance dungeon.] Meta coldly cut through my thoughts.

'Yeah, yeah, i know. No second or third chances. And while i may not actually die here, it's over if I'm forcefully transported back outside.' i reinstated my thoughts and prepared to take action.

If I'm immediately forced to forfeit this early like this, that means i won't be able to level uo and breakthrough.

I'd be missing a perfectly good opportunity to grind experience!

Who knew when next I'd be lucky to find a dungeon, one prepared adequately ahead of time like this for me?

In summary, i couldn't die.

"We'll retreat and regroup. Don, how big of a storm can you summon? We need a distraction and a smoke screen to use as cover!"

Don raised both his hands at the Sand Dragon and smriked darkly at Deandra's order.

"Big enough."

The next second, the surrounding biting winds raged in a furry.

***

-BOOM!!

The distant sound of an explosion erupted from afar.

A massive tide of dark red sand rose sharply into the blood red sky as a powerful shockwave detonated through the vicinity like a pulse.

A portion of the desert rippled like the sea surface of an ocean, and something flew sharply through the air at a stunning speed.

No.

There were five of them actually.

"Don, you bastard!!!" I screamed a curse as i tore through the air like a torpedoe with inertia completely against me.

This bastard had totally caught us all up in his attack!

-Boom!

We crashed into the sandy dunes of the desert as we somehow had our fall broken at the last minute by the wind conjured by Don too.

I rolled against the ground, and unto my back. Then i just stared hopelessly at the red sky hanging above me.

Ah.

I wanted to go home.

Well...

"At least we survived..."

For now.

"And the Sand Dragon?" Without getting up, i heard Trise say.

"I think we managed to lose it. Since we took to the sky like that, do you think it'd be able to keep track of our movement at that moment?" Chelsea responded soundly.

Yes, indeed.

In the end, we managed to escape from the abominable Desert king and landed far off somewhere.

"So... Where exactly are we?" Trise said.

Pushing aside the lethargy i felt seep into my mind, i forced myself to get up and dusted the sand out of my hair.

"No, clue. And i doubt that really matters."

"The Desert King... Haaah. We were lucky." Don sighed.

"Unlucky, you mean?" I interjected.

The black haired young man shrugged at me, looking exhausted.

"At least we got away from it for now."

"Yeah, well i would have better preferred we never ran into it."

"Indeed. What were the odds that we would come across the most dangerous creature the Blood Earth had to offer right at the beginning?"

"..."
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"Hmm? What's wrong, why did you suddenly go quiet, Vic?"

"...Er, no it's nothing. I'm fine." I coughed and looked away from the innocent and pure eyes of Chelsea.

How could i say this...

I couldn't look these guys in the faces...

Internally, I could only pray.

'I'm sorry for my bad luck.'