Re: Timeless Apocalypse-Chapter 141: Wave
He reached the peak and, looking over the horizon, let out a faint giggle.
’I’m not sure why I expected anything other than more sand.’
He shook his head. Biting his thumb, he used the blood leaking from it to draw a small formation onto his palm, which he immediately linked to his core.
Folding his hand as if it were a lens, he squinted and looked through the tube his palm formed. Suddenly, his vision expanded, piercing past dozens of kilometres.
He laid eyes on the stone foot of the gigantic statue he aimed to reach. Even with his formation, which enhanced his sight a hundredfold, the statue still looked impossibly far away.
He wasn’t sure if it was due to the structure’s sheer size or if it was because he was just that far.
He hoped it wasn’t both.
’That’s about three hundred kilometres—by the gods!—and if I factor in the rising and falling dunes then that’s about three fifty?’
He fell into deep thought.
’If I walk at about five kilometres per hour, I should be there...’ He chuckled. ’...in about eight days.’
’If I really push it, I should be able to reach it in a day at best and two days at worst, and three if I pace myself.’
He sighed and deactivated the formation on his palm, lowering his hand and slotting it back into his layered tunics.
’Well that’s terrible news.’
He hadn’t seen or encountered any monsters yet, but considering the nature of the trial, especially its name, which contained the ’ant’ moniker, he didn’t doubt that he’d soon have a lot of company.
That made the trip itself much more dangerous, but another worry was the sandstorm constantly raging around him.
For now, he was fine, shielded from the cold and with his core stable, but he wasn’t sure if time would be so kind to him.
’The other issue is, if I get there and I find nothing related to the palace, then I just wasted two to three days. But I don’t know what else to do...’
His gaze panned upwards. ’Maybe I should try and bypass the settlement barrier and see if the palace is above it?’
He suddenly froze. ’Oh.’
Slightly embarrassed, he churned his aether, sending it toward his tool and activating its enchantments.
But just as he hoped to get answers—
[Territory too chaotic for resonance to be stabilised and anchored. The tool is offline.]
’Ah, damn it, I forgot I made my tool so resonance-dependent.’
—he was met with another wall.
The embarrassment he’d just hoped to free himself from doubled, and he found himself back at square one.
’Ah, well. Let’s just get to it. To the statue it is.’
He jumped, then slid off the slope of the tall dune’s peak he’d been standing on, smoothly landing at its foot and seamlessly continuing forward.
But as he straightened and made his stride toward his destination, he noticed something strange.
’Huh, was the sand always this soft?’
He could feel it flowing between his toes as if it were fine, silky dust, almost pleasant and soothing as it rolled off his skin.
More importantly, it felt like each of his steps dug deeper into the ground, as if he’d somehow become heavier.
He found it strange.
And then he noticed something else.
He froze, and his eyes snapped upward.
’Since when did the thunder stop?!’
...
The place Uriel had landed in was a desert.
It was a simple desert.
White sand, rising and falling into tall dunes and hills, forming hundreds and thousands of valleys between the slopes.
The skies were grey, filled with smouldering clouds, and the air churned with a constant and never-ending sandstorm of ice and wind aether.
From the clash of the two aethers, thundering booms continuously filled the air, like ancient and primordial drums announcing the soon-to-be awakening of a slumbering god.
It had been like this since time immemorial in this desert.
But suddenly, the thunderclaps came to an end.
For the first time, the desert was entirely silent.
HUMMM!
A powerful earthquake tore through the desert, and suddenly all its hills and dunes collapsed. The ground shook so violently that the entire desert evened out into a never-ending plane of sand.
A perfectly flat plane of pure ivory-white grains.
Then silence returned once more, and the earthquake came to an end.
Then...
SHA! SHA! SHA!
It was as if the entire desert was being stirred and shaken, the sand suddenly akin to water, rippling and undulating with unmatched fluidity.
The desert rocked from side to side, and with it the sand rose and fell; like waves, waves of water forming upon a turbulent ocean.
Waves that rose and fell...
BOOOM!
...like tsunamis.
The entire desert became a sea of sand, of rising and falling, catastrophic tsunamis of sand.
...
"OH MY—"
A gust of force pounded Uriel, and he was thrown off his feet and flung across the sand, the earthquake hurling him in every direction.
Slightly panicked, from a tumbling roll he forced his wood element to keep him stable for even the slightest moment, then sprang to his feet.
Confused, he looked around, unable to understand what had suddenly changed.
’What the hell is going on?!’
The desert was now flat.
He spun in place, looking around in every direction; searching for an enemy, a formation, anything that could help him.
But he found nothing. In fact, he couldn’t even see the statue anymore, not even its faint outline.
And then...
BANG!
The sandstorm returned.
He thought he was ready for it, but it came back with such ferocity that he blinked and then—
"ARGHHHH!"
—wind and ice aether seeped into his body, coagulating in his left arm and leg and essentially paralysing an entire half of him.
He struggled to stay on his feet, staggering backward, but then the plane of sand the desert had become suddenly shook again.
He fell back onto his backside, entirely overwhelmed.
WHOOOSH!
A massive shadow swallowed him whole.
’...?!’
His gaze panned upward, utterly terrified.
’...’
Color drained from his features, and his ivory gaze trembled.
’...t-there’s no way...!’
