NOVEL NEXT Chapter 35: Thread Of Hope
After his small advancement, Kyle felt minor improvements in his body, though they were so slight that they could hardly be considered a meaningful difference.
An hour later, Kyle had managed to scrape the skin from the dead Cimmerian Sandworms to use it as a source of food. It was not the first time he had eaten this sort of meat; in fact, most of his meals had come from mutants.
He carried several patches of meat in his left hand as he walked through the desert, while keeping a firm hold on the serrated bone.
It did little to drain his Vitality as he continued in search of either the edge of the seemingly endless sea of sand or, at the very least, some cover to stay hidden from any mutant that might appear again.
"Oh, gods, help... oh, wait, they are all dead. I can't plead to dead entities. Pfft," the young man muttered darkly as he stared at the journey ahead.
His eyes narrowed as he calculated just how far he still had to go.
Were all deserts really this vast?
He pressed onward through the endless expanse of sand, a dark look etched on his face, constantly scanning for any place where he could pause and rest before continuing.
Despite the constant assault on his eyes, it barely slowed him. He had grown accustomed to hardship, to walking where survival was the only reward.
Then, suddenly, the uniform brilliance of the sky began to falter.
Darkness seeped across the dunes at a terrifying pace, as if someone above had dipped a brush in ink and smeared it across the horizon.
The light dimmed unnaturally in an instant, leaving the desert shrouded in a strange, twilight-like gloom.
"Uh? What the fuck...?"
Kyle's gaze flicked instinctively behind him, catching the first sign of movement in the distance.
A wall of sand rose from the horizon, towering and spinning with a terrible energy.
It came faster than any natural wind could move, a storm whipped into a frenzied surge. The grains within it sparkled in the last vestiges of light, forming a roaring, shimmering tide of destruction.
Disasters like this were not unusual in a Trial Zone. In fact, they were far more extreme than those of the normal world, capable of surpassing ordinary force and wreaking havoc with unprecedented intensity.
Normally, if a hunter was not killed by a mutated creature or some special entity, the hazardous atmosphere, capable of shifting unexpectedly even at the most peaceful moments, would finish the job once and for all.
For him to still be alive after more than an hour was a remarkable stroke of luck. As a Tier 2, the upper limit of survival he could hope for in such conditions was around six hours.
Surviving even an hour was a feat in itself. A full day here would mean he had practically become a cockroach.
The young man broke into a sprint the moment he realised the sandstorm was bearing down, forcing his legs to carry the extra weight of the meat and the serrated bone weapon.
Adrenaline pushed him past his limits, amplifying his superhuman speed and allowing him to run faster than a sprinter, maintaining a pace that would have been utterly exhausting for a normal human.
The storm raced forward at more than 189 kilometres per hour, even faster than the most extreme and rare sandstorms. That translated to roughly 52.5 metres per second.
Every heartbeat counted as the distance closed by a fraction.
His own top speed was maxed at 67 kilometres per hour, giving him about 18.6 metres per second. He was far slower than the storm, which approached almost three times faster than he could move.
The only thing in his favour was that it was still metres away, needing to cover at least 40 kilometres before it could reach him.
Abruptly, sand whipped past him from all corners of the desert, carried by the rising vortex at the storm's periphery.
The edges of the dunes ahead were flung violently by the gusts, grains cutting against his skin like fire.
He shifted his running stance to his left side, temporarily clear of the storm, while straining to increase his pace in the desperate hope of survival.
His eyes burned with the same desperation and determination he had felt when facing the two mutated beasts. This time, however, it flared even more, for all he could see was death closing in from every direction.
"Fuck!" Kyle screamed, his favourite word escaping in a hopeless attempt to fuel his adrenaline, though he knew it was only a metaphor.
The wind tore past him with a deafening roar. Above the storm, the sky writhed in a blackened swirl that seemed to drain the luminescent light, extinguishing it as the storm advanced.
Kyle realised that the rising sandstorm itself was pressing the darkness down onto the land.
Without his heightened vision, piercing this oppressive gloom would have been impossible.
Apart from the raw will to survive, all he felt was anger.
He now realised that he was once again living his daily routine of running and fighting for his life every second.
That was what he had been doing ever since he had been transported here. It was almost as if he had simply taken a few days off from work, only to return to an even more ruthless assignment.
In that sense, this was his first day back on the job.
An undignified job, at that...
***
Kyle pushed his legs harder, ignoring the fatigue that was slowly building. Each forward stride seemed to stretch into eternity, yet the wall of sand maintained its relentless pace and threatened to overtake him.
It covered a wide arc behind him, consuming all visible landmarks and erasing the horizon that he had been tracking for survival.
Dust and particles stung his eyes, forcing them half-shut and creating more trouble for him than the darkness, but he could not stop.
The desert, which had once seemed endless, had transformed into a cage with a predator that moved faster than any human could endure.
The roar of the storm grew louder and shook the dunes beneath his feet, as though the ground itself feared the advancing tide. Kyle's mind worked frantically to find a way to survive.
The sky above had lost all semblance of gentle luminescence, which was already a mild description, and what he faced now was far worse.
But when all hope seemed to be lost and it translated to his final rodeo, a thread of hopeful thought soon extended.
...Something sparked in his eyes from the distance.
It was a cliff...