'When are they going to get tired?!'
He had been running for about half an hour without stopping.
Fortunately, his Spectrum's buff is too good. It has taken him a long time to get tired, and he can keep up the pace of his masterful escape. But nothing lasts forever, because sooner or later the buff will wear off, and the killer dogs will catch up with him.
Serenity depends on the mastery of its user. Of course, Nova has been using Serenity for years, but that doesn't make him an expert with infinite ability to grant buffs to others.
The Aberrations look hungry as they run after him. They must have been waiting for this moment for a long time. Maybe they've been secretly watching him all this time, which is why they didn't show up!
Nocturnal beasts behave this way. They rest during the day and hunt at night. In this case, Nova is the prey.
'I can't waste seeds right now. My staff won't be enough. If there were five, or ten, at least, I could defend myself, but there are too many!'
His basic martial arts would work with a few, that's true, but there are too many.
Being a support automatically puts you in the position of the weakest and the one who needs to be protected. Unless you're an Elite Empath or a Feeler, it's practically impossible to be self-sufficient during a fight. Nova is neither Elite nor Feeler. He's a weakling with the only good point being that he can make the strong stronger.
'Running blind is worse than I imagined. Where the hell am I going?!'
The terrain is flat, no problem. He won't fall anywhere. The sand also seems solid enough that it won't turn into quicksand, so that's one less thing to worry about. All one has to do is lift one's feet high enough to avoid tripping.
There is no quick solution to this predicament, much less a coherent escape.
The beasts growled, breathed heavily, and advanced behind Nova. Even if they have no eyes, they are able to see him. They move as fast or faster than a Seventh Level Empath. With that, it could be said that there is no way to survive or escape.
'Crap!' Nova thought, his eyes wide as he stared at the ground. 'Not again.'
A faint energetic presence appeared underground. That can only mean one thing: there is more than one Aberration similar to the one at the beginning, and it is moving beneath them at great speed right now.
The dogs seemed to sense this presence, as they stopped dead in their tracks and backed away. Frightened, with their ghostly dark tails between their deformed legs, they fled in terror.
At that moment, the sand beneath Nova's feet shifted, sinking like the surface of an hourglass.
Nova, of course, didn't stop to look.
'I'm not going to let them break my bones again. I'm still recovering!'
He ran as if there were no tomorrow.
By that time, the Aberration had already emerged from the sand. It was exactly the same as the one Nova had encountered at the beginning, and that was a bad sign. Not only because the damn thing was even bigger than the previous one, but because Nova couldn't see that this beast was more dangerous.
Still, he ran. He didn't allow himself to stop. His body ached, his still-recovering bones creaked painfully, but he had to flee. Sometimes, the battles you don't fight are the ones you win.
Nova is following that path.
"Huh?"
A slight crackling sound was heard. The sand beneath them both shifted.
There was something else he hadn't taken into account. The first Aberration was almost on the surface, so there were no major sand slides with its appearance, but the one behind him, listening to the movements on the sand, was hidden deeper underground.
It was the sound of multiple beasts running across the sand that woke it up, but the one with the most "energy" would suffer the consequences.
The sand fell, sank, and formed a path that opened up around and along it, like a small canyon opening up in the form of various cracks.
In complete darkness, Nova turned on his communicator and lit up the path, only to realize he was running on ground that was sinking beneath his boots.
'Ah! Damn it!'
He couldn't scream, nor would he have, but he was quite shaken when he turned around and saw the octopus monster sliding through the long crack in the sand. It was pushing the sand aside with its large shell, dragging its tentacles nimbly along the walls of the crack, which was only getting bigger.
It chewed mockingly as it stared sinisterly at Nova. Its eyes glowed faintly white beneath the darkness of its shell, a color different from that of the previous Aberration.
'It's catching up to me!'
Although he couldn't see it, he could feel it sneaking up on him.
The more he ran, the closer he got to falling into the sand crevice. The sand kept falling behind him, sinking and passing under the monster's tentacles, but the pace of the chase was steady and even.
The bad news is that Nova doesn't have infinite stamina. Even with the Spectrum buff, which grants physical, energy, and Spectrum buffs, it's not enough to keep going for long.
In all this, we must remember the most basic law of thermodynamics: Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed or transferred. What Nova is doing is just wasting energy by buffing himself. In the end, he will be more tired than if he had run for his life without the Serenity buff.
The Aberration extended its tentacle toward Nova's foot. He sensed the danger and jumped forward to cover more ground, narrowly escaping the tentacle's grasp. Then he rolled to cushion his fall without slowing down and resumed his journey.
'Why don't you follow the dogs instead of me?'
Of course, Nova can't understand this because he still doesn't know how these kinds of Aberrations work.
'It doesn't matter! I have no choice!'
He took three more seeds out of his pocket. He clenched them tightly in his fist and looked back. He couldn't see anything, of course, but that would be a hasty conclusion. What can be seen are the eyes of the tentacled monster.
'Here they come!'
He raised his hand, ready to throw himself into the bastard's mouth. For that, he had to stop. In doing so, he fell into the crevice, hoping that the octopus would get the hint and offer itself as a sacrifice to create a beautiful blue tree.
Of course, the Sand Octopus is stupid and extended its tentacles. It tried to grab Nova, but he continued to fall endlessly.
"Huh?"
If the Aberration could express feelings or a voice, it would have said the same thing.
A very timely failure occurred. Although, rather than timely, it was something that was bound to happen sooner or later.
When something as massive as an Aberration over eight meters tall and wide moves from the bottom of a large expanse of sand, it is normal to think that all the sand that was covering it would fall to the bottom.
Here's the thing. There were many other things covering the Aberration.
So, because of that, the ground in the crack sank even further into the sand. The Aberration and Nova fell to the bottom with no chance of escape.
He felt the sand crushing him and filling his clothes. The warm wind blew across his face, where his amber eyes focused on the monster trying to cling to the walls with its tentacles.
They were falling down a kind of extensive cave. The octopus was desperately trying not to fall to the bottom. However, it looked at Nova. With one of its many tentacles, it grabbed him by the torso and brought him closer to its mouth.
'I can't believe you care more about eating me than saving your life!'
It is a foolish beast, after all. But that was enough for Nova. Being so close to the octopus's mouth, he threw the seeds inside.
'Now you're really going to eat something!'
In an instant, the plants exploded inside the Aberration. Once again, cold branches and blue leaves spread out on the sides. The shell broke, the tentacles twisted desperately. Black blood, which stank of death, splattered everywhere, and the beast's entrails disappeared in the fall.
A quick death for an impatient beast. That's what it is.
Nova sighed with relief, but it was no time to relax. In free fall, danger still lurks in the shadows.
So he took advantage of the tree's growth to hold on to one of the branches. The branches themselves extended against the walls, slowing the fall a little. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough.
'Crap!'
The tree got stuck between a pair of black rocks that made up the interior of the dark, narrow cave, coming to a sudden halt and causing Nova to let go.
The wind whistled loudly past his ears. The darkness stretched out into the depths like a hellish abyss. Distant creaks echoed nearby. In the end, only a loud thud was heard as the sand hit the ground.
For Nova, everything went black the moment he fell, as if it were all just some kind of lucid dream.
The next few hours would pass in deep silence.
***
It seemed that all this had already become a kind of habit. I mean, falling from a very high place, heading toward death and despair, where there are surely all kinds of dangerous monsters with a big appetite.
These are the kinds of horrors that lie behind the portals. Nova has only seen a little of one of the worlds on the other side, but there is probably much more out there.
He fell. He was unconscious. Maybe he died. Everything has become confusing in this world. Octopuses that live in the sand. Strange dogs that see even though they have no eyes. Two suns in the sky and a long night lasting 42 hours.
It's curious how there can be things so different from what we already know.
It's like the blood of other races, or the blood that is spilling onto the sand right now.
What color is that blood? Black? Blue? Red?
At the bottom of the abyss, after long hours of deep silence, Nova opened his eyes.
He is confused, dizzy, and has a horrible headache. However, the pain did not feel like a big deal, for everything lies in darkness; the darkness that embraces the unknown and spreads its long fingers over everything.
From the calm, Nova thought:
'It hurts...'
The pain crescendoed. It started as a slight itch on the right side of his face. Then, like a strong blow with a metal bar. In the end, it felt like he had been shot in the face with a shotgun. The pellets scattered across his right eye and dug into the bottom of his skin.
It burns, it hurts, and it throbs as if the veins are trying to pump blood through a place where there is no longer any passage.
'My eye...' he whispered, in a faint, monotonous, emotionless tone of voice.
Yes. The problem with this was that there was a small part of his body that he could no longer feel.
He was buried in the sand from the neck down. His entire body is still stunned from the fall, but there were no serious injuries except for one place, his face, which barely protrudes above the sand; a face without an eye.
When he regained mobility in his body, he slowly moved his legs upward. As he did so, he pushed his legs down so he could move upward in the sand. He repeated the process for a few minutes until his torso was out of the sand.
He leaned on the surface with both hands. He pulled his feet out of the sand and remained kneeling, staring at the ground.
He couldn't see anything, but he could feel the small, dry drops of blood sliding from his missing eye to the edge of his chin.
"Did I lose my eye?"
The hard blow from earlier. Nova could remember it. Before falling, his face hit a rock near the wall. His eye exploded the moment he lost consciousness.
"That's why it hurts so much, huh."
Anyone would be horrified by this sudden and depressing news. Nova, however, showed no emotion. It was as if his heart blocked out all kinds of suffering.
He searched his pockets. His communicator was still there. He used the light to find his backpack, shield, and staff. With those, he could eat some fruit and stop the bleeding with regeneration.
For a second, he shone the light on the ground, where small drops of red blood fell in sequence.
Nova looked at it silently. Perhaps he didn't react much because it didn't seem real to him that he had lost his eye in a single, small mistake.
Unconsciously, he brought his hand to his face, covering the wound so as not to lose any more blood. Then he slowly raised the light, but frowned when he saw something strange lying in the sand.
It was a strange sandstone pillar with inscriptions in incomprehensible scribbles. The pillar was old, broken, and lying on the sand. In other words, it was ancient debris, a fragment of the past.
He endured the pain as the blood fell like a tear. He raised the light higher and saw something that seemed interesting.
'What is this? Where did I fall?'
In front of him lay the disgusting entrails of the octopus, scattered over the rocks and walls, but also the rubble of an ancient temple of yellowish sandstone, which had waited for eternity for a civilization that would never return...