The entrance sealed behind Himmel like the closing of a tomb.Air vanished first—then sound. The silence pressed against his eardrums, suffocating in its stillness. The only noise left was the faint, deliberate rhythm of his breathing and the low hum of ancient mana leaking through stone.
The room was vast, domed and symmetrical, a cathedral of ruin. Six towering columns circled the center, carved from dark stone that shimmered faintly when his lightning aura brushed past. On each column, etched deep into the rock, were the eight sacred sigils: Earth, Fire, Water, Wind, Lightning, Ice, Dark, and Light.
And at the center—perfectly motionless—sat the sphere.
It was the size of a small boulder, colorless and smooth, resting in a shallow crater like an egg that had been waiting too long to hatch. Himmel approached with his sword drawn, every sense alert. The closer he stepped, the heavier the air grew.
Then, without warning, the sphere moved.
It shuddered once, then rolled sharply toward him. He sidestepped just in time—wham!—the thing slammed into the wall and bounced back, faster than before.
"What the—"
It came again, and this time grazed his shoulder. The impact was brutal—like getting hit by a charging beast. The sound echoed around the chamber, deafening. Himmel spun, drawing in his breath, electricity crawling up his arm.
He fired a bolt of lightning, striking the sphere dead-center. It absorbed the shock without flinching—then redirected it, flashing briefly blue before charging him again.
"Alright," Himmel muttered, narrowing his eyes. "You like to play rough."
He ducked low, leapt aside, and flicked his wrist. A fireball roared from his hand—meant for the sphere, but it missed, sailing past and smashing into one of the columns behind.
The result was instant. The column flared crimson. And the sphere… slowed.
Himmel blinked, caught mid-motion."What the hell—"
The orb wobbled, sluggish, before regaining speed again. He stared between the glowing column and the rolling sphere, mind catching up.
He raised a brow. "Wait… don't tell me."
He launched another fireball—this time intentionally wide—and struck a second column. Again, that deep hum filled the air, and the orb's movement weakened. Its surface vibrated now, flickering faintly red as if unsure which power it obeyed.
"Oh, so that's how it is," Himmel muttered with a grin. "You're tied to these pillars, huh?"
He planted his feet and raised both hands. The air shimmered with mana, heat distorting the world. Six glowing orbs of flame burst into existence around him—miniature suns reflecting in his eyes.
"Let's see how you like this."
With a sweep of his arms, the fireballs streaked outward—boom—each slamming into a column. The carvings of Fire across all six ignited at once, glowing molten red. From their tops erupted beams of energy, spearing into the center where the sphere rolled in confusion.
The sound that followed wasn't thunder—it was pressure given voice, the deep scream of magic folding in on itself. The ground trembled. The sphere staggered midair, pulled between the six red beams, energy rippling across its surface like waves of molten glass.
Then, abruptly, it froze.
Cracks spidered along the middle columns; chunks of ancient stone fell and shattered. From their ruins poured a pure white light, forming a circle on the ground that pulsed like a heartbeat.
The sphere wobbled once—twice—then began to move again, but slower, erratic. It rolled into the east wall. Then the north. Then stopped dead center, quivering in place, as if waiting for Himmel's next move.
He frowned. "You follow me, huh?"
He stepped to the right—the sphere twisted, following. He stepped left—same result. He tested it again, moving deliberately across the chamber, watching as it obeyed his position with unnatural precision.
After a few tense moments, he pieced the pattern together. It always rebounded twice before resting fifteen feet from the wall. And it only moved when he wasn't centered.
So he positioned himself exactly opposite the circle, aligning his stance with the geometry of the room. Then he waited, heartbeat syncing with the sphere's faint hum. It rolled—east. Then north. Then stopped exactly in the center of the circle.
For a heartbeat, everything went still.
Then the chamber erupted in light.
Beams from all six columns converged above the sphere, melting into one massive spiral of red and white flame. The orb split apart midair, shattering into glowing shards that fell like embers. From the storm of light emerged a golem—small, dense, its body of stone and molten sigils. Lightning traced its joints. The eight elements pulsed across its frame, flickering between hue and glow.
It fell to one knee before Himmel, eyes burning with silent obedience.
"…That's it?" Himmel panted, brushing soot from his gloves. "All that for a walking rock?"
The golem tilted its head, utterly indifferent.
"Figures," he sighed. "Come on, pet rock."
The dungeon trembled, walls cracking. He sprinted toward the entrance, the golem thudding behind him, each step sending dust cascading from the collapsing ceiling. He burst through the fading portal just as the tunnel behind them caved in completely.
Outside, the desert light stung his eyes. And there—standing amid the shifting gold of sand and sunlight—was Texan.
His armor was newly forged but scuffed. His gait uneven. His face half-shadowed by exhaustion and something deeper—loss.
"About time," Texan rasped. "You take a nap in there?"
Himmel blinked, breath catching. "Texan?"
The siren grinned faintly. "Who else?"
They met halfway, dust curling around their boots. Himmel clasped his arm, seeing the pale scars beneath new wrappings.
"What happened?"
Texan's voice was low, cracked. "The first prince's men. The level five bastard. Gumbo's gone."
Himmel's grip faltered. His chest tightened like armor cinched too hard. "...Gone?"
Texan nodded once. No excuses. No softening.
For a long moment, Himmel said nothing. Only the wind spoke—whispering across the dunes like the low hum of mourning. Then, finally, Himmel muttered, "We'll make him pay."
Texan managed a half-smile. "That's what I wanted to hear."
The campfire hissed as sand gusted across it. The group huddled around, faces half-lit in orange glow, shadows dancing on their armor like ghosts of past battles.
Vanessa leaned back against a rock, braid loose, her voice tired but soft. "We've only been here two days… and it feels like two months."
Winter snorted, tossing another branch into the flames. "That's 'cause the Wild Lands don't want us here. You can feel it watching."
Tyler strummed a quiet note on his harmonica—low, wandering, almost mournful. "Maybe it's testing us."
Texan exhaled a cloud of smoke, pipe clenched between teeth. "Testing? I'd say it's eating us slow."
Himmel smiled faintly at the firelight, eyes unfocused. "You know… I hit level four after that dungeon."
"Finally," Vanessa said, pretending to sound unimpressed. "We were starting to think you'd been stuck forever."
Himmel shrugged. "Maybe. But the dungeon wasn't what did it. Just… being here. The Wild Lands count as achievement on their own."
Tyler looked up. "What do you mean?"
Himmel poked the dirt absently with a stick. "Every step we take here—every kill, every moment we survive—it registers. The land itself recognizes strength. Or fear. Maybe both."
Texan tilted his head. "So you're saying I could level up just by breathing hard enough out here?"
"Wouldn't surprise me," Winter said. "Air here feels like punishment."
They laughed quietly, the tension breaking for a moment. Vanessa gazed up at the moon—pale and cracked behind clouds of dust. "You ever think about how far we've come? A year ago we were just running from bounty hunters. Now we're out here chasing gods."
Texan chuckled. "Yeah, and now the gods are chasing back."
The golem stirred beside Himmel, its faint blue light reflecting in his eyes. He looked around at the faces around the fire—tired, blistered, scarred, but alive.
And for the first time in days, he felt something warm that wasn't from the flame.
"Tomorrow," he said, standing, "we move again. The deeper we go, the faster we grow. And the faster we grow… the closer we get to changing something."
Texan grinned. "And maybe not dying in the process."
Vanessa smirked. "That part's optional."
They all laughed again, the sound low and human beneath a sky full of cold stars.
Two days passed.They hunted. They trained. They healed.
Himmel's lightning had grown razor-thin, no longer wild bursts of power but precise slashes of blue fire that cut the air cleanly before fading into static whispers.Texan's movements slowed—not in speed, but in waste. Every strike was measured, every dodge deliberate. His fists sang with the memory of Dynamo's scroll.Vanessa's swordsmanship lost its flourishes, her blade now a tool instead of a performance.Winter moved differently too—her steps were silent, paced to the rhythm of the desert wind.Tyler's mana sense had deepened until he could feel the slow pulse of magic beneath the sand, like veins of molten glass shifting underfoot.
They were sharper. Quieter. More dangerous.But the Wild Lands didn't care.
By noon, the world itself turned against them.
The heat was not merely temperature—it was a living, breathing presence, crawling into lungs, biting into skin, searing thought and reason alike.The horizon rippled like a mirage painted on boiling glass. Every footstep sent up dust that burned on contact. Even the light looked warped—too white, too clean, as if the sun had scoured all color from existence.
Their armor hissed and popped as it heated.Himmel's cloak smoldered at the edges.Texan's tail left faint trails of smoke in the sand where it dragged.The air shimmered with rising waves of distortion, bending the world into hallucination.
By the fourth hour, they stopped talking.By the fifth, they stopped thinking.When the first of them—Tyler—stumbled to one knee, Himmel's cracked voice came out hoarse and half-choked:
"Shade. Now."
Winter raised a shaking hand, pointing toward a jagged line in the dunes—black stone jutting from the sand like the spine of a buried god.
They stumbled toward it, the sand swallowing their steps, each movement heavier than the last. Beneath the rock's shadow was only a sliver of coolness—barely enough for one man. Still, they dropped beneath it like bodies falling into a grave.
The difference was immediate but cruel.Their sweat turned cold, their lungs clawing for relief that wouldn't come.The shade wasn't shade—it was just less death.
They pressed themselves tighter beneath the stone, armor clattering, shoulders bumping. Himmel could smell the iron of their sweat, the ozone from his own skin, the faint sour of fear. He stared past them, through the glare, and froze.
Something moved across the dunes.
It was enormous—a beast shaped like an elephant, its skin glimmering obsidian under the sun, its tusks sharp enough to split boulders. Each step it took sank entire yards of sand. Its breathing was heavy, ragged, echoing like bellows through the hot air.
And then it began to die.
At first, Himmel thought it was shedding water—thick beads of sweat dripping down its legs. But then the air filled with steam. Its skin bubbled, blistered, and sloughed off in sheets, revealing red muscle beneath. The sound came next: a low, wet hiss, like fat dropped in fire.The creature wailed—a broken sound, too human to ignore—and collapsed onto its side.
The smell hit seconds later.Rot and iron and salt.The stench of meat cooking alive.
Its flesh liquefied before their eyes, bones turning soft, tusks drooping like wax candles. The ground beneath it hissed where it touched, until the body was nothing—just black sludge that sizzled and vanished into the sand. A crater remained, ringed in glass.
No one spoke.No one even breathed.
Texan broke the silence first, voice rasping."Level five," he muttered. "Dead in a minute."
Himmel's jaw tightened. His voice was low but sharp. "This land kills gods."
No one argued.
The heat pressed harder, as if the sun itself disapproved of their witness. Himmel wiped sweat from his brow, the motion slow, deliberate. "We dig deeper," he ordered.
Vanessa groaned, but she obeyed first. She drew her blade and began carving into the sand, slicing wide trenches under the rock. The others followed—Winter using her shield like a spade, Tyler pushing sand with trembling hands. Even Texan, still half limping, helped with his gauntlets.
The work was slow. Painful. Every movement stirred up more heat.But inch by inch, they hollowed out a pit large enough to fit them all. Himmel dropped inside last, crouching low. The air was still stifling, but survivable. Barely.
When they were all pressed together in the pit, Himmel lifted his hand and let a weak pulse of lightning crawl across the stone ceiling, lighting the cramped space in pale blue glow.
"Better," Winter rasped. Her hair clung to her neck like wet cloth. "Not by much."
"Beats dying in the sun," Texan said, wiping his brow. His grin didn't quite reach his eyes.
No one laughed this time.
They sat in silence, each lost to their thoughts, the faint hum of the Wild Lands vibrating through the sand. Outside, the heat screamed against the world. Inside, they dug into the earth like fugitives hiding from godfire.
When darkness came, the temperature finally dropped, but the fear didn't.
They stayed where they were—buried in their hollow, weapons close, armor cooling against their skin. Above them, the night sky shimmered with alien beauty. Stars glittered like ice caught in black glass, and every so often, a streak of blue light traced across the heavens—wild magic, raw and unclaimed.
No one dared speak too loud.They took turns keeping watch, whispering when necessary, staring at the horizon where sand met sky.
The Wild Lands never slept.It only waited.
And for the first time since entering this place, Himmel truly felt it:They weren't conquering this land.They were surviving its mercy.