Chapter 298: Escape from the Desert 2

The sun might be blazing high in the sky now, but that wouldn’t last. Night would fall before long, and she needed to find shelter before then. After all, the temperature difference between day and night in the desert was immense.

The days were hot enough to kill, while the nights were cold enough to freeze you to death.

As Perry Yates walked on, she suddenly felt something unusual beneath her feet.

Logically, sand should be soft. Sometimes, a single step would sink you calf-deep into it.

That was precisely why walking in the desert was so draining.

However, the ground she was standing on now felt completely different from the sand she’d been treading on before.

It felt as if she were stepping on a stone—a large, uneven one at that.

The moment Perry Yates realized something was wrong, she quickly moved away from the spot and activated her Invisibility skill.

Just as Perry Yates moved away, a brown mound suddenly swelled up from the exact spot she had been standing on.

The mound’s surface was covered in dense, tightly-packed scales. This was clearly no ordinary hillock, but part of some creature’s body.

When the thing in the sand fully revealed itself, Perry Yates couldn’t help but exclaim, "What a huge lizard."

The lizard seemed to have been awakened by Perry Yates. After emerging, it began searching for whatever had disturbed its pleasant dream, but it naturally found nothing.

The lizard clearly couldn’t stand the scorching surface of the desert either. After searching for only a short while, it gave up and scurried off, vanishing in a flash.

It moved with a speed that would leave anyone in the dust.

It was hard to imagine something of its size could move so fast.

After the lizard left, Perry Yates continued toward her destination.

A few hours later, Perry Yates finally arrived at the foot of the cactus.

Just as Perry Yates had predicted, the cactus was enormous.

For those lost in the desert, cacti were treasures. Cutting them open revealed juice that could quench one’s thirst.

However, Perry Yates had no interest in the cactus juice. She was more interested in the ripe Cactus Fruit growing on it.

"Identification."

[Cactus Fruit of the Desert: Unripe fruit is green and contains trace amounts of toxins; consumption is not recommended. When mature, the fruit turns red, the toxins disappear, and it becomes nutritious and extremely high in calories. Its sweet aroma attracts fruit-eating animals and birds, which helps to spread its seeds.]

Perry Yates looked at the top of the cactus. Many Cactus Fruits had already grown, and a good number of them had already turned red.

Perry Yates’s timing was perfect. The Cactus Fruits had just ripened, and the animals drawn by their scent were still on their way.

She took out a knife, preparing to harvest all the Cactus Fruits.

The height of several dozen meters and the cactus’s sharp spines were no obstacle for Perry Yates.

After scouring the surrounding cacti, Perry Yates harvested over a hundred Cactus Fruits, enough to last her for a long time.

Perry Yates stored the Cactus Fruits in her Safe House.

As the sun set, the surrounding temperature plummeted. The once-scorching sand turned bone-chillingly cold. Even Perry Yates couldn’t help but shiver and quickly ducked into her Safe House.

Inside the Safe House, Perry Yates happily munched on the prepared Cactus Fruit.

’Tsk, it’s so much better in the Safe House,’ she thought. ’If this mission wasn’t to escape the desert, I could stay in here until the very end.’

She cleaned the bird she had found earlier, plucking its feathers and removing the innards, then placed it in the oven.

It was already half-cooked, so she just needed to roast it a little longer to heat it up.

The night passed dreamlessly.

In the morning, Perry Yates woke up, ate a few Cactus Fruits for breakfast, put away her Safe House, and got back on the road.

After walking for about two hours, Perry Yates started to feel like she didn’t want to go on. She was a bit tired.

This wasn’t physical exhaustion. After all, with the huge sun overhead constantly supplying her with energy, how could she be tired?

Her current fatigue was mental. In short, she was bored.

There wasn’t another person in sight. All she could see in every direction was an endless sea of sand. It was even more boring than the previous highway survival scenario.

At least the highway survival one had a chat function. This one had nothing at all.

But thoughts were just thoughts; she still had to keep moving. And she needed to move quickly, because she could sense a very lush Wood-elemental energy not far away.

Based on the strength of the energy, she deduced it had to be an Oasis.

Although the desert was arid with little rain, there was still a chance for an Oasis to form.

Inside an Oasis, the land was fertile. More importantly, an Oasis held the most precious and vital resource for anyone in the desert: a water source.

However, this Oasis wasn’t very large. It wasn’t the one she had locked onto earlier.

In the afternoon, an Oasis appeared in the distance.

Just as she had expected, this Oasis wasn’t large, but it was crowded with people.

Perry Yates could clearly see people moving back and forth within the Oasis from time to time. It looked quite congested.

Seeing this, Perry Yates decided to go over and check out the situation.

When she reached the Oasis, there were even more people than she had imagined.

And they were all players.

Perry Yates did a quick count—there were about twenty-odd people.

They were sitting around the water’s edge, chatting. She could hear their loud laughter even from a distance.

Because of the Silver Cross, none of them noticed Perry Yates’s arrival.

She glanced at the water source they were surrounding. It was obvious the water level had dropped significantly, a testament to how much they had been drinking.

Or perhaps they hadn’t drunk it all; some of it was likely taken away.

Perry Yates had no intention of fighting them for the water. She wasn’t short on water anyway. Besides, she had just seen one of them soaking their feet in it. She couldn’t bring herself to drink water like that.

Besides the water, a number of plants and wild fruits also grew in the Oasis.

Perry Yates used Identification on the wild fruits before she began picking the ripe ones.

[Red Fruit: Turns purple when ripe. Mature Red Fruit has a powerful hypnotic effect.]

’I’ll pick some of these, too. They might be useful later.’

’Even if they’re useless in the game, I can take them back and sell them as sleeping pills.’

Perry Yates not only picked the fruit but also transplanted two of the plants into pots.