Chapter 280: Desert Storm

Once the sewer slime was destroyed, the three of us continued to watch as the water filled the tank. Tiny little golems emerged from various pipes, holding devices that looked like sparking wands as they went to work on every damaged surface that they could find. I waited, prepared for another monster to appear, but I couldn’t find anything dangerous registering in my True Sight.

After a solid fifteen minutes of waiting, there was a loud hissing noise from above the water tank. We looked up, seeing the ceiling split open to reveal a bright, clear sky. Steam rose up from the tank, forming clouds above the opening at remarkable speeds.

“Does this mean that the next boss will be weather-themed?” Bella asked, but Diane simply stared at the opening, her eyes widening with barely-disguised alarm.

“Do you know what’s happening?” I asked her, snapping the halfling girl out of her thoughts.

“I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t want to say anything just yet.” Her words only served to confuse me even further.

Still, another ten minutes passed without any sign of a monster to fight. Finally, the computer let out a chime, reporting that the emergency maintenance had been completed, and that the facility was fully operational.

“Drake, can you see any chests or rewards anywhere in this place?” Diane asked, her voice seeming somewhat urgent.

I blinked in surprise, but began sweeping the facility with my senses yet again, and even activated the Search skill to look for a hidden chest. Despite this, I saw nothing that looked like a reward. When I reported this, Diane let out a low groan.

“We need to get out of here,” she said, already turning and walking towards the exit of the dungeon.

“Why? Is there some dangerous mechanic coming?” Bella quickly followed behind Diane as she asked for an explanation.

“No, nothing like that. This really is a story dungeon, but it’s one that we shouldn’t have been able to clear this soon. We managed to avoid a few steps along the way, so there are going to be consequences. For starters, there is a chance that this dungeon is tied to others in Khestra, and that those dungeons were meant to be cleared first as the user of Timeless Traces mastered their skill.”

“In a lot of games, sequence breaking like this can lead to unpredictable glitches. We’ll need to get outside in order to see the extent of the damage. At the very least, we’ll need to hurry up and visit that last dungeon on Marron’s list.”

After saying that, the three of us rushed out of the dungeon. The golems didn’t stop us, still treating us as if we were inspectors that had helped to repair their facility. By the time we exited the dungeon, the surroundings had changed considerably. The clear skies had darkened, thunder crackling within the clouds while rain had just started to hammer down against the sands. 

“Drake, scout the area. Check every region of Khestra we’ve flown through,” Diane urged. I activated Beyond Horizons, projecting my senses to the north pole, to the rift where we entered this world, and even the place where the Stilled Shadows dungeon had been the previous night.

“It’s everywhere.” No matter where I looked, the rain had spread throughout the whole of Khestra. Thunder crackled and roared, monsters burrowed into the sands, and even the sandstorms seemed to shy away from the clouds above.

“It’s a terraforming quest line,” Diane cursed under her breath. “Remember the dungeon last night? How it was storming in the background? At the time, I played it off as a way to make use of the temporal mechanic of the dungeon and activate the Timeless. A necessary story element that might have been representative of an extremely rare meteorological event, or perhaps another location entirely.”

“But, what if that was how Khestra had always been in ancient times? What if the territory that became Khestra used to be covered in greenery and regular storms, caused by this ‘water recycling plant’? It doesn’t recycle the water in some sewage systems, but the water in the atmosphere, controlling the weather. And when the facility began to break down, the rains stopped. For thousands of years, there was no rain, leading to Khestra becoming the dry, barren desert that it is now. Or… was.”

“How long would it take for Khestra to go back to how it used to be, then?” Bella asked, but Diane shook her head.

“Under normal conditions? I’d say at least a century. But this is a quest line, not a singular quest. We would likely pick up the quest for this dungeon at the Sand Castle or some other dungeon on Khestra that we haven’t learned about. Other dungeons will have the keys to accelerate the process by modifying the soil or stimulating the flora and fauna.”

As she thought about that, Diane froze, her eyes going wide. “Drake. The north pole. You said that the storm was everywhere, right?”

“That’s right?” I responded, confused by the unease in her voice. “What’s the matter? I checked that area specifically, and it was raining there, too.”

“The world boss,” Diane explained. “Its crown is a series of mountain peaks. We didn’t spend enough time there to study the makeup of those mountains. However, given that they were meant to resist erosion for thousands of years, it's reasonable to assume that they are at least partially metallic. In other words, they are lightning rods. One of the purposes of this storm might have been to awaken the world boss. And if that’s the case, the boss would have a preset directive on where it would go if it awoke during a storm.”

“We need to get to the Sand Castle.” She turned to face me, her expression serious. “If the Sand Castle was built for giants, we’ll know that it was the home of the world boss resting at the north pole. If it is a normal-sized castle, then we will be safe to explore it. Either way, it will take some time for the boss monster to walk there, so we have the opportunity to get to it now.”

My eyes widened slightly as I listened to her explanation. “Alright. Tell me how we can find the Sand Castle. It’s tied to the Mountain Crown, right?”

“Third peak to the left, eight hundred kilometers according to Marron.” As soon as Diane gave the information, I teleported the three of us to the Mountain Crown, where lightning was already starting to strike the mountaintops.

Without waiting to see if the boss monster was truly going to wake up, I pulled out the car and started driving past the third peak. Eight hundred kilometers wasn’t a particularly short drive, but it wasn’t a very long one either when we were driving as fast as I was. Especially since all of the usual flying monster obstacles had hidden beneath the sand. All I needed to do was erect a barrier to protect against lightning strikes and rain, and drive in a straight line.

Almost two hours later, we saw a sand dune rising on the horizon, a black cave at its base. This was clearly not a natural cave, as the sand refused to fall around its entrance to cover it. At the same time, flooding had already begun in the desert, rivers of rainwater rushing through the dunes.

Seeing that the entrance to the cave was large enough to drive into, I did exactly that. Once inside the dungeon, we were once again greeted with a clear sky, the outside’s weather having no influence on the dungeon itself.

However, Diane’s focus was more on the structure ahead of us. As its name implied, it was a large castle built entirely out of sand, its structure held together by some unseen force. Along the perimeter, we could see humanoid figures walking while carrying spears, looking like armored knights. However, these knights too were made of sand.

Diane let out a small sigh of relief when she saw the castle. “Although it’s big, it still looks like it was made for normal-sized people, not giants thousands of meters tall.”

“Does that mean that we can take a moment to relax?” Bella asked, a wry smile on her face. “No offense, but I’ve been tense all this time, worried that we were about to have a massive boss monster chasing us down as we flew here.”

Diane hesitated to answer, before ultimately shaking her head. “It’s too soon to relax. Let’s approach these sand knights and see how they react to us. It might be like the last dungeon, where the knights are actually friendly monsters, or this might be a normal dungeon where we have to fight our way through.”

“However, Drake, if they turn hostile, try to use your Timeless Traces on them right away. There is the possibility that they could be under some effect that turned them into their current form, and that Timeless Traces was meant to be used here as well.”

I signalled that I understood, and we quickly began to make our way forward. The sand knights soon spotted us, holding their spears defensively as they approached. They did not offer a single word of greeting, whether because they couldn’t or because they had no intentions for peace, and launched forward with their spears in hand.

I teleported behind the furthest knight from us, placing my hand on its back and activating Timeless Traces. Judging by Diane’s assumptions earlier, I thought that maybe this would turn him into a normal human knight that we could reason with.

Instead, the knight suddenly collapsed, dissolving into a lifeless pile of sand while I stood there, blinking in confusion. “I didn’t do that on purpose,” I called out.

Bella’s retort was immediate, firing ice bullets towards the approaching knights. “Well, get over here and do do it on purpose!”

I quickly teleported around, using the skill on each of the knights to instantly dissolve them. Diane let out a huff, still holding her shadowy weapons as she looked at the piles of sand. “Even if we assume that they’ll go back to normal when your skill expires, that gives us over half an hour of peace to explore the dungeon.”

With that said, we made our way towards the gates. I looked at the walls of the castle, pursing my lips. My curiosity got the better of me, and I cast Timeless Traces on a small patch of the wall, wondering if the castle was perhaps made of a material that had been converted into sand, or if the affected section would simply dissolve like the knights had.

The answer quickly revealed itself to be the latter as a cubic meter of wall just disappeared, collapsing into nothingness. The two girls shot a look at me, but I simply shrugged. “Better to know than not.”

Diane simply sighed, keeping her stance low as she walked through the halls ahead of us. “Do you sense anything?”

My True Sight swept through the dungeon, quickly getting a look at the various features. “There are a lot of different sand monsters, as well as three treasure chests. However, if there is anything historically significant, it will probably be in the library in the basement.”

Bella seemed to agree with that. “Right. This shouldn’t be a dungeon where Marron’s skill would come in handy, should it? I mean, if the walls and monsters all dissolve into sand when returned to their past state, this whole area should have been empty in the time period that Marron would visit.”

“We don’t know for sure, but that’s likely,” Diane confirmed. “This is most likely part of the questline to train the Timeless Traces skill, with the knights serving as targets to help the user level the skill up. We’ll know more once we get to that library, though, so lead the way.”