The ground beneath Kaelen's boots didn't just shake; it liquefied.
The Sand-Worm Queen rose like a monolithic tower of dried blood and jagged crystal. She was twenty meters of hate, her body segmented by chitinous armor plates thick enough to stop a tank shell.
She didn't have eyes. She didn't need them. The vibrating sensory bristles along her jawline twitched, locking onto the rhythmic thrum of Kaelen's heartbeat.
ROAR.
The sound wasn't heard; it was felt. A shockwave of infrasound slammed into Kaelen, rattling his teeth and popping the capillaries in his nose.
Behind him, the Nomad warriors scrambled up the rock formations, desperate to escape the splash zone. They watched the small, black-clad figure walking calmly toward the apocalypse.
"She's agitated," Kaelen muttered, wiping a trickle of blood from his nose. "The Ash-Storm overcharged the ambient mana. She's not hunting for food. She's hunting to vent excess energy."
He gripped the Mithril Sword. The blade was still hot to the touch, humming with the residual violet lightning he had absorbed an hour ago.
"Good," Kaelen whispered, his eyes narrowing into reptilian slits. "I was looking for a place to dump this headache."
The Queen lunged.
It defied physics. A creature that size shouldn't move that fast. She snapped forward like a whip, her maw—a circular saw of crystalline teeth—aiming to swallow Kaelen whole.
Kaelen didn't run away. He stepped into the attack.
[Skill: Shadow Step.]
He vanished in a blur of black mist.
CRASH.
The Queen's head slammed into the earth where Kaelen had been standing, throwing up a geyser of mud and rock. The impact cracked the stone foundation of the Oasis.
Kaelen reappeared in mid-air, directly above the Queen's neck segments.
"Hard shell," Kaelen analyzed in mid-fall. "Soft joints."
He reversed his grip on the sword. Gravity took hold. He drove the blade down, aiming for the gap between the third and fourth armor plates.
CLANG.
Sparks flew. The sword didn't penetrate. It skidded off the hardened mucus that coated the joints, leaving only a shallow white scratch.
Kaelen landed on the Queen's back, struggling to find purchase on the slick, shifting scales.
"Rank B durability," Kaelen grunted, digging his boots into a ridge. "Standard steel won't cut it. I need a can opener."
The Queen realized she had a parasite. She thrashed violently, rolling her massive body to crush Kaelen against the ground.
Kaelen leaped off just as thousands of tons of muscle rolled over. He landed on the wet sand, skidding back ten meters.
The Queen righted herself. She didn't lunge this time. Her throat expanded, glowing with a sickly green light.
[System Warning.]
[Enemy Skill Detected: Acidic Bile Stream.]
[Property: Corrosive / Area of Effect.]
"Move!" Vex screamed over the comms from the crawler.
A stream of pressurized acid erupted from the Queen's maw. It swept across the beach like a fire hose.
Kaelen sprinted. He didn't run in a straight line; he ran in jagged, unpredictable bursts. The acid hissed as it hit the sand behind him, melting the silica into bubbling green sludge instantly. The fumes alone were enough to melt the lining of his lungs.
He ducked behind a large rock formation.
HISS-CRACK.
The acid stream hit the rock. The stone dissolved like sugar in hot water.
"She has range, armor, and chemical weapons," Kaelen listed off, checking his stamina bar. It was dropping fast in the heavy gravity of the Oasis. "Brute force is a losing equation."
He looked at the Nomad Chief, who was watching from a high ridge. The Chief wasn't helping. He was evaluating. If Kaelen died, the Nomads would just loot his corpse.
"Spectators," Kaelen spat.
He looked back at the Queen. She was coiling up, preparing to burrow.
"She tracks vibration," Kaelen recalled.
He looked at the Mithril Sword. It was chipped. It wouldn't survive another direct impact with the armor.
'If I can't break the armor... I have to bypass it.'
Kaelen sheathed the sword. He reached into his inventory and pulled out a [Flash-Bang Grenade] he had taken from the Iron City guards.
He looked at the Queen. She began to spin, drilling into the loose sand.
[Enemy Skill: Sand Vortex.]
The ground beneath the Oasis began to swirl. A massive sinkhole formed, dragging water, rocks, and trees toward the center where the Queen waited with her mouth wide open.
"She's pulling everything in!" Lyra shouted. "Kaelen, get to high ground!"
Kaelen looked at the vortex. It was a death trap.
Or an express elevator.
"No," Kaelen said into the comms. "I'm going in."
"What?!"
Kaelen sprinted. Not away from the vortex, but with the flow. He jumped onto a floating log that was being dragged into the sinkhole.
He rode the debris down into the swirling pit of sand and water.
The Queen's mouth was at the bottom, a gaping cavern of darkness and teeth, waiting to consume the debris.
"Biology 101," Kaelen whispered as the log tipped over the edge of the maw. "Things are softer on the inside."
He leaped from the log, diving straight into the monster's throat.
The Nomads gasped. The Chief lowered his hammer.
"He is eaten," the Chief grunted. "Foolish."
The Queen snapped her mouth shut. She swallowed. She stopped spinning, satisfied with her meal. She began to submerge, retreating to her nest to digest.
Silence fell over the Oasis.
Vex gripped the steering wheel of the crawler, her knuckles white. "He's not dead. He's too mean to die."
***
Inside the Queen.
It was dark, hot, and smelled like rotting sulfur.
Kaelen slid down the slimy esophagus. Muscle contractions squeezed him, trying to push him into the stomach acid below.
He jammed his boots and elbows against the walls of the throat, halting his descent. The pressure was immense. It felt like being crushed by a hydraulic press.
[-10 HP]
[-10 HP]
[Status: Suffocating.]
"Disgusting," Kaelen gagged, bile rising in his own throat.
He was just above the stomach sphincter. Below him, a pool of green acid bubbled. Above him, the muscles were contracting to force him down.
"System," Kaelen wheezed. "Status of the lightning charge."
[Abyssal Battery: 120% Capacity (Unstable).]
[Advice: Discharge immediately or face critical organ failure.]
"That's the plan," Kaelen growled.
He drew the Mithril Sword.
He didn't slash. He stabbed the blade deep into the soft, pink flesh of the Queen's inner throat.
The monster spasmed around him.
Kaelen grabbed the hilt with both hands. He didn't use mana to cut. He used his body as a conduit.
"You like eating?" Kaelen roared, his voice echoing inside the beast. "Choke on this!"
He released the [Sin Eater]'s hold on the absorbed lightning storm.
[Skill: Grand Discharge.]
ZZAAP-BOOM!
The energy of a Rank C+ Mana Storm, which Kaelen had been holding in his cells like a living battery, surged out through his arms and into the sword.
Violet lightning exploded inside the Queen.
It wasn't a directed strike. It was an omnidirectional detonation.
***
Outside.
The Queen paused in her descent.
She shuddered.
Smoke began to pour from her gills.
Then, she screamed. It was a sound of pure agony that shattered the nearby rock formations.
Violet light erupted from inside her body, illuminating her silhouette through her skin. Arcs of electricity burst from her mouth and eyes.
BOOM!
Her midsection expanded violently. The tough outer armor that could stop tank shells couldn't stop the pressure from within.
With a wet, tearing sound, the Queen's neck exploded.
Gore, slime, and charred meat rained down on the Oasis. The massive upper half of the worm fell to the sand with a wet thud, twitching in death throes.
The lower half sank limply back into the depths.
Steam rose from the carcass.
The Nomads stood frozen, their mouths open. They had worshipped this beast as a god of death for generations. And they just watched it explode.
Movement at the neck stump.
A hand, coated in black ichor, clawed its way out of the ruined throat.
Kaelen Vance dragged himself out of the carcass. He slid down the side of the dead Queen, landing face-first in the mud.
He was covered in blue blood and green slime. His coat was dissolved in patches. But he was alive.
[Ding!]
[Boss Defeated: The Sand-Worm Queen (Rank B).]
[Kill Method: Internal Rupture (Critical).]
[XP Gained: 12,000.]
[Level Up!]
[Level Up!]
[Current Level: 17.]
[Loot Acquired: Queen's Crystal Heart (Rank B), Unbroken Chitin Plate x5.]
Kaelen rolled onto his back, staring up at the twilight sky. He coughed, spitting out a glob of worm blood.
"Note to self," Kaelen rasped. "Next time, bring explosives. The taste is terrible."
Shadows fell over him.
He looked up. The Nomad Chief stood over him. Behind the Chief were fifty warriors, their weapons lowered.
The Chief looked at the dead Queen. Then he looked at the small, slime-covered human.
Slowly, the Chief knelt.
He placed his massive hammer on the ground and bowed his head.
"You killed the Earth-Eater," the Chief rumbled, his voice filled with a new emotion. Awe. "You walked into the dark and brought the fire."
The other Nomads knelt in unison, pounding their chests.
"Exile," the Chief declared. "No... Guest."
Kaelen sat up, groaning as his ribs protested. He wiped the slime from his eyes.
"Guest is good," Kaelen said, standing up on shaky legs. "But I prefer 'Partner'."
He pointed at the dead Queen.
"Harvest the armor. It's better than anything you're wearing. We have a war to prepare for."
The Chief stood up, grinning, revealing sharp, yellow teeth.
"War against the Iron City?"
"War against everyone," Kaelen corrected.
He walked past the Chief toward the water to wash off the filth.
"But first," Kaelen called back. "Tell me about the 7th Door. The mutant in Rust-Town said this place guards it."
The Chief's smile vanished. He looked at the bubbling sinkhole where the Queen had died.
"The Earth-Eater did not guard the Door," the Chief whispered, his voice trembling. "She was running from it."
Kaelen froze, the water dripping from his hands.
"Running?"
"Something woke up below," the Chief pointed at the deep, dark water of the sinkhole. "Something older than the Queen. She came to the surface because she was afraid."
[System Quest Updated.]
[The Pilgrimage of Ruin.]
[New Objective: Investigate the depths of the Oasis.]
[Warning: High Abyssal Concentration Detected.]
Kaelen looked at the black water. The Key in his pocket pulsed with a cold, rhythmic beat.
"Of course," Kaelen sighed, looking at his tired reflection. "It's never just a worm."