Panting, Free collapsed atop a sand dune, a couple of miles away from his village, letting his back fall onto the sand.
Gazing up at the pitch-black sky and near-full moon, he couldn't help but sigh.
This was the furthest away he had ever been from the village, and...it was so exhilarating!
There was no one to stop him, hold him back...the night was all his.
Furthermore, if he ran into any dark monsters, Free would be able to spot them from a mile away in the plain desert and react accordingly.
It was truly a shame he would have to head back soon to make it back before the full moon.
Catching his breath, Free gazed forward, seeing the small white sparkle he had been looking for all this time momentarily appear before vanishing.
When a sudden white hue, sparkling every so often, had caught his sight amidst the vast and dark desert a week ago, Free immediatly wanted to chase after it like a child catching dragonflies.
For the first time in his fifteen years of living in this mundane village, something intriguing had come.
But the villagers had always stopped him before he could get too close.
In reality, Free didn't honestly care about the value or worth the sparkling light held; it was what it symbolized that mattered.
Change.
Free longed for change, any deviation from the simple life he lived.
He wanted an escape.
As he approached the flickering white light, the sparkle it emitted became more and more frequent, even growing brighter.
Within a few moments, Free stood at the base of a dune that seemed to stretch up into the sky, gazing upward at the light, which was so bright that it could be... mistaken for the moon.
Unlike the other less steep dunes, he couldn't just walk up this one, so Free surged his hands forward, embedding them in the soft and cold sand, and began scaling the dune like a rock climber.
However...a second later.
*CRASH*
Free inevitably tumbled to the ground as his legs immediatly fell through the sand, causing him to lose his balance.
Yet, when he looked up, the dune's peak, where the white sparkle lay, had gotten a tiny bit lower.
"..."
Like a charging ram, Free backed up a bit before sprinting full speed ahead, gaining more and more momentum as he approached the dune's base.
*BANG*
Surprisingly, running straight into the sand didn't hurt as he went right through its soft outer layer, slowly coming to a halt in the middle of the dune.
*SHHHKKK*
That doesn't sound good...
A moment later, the dune completely collapsed, having lost its base, and the sand tumbled downward, burying Free, who stood in the middle of it.
Trying to make a hole for oxygen, Free desperately swung his hands forward, batting away sand, but more and more came, filling in the gaps around him.
His vision went completely dark as sand buried him, his actions slowed, and nausea overtook his brain as he lost access to oxygen.
But, at that moment, a sudden...red sparkle flashed across his sight.
Is that it...the light?
Mustering up the last of his strength, he raised his right arm forward and pushed it through the countless layers of sand above, toward the red glow above him.
Right as his eyes closed and thoughts came to a halt, preparing his body to shut off entirely, Free felt it.
A smooth and glossy texture, like he had never felt before, brushed against the fingertips of his right hand.
Not even a moment later, a somewhat... familiar voice rang through his ears, snapping him away from the claws of death.
[Eclipser! You have obtained a Blood-Moon fragment and met the qualifications necessary to participate in the Blood Moon Dream!]
[Please touch an End Crystal tomorrow to receive full access to your Dream!]
Blood Moon...wasn't the Lunite talking about that!?
Before Free's mind could process anything else, his brain halted, and his body paused.
It was said that a human could live for three to six minutes without oxygen, and Free's body, although better than average due to his constant desert exploration missions, was running out of time.
Desperately, as the blood-red light faded away and darkness returned, Free pushed his hands forward, attempting to push away the sand and create space for oxygen.
However, his hands... limply fell to his side, disobeying his brain's commands, and sand from above immediately filled the hole he had created to grab the red crystal.
For a moment, Free's head reawakened, flooding with panicked thoughts as the idea of death appeared, but a moment later, it...halted.
His now-unconscious body remained utterly still, surrounded by sand in the middle of the collapsed dune, each second drawing him closer to death's door.
Then...a light white light suddenly appeared.
*TUMBLE*
An arm, covered by iron armor, surged forward through the dune, creating a gap for oxygen and the moon's light.
Suddenly, while Free's unconscious body fell backward due to the new hole in the dune, the arm's pale white palm met his neck.
Grasping onto him as if he were a baseball, the unknown palm wrapped its fingers around Free's neck.
Then, in an extremely aggressive motion, the arm suddenly flew backward out of the dune, yanking Free's body out of the sand as if he were an object.
*BANG*
Consequently, Free flew out of the hand and landed on the soft sand a couple of meters away from the unknown dune.
The impact instantly awoke him.
"Pfft— gah."
Spitting out the sand from his mouth and coughing desperately, Free gazed up at the pitch-black sky, happy to see the moon for once.
His view of the moon was quickly blocked, though.
A figure with snow-white hair stepped over his body, placing her head right above his, and gazed down at him with frozen ice-blue eyes.
Not skipping a beat, she immediatly asked...or rather demanded while looming over him.
"Where is it."
"..."
Wordlessly, Free stared at his empty right palm, which had previously held the blood-red crystal, before...closing his eyes.
If I can't see her, she can't see me!
If I can't see her, she can't see me!
"...?"