7 years later.
A giant worm, it's mouth big and round and filled with thousands of teeth's leaped out of the desert sand. It screeched and large sand pillars rose from the ground all aiming towards a small figure, not even as big as the sand worms eye.
The small figure jumped high in the air, the fist filling with a huge amount of mana blocking of the sand attacks and hitting the worm with such a force that its whole upper part of the head exploded.
[Killed 1x Elite Giant Sandworm: 301 Exp]
With a smooth roll the person landed, and freed his long curly brown hair from the sand. He shook his head one time, and correct with a small band his hair back into a bun.
His face was covered by a piece of fabric or better said a plant, protecting him from harsh sand storms. His chocolate brown eyes pierced into the distant. What was that?
„I thought in saw some green, when I jumped…" he thought and listened to the wind, „sounds like a river…? Am I going crazy now?"
He pulled down his mask and listened more closely, and he was right. He heard the gushing of a fast river. Without laying an eye on the sandworm he jogged towards the sound, and around the half he jumped up high again. Channeled his body with mana and jumped high up in the sky.
„YEEES!" he screamed at the landing, „finally! after one whole year!", he saw grass!
And not just an Oase!
This hellish desert! Finally!
Arriving at the small river he jumped laughing over it and continued running till the first greenish yellowish blades of grass emerged between the yellow and dry sand. Then more and more, till a whole steppe lay in front of him, first dry and somewhat yellow, but on the horizon he could bet that it was green.
The next days he continued his travel.
The steppe was still dry, wind-cut, the grass sharp enough to slice skin if he moved carelessly. The nights were cold—biting after the desert's heat—and the days continued burned without mercy. But compared to sand and silence, this was life.
Real life.
He hunted big horned beasts that moved in skittish herds. Once, a pack of steppe wolves tested him. He killed the alpha's jaw with an all out attack and the rest scattered, tails between their legs.
The monster lands name was real. Since arriving here, he fought stronger monsters each day.
His body moved differently now. Efficient. Quiet. Every motion deliberate, honed by years of pain and survival. Scars stretched and shifted as muscles worked beneath them—proof that he had lived when he shouldn't have.
At night, he slept lightly, often in shallow dugouts. In clear nights he looked at the stars, while creating himself an bath with his healing water.
Here, outside the whole civilization or anything else that created light, the stars were so clear and so bright. The moon even creates shadows, the night isn't really dark.
He could watch the bright sky the whole night, running away from the dreams that kept chasing him. Chains.Stone.A screaming man behind walls of earth.
Sam woke from those dreams with clenched fists and steady breath.
On the fourth day, the grass truly turned green.
Flowers appeared—small, stubborn things pushing through the soil. Insects hummed. Birds cried overhead.
He stopped.
Just stood there.
For a long moment, Sam said nothing. Then he knelt, laying in the sod grass, gazing up at the blue sky riddled with the first kinds of clouds.
The wind carried the smell of fresh earth and the sound of water again. Stronger this time, gushing and wild. Like A real river.
He tied his hair tighter, corrected the self made backpack — just an sack of pelts knotted together into an big sack of something— on his back, and smiled.
Walking further, crossing green hills, fighting large earth horses and so on. Did 2 more months pass. The air got cooler and the first bushes jumped out of the ground.
Samuel just fought his next meal. An big cyclope with an eye that could fire attacks powerful enough to destroy country's.
With a hair's breadth, Samuel twisted aside.
The beam tore past him, a line of condensed force that split the hill behind him in two. Stone vaporized. Earth screamed. The shockwave flattened grass for dozens of meters.
Samuel landed low, one hand pressed to the ground, boots carving furrows into the soil as he slid. His whole body hummed—mana circulating instinctively, reinforcing muscle, bone and skin.
"Too slow," he muttered.
The Cyclops roared.
It was enormous—easily three times Samuel's height. Its single eye glowed with violent light, veins pulsing around it like molten cracks. Every step shook the land, each footfall a small earthquake. Its club—if one could call a torn slab of stone a weapon—came crashing down.
Samuel didn't block.
He entered.
The moment the club fell, he dashed forward instead of back, letting the wind of the impact tear past his shoulders. His fist drove upward into the Cyclops' knee.
BOOM.
Mana detonated at the point of contact. Not released outward—but forced inward. Bone cracked. The giant staggered, bellowing in shock.
Samuel was already moving.
He leapt, twisting midair, his heel smashing into the Cyclops' ribs. His whole body followed—elbow, shoulder, knee—each strike chained seamlessly, no wasted motion, no pause. His fighting style was no longer human martial arts.
It was survival incarnate.
The Cyclops swung blindly, trying to swat him away. Samuel ran along the arm, feet pounding up muscle and stone-like skin, then launched himself straight at the eye.
The beam fired again.
Samuel crossed his arms, hardened flesh flaring metallic for a split second as the blast grazed him. Skin burned. Blood sprayed. But his body adapted instantly—regeneration surging, muscles reshaping under stress.
He screamed—not in pain, but effort—and punched.
Not at the eye.
At the brow above it.
The impact snapped the Cyclops' head back violently. The beam misfired, ripping into the sky instead of the land. Samuel dropped, landed, rolled—and came up directly beneath the monster's chest.
"Fall."
He drove both palms upward.
Mana erupted through his arms, legs, spine—his entire body acting as one weapon. The ground beneath them cratered. The Cyclops' torso lifted for a brief, impossible second— Then collapsed.
The giant hit the earth like a mountain breaking. Dust and debris filled the air. Trees at the forest's edge shook violently, leaves raining down.
Silence followed.
[Killed 1x Angry Cyclobe: 362 Exp]
Samuel stood atop the fallen body, chest rising and falling, blood steaming where it touched the cool air. His scars glowed faintly, then dimmed as regeneration finished its work.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. And finally, more messages followed.