Nearly eight hours had passed since the Divine Domain: Forbidden Zone opened.
And yet—not a single competitor had secured even one confirmed resource.
By now, everyone had reached the same brutal conclusion:
Before you could hunt "resources," you had to solve survival.
Food. Water. Shelter. Basic endurance.
And thanks to Noah Drake's earlier callout, nearly every team set their sights on the same thing—
cacti.
Even if a competitor muted the live chat overlay, information still spread—through other teams, other streams, and viewers who relayed what they'd seen.
So once Miracle Nation demonstrated the cactus strategy, it didn't take long before the entire Forbidden Zone erupted into a bizarre new trend:
A worldwide "cactus raid."
Viewers couldn't help laughing at the sheer absurdity of it.
"Divine Domain: Forbidden Zone — Cactus Extermination Arc!"
"I'm dying. Why does this suddenly feel like a comedy?"
"Jokes aside, survival comes first."
"If you can't even stay alive, what 'resources' are you going to find?"
Everyone understood the logic.
It was just… the vibe was strange.
Over in Indus Nation's channel, two competitors were on what felt like their hundredth cactus harvest.
Both were lean and dark-skinned, with the look of people who'd grown up grinding through hardship. They didn't look flashy. They didn't look legendary.
But what they did have was adaptability.
Indus Nation's homeland was harsh and unforgiving; people there learned early how to endure heat, scarcity, and hostile terrain. In this desert, those instincts actually helped.
They were adjusting fast.
Even so, the cactus diet had a problem.
It kept you from dying immediately—but it wasn't enough to keep you strong.
One of them wiped sweat from his brow, staring at the pulp in his hand like it had personally offended him.
"This won't work long-term," he muttered. "Cactus alone… no protein. No real fuel."
His partner scanned the empty dunes.
"And look at this place. Doesn't seem like there's any wildlife at all."
They fell into a brief, frustrated silence, both thinking the same thing:
If the desert had no animals…
Then where were they supposed to get real food?
That was when the sand in the distance exploded upward.
A towering wall of yellow surged like a tidal wave.
WHOOM—WHOOM—WHOOM!
A cutting wind slammed into them. The air turned sharp and violent in an instant.
Their eyes widened.
"A sandstorm?!" one shouted.
"No way—there was no warning!"
The rising sand swallowed the horizon, coming in fast. It was massive. Too massive.
Panic hit them hard enough to make their limbs feel weightless.
Indus Nation's viewers were screaming too.
"You've got to be kidding—why is it hitting our team?!"
"Run! RUN!"
"Wait—look under the sand!"
"What is that red—?!"
Some sharp-eyed viewers caught it first.
Beneath the churning sand, something crimson flashed again and again—like fresh blood moving under the dunes.
That wasn't a storm.
That was something alive.
A creature.
But the two competitors didn't have time to process it. Storm or monster—either way, they were outmatched.
They turned and ran.
Within minutes, the incident spread everywhere through the live streams—clipped, reposted, shouted through overlays, repeated in panic.
Competitors across the Forbidden Zone began adjusting their routes, trying to steer clear of the danger based on rough direction and the scale of the disturbance.
No one wanted to be swallowed by whatever was moving under that sand.
And then Dragon Nation's feed detonated.
Because viewers realized something horrifying:
Adrian Vale and Raven Shaw were walking straight toward it.
"STOP GOING FORWARD!"
"TURN BACK—THERE'S SOMETHING AHEAD!"
"They're not reacting… don't tell me they muted the overlay!"
"They did! They definitely did!"
They had.
Neither Adrian Vale nor Raven Shaw showed even a flicker of response.
They just kept moving at the same steady pace, as if the world's panic didn't exist.
Adrian Vale in front.
Raven Shaw behind.
No conversation. No planning. No hesitation.
To the audience, it looked like the dumbest possible way to die.
The chat went hysterical.
But there was nothing anyone could do.
And then—
The distant wall of sand finally rose into view on Dragon Nation's stream.
Closer now.
Louder now.
The desert ahead began to roar, and the dunes buckled as if something enormous was turning beneath the surface.
On the horizon, that same flash of crimson appeared again—
not as a speck…
but as a moving, bleeding streak, cutting through the sand like a knife.
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