“Finally…
that damn trial.”
I dropped my lead-heavy legs onto the carcass of a chopped-up buzzard-wasp and focused on the text floating before my eyes.
The first trial was complete, achieved through unimaginable effort.
A whole week, according to the hourglass, my nerves had been stretched like steel cables, snapping now and then under the pressure of the environment.
I couldn’t even say I’d seen any progress in my actions.
I slept little, ate poorly, and rested even less.
That took a serious toll on my body.
The further I went, the worse it got.
My movements slowed, walking became harder, and swinging my arms…
I just didn’t want to do it anymore.
I had to replace standard muscle movements with sandbending.
Honestly, doing almost anything was easier with bending.
Cutting food, moving around, even wiping myself.
That didn’t mean my muscles weren’t developing—they were straining harder than in any of my previous home workouts.
They just broke down faster , so trusting them became harder.
And the wasps never seemed to decrease in number.
After exploring the hive, I quickly realized I’d only been on the first level.
The hole in the center, where new drones occasionally flew out, led deeper into the nest.
That’s also where most of the “honey” went.
Presumably as food.
And the more I appeared in the hive, the less I wanted to go deeper.
“Trial complete.
However, my aspect is not only Death.
I am also the guardian of poisons and medicines.
As my champion, you must learn the necessary craft.
Choose:”
1 Study the poisons in the wasps’ bodies (You’ll gain basic knowledge of using poisons).
2 Study what useful properties can be extracted from the wasps (You’ll gain basic knowledge of surgery and medicine).
3 Eat the wasps whole (You can build tolerance to their toxins).
“So I’m your champion now?” I muttered.
“Well, this is useful knowledge, I suppose.”
Choosing just one was difficult.
Some options felt like a fever dream, but others were practical.
I had to pick a path, so I decided on medicine.
With a hope that my body would at least get a little easier, I was forced to gather a huge pile of corpses and lay them out somewhere I wouldn’t be disturbed.
After countless days of fighting, this trial was true torture.
No charging, no scanning your surroundings in three-dimensional space.
Just sitting in silence, carefully dissecting the more intact carcasses.
Anubis demanded precision.
I had to cut open ten abdomens in a row without damaging them with excessive roughness.
I had to make flawless incisions and remove the hide.
For that, I had to start crafting more refined tools.
Previously, I hadn’t cared about how sharp my edges were, and making them perfect mid-battle was impossible.
Now I was straining myself just to make the blade smooth, without a single protruding grain.
Without proper tools, it was easy to damage the nerves, blood vessels, muscles, and organs I needed to store and process separately.
Sand tentacles did the work while my hands rested.
Already at this stage, I noticed how important it was to butcher a carcass correctly.
Excessive damage to the body strained the muscles, making the meat tough.
Damaged organs released a foul compound that spoiled the meat.
And if you didn’t properly drain the blood vessels, the blood became viscous.
I don’t know how to describe it, but my motivation to study medicine only grew stronger.
I stopped eating slop from tainted wasp meat and started eating properly butchered carcasses.
I drank blood that was still disgusting, but no longer oily.
As for the organs, I had to preserve them in jars made of sandstone.
It turned out that the luminescent fluid of the glowing drones protected organic matter from decay.
I acquired this information through the unpleasant processing of several fireflies.
Eternal memory to them.
Soon, I began to marvel at how much time all this consumed. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
I dove headfirst into the available knowledge and the opportunities to acquire it.
Swoosh.
Sand streamed down inside the sturdy glass flask into the lower chamber.
I watched the remaining grains intensely, counting the seconds until the last one fell, then silently followed the hourglass as it flipped.
That moment marked the second year of living in the mountain’s depths.
And it was my last day.
“Anubis…
is this it?” With a heavy, hopeless gaze, I focused on the space before me.
The brutality of the battlefield had taught me to rely only on proven facts and my own abilities.
Only a harsh blow from reality can guide development in the right direction.
I was ready to receive another one.
“You may go outside.”
After two years here, I knew the entire nest by heart.
It had at least five floors, all connected by a massive central shaft that my sand tentacles used to climb out.
The horror of this place lay in its…
ordinariness.
The wasps behaved just like the ones from my world.
They had no bending, didn’t shoot acid.
They just defended the Queen ferociously.
The closer you got to her, the more dangerous the swarm became.
They cared less about their own wounds and fought harder to kill the intruder.
The desert people’s stories about this place were true.
But only partly.
Still, all the problems posed by these local wasps, I solved alone.
The lair and its Queen were destroyed.
Walking through the long corridor, stepping on the slimy floor out of habit, I finally emerged into fresh air.
My rags fluttered in the wind.
Nothing unusual happened I’d come out occasionally so the sunlight wouldn’t blind me all at once.
But this time, my ears caught the sound of trickling water.
Approaching the cliff’s edge, I saw a boat with a couple of sandbenders and one man relieving himself on the mountain.
“Hurry up, I don’t want to watch a buzzard-wasp bite your dick off!”
“Let me pee in peace!
Anyway, when’s the last time you even saw one?”
“Maybe they eat idiots like you?
Hey, wait…
who’s that up there?” Four pairs of eyes quickly lifted to me.
I calmly looked them over, especially their boat—which could get me to the nearest settlement in about a day—and stepped forward.
Then I jumped.
Swoosh.
Landing on the hot sand, I met their gazes.
Each one flinched.
A couple immediately summoned sand blades and pointed them at me.
I’d forgotten…
my stare tends to cause panic.
“I’m not looking for trouble.
I just want a ride.”
“Threatening us?” one of them snapped.
My gaze was fixed on him, and apparently, that was taken as an insult.
“Who the hell are you anyway?
Just rags on your body.”
“Oh, right…
you wouldn’t have spare clothes, would you?” I’d replayed meeting people in my head countless times, but now it was all jumbled.
How do you act when people are scared of you and ready to kill?
“Thinking of robbing us?” At that moment, one of the other one who’d been peeing—stepped closer.
A blade touched my neck, a smirk on his face.
“You smell like crap.”
“I wasn’t planning on fighting…” But before I could finish, I felt the knife nearing my throat.
To the man, I seemed trapped.
He tried to grab my head and smash it against the rock a movement I could read easily.
But after the wasps on the final level, which fought at maximum capacity due to the Queen’s pheromones, his speed felt painfully slow.
I didn’t even understand why he was using his hands instead of bending it would’ve been faster and stronger.
I dodged instantly, sand carrying me so fast nobody even noticed.
The bandit’s body was soon encased in sand shackles.
“Mmph!
Mmph-mmpph!” He screamed, unable to break free.
He was wrapped like a mummy.
Carefully and precisely, just like the ancient Egyptian servants of Anubis learned during burials.
With a hostage in my grip, I figured the rest would start listening to me.
Instead, I felt shifting sand waves forming with sharp edges, surging toward me.
They stopped short.
The benders lost control as they suddenly sank into the sand up to their necks.
“Huh?
Quicksand?!”
“What the hell are you doing?!”
All heads screamed angrily as I walked to the boat and checked the cabin for clothes.
I found surprisingly many several crates of various goods.
Plants, fruits, and fabrics.
I swallowed and grabbed a couple of fruits.
My eyes widened at the taste rich and sickly sweet.
Then I grabbed some fabric and started changing.
“Let us go!”
“No.” Stepping out onto the deck and sitting on the edge, I looked down at them.
I let my gaze turn truly menacing, and the men flinched, finally shutting up.
“You’re bandits, aren’t you?
You’ve got a lot of different goods.
Some of them have blood on them…”
“Y-you…” Someone wet their pants.
“We’ll share, just don’t kill us!
No, join our gang we need benders!
You’ll live like a king!”
“Shut up.
Do you know a man named Tassad?
He was attacked by bandits two years ago.”
The men exchanged glances, then expressed complete confusion.
Apparently, they’d only been active in this area for less than a year.
They’d formed a gang and patrolled near Shi Wong Mountain, where traders had started passing more often.
Questioning them about my father’s fate was useless.
I stood up, climbed onto the cabin roof, and focused on my hands.
“Hey, you’re letting us go, right?”
“We can’t get out!
The sand won’t budge!”
“…Why should I help bandits?” I tilted my head innocently, then summoned a miniature tornado in my hands.
The rapidly growing vortex was thrown toward the sail, swelling to three meters high.
The wind it created filled the sail and accelerated the boat faster than the bandits could ever dream.
Within seconds, I was racing at breakneck speed, unburdened by extra effort.
The tornado stabilized on its own, propelling me wherever I wanted.
But…
“Anubis, which direction is that settlement where we bought the wood?
I need to understand why the bandits wanted to capture me and Tassad…”
“Choose:”
1 Go back and ask the bandits (Less honorable options will become available, opening a direct path to your goal).
2 — Reconstruct past events and try to find the way yourself (A path for developing tracking skills).
3 Wander in search of your goal (You’ll learn the desert and navigate it more easily).
“…I’m not proud.
I’ll go back and ask.”