The heat was gnawing at my skin as if the sun had decided to pour its fire on me alone. The strange thing is that I felt that even though consciousness had left me. I was not between dream and wakefulness, but lost in a limbo between life and death.
Then, like someone emerging from under water after a long drowning, I suddenly regained consciousness. I opened my eyes slowly, wishing that everything that happened was just a nightmare, that I would open my eyes to find myself in my bed, or in a place I knew. But the truth was harsher than any disturbing dream.
I looked around me... the land extending endlessly, the golden sand boiling under my feet, and the dry air that slashes the throat. No, it wasn't a dream. I was really there. In a place that resembled the desert... no, it was a desert in every sense, with its deadly silence and merciless desolation.
"What is this? And where am I?"
The words whispered between my lips, but the answer was not clear. My voice was faint, mixed with doubt and fear, as if I were addressing the whole world, but it did not respond. The air was heavy, and the silence stronger than anything else.
Suddenly, and in a moment that cannot be described, the silence exploded with something strange. The sound came from nothingness, a loud scream tearing the horizon, interspersed with a roar growing stronger. Before I could think of what was happening, a huge shape appeared from between the sands, a mass of rocks moving as if it were a living creature. It was a stone golem, huge, walking at an astonishing speed toward me.
"W... what is going on?"
The words burst from my mouth as I saw it approaching. My throat dried up, while my feet failed to carry my body, and I began retreating step by step. I couldn't stand on my feet, a feeling of helplessness controlling me as if everything around me was moving faster than my ability to comprehend.
I stood on my feet with difficulty, and started running as fast as I could. My feet were barely carrying me, and my body refused to respond as if it were exhausted from thirst and hunger, and something else—extreme fear—but I had no other choice. The golem was approaching me quickly, and I was barely able to catch my breath...
I was running endlessly, as if I were chasing the air that was escaping me at an unbelievable speed.
"Whooshhh"...
That familiar window appeared again, as if it were watching me, watching every step I took. This time, the words written on the window were more astonishing...
(Desert Lord Golem)
(Class: B+)
Reward for killing him: The reward is secret until he is killed...
"Shut up... what does this mean? Am I now facing the Lord of the Desert? And for a reward?..."
I muttered the words in a low voice, while my heart was pounding in my chest like a hammer. I still couldn't comprehend it. Everything seemed illogical, as if I were in a parallel world that had nothing to do with what I knew. But suddenly, as if the universe decided to send me one last chance, the window flipped and the information changed before my eyes.
New words appeared, and I quickly read what was written:
{You can now buy whatever you want at a price lower than usual, due to leveling up to 2.}
Items available for purchase:
Silver Dagger: 100 Mana Points
Enhancement Elixir: 350 Mana Points
Silver Sword: 5000 Mana Points
{Total Mana Points the player owns: 2,000,000}
I froze in place, my eyes widening in shock. Those points were too many, more than I imagined. Where did I get them? Since when have I had this enormous number of points?...
My train of thought was suddenly cut off when I felt a strong blow, like a missile shaking my body violently. Before I could understand what was happening, the blow threw me into the sand dunes, where I rolled between the hot grains until I finally stopped in a deep place.
But the pain did not leave my body for a moment. I tried to catch my breath, but the air was heavy, and my eyes were closing from extreme exhaustion.
When I opened my mouth to take a deep breath, I realized that blood had filled my mouth.
I spat, and the blood splattered on the sand, heavy like drops of iron. Its taste was bitter, and heavy, as if it carried the burdens of the entire world.
The window appeared again before my eyes, as if it were observing every detail in the hardest moment of my life. The words were clear, but heavy as stone...
"Last chance. Do you want to buy or not?"
All I wanted was to answer, to say the name of the item I needed. But before I could respond, the unexpected happened.
In a fleeting moment, I felt something huge gripping my feet tightly and lifting me up as if I were just a doll in the hand of that giant golem.
I rose from the ground quickly, and nothing around me but the burning sunlight and the flying sand. The golem was raising me high with one intent only... to devour me.
The scream that came out of me was hysterical, echoing in my ears like the roar of a wild beast.
I was gathering my strength in a desperate attempt to break free, but the pain was ravaging my ribs, and blood was dripping from me everywhere.
Everything around me was becoming more and more blurry, as if I were on the edge of the end.
In a fleeting moment, the giant golem placed the boy inside its massive stone mouth and swallowed him in one go, the boy's final scream rising before being silenced by the golem's cruel fangs. The cracking of bones echoed amid the barren silence, and blood scattered like red flowers on the golden desert sands, decorating its cruelty with a blot of tragedy.
The window appeared again, but it wasn't as before. No host this time, no voice, no shadow of anyone to read what was written in it.
Only one word was glowing in the darkness, pulsing with a mysterious dimness:
"Restart."
The word was floating slowly, as if inviting, or warning, or offering a choice that could not be undone.
The void around it remained silent... but it seemed as if it were waiting...
I woke up again. No sound, no breeze, only that heavy stillness that chokes time. I was in my place... in the same barren desert, at the exact point where I first began, as if time had turned a full circle to return me to the beginning.
With the instinct of one who just survived, I felt my body with trembling fingers. No wounds, no bite marks, as if the golem was nothing but a passing nightmare... or maybe I was the nightmare.
I looked around slowly. The sand still stretched endlessly, dead golden under a sun that doesn't know how to set. No sign of the window, or the golem... only me, and the desert, and that heavy feeling that something is repeating itself... but differently this time.
"Why did I return to the same place again? Is there something I overlooked? Or must I kill him and survive—and also take that reward??..."
The golem reappeared.
From the heart of the mirage it formed, as if the desert itself had spit it out from its depths, stacked stones trembling under the impact of its heavy steps. My eyes widened completely, and fear rose in my chest like a sudden storm. I didn't think, I didn't hesitate.
I jumped to my feet like someone who woke from a nightmare inside a nightmare, and started running... running with all I had, as if my feet were burning under the sands, as if the air itself resisted me.
"What the hell is going on here?"
I didn't look back. I didn't dare.
All I knew was that if I slowed for a moment, a new end awaited me—and maybe I wouldn't get another chance this time...
"Show up, you damned window!"
I screamed it with all my chest, my voice tearing in the hot air as I ran without aim, without direction, only fleeing from the unknown roaring behind me. The sands folded beneath my feet as if trying to embrace me, or perhaps swallow me, and the golem was still approaching, its sound like the roar of a mountain collapsing.
No window appeared.
And the desert remained in its eerie silence, watching me like an indifferent witness, as if mocking my screams, my helplessness, everything.
I just wanted an exit... just one more chance to escape this damned nightmare...
The window appeared... finally.
As if it responded to my rage, or perhaps it was waiting for the right moment to return. It emerged from nothingness, floating in the air before me, glowing with a faint light, carrying familiar words....
Items available for purchase:
Silver Dagger: 100 Mana Points..
Enhancement Elixir: 350 Mana Points..
Silver Sword: 5,000 Mana Points..
{Total Mana Points the player owns: 2,000,000}
I froze in place, panting, and the golem was still on the horizon, roaring, closing the distance between us slowly and threateningly.
My hand extended toward the window as if it knew what it had to do.
The choice this time... was mine.
And the power, if I chose well, might no longer be a dream.
I pronounced the name of the item I desired, and the words came from my mouth like a spell engraved in memory.
"Elixir of Life!"
"The silver dagger!"
The elixir was pulsing with a glowing blue color, as if it carried a hidden pulse of life, while the dagger...
The dagger was a masterpiece, light in weight but imbued with a strange power, its surface shining under the desert sun as if light itself was crafted into its simple silver engravings.
And above the window, new words appeared in steady script:
One Elixir of Life purchased...
One Silver Dagger purchased...
The air around me tr
embled, as if the world realized that something had changed...
And for the first time, I was not the one running.
I was the one who would face.